Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson should thank their stars that Dave Foreman chose to become a conservation preacher rather than a religious preacher. Otherwise, they would be out of jobs. Foreman, who said his family had expected him to become a Bible-thumper, traces his unique ministry back to the doomsday preaching of Cassandra, and he […]
Wildlife
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Forest plan powers through Congress
Federal legislation to launch the Quincy Library Group’s forest management plan soared through the House, 429-1, a landslide victory which supporters are boasting was bigger and faster than the vote following Pearl Harbor. The lone holdout was Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. Opposition to the controversial bill faded in last-minute negotiations between Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Trouble for grizzly bear recovery plan
After a four-year, $250,000 effort, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released its draft plan for restoring grizzly bears in western Montana and central Idaho. Now, Sens. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, want to cut the project off at the knees. Hailed by many as a groundbreaking compromise between the timber industry, […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Habitat Conservation Plans
Who wins and who loses whenUncle Sam cuts deals with landowners to protect endangered species?
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Cove-Mallard warms up for another summer
No sooner had the courts given the Forest Service a go-ahead to resume logging in Idaho’s Cove-Mallard than activists took to the woods to begin a sixth straight year of protest. Nez Perce National Forest officials responded by arresting two activists perched in 40-foot-high tripods. The June 18 arrests came one week after U.S. Magistrate […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Get your ash off our mountain
People leave things in wilderness areas: toilet paper, orange rinds, even beer cans. But in the San Francisco Peaks north of Flagstaff, Ariz., it’s human remains that are littering the Coconino National Forest. Last month, Native Americans in Arizona were upset when newspapers reported that a deceased Navajo woman’s ashes had been scattered in the […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Wolf pups proliferate
As scores of bison and deer perished last winter in and around Yellowstone, one species was there to take it all in. Literally. Yellowstone’s wolf packs found feast where others fell to famine. Eight of Yellowstone’s nine wolf packs produced 11 litters last spring. This could double the park’s total wolf population of 47. Although […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Coalition says: Stop logging watersheds
In 1996, floods and landslides exacerbated by decades of logging forced over 200,000 Oregon residents to boil their drinking water. Now, the Oregon Natural Resources Council and 20 other conservation organizations want the Forest Service to stop all logging of municipal watersheds in the Northwest. Streams draining Forest Service lands provide drinking water to two-thirds […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
San Luis heats up again
The historic town of San Luis in southern Colorado is shaking again from the rumble of logging trucks. After a halt in timber cutting due to spring mud, 15-20 trucks a day started hauling logs in early June from the mountainous Taylor Ranch, called La Sierra by the predominantly Hispanic residents below. The 77,000-acre ranch […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
In Oregon, tension over coho and trees
When federal biologists listed coho salmon under the Endangered Species Act in early June, logging protesters staking out the China Left timber sale in Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest hoped their work was done. They were disappointed. The day of the listing, which protects threatened coho in streams along the Oregon-California border, forest supervisor Mike Lunn […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
Tribes say count us out
Efforts to restore salmon populations in the Columbia and Snake rivers just lost valuable support. Four Native American tribes have withdrawn from a collaboration with the federal government and three Western states, charging that the process favors hydropower, not fish. The tribes, members of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, had been participants in a […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
New plan draws hisses, boos
What do you get when two government agencies spend three-and-a-half years and $36 million on a mega-conservation plan covering all or part of seven states? That’s the question environmentalists, Indian tribes, ranchers, loggers and others in the Northwest are pondering following the release last month of the Clinton administration’s draft plan of the Interior Columbia […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
What to do about a nasty fish
When California fisheries biologists discovered northern pike in Lake Davis, 70 miles north of Lake Tahoe, they had a fix: 26,000 gallons of poison. Killing all the fish in the Plumas County lake would prevent the voracious, non-native pike from migrating down the Feather River to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where they could destroy the […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
Did agency get in bed with loggers?
Last month, when environmentalists began digging through federal documents about logging in Idaho’s Payette National Forest, they thought they’d found evidence of a Forest Service-timber industry conspiracy. Members of the Neighbors of Cuddy Mountain and the Idaho Sporting Congress discovered records of a 300-year-old grove of fir and pine trees that the Forest Service denied […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Dear Michael Dombeck
The Forest Service isn’t doing enough to protect fish, wildlife and plants. And this time it’s not environmentalists who say so, but people inside the agency. Biologists and botanists – 170 from 30 different forests – collaborated recently on a letter to Chief Michael Dombeck, warning him that “many forests now find their fish, wildlife […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Tell it to the judge
The fate of 95 species of Southwestern wildlife is hanging in the balance. It’s been over a year since the species were proposed for listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the nonprofit Southwestern Center for Biodiversity says it will sue if nothing is done by June 13. Seventy-one of these species, including […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
The roads less funded
Last year, it was a photo finish. A bill to stop paying for logging roads on national forests fell two votes shy of making it through the House of Representatives. This year, Reps. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., and John Porter, R-Ill., want to see if they can push the measure over the top. A letter they […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Condors soar once more over the Southwest
On a Saturday morning, a small crowd gathers at Arizona’s House Rock Valley, gazing up at big black birds that glide on the thermals. The California condor has returned to canyon country. The last time anyone saw the giant cousin of the turkey vulture in this region was almost 70 years ago. The species nearly […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
The system cuts a new chief down to size
Four months ago, environmentalists thought incoming Forest Service Chief Michael Dombeck made a promise to do things differently. “The unfortunate reality is that many people presently do not trust us to do the right thing,” he told Congress in February of 1997. “Until we rebuild that trust and strengthen those relationships, it is simply common […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Agency wants to shoot down gun club
TUCSON, Ariz. – Forest Service officials have long dreamed of shutting down the Tucson Rod and Gun Club’s shooting range, but when they tried to silence the gunfire in March, they found themselves in the club’s crosshairs. The shooting range, which the gun club has leased from the Forest Service since the early 1950s, skirts […]