Miners have many ways of turning rock into metal – brute force, corrosive chemicals, high heat and extreme pressure. Likewise, environmentalists are discovering there is more than one way to transform the West’s most refractory industry. Mining has fiercely resisted change since it was first given free license to pillage the mineral riches of a […]
Writers on the Range
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Unlikely reformer: Can sinful Las Vegas help change the West?
The way people gamble, it’s no wonder casino owners in Las Vegas build thousands of new hotel rooms a year. Take the man next to me at the roulette wheel in a run-down casino whose three-story marquee announced, “Where the locals play.” He was betting his Social Security check on a system based on his […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Back to the past: House resets pollution laws
This is not a good time to be an environmentalist in Washington. With House Republicans scrambling to meet their self-imposed deadline of voting in the party’s Contract With America by the Easter recess, some of the most anti-environmental bills in the history of environmental legislation have blasted through the House of Representatives. This is also […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
You say you want to cut government spending? Kick off cows
Dear Congress: Since you say you want to stop wasteful federal spending, I am writing to alert you to what’s going on at the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, where, in 1990, they spent $52 million more managing livestock than they collected in fees. Part of the problem is that the current […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Slash and burn
Many good, green guys and gals were blown away Nov. 8, and bills now in Congress would block environmental regulation through “takings” analyses that elevate property rights above the public good. But legitimate fears should not blind the environmental community to new opportunities for positive change. Voters also blew out deadwood and shook the foundations […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Democrats resort to banana bread
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The scene was vintage Washington power breakfast: a private room at the Old Ebbitt Grill across from the Treasury Department. The table held plates of bagels and banana bread. The burgundy napkins complemented the Oriental rug and the velvet chairs. Those are the lures reporters expect from a deposed potentate or a […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Ranchers forced into numbers game
Imagine the Western range as a half-billion acre game board. It’s not hard; section lines, pasture lines, power lines, irrigation lines, and roads straight as lines subdivide it into as many playing squares as there are players. But it is not chess or checkers. It’s a deadly serious game, where the stakes are the health […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
An ersatz democracy gets what it deserves
In the late 1980s, the city and county of Denver chose to look away from a deteriorating public school system, dirty air, traffic jams and inadequate public transportation, to pour $10 billion into 53 square miles of prairie out toward Kansas. As this special issue shows, the decision to build Denver International Airport was made […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
We can’t save the land without first saving the West
Once a month I spend several hours with what I affectionately call my “wise-use” group. It’s not really a wise-use group but at first glance it resembles one. Members include the six county commissioners from Delta and Montrose counties here in western Colorado, a rancher, a timber mill employee, a coal miner, a banker, and […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Victory in Idaho: Canyon lovers defeat the military
The Air Force’s decision Oct. 6 to back off on building a new bombing range in the Owyhee canyonlands is a victory – and therefore shocking. Who would have thought that a coalition of local and national environmentalists, hunting groups and a few members of Congress could stop the military and Idaho’s forceful Gov. Cecil […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Bit by bit, government’s power is being eroded by wave of takings lawsuits
Takings in its newest formulation has taken the West by surprise. It shouldn’t have. Many reservoirs sit on taken ranches. Highways and railroads run across formerly private lands. Missile silos are embedded in once-private farms. These lands were taken by government or corporations through the power of eminent domain. The only question was how much […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
Bruce Babbitt in the lion’s den
Elsewhere in this issue (page 4), writer Michael Riley describes how Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt attended a ranchers’ barbecue. At the barbecue, as Babbitt knew they would, speaker after speaker tore into him. Throughout the talks, Riley reports, Babbitt chatted quietly with ranchers and local officials. Babbitt’s visit to the barbecue was another example of […]
Posted inJuly 25, 1994: 'Unranchers' reach for West's state lands
How love of gold moves mountains
Through the centuries of our mythology, gold has gathered such a mystical sheen that we forget it is just another commodity. This is a critical oversight, especially for those people fighting gold mines in the West. We oppose gold mines and proposals for mines through the usual government channels, meager as these might be with […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Camping out in the Merry Widow Mine
BOULDER, Mont. – Most people hear the word radon and think of an odorless, colorless gas that seeps into homes and can cause cancer. But some, like Denise Palmer, think of radon as a miracle drug. Crippled with psoriatic arthritis, her hands had become so painful she could no longer pull her clothes on or […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 1994: Turmoil on the range
Consensus may not be the best way to reform grazing
Editor’s note: The following letter was sent to Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt by Dan Heinz, a 25-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service. Heinz is now an environmental consultant and field agent for the non-profit American Wildlands, 16575 Callahan Ranch, Reno, NV 89511 (702/884-1998). Dear Secretary Babbitt, Your willingness to listen to the grass […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Don’t try to improve grazing; abolish it!
My greatest fear about grazing reform is that it will substitute for substantive reform. The grazing fee will increase from one-quarter to one-half of fair market value, but government will kick back even that increase to those ranchers who talk the range reform talk. The increased fee will go to range developments to mitigate livestock […]
Posted inMay 30, 1994: Can mining come clean?
Scientist says Yellowstone Park is being destroyed
The Yellowstone northern elk herd, allowed to persist at high densities by the national park’s “natural-regulation” policy, is destroying the biodiversity and ecological integrity of the northern-range ecosystem. Park publicity denies this and misleads the public by proclaiming that all is well in Yellowstone. There are only two possible interpretations of this behavior. One is […]
Posted inMay 30, 1994: Can mining come clean?
Why one advocacy group steers clear of consensus efforts
The Southern Utah Wilderness Association often receives invitations from government entities or other groups to participate on various types of advisory committees. It is usually our policy to decline these offers. The rationale behind this policy goes like this: 1. Advisory committees include interests which benefit from the status quo, and therefore have little or […]
Posted inMay 16, 1994: Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
We need a regional wilderness law
Montana roadless lands have been under siege for nearly two decades. Although Montana congressmen brought forth 15 wilderness bills, they were more accurately commodity bills that strongly favored timber and mining. All failed. In June 1993, Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mont.) tried again. Although #16 is better in some respects than its predecessors, it is no […]
Posted inMay 16, 1994: Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
Endless pressure, endlessly applied
Never have a president and secretary of the Interior so disappointed conservationists as have Bill Clinton and Bruce Babbitt. The firing of Jim Baca as Bureau of Land Management director is simply the icing on a multi-layered cake of betrayal. We shouldn’t be surprised, though. Between nomination and taking office as secretary of the Interior, […]