NATION Environmental groups and the timber industry are united for once. Both oppose the Forest Service’s plan for protecting roadless areas. The plan, released May 9, comes in response to President Clinton’s promise last October to protect undesignated wilderness in national forests (HCN, 11/8/99: A new road for the public lands). The proposal would ban […]
Wildlife
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Grizzlies: going, going …
People are the greatest threat to grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park, according to a 73-page Sierra Club report, Rural Residential Development Trends in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Since the Listing of the Grizzly Bear. Writer Vanessa K. Johnson says rapid growth in the counties surrounding Yellowstone chews up what’s left of the bears’ habitat. […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Help Hells Canyon
Managers of Hells Canyon on the Oregon-Idaho border, the deepest river-cut canyon in the world, are hoping for more direction in dealing with increasing numbers of visitors, longstanding grazing and logging and a mandate to protect the area. Until June 20, the public can have a say in the future of the canyon by commenting […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Elk find no home on the grasslands
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When rangers at North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park culled the park’s burgeoning elk herd early this year, they sent about 200 of the animals to Kentucky. There, the state wildlife division reintroduced the once-native animals to parts of the Appalachian state. This struck […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Invisible roads block wilderness
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Imagine a map of North Dakota with every section line – the crisscrossed lines that stretch north-south and east-west across the state precisely one mile apart – converted into a public road. That’s just what the Dakota Territorial Legislature imagined in 1871, when it […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
The West’s hottest question: How to burn what’s bound to burn
In the wake of the Cerro Grande fire, everyone ponders prescribed burning
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
More trouble waits in the wings
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article,”The West’s hottest question: How to burn what’s bound to burn.” While the 1988 fire at Yellowstone National Park stands today as an ecological success story, some scientists and forest managers say the Cerro Grande fire will be […]
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
The burbs target cougars
WASHINGTON The suburbs of Seattle have historically been home to voters who support wild animals, but as development encroaches on what once was wilderness, new homeowners, such as Tami Cron, feel torn. Last summer Cron opened her front door and came face-to-face with an adult female lion. “It is pretty nerve-racking to think cougars were […]
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
Yelling fire in a crowded West
I was in Jackson, Wyo., in fall 1988, right after Yellowstone National Park burned to the ground. School children were contributing nickels and dimes to build it back up, and there was a lynch-mob attitude in the town toward the National Park Service and other federal agencies (HCN, 9/26/88). Today, the Yellowstone fires are celebrated […]
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
The weedy future of the Great Basin
Fire and cheatgrass conspire to create a weedy wasteland
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
Activist calls for cease-fire on wolves
Others say killing problem wolves was part of the deal
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
‘Los Alamos is burning’
Los Alamos is burning. My wife stands in front of the TV in our home in Lewiston, Idaho, watching CNN with her hands to her face, tears in her eyes. She is whispering softly, a litany of actions from deep in her memory. “They have to pack their things. They have to take the family […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
A growing movement in green
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. It’s hard for the untrained eye to tell, but not all of the wood at Karen and Tom Randall’s mill on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington is created equal. Some logs have come from forests that aren’t clear-cut, where water quality, wildlife and wetlands […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Bart: Still a trooper
Bart, the 1,500-pound star of The Bear and most recently The Edge (co-starring Anthony Hopkins), missed out on the Academy Awards a couple of weeks ago. But the 23-year-old actor and coastal Kodiak grizzly will be appearing this month on the small screen as spokesbear for Colorado State University’s Animal Cancer Center’s new research facility. […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Forest Service Volunteer Program
The Forest Service Volunteer Program for the Rocky Mountain region is looking for backcountry rangers, campground hosts and workers for research projects and trail maintenance, among others. For a copy of the agency’s Volunteer Directory, write Volunteer Coordinator, USDA Forest Service, 324 25th St., Ogden, UT 84401, call 801/625-5175, fax 801/625-5170, e-mail blyons@fs.fed.us, or visit […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Logging doesn’t cut it
A sea of evergreens, uninterrupted by roads or clear-cut; an eroding mountainside, barren of everything but stumps and broken branches. Ancient Forests: The Power of Place, a 30-minute educational video, uses this contrast to paint a compelling picture of logging’s siege on Northwest forests. The video from Green Fire Productions, a nonprofit filmmaking organization, takes […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
A bear of a plan
Grizzly bears could be reintroduced to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area in a little more than a year, if a final environmental impact statement proceeds as planned. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s preferred alternative of the grizzly plan calls for a citizen’s management committee to oversee reintroduction of a non-essential experimental grizzly bear population. The Interior […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
‘We still have the opportunity to practice wild forestry’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bob Love is a hunter, naturalist, writer and logger in Columbia Falls, Montana. His company is Confluence Timber Company. Bob Love: “Our public forests in the past were corporatized, and now you could say we’re trying to communitize our forests. We need to invest […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
‘The emphasis is on what’s best for the land’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Tom Kovalicky, a 30-year veteran of the Forest Service, was the Nez Perce National Forest Supervisor from 1982-1991. He still lives in Grangeville, Idaho, where he is the volunteer chairman of Stewards of the Nez Perce, a collaborative community group working with the Nez […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
‘It shouldn’t be all or nothing’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Evelyn Thompson is co-owner of RBM Lumberin Columbia Falls, Montana. In 1997, she was recognized as Montana’s Businesswoman of the Year by the Small Business Administration. Evelyn Thompson: “One of our biggest principles is to eliminate waste. We developed a lot of our products […]