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 […]
Wildlife
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 […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
How safe is that fillet?
Most Americans — even those fanatical about eating only organic foods — assume that eating fish raised in the ocean is a healthy act that does no harm to the environment. Not necessarily. Some seafood varieties are overfished, and some are caught and farmed in ways that damage ocean ecosystems (HCN, 3/17/03: Bracing against the […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Planting time
The native-seed business is blooming, but can a restoration economy take root in the West?
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
To restore the West, go big and go native
It’s always disconcerting to have a myth blown apart — like when you discover that your favorite sports star, whom you always thought to be a nice, upstanding person, cheats on his wife or abuses his kids. The world wobbles; food doesn’t taste as good; you just want to fall asleep and wake up when […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
New forest plan leaves owls in a lurch
Sierra Nevada plan gets logger-friendly
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
In search of the desert manna
TAOS, N.M. — Winter was coming, and like so many others, I was broke. I had a freezer full of elk meat, but it wasn’t enough to survive the cold months in the high country. There’s no fat in elk meat; explorers Lewis and Clark lost weight on it, my friends say. With little money […]
Posted inApril 28, 2003: Indian Power
Roadkill 101
“Don’t touch that!” is what most kids hear when they investigate dead animals. But in Hayden, Colo., elementary school teachers are encouraging students – armed with maps and global positioning systems – to go in search of roadkill. Second- and fourth-grade students at Hayden Valley Elementary School have produced a map of roadkill patterns along […]
Posted inApril 28, 2003: Indian Power
Birdman’s biography soars
He’s known as the Birdman of Boise, and is perhaps the most underrated conservationist in the West. In Cool North Wind: Morley Nelson’s Life with Birds of Prey, Idaho writer Stephen Stuebner tells the story of a former Soil Conservation Service employee, “a flamboyant salt-of-the-earth character, a father of four, a husband, a widower, a […]
Posted inApril 28, 2003: Indian Power
Montana debates bison-hunting season
Critics say bison should simply be allowed to roam