Eagle Creek has become an icon for anti-logging activists
Wildlife
Posted inSeptember 24, 2001: River of dreams
The enduring Endangered Species Act
Four years ago, Bruce Babbitt stood at a podium in Austin, Tex., and, in his most sonorous, Garrison Keillor-like voice, delivered the new gospel on endangered species. The conservationists’ most effective tool in the restoration of species and their habitats – the Endangered Species Act – was in peril, the then-Interior secretary told the Society […]
Posted inSeptember 24, 2001: River of dreams
In the house of the grizzly
We have begun to think of this place as ours. Every year, we cross the creek, ride up the long slope to the timbered bench, then drop into the meadow, as we have for a decade. It’s a coming home; a flood of memories of previous hunts, good times, hard work; a shared experience of […]
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
Organics, timber cut healthy deal
OREGON If chemicals from a private logging operation show up on Ed Smith’s organic herbal extract farm, all his worst fears will come true. Though Boise Cascade commonly sprays herbicides after it logs, Smith, cofounder of Herb Pharm in Williams, Ore., says his company would have to forfeit its organic certification and face ruin if […]
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
Voice of the Butterfly
Change can be as miraculous as a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis … or as surreal as a wild landscape sprouting highways and leapfrog subdivisions. John Nichols’ newest work of fiction, The Voice of the Butterfly, is a hyperactive meditation on transformation in our post-modern, uber-consumption world. Full of gritty slapstick zen, Nichols’ morality play […]
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
Boulder utilizes burns
Last May, when a prescribed burn in New Mexico’s Bandelier National Monument blew out of control and destroyed 200 structures in nearby Los Alamos, burn programs around the nation faced intense scrutiny. But in Boulder, Colo., support for prescribed burning in local open space remains strong. The Boulder Fire Department’s prescribed fire management specialist Rod […]
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
A murder mystery on Whiskey Mountain
DUBOIS, Wyo. – John and I are hiking on Sheep Ridge on a blustery day in February, and we are busy counting sheep. These Rocky Mountain bighorns look healthy – their dusty brown coats thick, their bodies sleek – but their looks belie the numbers, and their numbers tell the story. The sheep are dying […]
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
Cease-fire on the Tonto Forest
Forest Service bans ‘plinking’ on 81,000 acres in Arizona
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
New forest chief becomes a lame duck
It could turn out to be the shortest tenure as Forest Service chief in history. Dale N. Bosworth was named the 15th chief of the United States Forest Service on April 12, 2001. He may have made himself a lame duck on Friday, Aug. 24, 2001, when he removed Brad Powell as regional forester for […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
The wild West lives
Jack Hunter abandons his Sierra Club lobbying job in D.C. and a marriage gone sour, eager to settle on life’s placid surface near the Diablo National Forest of southwestern New Mexico. He takes up horseshoeing and jumps into a meaningless affair, enjoying the respite from strenuous work for hopeless causes. But then he meets a […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Arctic Refuge
“When a lone wolf howls it sounds distinctively alone. When a pack howls, the sounds harmonize and mix until the voices of a few blend into the chorus of a multitude. A call answered and passed on. A call to gather.” – Lentfer & Servid in Arctic Refuge: A Circle of Testimony That the call […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Minnow melee continues
NEW MEXICO As the battle for scarce Rio Grande water pits central New Mexico farmers against the three-inch silvery minnow (HCN, 8/28/00: Shaky truce on the Rio Grande), a controversial federal-state agreement is aiming to ensure the survival of both species. Under the three-year plan, signed June 29, the state will sell 100,000 acre-feet of […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Fire plan gets a scolding
NATION The $1.6 billion National Fire Plan, approved by Congress last September, promised a cooperative, interagency approach to fire management (HCN, 9/25/00: Fires bring on a flood of federal funds). But the government’s in-house watchdog says that promise is far from fulfilled. In his testimony before a House subcommittee on July 31, General Accounting Office […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
The way it works
The final Sierra Nevada Framework is the guiding planning document for 11 million acres of national forest lands in California. It covers the Humboldt-Toiyabe, Modoc, Lassen, Plumas, Tahoe, Eldorado, Stanislaus, Sierra, Inyo and Sequoia national forests, and the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. In a nutshell, the plan will: Reduce the total allowed timber harvest […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
A plan for the Sierra: 20 years in the making
1981 The U.S. Forest Service starts to consider the impact of intensive logging on the California spotted owl. 1984 The agency recognizes the California spotted owl as a “sensitive” species, vulnerable to extinction. 1991 Sacramento Bee reporter Tom Knudson writes a series on the forest-health crisis in the Sierra Nevada. “The Sierra in Peril” wins […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Modern-day Muir copes with victory
Craig Thomas, 56, has been hanged in effigy, had his property vandalized and his life threatened. Yet he says he feels like the luckiest guy living in the Sierra Nevada: “I actually get paid to keep this mountain range intact,” he says. Thomas works for the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign, a coalition of 72 […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Fire managers play a subtle new game
SPRINGVILLE, Calif. – “I’ve been a pyromaniac ever since I lit my shirt on fire when I was five,” says Brent Skaggs. He’s not quite kidding. Thirty-four years later, Skaggs still plays with fire, but now he has two fire engines, 40 drip torches, a crew of 22 firefighters and he carries a million-dollar liability […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Sierra loggers get the ax
EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. – It is not yet 10 a.m. on a rainy spring morning, and a computer in the Wetsel-Oviatt sawmill already reads 797 trees turned into boards since dawn. Sawdust fills the air as workers wearing ear plugs roll white fir through an assembly line of blades. This mill in the hills […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
‘The fire group is in a real building process’
Berni Bahro, 43, directed the fire analysis team for the Sierra Nevada Framework. He is a fire specialist in the Region 5 office of the Forest Service in Sacramento, Calif. “The information that we used to plan fuels management for the Framework was the best we’ve ever had. But at the site-specific level, there are […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Forest Plan has plenty of appeal(s)
VALLEJO, Calif. – If you didn’t know better, you’d think the Sierra Nevada Framework did something terrible to burglar-alarm companies. The staff at Giotto’s Alarm Tech in Tulare, Calif., accounts for 10 appeals – more than the Forest Service received from all the timber companies combined. “We’ve got a real activist office here,” says the […]