Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Eagle County balks at fourth mega-resort. Readers of Snow Country magazine recently discovered a special advertising supplement tucked between stories of equipment and resorts: “Stewards of the Land: Skiing and the U.S. Forest Service, a public and private alliance.” The 15-page glossy infomercial, complete […]
Wildlife
Posted inFebruary 19, 1996: Can a Colorado ski county say 'Enough is enough'?
Colorado ski area dumps all over trout stream
WINTER PARK, Colo. – When a snow-grooming machine swept downhill at Colorado’s Winter Park ski area in late January, it did more than groom a wider ski run. It packed a section of Little Vasquez Creek with snow, possibly wiping out the stream’s population of cutthroat trout. Winter Park and the Forest Service are at […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 1996: Can a Colorado ski county say 'Enough is enough'?
Christians preach environmental gospel
God’s handiwork can only be destroyed by its maker, Wisconsin Evangelical Calvin DeWitt recently told National Public Radio. “If you didn’t make it, you’d better keep your hands off,” he warned, buttressing his argument with a verse from Revelation that says those who destroy the Earth will be destroyed. Evangelical Christians are only one source […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 1996: Can a Colorado ski county say 'Enough is enough'?
Biologists to Yellowstone: Feed the grizzlies
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – Feeding the grizzly bears here may not be such a bad idea; in fact, it may be the only way to ensure their survival into the next century, according to a new book, The Grizzly Bears of Yellowstone: Their Ecology in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, 1959-1992. A trio of biologists sees […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Buffalo hunt halted
Fighting their case through federal court, a coalition of animal rights groups and Indian tribes has stopped New Mexico from staging its first public buffalo hunt in 110 years. A federal judge ruled Jan. 26 that the U.S. Army needed to conduct a preliminary environmental analysis first. The state agency had scheduled three hunts at […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Of raptors and rifles
Rancher Jim Maitland waded through chest-high waters in mid-November on a rescue mission, but not to save a calf. The creature struggling in a southwestern Oregon river was a young golden eagle that had been shot. After Maitland used a potato sack to rescue the raptor from a riverbank, it thanked him by gouging his […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Keeping the wolf at bay
KEEPING THE WOLF AT BAY As U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologists ship more gray wolves into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho, the agency is considering how it can get out of the wolf reintroduction business. An agency draft proposal says the wolf could be considered recovered throughout the West once 10 breeding pairs have […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Bees need our backing
Bees need our backing Scientists concerned about the decline of pollinators have found something that everyone can care about: food. “If we lost all honey bees in the U.S. without any wild pollinators taking over their chores, the resulting price increases for food in the U.S. would amount to $6 to $8 billion a year,” […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Don’t just stand there: Get arrested
Everybody’s doing it – the Audubon Society’s Brock Evans, former Indiana congressman Jim Jontz, the Sierra Club’s Charlie Ogle – all going to jail for trees and to stop salvage sales. Getting handcuffed and treated roughly by gendarmes. Paying a new, for them, sort of dues. Since our travels around the West put us in […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
The secret life of wolverines
STANLEY, Idaho – Snow machines finally silent, four researchers walked toward a trap for elusive wolverines. All was still in the thick timber of the Sawtooth Wilderness until a growl made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Pacing inside the log-house trap was a wolverine about as big as a bear […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Wolf from Canada killed by U.S. red tape
The release of 26 British Columbia wolves into Idaho and Yellowstone National Park seemed a howling success until biologists were forced to kill a wolf after it bit a biologist’s thumb to the bone. The alpha male bit John Weaver during a stopover in Missoula, Mont., the day before the animal was to be released […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
One forest, two studies
ONE FOREST, TWO STUDIES In the old West, arguments may have been settled by a gunfight on Main Street, but in the battle over Southwest forests there is a new kind of showdown – dueling studies. A recent Forest Service report claims that the number of larger trees in the region has decreased little over […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Survival of a trickster
SURVIVAL OF A TRICKSTER The coyote has never gotten much respect. For the past two centuries, ranchers, farmers and federal agents have ruthlessly gunned and poisoned the tawny predator. Yet unlike its larger cousin, the wolf, the coyote has thrived, and expanded its range into virtually every ecosystem in North America. How the legendary trickster […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Can a salvage sale save the trees?
For the first time in the history of the Forest Service, the high bidder of a timber sale has no intention of felling the trees. The Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, a nonprofit conservation organization based in Bellingham, Wash., bid $29,000 for the Thunder Mountain salvage sale, a 275-acre roadless tract in Washington’s Okanogan National Forest. But […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Welcome back (with a bang)
After 21 days of leave with uncertain pay due to the federal budget impasse, Forest Service workers in Espaûola, N.M., returned to work Jan. 8 to find their office had been bombed. “What a welcome back,” says Sam Mott, a spokesman for the Santa Fe National Forest. “We’d feel better if we knew why. It’s […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Fish for your wall
FISH FOR YOUR WALL A new Trout Unlimited poster tells a few good fish stories. The Apache trout and greenback cutthroat trout are both on the road to recovery since being listed as endangered species in 1973. But the poster, Threatened and Endangered Trout and Salmon of North America also shares less cheery tales of […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Hunting: Get used to it
Let me state right off and as unapologetically as possible that I am a member of the “hook-and-bullet” press – a field editor of the venerable Outdoor Life magazine, which along with its sister publication, Field & Stream, are America’s original conservation magazines. Both have been in business since before the turn of the century, […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Logged hillsides collapse into Idaho’s creeks
CLEARWATER NATIONAL FOREST, Idaho – Forest Service ranger Art Bourassa pulls off to the side of the road and looks up at a raw and broken hillside. Some might assume it’s the freshly scalped victim of a strip-mining operation. Not this time. Torrential November rains washed out this section of forest in northern Idaho. At […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Agency chooses death
Killing is the method most frequently used by the federal government to control livestock predators such as coyotes, lions and bears, according to a recent report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Although guidelines for Animal Damage Control staff require them to consider non-lethal methods of control first, federal investigators found […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Bird Brains
-If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows.” * Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, c. 1880s Like coyotes, some members of the crow family have long been considered vermin. Scruffy crows steal crops; ravens rip into garbage; magpies and jays steal eggs and nestlings from “innocent” […]