BILLINGS, Mont. – The three-day trial here last month of a man accused of shooting an endangered wolf ran like a morality play about the new American West and small-town Montana culture. This is a place where men enjoy their guns, hunting, beer and trucks, but as the accused, Chad McKittrick, soon discovered, there are […]
Wildlife
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Rare native fish found in Utah, then poisoned by mistake
A project launched by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to protect a recently discovered population of rare native trout killed almost every fish in the stream instead. The fish, located in Parley’s Creek close to Salt Lake City, were believed to be pure Bonneville cutthroat trout, one of only two varieties of trout native […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Agency leaders need to come out swinging
With a muffled thump, a small bomb ripped through Forest Service offices in Carson City, Nev., in late March, damaging walls and computer equipment. The damages were not just physical; for the men and women whose daily routines were shattered, the detonation had understandable psychological ramifications. There were political reverberations, too: Some public-land managers who […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Clinton says: Stop logging
President Clinton says he’s distressed because the salvage rider he signed in July opened up the wrong ancient forests to logging. Faced with growing civil disobedience in the Northwest, the president said last month that he wants Congress to change the law. As interpreted by a federal judge, part of the salvage law mandated the […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Guy Pence leaves Nevada
The Forest Service has ordered Guy Pence off of the front lines in Nevada. The district ranger in Carson City has been the target of two bombings this year (HCN, 10/30/95). The agency is reassigning him to a staff position at the regional office in Boise, Idaho, out of concern for his personal safety and […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
The butterfly and the golf course; and the widow’s story
The butterfly and the golf course The Allegation: In a cover story titled “The Butterfly Problem,” in the January 1992 issue of The Atlantic, the authors portrayed an Oregon developer whose lifelong dream of carving fairways on a section of the Oregon coast was snuffed out in the morass of Endangered Species Act protection of […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Writers for Utah wilderness
We are not, of course, in dire need of roads, transmission towers, dams, reservoirs, and gas pipelines. We are in dire need of courtesy. We are in dire need of a broadly intelligent conversation about human fate. We are in need of a thorough and piercing review of our plan for economic development, a plan […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Helping hand isn’t
Helping hand isn’t The best way to help wildlife live through a bitter winter is to leave them alone, says the Montana-based Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Free food can accustom deer and elk to human hand-outs and erode instincts that protect the animals, says the group. If the ration suddenly disappears, the animals may descend […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
The anecdotal war on endangered species is running out of steam
Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth stepped up to the podium at the Wise Use Leadership Conference in Reno, Nev., this summer and charged the Endangered Species Act with a series of assaults: Californians lost homes to the 1993 fire because they were not allowed to clear weeds where endangered kangaroo rats live. Snails smaller than a […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Logging deal struck in Southwest
Some timber cutting has resumed in the Southwest’s national forests, Christmas trees and all. An Oct. 19 agreement reached between environmentalists and the Forest Service frees up about 30 million board-feet of timber for harvesting. The negotiations came after a federal judge in August halted logging on national forests in Arizona and New Mexico until […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Grizzly plan sent back to drawing board
A recent federal court ruling may delay plans to declare grizzly recovery in Yellowstone a success. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled Oct. 4 that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 1993 Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan lacks an adequate yardstick for measuring recovery of the species, which gained federal protection in 1975. Citing the plan’s […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF? Ranchers concerned about wolves killing livestock should buy a new piece of equipment – a video camera. That’s the advice in Dealing with Wolves on the Ranch, a pamphlet from the Montana Stockgrowers Association that explains the legal do’s and don’ts of dealing with endangered wolves in Idaho, […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
‘The hate in our country is reminiscent of Nazi Germany’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Nevada’s ugly tug-of war. “The hate in our country is reminiscent of Nazi Germany.” – Guy Pence Last March, a pipe bomb blew a hole in the wall of Forest Service District Ranger Guy Pence’s office in Carson City. In August, dynamite blew up […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
‘As long as people are breaking the law …’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Nevada’s ugly tug-of war. “As long as people are breaking the law and getting away with it … it’s going to be tough.” – Jim Nelson Jim Nelson, supervisor of the Toiyabe and Humboldt national forests in Nevada, has led the agency in cracking […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
To: Mom from: Wolf 3, Somewhere in Yellowstone National Park
About the last thing I remember, we were standing around that dead elk in Canada, you and me and One Eye and the triplets. You were laying out the meal at the south end of dinner, and I was leaving a message for those brain-dead coyotes on a pine tree. Then there was this loud […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
Bears forced to defer to cows
A plan by Wyoming officials to relocate two grizzly bears with a taste for beef has environmentalists concerned. They say cows are taking precedence over bears in important grizzly habitat near Jackson, Wyo. In mid-September, Wyoming officials decided to move one bear from a grazing allotment inside Grand Teton National Park and another from the […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
Timber sales are throwbacks to beastly days
Though the science of forestry has advanced over the past decade, green timber sales in forests west of the Cascades in Washington and Oregon don’t show it. Take the Roman Dunn timber sale, a tract of old-growth Douglas fir managed by the Bureau of Land Management along the central coast of Oregon near Eugene. A […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
ATVs shred redds
If endangered salmon trying to reach central Idaho didn’t have enough to worry about, now they need to dodge tires. Over the Labor Day weekend, drivers of all-terrain vehicles blasted through two miles of prime spawning grounds for salmon and bull trout along the upper Salmon River. The marauders tore up gravel and algae in […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
Alberta proves deadly for wolves
Though the wolf population in northern Canada is strong, southwestern Alberta – with ranch land bordering on wilderness – is becoming a killing ground for wolves. Biologists on both sides of the border fear that if the open shooting season there continues, the 100 or so wolves that have migrated on their own into western […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
Just ask the loggers
Though environmentalists feared the worst when President Clinton signed a controversial timber-salvage law this summer, the Forest Service told them not to worry: The agency would take every precaution to protect the environment. A memo sent to regional foresters Sept. 21 from the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., suggests otherwise. Citing a lack of government […]