A darling of developers, consultant gets five years’ probation and $5,000 fine
Wildlife
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
American Speedster
With its distinctive markings, an American pronghorn on the prairie range is about as inconspicuous as pepper in salt. But then again, when you can sprint at 60 miles per hour and sustain speeds of around 45 mph for mile after mile, stealth and camouflage aren’t that important. In Built for Speed, John Byers — […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
News flash: Fish do need water
Federal wildlife managers admit that a massive fish kill was caused, in part, by diversions of water to farmers
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Forest protection on the honor system
After nearly a year of contentious debate about how best to reduce wildfire danger, the House and Senate passed the Healthy Forests Restoration Act on Nov. 20 (HCN, 5/26/03: Congress jousts over forest health). Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who worked to craft the bill, is hailing it as a compromise and a bipartisan success, but […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
In Boulder-White Cloud mountains, another wilderness compromise
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Riding the middle path.” A hundred miles north of the Owyhee Canyonlands, another bold wilderness deal is brewing in Idaho, and the brewmaster is another conservative Republican congressman. “We have a rare opportunity to control our own destiny, by crafting our own legislation that […]
Posted inWotr
Sportsmen for Bush: Wise up!
Without enthusiastic support from most of America’s 50 million hunters and anglers, George W. Bush and his appointees would still be employed by oil, gas and coal companies. I still see bumper stickers that say: “Another Sportsman for Bush.” Yet as a lifelong sportsman myself, I wonder why even one sportsman, let alone “another,” would […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Logging faces new pollution controls
A recent federal court ruling and a new California law could both curtail stream pollution by the timber industry. On Oct. 12, outgoing Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill that allows regional water quality boards to veto logging plans if they would damage streams classified by the federal Environmental Protection Agency as “impaired due to […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Whirling disease hits Yellowstone
Cutthroat trout, a native species in trouble around the West, are facing an increasing threat in a key sanctuary, Yellowstone National Park. Whirling disease, spread by a European parasite that showed up in the park five years ago, now infects 12 to 20 percent of the cutthroats in Yellowstone Lake, according to biologists’ studies. And […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Our publicly owned forests are being subverted
As the nation remains preoccupied with the war against terrorism, President Bush has been carrying out a less visible assault on another front: our national forests. Most of the attacks over the last year have been below the radar — in arcane rules, stealth riders and misnamed legislation. In this many-fronted assault, big timber is […]
Posted inWotr
Fire policy in the form of Smokey and the Bandit
Among the spectacles swirling around Southern California’s recent wildfires, we had now-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who rose from body-building to movie screens and into politics on the principle of self-reliance, beseeching Washington, D.C., to cushion Californians from the toll of the flames. There was also California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who rose with […]
Posted inWotr
Our publicly owned forests are being subverted
As the nation remains preoccupied with the war against terrorism, President Bush has been carrying out a less visible assault on another front: our national forests. Most of the attacks over the last year have been below the radar — in arcane rules, stealth riders and misnamed legislation. In this many-fronted assault, big timber is […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Activists raise a stink over outhouse
In the latest skirmish over a long-disputed dirt road in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Elko county-rights activists are fuming over the Forest Service’s decision to clean a remote outhouse. The county and the Forest Service have clashed since 1995, when the agency closed a 1.5-mile stretch of South Canyon Road after most of it was […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Bee kind, please redesign
If you dread mowing the lawn, maybe you should just give it up altogether next year. Native pollinator insects — bees, butterflies and others — are declining across the nation because of land-management practices that range from vast single-crop farm fields to manicured urban lawns. This is very bad news, because despite their tiny size, […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
A revival on Hart Mountain
The antelope refuge looks better than it has in decades, but managers seem stuck in the past
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
It’s ‘bombs away’ on New Mexico saltcedar
State begins an aerial assault on a water-sucking weed
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Behind the scenes, pressure and doubt
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “San Diego’s Habitat Triage.” The Center for Biological Diversity and its allies weren’t the only ones who found serious problems with the San Diego Multiple Species Conservation Program. Inside the Fish and Wildlife Service, two biologists, who have since left the agency, harbored private […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
A grizzly attack that was bound to happen
One of the most egotistical notions humans have is that we can “commune” with unpredictable wild animals. News headlines over the last couple of weeks have revealed the depth of our folly. During Siegfried and Roy’s Las Vegas nightclub act, a tiger turned on trainer Roy Horn. Doctors say Roy remains in serious condition. And […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
The West loses a conservation elder
Perhaps all showdowns between environmentalists and industry appear to be clashes of mythic proportion, but the unfolding story of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge seems particularly so, a world-class drama whose players include migratory birds, caribou, polar bears, native Alaskans, eco-activists, oil executives and politicians. The outcome of this mythic tale is yet unscripted. But […]
Posted inWotr
Salmon go swoosh in the Northwest
It was Saturday, and we had shopping to do: groceries, eyeglasses, yard tools, and as we crisscrossed Portland to find deals, we were sucked into malls, lured by displays to purchase jeans and sports paraphernalia. Then, in the middle of the overcast Oregon afternoon, in the heart of Northwest cool known as the Pearl District, […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Pygmy-owl may lose protection
Arizona’s cactus ferruginous pygmy-owl may no longer be endangered, according to an August ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The three-judge panel concluded that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to prove that 18 pygmy owls in Arizona are distinct from a much larger population of owls in Sonora, Mexico. In […]