Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. MEDORA, N.D. – Though bison graze on a national park and some ranches here, they aren’t catching on in Medora, where for generations the industry has been cattle. Some see it as just another of the get-rich-quick schemes that periodically sweep through agriculture. Everyone […]
Wildlife
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Exotic predators swallow the Southwest’s native frogs
LEWIS SPRINGS, Ariz. – Phil Rosen is knee-deep in a disaster this spring day. Just a few years ago, native leopard frogs filled algae-covered pools in this side drainage of the San Pedro River, one of the last free-flowing rivers in the Southwest, 70 miles southeast of Tucson. Now, Rosen keeps turning up bad news. […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Snow geese have become too plentiful
Because snow geese have become too successful for their own good, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is asking for a wholesale hunt. The conversion of pastures to fields of grain has provided a bountiful harvest for the birds, causing the population to soar over the last three decades. Now, say agency biologists, snow geese […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Survey says: Go wild!
Most supporters of wilderness are just espresso-sipping urbanites, right? Not so, according to a survey of 500 Colorado voters, released in April by a coalition of environmental groups. “We’re talking about four out of five Coloradans,” says Elise Jones of the League of Conservation Voters’ Boulder office. “These are pretty bomb-proof numbers.” The poll, conducted […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Tackling tamarisk
In the exotic shrub an ecological menace or merely the best our degraded rivers can muster?
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Killing tamarisk frees water
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Sometimes it takes a miracle to wake people up to an invasion. Sometimes it takes a lawsuit. For the ranchers and farmers who make a living along the Pecos River in southern New Mexico, it took both. The miracle occurred in 1991, when a […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Fighting exotics with exotics
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Is releasing exotic insects to control exotic plants, such as the tamarisk, a good idea? The answer depends on whom you talk to. Scientists who specialize in biological control say exotic plants often explode in foreign soils because they have left behind their natural […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
It only seems cruel to fool a fish
“Who hears the fishes when they cry?” That question was asked by a scold, iconoclast and master angler who worried about the pain he inflicted on his quarry. His contemporaries considered him very weird. His name was Henry Thoreau. The same concern is being voiced today by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
How California poisoned a small town
PORTOLA, Calif. – The northern pike, a voracious species, has claimed what may be its biggest victim yet: this small town. Officials of the Plumas County town of 2,200 residents say they have lost their backup water supply, half their tourism business and their reputation for a pristine mountain environment – all to the predatory […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
A summer like no other looms ahead
SWAN VALLEY, Mont. – The sweet aroma from a mock orange bush wafts through the air, but Steve Gauger is not here to look at wildflowers. He’s monitoring a wildfire. Like many firefighters, Gauger, incident commander on Montana’s recent 220-acre Goat Creek Fire, is scratching his head over this year’s early fires. On the high […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Program gets a C
When the 1993 Northwest Forest Plan reduced timber production in California, Washington and Oregon, the Clinton administration began the “Jobs in the Woods’ program to retrain timber workers. It sounded like a great idea: Former loggers would work with the Forest Service and other agencies to close abandoned roads and restore streams for native fish, […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Foreign forests keep mills alive
Even as the United States cuts fewer trees on its public lands and exports fewer raw logs, some mills stay as busy as ever. How? By milling imported logs. In Oregon, some mills are relying on imports of plantation-grown radiata pine from Chile and New Zealand to replace the dwindling supply of domestic trees. Cascade […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Hikes discover a road
The Snowbank Roadless Area near Cascade, Idaho, is no longer roadless. The Boise National Forest blames a mapping error for its approval of a road and a 315-acre logging operation in an area previously proposed for wilderness protection, but it’s too late now, the agency says. “We did not become aware of the mistake until […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Delay for the “Oregon way’
Oregon’s Gov. John Kitzhaber has been trying to protect salmon on state and private land – and keep the fish off the endangered species list. Now, he says, the National Marine Fisheries Service threatens to upset his attempt at “managing our resources the Oregon way.” Kitzhaber’s Oregon Plan would protect salmon through voluntary efforts by […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Timber town opts for water over logs
The vast old-growth forests of the Cascade Range built the tiny town of Detroit, Ore., and kept three local sawmills bustling. Every year, residents counted on timber from the Willamette National Forest to fuel the economy much as they waited for spring snowmelt to fill the local reservoir. The Forest Service, and the spring snowmelt, […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Will Dombeck sock it to rebellious supervisors?
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories. For three decades, Tom Kovalicky worked his way up the ranks of the Forest Service bureaucracy until he became supervisor of the Nez Perce National Forest in Idaho during the 1980s. Once in that position, Kovalicky attempted to restrain the logging on […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Breaking an agency of its old ways
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories. Andy Stahl, the executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE) oversees the largest activist organization in the country devoted exclusively to forest management issues. FSEEE was founded a decade ago by former timber planner Jeff DeBonis, to create a […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
The worker ants keep the agency alive
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories. Joyce Whitney is typical of many young people who enter the Forest Service with a gleam in their eyes, believing they can make a contribution to the stewardship of America’s public lands. She works on the Bozeman Ranger District of the Gallatin […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
GAO knocks Forest Service again
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories. The General Accounting Office once again told the U.S. Forest Service what it was doing wrong. It took 12 pages. For more than a decade, the investigative arm of Congress has issued dozens of reports telling the Forest Service how to do […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Predator control gets out of control
In 1993, without much fanfare, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management turned their predator problems over to the experts. The agencies signed an agreement allowing the federal Animal Damage Control agency, now known as Wildlife Services, to plan for the extermination of coyotes, mountain lions and other “problem” animals that kill livestock […]