Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., wants to kill one federal environmental program to fund another. His amendment to the recently passed Interior appropriations bill would cut wolf reintroduction budgets and give the money to whirling disease research. Burns told The Billings Gazette that “whirling disease represents a real threat to Montana’s economy and environment, while wolf […]
Wildlife
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Just burn it
JUST BURN IT A year after the Storm King fire in Glenwood Springs, Colo., claimed the lives of l4 firefighters, the Clinton administration announced that it wants to fight fire with fire. The administration’s new policy, which advocates the use of more controlled and prescribed burning, results from reviews of federal firefighting efforts that began […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Jobs for the environment
JOBS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT A proposed bill to protect the Northern Rockies ecosystem would create thousands of new jobs, according to an economic study released by an environmental group, Alliance for the Wild Rockies. The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, recently introduced by New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, would designate 20 million acres of wilderness […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Forest Service wants to play by a new set of rules
While reform of the Endangered Species Act captures headlines across the West, some conservationists say an equally important law is also in danger. It is the National Forest Management Act, or NFMA, which has governed watersheds, soils and wildlife for nearly two decades. Forest Service officials now propose wholesale changes in the regulations that implement […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Devastation at the center of his universe
For many of us, some places become more special than all others. One of mine is a raw asymmetrical land, lacking the scenic appeal of Colorado’s alps. It’s a quiltwork of lodgepole pine, spruce and Douglas fir, with heroic patches of alpine larch and whitebark pine hugging the highest and rockiest slopes. There’s old-growth ponderosa […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
No takers for torched timber
Though the Forest Service is selling burned timber in the West at bargain-basement prices, the timber industry doesn’t seem interested. Industry buyers haven’t even shown up at many recent sales auctions in Idaho and Washington. On the Boise National Forest in Idaho, five recent sales drew no takers, prompting federal officials to drop their prices. […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
Higher pay for hotter jobs?
-If they called them firefighters, they’d have to pay them like firefighters.” That’s the aim of union organizer Kenny Harrell of the Sacramento-based California Professional Firefighters. Harrell wants better pay for federal wildland fire crews, now called “forestry technicians.” Under that title, federal firefighters are paid less than municipal workers and then only while battling […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
Hikers find bomb in wilderness
The July discovery of a pipe bomb by three backpackers in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness was thought to be a freak incident. Then Forest Service officials started comparing notes: It was the fourth time someone had found a bomb or explosive in the wilderness in the past 13 months. That realization jarred Forest Service employees […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
A decadent, old-growth timber baron is chopped down
Harry Merlo was brought down last month by his hand-picked board because he was in the process of destroying both it and the company it was supposed to oversee. Toward the end, the 22-year chief executive officer and chairman of Louisiana-Pacific was a grotesque ruin, bellowing threats to relocate his company across the Columbia River […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Human smolts reach Washington
Five mighty strange-looking salmon ended their 450-mile downstream migration at Washington’s Lower Granite Dam July 25. In fact, they weren’t salmon at all but an unusual swim team that started its expedition 25 days earlier at Idaho’s Redfish Lake. Four men and one woman took turns in the water, following the outward migration route of […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Salvage logging reborn
Despite a previous veto, President Clinton has signed a compromise bill that calls for accelerated logging on national forests. The president justified the action to angry environmentalists by claiming that his administration now has Republican backing to implement salvage logging that is “consistent with the spirit and intent of our forest plans and all existing […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
A hot welcome on the fire line
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Fighting fires, and indignities. History does not record the name of the first woman who got a paycheck for fighting a forest fire. Supposedly, she signed on with the Bureau of Land Management in Alaska in 1971. Today 30 to 40 percent of forest […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Hot summer reading
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Fighting fires, and indignities. Writers and photographers have been catching up with public interest to document firefighting. Michael Thoele’s Fire Line: The Summer Battles of the West collects dramatic photographs from across the front lines of wildland firefighting, focusing the summer drama of smokejumpers, […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Feds want to kill some Yellowstone bison
Where tourists visiting Yellowstone National Park see a wildlife haven for free-roaming buffalo, a cadre of federal and state scientists see a reservoir of disease that threatens to spill into the outside world. “Yellowstone National Park is a cloud hanging over us,” says Dick Rath, a veterinarian from Bozeman, Mont. Rath and his colleagues, including […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
The spotted owl made the rich richer
In Oregon lumber towns, a popular bumper sticker reads, “Spotted owl tastes like chicken.” But in the boardrooms of some of the nation’s largest forest products companies, the rare bird has laid a golden egg. The scarcity brought about by the federal protection of the endangered owl helped double the value of many corporations’ vast […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Have you hugged your tarantula lately?
We live in the Tucson Mountains. Our house sits on the saddle of a low hill with an arroyo on either side. It did not occur to us when we built the house many years ago that the hill on which we built undoubtedly served as a place of refuge when the arroyos became torrential […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Fighting fires, and indignities
“Them sons-of-bitches was Mennonites who wouldn’t fight in the last war … Them sons-of-bitches took them shovels and saws and Pulaskis and put a hump in their backs and never straightened up until morning when they had a fire-line around the whole damn fire. Them sons-of-bitches was the world’s champion firefighters.” – Retired smokejumper […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Grazing thickens forests
GRAZING THICKENS FORESTS A June 12 report from the Oregon Natural Resources Council blames livestock in addition to the usual culprits – fire suppression and poor logging practices – for the declining health of Western forests. The group’s ecologists, Joy Belsky and Dana Blumenthal, reviewed four case studies from Washington, Utah, Idaho and the Southwest, […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Toughen the ESA, scientists say
TOUGHEN THE ESA, SCIENTISTS SAY In the midst of efforts to water down the Endangered Species Act, two scientific panels announced support for the beleaguered law. Convened by the National Academy of Sciences, the first panel called for swifter action by the government to denote and protect “survival habitat.” Panel chairman Michael Clegg, a geneticist […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Turkeys for timber
An unearthed federal report reveals that Kaibab Forest Products Co. deliberately stole more than 1,200 trees from the Kaibab National Forest north of the Grand Canyon. According to the 1992 report, made public after a Freedom of Information Act request by Robin Silver of the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, a cozy relationship existed between […]