On Jan. 5, a former teacher began serving a 30-day sentence for refusing to part from a 400-year-old Engelmann spruce she was trying to protect from loggers. Joni Clark’s sentence of 30 days is the stiffest penalty yet for a tree-sitter in Colorado. She was found guilty of violating the Forest Service’s Special Closure Order […]
Wildlife
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Wolf wars enter next round
As the fallout settles from federal Judge William Downes’ decision ordering that nearly 200 introduced wolves be removed from Yellowstone and Idaho, members of the environmental community who have been at each other’s throats are putting aside their differences and preparing to appeal the decision (HCN, 12/22/97: Judge says wolf reintroduction was illegal). Immediately following […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Judge says wolf reintroduction was illegal
Several years ago, the Department of Interior sold its program to reintroduce wolves into Yellowstone and central Idaho by assuring ranchers they could shoot wolves that got into their herds without fear of penalty under the Endangered Species Act. Now, with introduced wolves thriving in both areas, a federal judge has ruled that the agency […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Salvage law haunts Utah
Salvage law haunts Utah When Forest Supervisor Janette Kaiser announced plans for a huge salvage timber sale on central Utah’s Manti-La Sal National Forest in August, environmentalists thought they’d seen a ghost. The sale was approved under a law they thought long dead: the salvage logging rider. Now, they hope a recent agency decision will […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
The greening of Mount St. Helens
Dick Ford didn’t think it possible. Weyerhaeuser Co.” s timber lands near Mount St. Helens, the volcano that erupted in Washington state 17 years ago, are turning green. “I remember thinking that it would never be a normal forest,” says Ford, who managed Weyerhaeuser’s replanting operations around the volcano through the 1980s. In the months […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Ancient cedars get a life
Environmentalists have always said that old-growth trees are worth more alive than logged. Recently, the Forest Service seconded that thought. In October, after five years of negotiations, the agency allowed Idaho sawmill owner Mark Brinkmeyer to swap his 530-acre grove of 1,200-year-old trees at the headwaters of Idaho’s Upper Priest Lake for 2,200 acres of […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Termite tenacity
Termites build their homes to last. The evidence is in New Mexico, where a team of University of Colorado scientists have identified termite mounds dating back to the Jurassic period, 155 million years ago. More than 100 sandstone pillars, some as high as 20 feet and six feet in diameter, were found over the last […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Completing a prairie ecosystem
Ranchers say the cost of recovery is exorbitant
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Saving species: A guide for the perplexed
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Policy is complicated. The goals of policy – a strong economy, peace (or war, depending on circumstances), clean air – are simple. But in a diverse, sometimes disagreeable society with conflicting institutions, a sprawling government and an intricate legal system, achieving those goals requires gobs of … well, process, and process can […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Selling science to the agencies: an ecologist’s story
Note: this article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. David Dobkin’s epiphany occurred in New Jersey in 1989, as he drove down a road in the Pine Barrens. At each turn he encountered another trash heap of wrecked automobiles and abandoned refrigerators. The Rutgers University zoology professor knew he was in the wrong […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Do coyotes need “control’ on the refuge?
Note: this article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Mike Nunn and Dan Alonso stop their rig on a punishing track in the southeastern corner of the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge. They have sighted two female pronghorn, just dark dots on the landscape to untrained observers. The does head toward a distant […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Logging slated for many roadless areas
The success of environmentalists in protecting what’s left of the old-growth forests in the Northwest and Southwest means that logging corporations are often forced to look elsewhere. So they have looked at Colorado and southern Wyoming, where, according to a coalition of more than 15 environmental groups, the U.S. Forest Service plans in 1998 to […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
A rancher sees red over a timber sale
Of all the timber sales currently being proposed in Colorado and southern Wyoming, the Sheep Flats timber sale on Grand Mesa has been called the worst – so bad ranchers and environmentalists have united against it. Sharon Jordan, who has been ranching with her husband in Collbran for 25 years, is rallying support among her […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Freak wind storm flattens 6 million trees
For hundreds of years, the spruce forest in the mountains north of Steamboat Springs, Colo., close to Wyoming, endured everything Mother Nature could throw at it: deep winter snows, severe drought, lightning strikes and gusty winds. But on the night of Oct. 24, the forest got hit by something new: 120-mile-per-hour winds blowing from the […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Looking for the missing lynx
EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. – Already the nation’s largest ski area, Vail may soon be even bigger. In September, the U.S. Forest Service approved a 4,000-acre expansion that has been in the works for a decade. If the decision holds and Eagle County approves the expansion, the resort will clear over 800 acres of new runs, […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Saying goodbye to the bear
Last winter, under pressure from the elements, bison left Yellowstone National Park in search of a bite to eat, and were killed. As a professional grizzly bear watcher, I had heard the story many times before. The problem is quite simple. U.S. Army General Phil Sheridan recognized it at the beginning of the park’s creation, […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
How an eco-logger views his work
Not many loggers have a degree in creative writing. Fewer serve on the board of a state wilderness association or argue philosophy with timber giants like Plum Creek in northwest Montana. Bob Love does. He’s been called the “eco-logger” by some, the “Una-Logger” by others, and these days he runs a one-man selective logging business. […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Taxpayers subsidize cheap vacations
In one of the most beautiful – and affluent – parts of central Idaho, 182 cabins on the Sawtooth National Forest have for decades been the best real estate bargain around. Many of the cabins are in stunning locations like Petit Lake, a remote body of water at the northern tier of the 2.1 million-acre […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Serious trouble for snow geese
The skies over Midwestern states will be dotted white this fall by snow geese moving south for the winter. But many biologists have concluded that the birds are too prolific for their own good. The goose population has skyrocketed over the past 30 years, up from 750,000 in 1969 to almost 3 million today. As […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Plumas lake poisoned despite civil disobedience
The California Department of Fish and Game poisoned Lake Davis despite a last-minute barrage of legal assaults and pre-dawn civil disobedience hours before the Oct. 15 treatment occurred. A week after pumping Nusyn-Noxfish and powdered rotenone into the lake north of Lake Tahoe, state officials had collected 15 tons of dead fish, including an 18-pound […]