My friend Fred says that what he enjoys most about camping in the wild is watching people hang their food. Though you’re miles from a television, it’s far funnier than anything Hollywood could invent. And on a recent trip with some friends, Fred and I demonstrated the truth of his theory. The concept is simple: […]
Wildlife
Posted inJune 23, 2003: 'Sound science' goes sour
Sound science goes sour
As federal scientists come under the gun from bureaucrats and politicians, some are becoming fed up, and one high-profile biologist has spoken out.
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
A dirty use for Clean Water Act money?
Watershed managers in northern New Mexico are mounting a pre-emptive strike this spring with a forest-thinning project that aims to reduce wildfire risk. In February, the Forest Service began a thinning project in the Santa Fe National Forest, which surrounds the city’s municipal water supply. The Santa Fe Watershed Association, a local grassroots group, secured […]
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
How much is wilderness worth?
Utah’s anti-wilderness moves could cost it the outdoor industry’s allegiance
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
Giant sequoias could get the ax
In a national monument, the Forest Service wants to cut trees to save them
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
A ‘nature girl’ remembers a dying lumber town
I never got over Hilt. It is as real to me now, when it no longer exists, as it was when I was 3 years old, or 6, or 12. I see it, sometimes, with an aching intensity that will not go away, so that the little valley beside Cottonwood Creek comes back to me […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
A book big enough to make waves
Northern Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is a big place with big oil reserves. And now it has a big photographic book that explores the collision of conservation and development there — a book that has created quite a stir in Washington, D.C. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land, A Photographic […]
Posted inWotr
Westerners must be fire-starters as well as firefighters
In one of his 16 books on fire, historian Stephen Pyne wrote: “If fire were captured today, it would never make it past the federal regulatory agencies.” Letting fire run free is a huge deal; early man must have wondered if it was worth the trouble. Fire empowered our ancestors not just to cook food, […]
Posted inWotr
To restore the West, go big and go native
It’s always disconcerting to have a myth blown apart. Like when you find out your favorite sports star, who you know to be a morally upstanding person, abuses his wife. The world wobbles; food doesn’t taste as good; you just want to fall asleep and wake up when everything is back to normal. That’s what […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
Enviros squash plan to kill crickets
Where are those ravenous seagulls when you need them? Idaho farmers are bracing for an invasion of Mormon crickets this summer, but they are unlikely to be as fortunate as early Utah settlers, whose besieged crops were miraculously rescued by flocks of birds. Instead, the federal government planned to spray pesticides over huge tracts of […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
Big blowups will continue, whether we like it or not
We’re spending billions to fight ‘catastrophic’ forest fires. But the big blowups will continue, whether we like it or not. For the forests, this may be good news.
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
Firespeak Catastrophe
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “A losing battle.” Firespeak catastrophe #1 “Wildland-urban interface.” This catchall phrase describing the forest fringe includes cabins and watersheds in the woods around Salmon, Idaho — a remote town of only 3,200 people that can hardly be described as urban. It also includes Lowman, […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
History is full of big fires
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “A losing battle.” “Investigating the … arid lands, I passed through South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho by train. Among the valleys, with mountains on every side, during all that trip a mountain was never seen. This was because the fires […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
Who should pay when houses burn?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “A losing battle.” CONNER, Montana Greg Tilford and his wife, Mary, pursued a dream when they quit their jobs as cops in California and moved here. They built a two-bedroom cabin on a forested ridgetop above Dickson Creek, installed solar panels and a garden, […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
Rising from the ashes
HUSON, Mont. — The early morning temperature has already reached the 80s, as our six-person Forest Service silviculture crew starts up a steep ridge, our tools stuffed into the pockets of our orange vests. We carry clinometers for measuring the steepness of the slopes, compasses and maps for finding our way, and logger’s tapes for […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
Learning to live with fire
I went to Mesa Verde National Park to see the ruins — not the cliff dwellings, which the Ancient Puebloan Indians mysteriously abandoned 700 years ago, but the ruined land itself. Since 1996, three major fires have torched more than half of the 55,000-acre park in southwest Colorado. You can’t help but notice the miles […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
Fire in the West
A losing battle High Country News launches its redesigned print edition with a critical look at fire in the West. Since the 1960s, the ‘let it burn’ approach to wildfire has gained wider and wider acceptance. But as fires increasingly come up against the West’s phenomenal population growth – and as some scientists warn that […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
Congress jousts over forest health
With fire season on the way, lawmakers again take up the battle over Bush’s Healthy Forests Initiative
Posted inWotr
It’s buyer beware when it comes to Atlantic salmon
When Dan Wasil plucks a white package of “Fresh Atlantic Salmon” from the grocery store cooler, he hardly glances at its label. “I assume that it comes from the Atlantic,” says Wasil, a fundraiser who has lived in Portland for over 30 years. While he says he’s careful to check labels to see if chicken […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Backcountry road deal runs over wilderness
A nearly three-decade-long fight over who controls backcountry roads crossing federal land in Utah may soon come to an end — and the resolution casts a huge cloud over the future of wilderness protection. In 2000, the state threatened to sue the federal government, claiming ownership of the roads under a Civil War-era law known […]