A chastened national environmental movement, watching the progress it fought for over decades being dismantled by a hostile Congress, is going back to its roots. Or so its leaders say. Big national organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, the National Audubon Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Wilderness Society, […]
Writers on the Range
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Sinclair Lewis’ George Babbitt would be at home in this Congress
When I read recently that a couple of Republican congressmen were still fighting an impending ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), I was overtaken by a literary obsession: I had to re-read Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt. Let me explain. About a year ago, while still gainfully employed, I wrote a column about Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, who […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
Who knows best: grassroots or foundations?
The symbolism and coincidences were heavy. The day after Labor Day, the National Audubon Society fired the staff of the Endangered Species Coalition – the group created by the environmental movement to protect the Endangered Species Act from Congress. And as if it were waiting for the firings, three days after former Indiana Congressman Jim […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
It’s unAmerican, or at best unWestern, but cooperation works
My mailbox is sounding the call to arms again. Since a Republican majority was elected to Congress, it’s been bulging with warnings that Newt Gingrich and his munchkins will dismantle most of the environmental gains made since the 1960s. Send more money and write more letters, the warnings trumpet, or risk seeing this environmental “dark […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
Fifteen people march in Idaho to mourn the vanishing salmon
There is a chaos theory adage about the movement of a butterfly’s wings setting off a hurricane on the other side of the globe. It is an interesting notion; for every action, a reaction. It has about it a certain humility, a recognition that we know very little about the potential impact of our doings. […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
We need to avoid riparian hysteria
At a recent workshop on riparian ecosystems sponsored by the Tonto National Forest and Arizona Game and Fish Department, biologists dutifully presented their litanies on the inhabitants, histories and importance of steamside environments. Although the theme of this symposium was understanding and not preservation, several speakers offered up the statistic du jour: 95 percent of […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Grazing reform: Here’s the answer
We are veterans of America’s longest war: the war over the public lands of the West. For the past quarter century – in a conflict that dates back to the Civil War – we have written and spoken about livestock grazing on federal lands and fought over how those lands should be governed. We have, […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
BPA scapegoats fish to protect fat cats
The Bonneville Power Administration says it can’t afford to save Columbia River salmon anymore. The eight senators in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana agree. They have asked governors in their states to help write a new law effectively capping the BPA’s fish costs. Not that the BPA’s fish programs have worked. Numerous runs have gone […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Congress fights to restore a filthy past
What follows sounds like a nightmare. But it’s not. It’s true. If you have a weak stomach, don’t read it. I grew up in an area of Kansas City, Kan., called Armourdale, which was bordered on the east by two meat-packing companies, on the west by two soap factories, on the north by the Santa […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Jealousy, passion, rage: It all takes place in Yellowstone National Park
MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, Wyo. – Marsha Karle was right. Hang around long enough, Yellowstone National Park’s official spokeswoman warned me once, and you’ll get chased by an elk. Last week, it happened. Leaving a mind-numbing press conference in the Mammoth Hotel inside Yellowstone National Park, I stepped outside to see the sun low in the […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
Don’t worry: Have a Kokopelli day
“It’s a Kokopelli kind of day,” a Coldwater Creek catalog announced in a T-shirt ad. “Spirit lifting, mischief-making Kokopelli is here to remind you not to take life so seriously …” No thanks. I’ll pass on buying the “buffalo on an eco-friendly tee,” the Comanche bow and arrow, the Tapiz range belt, or the petroglyph […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
‘Pocahontas’ is a mean-spirited lie
I really didn’t want to do it. But since the national media has made such to do about it – and as an American Indian journalist – I feel it is necessary to get my two cents into the hype. People magazine displayed its special brand of ignorance with a cutline under the photo of […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
An Easterner ponders the West’s alleged wildness
This is a mea culpa. Sorta. A few months ago I published a long piece in The Atlantic Monthly. An excerpt from a forthcoming book, it argued that the forests of the Appalachian spine had recovered much further than people realize – that even the wolf and the mountain lion had begun to return. The […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
And you thought cows were bad…
I pull apart the sooty rocks, exposing wads of foil, blobs of heated plastic and paper plates. The trash goes in my yellow Woodsy the Owl bag; the ash I scatter in the bushes. This soggy alpine meadow here in Idaho offers no good burial sites for a summer’s accumulation of cinders, and I do […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
How to get rural people to stand proud and tall
It usually takes something substantial – a dam or the earth’s 5 billion people – to annoy David Brower. But just credit him with having founded the Sierra Club and watch the scowl form. The annoyance is part vanity. The Sierra Club is now 103; Brower is a youthful 83. His reaction is also part […]
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 inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Grow up, dig in, and take root
Outside magazine recently picked six or seven towns – mostly in the West – as great places to live. But those seduced into pulling up stakes by the glossy photos and idyllic promises in July’s cover story should first consider a few facts. Here are three days’ worth of headlines from the Spokesman-Review, the newspaper […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
Small town, quirky lives
Though the paper now has a state-of-the-art office, when I worked there it was based in an old church built like a hallway. Cardboard dividers separated Betsy from the interns, and the interns from the bathroom. Our house, “Intern Acres,” had no screens, and no windows in places, just window frames. “That’s good,” my housemate […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
The little paper that could
Like one of those gravity-defying trees that grows horizontally out of a rocky mountainside, High Country News has found its niche. Its beat is 10 Western states – the 1 million square miles where so many of the nation’s wild things live on mostly public lands. How do you cover this world from a small, […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
HCN interns: city kids meet gritty rural life
As word filters in from former HCN interns, I’m beginning to understand my place in a long and distinguished line of grunt laborers. I see now that I’m riding a wave’s crest, benefiting from past intern suffering. Compared to bygone days, my time is a cakewalk. One change is that the town of 1,400 is […]