-The Road-Ripper’s Guide to Wildland Road Removal takes up where the first four Road-Ripper’s Guides left off. While the first four explain legal and political strategies for challenging different land-management agencies to close and remove roads, this guide explains how to make sure those roads are removed correctly.” * Bethanie Walder In 1997, Forest Service […]
Wildlife
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
Montana Audubon
Montana Audubon will be offering grants totaling more than $1,000 in the year 2000. The money will be awarded to individuals or nonprofit organizations whose project will directly benefit wildlife in Montana. Preference will be given to projects involving non-game wildlife, from birds to invertebrates, and their habitats. Interested applicants should call 406/443-3949 to obtain […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
Wolves at Colorado’s door?
During a recent presentation at the University of Colorado by a Boulder-based wolf recovery organization, Sinapu, a captive-raised wolf named Rami was introduced to the audience. As Rami calmly walked up and down the aisles with her handler, sniffing boots and licking faces, audience members sat in awed silence. Wolves, like many other predators, are […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
Wolff campaigns for wolves
For nine years, New Mexican Pat Wolff has been working to shut down publicly funded programs that kill predators and other problem animals (HCN, 4/27/98). Last year, the organization she founded, New West Research, won a lawsuit requiring the government to release names of ranchers who get federal help to control predators. Now, she’s touring […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
Wising up to whirling disease
Scientists are considering new management strategies for whirling disease, which has been attacking fish in the West since the early 1990s. The disease has spread from one Western river to the next, eluding attempts at a cure and draining funds from state game and fish department budgets. Trout get the disease by eating worms infected […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
Judge topples small timber sales
HOTCHKISS, Colo. – Allen Todd has been in the timber business on Colorado’s Western Slope for about a quarter of a century, and his small but tidy custom sawmill outside the town of Hotchkiss reflects his years of experience. Looking like oversized games of Jenga, neat towers of square timbers, which will soon reinforce shafts […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
The Forest Service sets off into uncharted territory
TARGHEE NATIONAL FOREST, Idaho – Jim Gerber is staring me in the eye and he doesn’t look happy. He’s tall and lean, wears his gray hair clipped in a buzz cut, and he’s angry. The U.S. Forest Service has dug itself into a hole, he says, and he’s hell-bent on digging the agency out, and […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
A convert to conservation
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Shawn Regnerus is a native Montanan, a hunter, angler, hiker and a former lover of dirt bikes. Regnerus, 30, grew up in rural Amsterdam, near Bozeman, where his father worked as a high school teacher. He later studied law at the University of Montana […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
One forest takes on roads
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. On the Clearwater National Forest in north-central Idaho, a group of hikers follows a Forest Service tour guide along a creek not far from where Lewis and Clark crossed the Bitterroot Mountains. Under clear August skies, they discover a different sort of pioneering effort. […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
Clinton proclaims a far-reaching forest plan
President Clinton made headlines Oct. 13, when he announced a sweeping initiative to protect 40-60 million acres of unroaded national forests. At a ceremony in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest in Virginia, Clinton put his full support behind permanent protection for land currently covered by an 18-month road-building moratorium, in addition to roadless […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
The least of these
A tiny, colorful fish that lives in the desert springs and marshes of western Utah is on the rebound – without ever having been listed as threatened or endangered. The algae-feeding least chub once lived throughout Utah’s West Desert, but by the early 1990s, the fish were found only in four ponds along the Utah-Nevada […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
Finally, a National Grassland Wilderness?
LONG X DIVIDE, N.D. – The green Forest Service rig pants like a winded dog on the rim of this canyon. The two-track ahead is washed out; I’ve taken the vehicle as far as it will go. But the view from the edge is breathtaking. On the horizon, a dusky cerise sky. Below lie rugged […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
Recreation drives a forest
Colorado’s White River National Forest is a busy place. It hosts 11 ski areas – two-thirds of the state’s downhill skiing – and attracts about 8.4 million visitors a year (HCN, 12/7/98). Recreation use has boomed, with four-wheel drive devotees wanting more roads, and cross-country skiers hoping for more huts for winter use. Now, a […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 1999: The Millworker and the Forest
Endangered boreal toads
Colorado hikers will find “WANTED” posters at trailheads this fall. The state Division of Wildlife, which posted the signs, is not looking for fugitives, but endangered boreal toads. The toads are often confused with chorus frogs or Woodhouse toads and biologists are trying to track legitimate sightings. They hope hikers will help with pictures, postcards, […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 1999: The Millworker and the Forest
The Millworker and the Forest
Notes on natural history, human industry and the deepest wilds of the Northwest
Posted inSeptember 27, 1999: The Millworker and the Forest
Disease is wasting the West’s wild herds
Nobody knows where the disease came from, or if it has existed forever, confined to the lodgepole forests, shortgrass prairies and alfalfa fields of north-central Colorado and southeast Wyoming. It is not known how it passes among its victims. What is certain is that the whitetails, mule deer and elk that contract it inevitably die […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 1999: The Millworker and the Forest
Do you want more wilderness? Good luck
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Poor W. Howard Gray didn’t know what hit him. Just a few years before, in the early 1960s, the head of the American Mining Congress seemed justified in confidently predicting oblivion for this absurd proposal to set aside millions of acres of land for … well, for doing nothing with it. All […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 1999: Troubled Oasis
Wolves and cows don’t mix
A pack of endangered Mexican wolves that developed a taste for beef headed back to captivity in early August. The Arizona Game and Fish Department captured seven wolves from the Pipestem Pack after they attacked cattle north of Clifton, Ariz. Three Pipestem pups have since died of parvovirus, a canine disease they apparently picked up […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 1999: Troubled Oasis
Medicine Bow National Forest
In Wyoming, the Friends of the Bow, Biodiversity Associates and the Snowy Range Group Sierra Club are leading a hike to unprotected wilderness in the Medicine Bow National Forest on Sept. 18. To join this outing in the Rock Creek roadless area near Arlington, Wyo., call 307/742-7978. This article appeared in the print edition of […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 1999: Troubled Oasis
Ranch is a squirrel sanctuary
When cattleman Frank Anderson settled into a remote house in rural Idaho, ground squirrels were the furthest thing from his mind. But once the critters emerged from hibernation, he could hardly ignore them as they devoured the chow he left outside for his dogs. “The bloody things were eating more dog food than the dogs,” […]