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. […]
Wildlife
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
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
‘Specialists in diversity’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Is RBM Lumber a one-of-a-kind operation, or could there be many such firms at work in the Northern Rockies? Judge for yourself. RBM originally stood for three Thompsons, Roy, Ben and Malcolm. Malcolm, Ben and Roy’s father, is a philosopher-ascetic who has returned to […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Restoring our future
Note: This essay appears in the print edition of this issue as a sidebar to a feature story. Moments of affirmation are rare in Washington, D.C. So I was pleased to run into a friend, living now in Los Angeles, whom I last saw in college, and to hear her excitement about the Forest Service’s […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Wanted: experienced firefighters
The Forest Service discovers it’s hard to find good help
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
After the fall
As big timber companies leave the Northern Rockies, a family mill turns to restoring forests
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Change is coming
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. John McCarthy is conservation director of the Idaho Conservation League. He lives in Boise. John McCarthy: “The big message in the forest today is, “change is coming – hard and fast.” We know the days of towns built around big, wasteful sawmills that required […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
‘We don’t need a revolution’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Teresa Catlin of Priest River, Idaho, is involved in a community forestry project called Forest Community Connection. She is an ecologist for the Colville National Forest in eastern Washington. She also operates a forest consulting company in Idaho called Total Land Management. Teresa Catlin: […]
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 […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Pump failure pummels salmon
OREGON A southern Oregon hatchery’s salmon stock was devastated when a pump failure killed nearly 1.4 million baby chinook. But no one is pointing fingers. When the Army Corps of Engineers shut off power to do some routine maintenance at the Cole M. Rivers Hatchery on the Rogue River, it was business as usual. “They […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Fish find friends in farmers
WASHINGTON Protecting threatened salmon in the Northwest has become everybody’s business, with Washington’s farmers the newest group to enter the fray. Now, farmers are under the gun: In the next 18 months, they must make sure their standards are compatible with habitat conservation guidelines published by federal agencies overseeing salmon recovery. If farmers are not […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Tough but threatened
The ironwood tree, long a symbol of desert abundance, may soon be protected by a new national monument in southern Arizona. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt toured an ironwood forest near Tucson in mid-March, and expressed interest in protecting about 71,000 acres of BLM land. A recent report by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson says […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Backpacks and quacks
Sporting highly sophisticated “backpacks’ that are really 20-gram satellite transmitters, 50 female pintail ducks are flying north from the Central Valley in California this spring. The ducks are the focus of Discovery for Recovery, a four-year study by Ducks Unlimited, the U.S. Geological Survey and the California Waterfowl Association. Its object is determining pintail migration […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Management plan for the Yellowstone grizzly
The Fish and Wildlife Service released its management plan for the Yellowstone grizzly, a requirement before the bear is taken off the endangered species list. View the plan at www.r6.fws.gov/endspp or obtain a copy from local libraries in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Address comments to Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, University […]
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
A letter fans the flames
NEVADA When Humboldt-Toiyabe Forest Supervisor Gloria Flora resigned last November, she said local hostility toward federal employees was a major reason for stepping down (HCN, 11/22/99: Nevadans drive out forest supervisor). Now, a letter has surfaced from a county official that supports her words. In a Dec. 30, 1998, letter to public land-use advisor Gene […]