New office seeks to keep species management closer to home
Wildlife
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Bush administration blinks on roadless rule
Attack on forest protection may backfire
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Tribes scale salmon harvest
NORTHWEST Although treaties guarantee the Yakama, Nez Perce, Umatilla and Warm Springs tribes the right to harvest salmon, contentious negotiations over just how many fish will come out of the river often end up in front of a judge (HCN, 12/20/99: Tribes cast for tradition, catch controversy). That’s about to change. In February, tribes and […]
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Reform for dumpster-diving bears
COLORADO In Pitkin County, Colo., trash is now safe from prying paws. Last month, a “bear ordinance” went into effect in all the county’s rural areas. The law, which had been in the works for more than two years, says that every trash can that hits the curb in unincorporated Pitkin County must be “wildlife-proof.” […]
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Back into the woods
The West goes to work cleaning up its forests
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Can Mr. Nice Guy lead the Forest Service?
Agency lifer Dale Bosworth lands in the hot seat
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Debate rages over fish poisoning
Supporters say pesticide is the best tool for recovering native species
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
The West’s fire survivors
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. LODGEPOLE PINE If you watched the Yellowstone fires in 1988, you’ve seen lodgepole pine in action. This is a tree that is built to burn. It grows in dense thickets at high elevations where the climate is usually moist and cool. But when drought […]
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Making forests safe again won’t be a walk in the park
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Mark Shiery works quickly but methodically with a chainsaw in the ponderosa pine forest on the northwest edge of Flagstaff. He revs his saw to fell small trees and bucks them into two-foot sections. Then Shiery, the assistant fuels manager for […]
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
A modest chief moved the Forest Service miles down the road
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In March, Mike Dombeck resigned as chief of the U.S. Forest Service. Dombeck grew up on Wisconsin’s Chequamegon National Forest and spent years working for the Bureau of Land Management before leading the Forest Service for four years under President Clinton. While the Forest […]
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
The year it rained money
In early September last year, I threw my lower back out. I drove to my job in Salmon, Idaho, but by noon I could hardly stand. I scooted myself to the office lobby on a wheeled chair, then hobbled as far as the sidewalk before my legs buckled. I lay panting on the cool concrete, […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Career bureaucrat blazes a new trail
By nature and by training, Brad Powell, regional forester for all of California, could never be called a “bunny-lover.” Yet the forest plan he signed on Jan. 12 has most environmentalists cheering. Activists were happy because the Sierra Nevada Framework is more concerned with critters such as owls than with timber volumes. It sets fires […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Timber towns search for a new economy
NORTH FORK, Calif. – Hidden away in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills, this town of 3,500 lies 16 miles from the nearest major road. Occupying, as the sign on the roadside says, “the exact center of California,” it’s a nice place to live: The air is crisp, everyone knows everyone else and the oak- and fir-covered […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Roadless rule hits the skids
The mood was unusually agreeable at a recent federal court hearing on the Clinton administration’s roadless area conservation rule for national forest lands. In Boise, Idaho, on March 30, Judge Edward Lodge heard arguments against the rule from the State of Idaho, timber company Boise Cascade, and other plaintiffs. Then he turned to the government […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Plan protects foresters, not fish
Biologists say Washington salmon plan based on politics
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
After the fires, Part I
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Reforming an agency such as the Forest Service is like pushing an old truck up a hill. It’s grunt work, and unless you have a lot of friends, you won’t get anywhere. But every once in a long while, there’s a shift. A moment […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
The Big Blowup
The Great Fires shaped a century of fire policy
Posted inApril 9, 2001: The water empress of Vegas
Montana gets a taste of old-time logging
Massive salvage operations leave little for the birds
Posted inApril 9, 2001: The water empress of Vegas
New Mexico loggers get ‘police power’
Legislature won’t wait for feds to clean up flammable forests
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Two laws collide in the Northwest woods
IDAHO, WASHINGTON Federal legislation designed to protect Alaska’s wild areas may enable a timber company to build at least 21 miles of new road through endangered species habitat on public and private lands in the Selkirk Range of Idaho and Washington. Stimson Lumber Company says it is guaranteed access to its checkerboard of national forest […]