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 […]
Wildlife
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
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 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 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 […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Utah wilderness goes coast-to-coast
Run over by a political juggernaut in their state, Utah’s environmental groups are trying to dust themselves off and sound a nationwide alarm. The state’s congressional delegation has united in pushing a bill that most environmentalists see as disastrous. It would make 1.8 million acres of Bureau of Land Management wilderness official, but release at […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Idaho woods again inspire “acts of conscience’
Summer’s here and it’s protesting time in the woods: Cove/Mallard Coalition’s third summer of logging resistance has begun in central Idaho. Protests and civil disobedience will once again be the tools of the campaign as loggers start building the third of nine access roads into the mostly roadless area. Holding a banner that read “The […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
She fights for ferrets
A veterinary technician fired for protesting an ill-fated plan for releasing black-footed ferrets into Badlands National Park in South Dakota now wants to start her own care facility for geriatric or neglected ferrets. Carolyn Kinsey was hired to manage a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “conditioning” facility in Pueblo, Colo., for ferrets soon to be […]
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
Wolf revival spreads to Southwest
A bronze likeness of the Mexican wolf stands in front of the University of New Mexico’s gymnasium in Albuquerque – the lobo is the mascot for the school’s sports teams. About the only other place to see the endangered predator today is in the zoo. But now, after a decade of environmentalist-rancher-government wrangling over Mexican […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Endangered law backed in court, ripped in Congress
The Endangered Species Act continues to thrive in courtrooms. But lawmakers on Capitol Hill have targeted it for extinction. In a highly anticipated ruling June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments by the timber industry that the 1973 law mostly exempted private lands. By a 6-3 count, the justices overturned a lower court ruling […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front: Sell It or Save It?
… And Daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County, Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay? Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking, Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away. — John Prine The early years of my life were spent in southern West Virginia. Dad […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Wolves bring Yellowstone to vivid life
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – Dawn … low clouds … swollen river. Like a field of dark toadstools the herds of resting bison take shape across the water. Above them on the grassy benches elk begin to move – cows and calves, a few of the very young ones still hobbling. Geese fly down the […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
How Colorado’s hunters lost 90 acres to 300 prisoners
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. Tom Huerkamp’s vision of the Delta Correctional Facility as a center for scientific research matches the state of Colorado’s goal when it began using the site in 1964. “The state’s noble experiment,” as a local newspaper called it at the time, […]