Few environmental issues have stirred up as much dust in the West as the debate over livestock grazing. “Cattle ruin the land,” shouts one side. “Environmentalists commit cultural genocide against ranchers,” shouts the other. In the early 1990s, a small group of conservationists looked beyond the hyperbole and found a third approach: supporting ranchers who […]
Writers on the Range
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Bush is audacious, but should that be surprising?
Indulge a small fantasy: It is 1993, and Bill Clinton, about to become the first Democratic president in 12 years, meets with the men who control his party’s majorities in Congress. “Mr. President,” say Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and House Speaker Tom Foley, “you are our leader. You make the final decisions. We have […]
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Watch out Mars, we don’t treat frontiers with respect
The same day President Bush announced his plan to “continue the journey” into space by colonizing the moon and heading for Mars, I stood in line at the grocery store and thought about space exploration as just another excuse to head ever Westward, another distraction for troubles at home, another frontier to conquer and leave […]
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Thank you, Sierra Club
The last time the Sierra Club was shaken into life, it was at the vigorous hands of the late David Brower. He took an insular, elite conservation group and made it grassroots, activist and environmentalist. The Sierra Club was transformed because Brower led it to act. The club first saved Dinosaur National Monument in Utah […]
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Off-road vehicles are chewing up our public lands
It’s hard to find anybody these days who’d even try to argue that off-road vehicles don’t damage public lands throughout the West. The U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded in 1999 that “with an increase of off-highway vehicle traffic, i.e., motorcycles, four-wheel drive vehicles, all-terrain vehicles, the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service have observed […]
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Motorized recreation belongs in the backcountry
I’ve had motorcycles in some form, on-or-off-road, since I was 11 years old. That’s how I went fishing or just exploring, dodging logging trucks as I gallivanted through the Flathead National Forest in Montana. It was, and still is, great fun; try it sometime. That’s not to say that there aren’t problems with motorized recreation. […]
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Judges tie themselves in knots when it comes to the West
Liberals have had their runs at dominating the federal court system, now it’s the Republicans’ turn. It’s not a sport, but it has some spectacular gyrations: Call it judicial flip-flopping. Most recently, it’s played by federal judges in Wyoming and Washington, D.C. — one ordering the National Park Service to ban snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park, […]
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Confessions of a wolf addict
Hi, my name is Amy, and I’m a wolfaholic. I know others like me are out there. They’re driving cars with bumper stickers crying “Little Red Riding Hood Lied.” Their walls display dreamy paintings of wolves that look gentler than Gandhi. My wolfaholism manifests itself in a different way: I’m addicted to watching wolves. It […]
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Era of the sage grouse is coming to an end
Sage grouse were an important part of this Wyoming ranch kid’s early life. My dad’s place included a range of sage-covered hills, and on those hills and many more between the ranch and foothills of the Wind River Mountain Range, there were thousands of sage grouse we sometimes called sage hens, or sage chickens. The […]
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Can grizzly bears and homeowners get along
Houses march to the Wyoming skyline like fat clouds stacked in a troubled sky. There’s open space, too, long sweeps of it, mostly irrigated, mostly covered with cows or alfalfa. The ranches are keeping this country open but every year a new ranch is “ranchetted,” chunked up like cheese, sold, fenced, housed. This is the […]
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Stopping by a truck on a snowy road
It seems to me that the rural West has two types of people: those who believe internal combustion engines are the answer to everything, and those who don’t. Few dirt bikers ride mountain bikes, and seldom do you find cross-country skiers hopping on snowmobiles. We’re usually in one camp or the other. Or you could […]
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You can’t hurry love in the rural West
An intriguing piece of mail showed up in my post office box. It was a newsletter from the alumni association of my graduate school inviting me to a Denver-area event called “speed dating.” For 30 bucks, “singles get to meet several age-matched counterparts for timed (and discreetly chaperoned) encounters” among graduates from a select group […]
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I can’t figure out what gays have to do with my marriage
I gave up fish for Lent. But then, I give up fish for Lent every year, and every year my good Christian wife rolls her eyes at me. Apparently there are no points to be made by foregoing something I had absolutely no intention of doing in the first place. I never eat fish. I’m […]
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Straight talk about Mad Cow from a mad rancher
Let’s get this straight. The cows aren’t mad. But you should be. “Mad cow disease” (BSE) develops in animals — or humans — when they eat parts of infected animals. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy can occur when cattle are forced to become cannibals. Cows in their natural habitat may butt heads, but they don’t eat each […]
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The Passion of the Christ in Butte, Montana
I won’t be going to see Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of The Christ.” Not because of any religious controversy, it’s just that I’m not sado-masochistic by nature. Besides, nothing can match my imagination when it comes to terror. The most violent scene I’ve seen in any film is when Marlon Brando gets beaten to […]
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A monumental shift for public lands
I flew into the sprawling city of Phoenix the other day not expecting a nature experience or a political revelation. My colleague and I rented a car and, after an appointment in the city, fought through an hour of bumper-to-bumper afternoon traffic on our way north to Flagstaff. What a relief it was to finally […]
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For Western myths, see newcomers on horseback
If you’ve heard about the man who kicked off his campaign for governor by swinging a medieval battle sword on horseback in the middle of downtown Billings, you probably thought, “Only in Montana.” Glenn Schaffer posed at the offices of the local paper in February on a stallion named Big Dog Thunder Horse, and said […]
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The high cost of low prices
“We Sell for Less.” Every few miles of a long drive down the length of California, I passed another Wal-Mart big-rig with those words across the back. The hypnotic monotony of the interstate made the slogan a mantra for the open road, for the featureless landscape that was the only America I could see through […]
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You can’t share a trail with an obnoxious machine
Around my hometown, as in so much of this quality-of-life Western landscape, there is strong competition for recreational space, and strident discussions about how to allocate that resource. In the debate, an occasional cry for tolerance is expressed, a call for the equable sharing of trails between practitioners of different forms of recreation. Mostly, the […]
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Surprise: Snowmobiles aren’t completely evil
There’s no question: They stink, they’re noisy, and they scare wildlife. Snowmobiles are truly obnoxious. But while I applaud Yellowstone’s contested ban on snowmobiles, I’ve had to rethink my own stance. For as much as I dislike the smelly machines, snowmobiles have their place. As a cross-country skier, I’ve never really cared for snowmobiling, especially […]