I received a provocative and compelling book the other day called Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry, published by Sierra Club (HCN, 4/4/94). If you prefer looking backward instead of forward, the impact of the images and ideas in this book can only be described as deeply disturbing. The images have an emotional power, and […]
Writers on the Range
Posted inMay 2, 1994: A struggle for the last grass
The Forest Service sells out
As the West’s economy shifts from traditional extractive industries to real estate and recreation, the region’s largest landowner is proving to be a big-time sucker. For decades the Forest Service has lost money on timber sales, and has leased valuable oil and gas reserves virtually for free. So it’s no surprise that the agency is […]
Posted inMay 2, 1994: A struggle for the last grass
Lycra is as ‘authentic’ as denim
It has become commonplace to attack and ridicule the socio-economic changes that are taking place in the Rocky Mountain West. With disgust and caustic humor residents lash out at the new “cappuccino cowboys,” the brightly colored, lycra-clad mountain bikers, the 20-acre ranchettes, the trophy homes of newcomers, and the network surfers on the information highway. […]
Posted inMay 2, 1994: A struggle for the last grass
Justice for owls, and for communities
A recent newspaper story on the revised Clinton forest plan was illustrated with a picture of Larry Mason standing by his abandoned lumber mill in Forks, Wash. I met Larry when I went to talk with Peter Yu, the administration official responsible for the jobs portion of the Clinton plan. Yu, by mistake, or perhaps […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
Salmon: the Clinton-Babbitt train wreck
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The salmon win one. In 1991, at the Citizens’ Salmon Congress in Hood River, Ore., Michelle DeHart of the Fish Passage Center spoke eloquently – again – about the death of salmon. The center is the tribal and Northwest states’ office that monitors the […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
An open letter to Andy Kerr in rural Oregon
ENTERPRISE, Ore. – I don’t know you, Andy, although we’ve met a couple of times. You came into my bookstore 12 or 15 years ago, then we met again the evening of Allan Savory’s grazing talk. I’ve heard your voice on TV and seen your face in the newspapers over the years. I remember one […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
RS 2477: A loophole for vandals
For years, Utah’s Arch Canyon was closed to motorized vehicles to protect sensitive riparian and natural values. But when off-road vehicle users began promoting the canyon as a travel route for their annual jeep safari, the Bureau of Land Management opened the canyon to vehicle use. Now, vehicles crush streamside vegetation, send fragile soils downstream […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Bruce Babbitt as Captain Consensus
What do the following personages have in common: Albert Schweitzer, Linus Pauling, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Bruce Babbitt? Type O blood? A secret fondness for fondue, perhaps? Nope. According to Ed Marston, the normally skeptical publisher of High Country News, they all should be recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
How to turn lemonade into lemons
The environmental movement seems intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. With a perverse political sense that values bad news and dismal foreboding over progress and natural evolution, environmentalists are putting a tragic, apocalyptic spin on every event. Take the firing of former Bureau of Land Management head Jim Baca. It was unfortunate. […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Let’s not heap injustice upon injustice
SAN LUIS, Colo. – The ownership of the Taylor Ranch in Colorado’s San Luis Valley has been a bone of contention for the past 34 years. However, the story of the land has a longer history and the feelings about it run deeper because the Taylor Ranch is not just another piece of mountain real […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Can San Luis resist ‘regional chaos’?
It was a Colorado state helicopter that turned Maria Mondragon-Valdez around on the subject of the 77,000-acre Taylor Ranch. Originally, she supported a proposal for a split purchase of the mountain tract she and other San Luis Valley residents call La Sierra, and which they believe was stolen from their community in 1960. The proposal […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Owyhee: On the eve of destruction
The next time you’re looking at a map of the United States, locate what appears to be the largest area without roads in the lower 48. Surprisingly, few people have ever seen or heard of it. Centered around the point common to Idaho, Nevada and Oregon, it is known as the “Owyhee” high desert region: […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Wyoming lawsuit would privatize wildlife
No one owns the sky. At least not yet. But ownership of the land, the water and now the wildlife is continually sought by people with too much money and a lot of greed. This country was founded by people running from kings who only let land-owning aristocrats hunt. Even if they were starving, the […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Grazing talks split both sides
Most environmentalists hate the idea that Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt would let a group of moderate ranchers and environmentalists from Colorado try to create a consensus plan on grazing reform. It’s like watering down a diluted version of a weak plan that was off to begin with, says Peter Angst, public-lands specialist with the […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Grazing: the shape of the future
Most combatants in the public-lands grazing battle are still in their bunkers, happily sending shells into opposing camps. Nevertheless, there hangs over this familiar and comfortable scene a small but dark cloud: the willingness among some former enemies to talk to each other. The possibility of negotiations is as unsettling in the West as it […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 1994: Turmoil on the range
A stark victory in Utah
In May 1989, Gene Nodine, head of the BLM’s Moab, Utah, office, told Arizona law professor Joe Feller: “You don’t know enough about this (public-land grazing) to question what we’re doing.” In retrospect, that was a rash statement. For in December 1993, John Rampton, an administrative law judge for the Department of Interior, ruled that […]
Posted inDecember 27, 1993: Yellowstone
Environmentalists shouldn’t have helped force out Dale Robertson
Opinion writer says that former Forest Chief Dale Robertson shouldn’t have been replaced by Jack Ward Thomas. To read this article, download this HCN issue in PDF format. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Environmentalists shouldn’t have helped force out Dale Robertson.
Posted inDecember 27, 1993: Yellowstone
She wants her colleages to feel free to say: ‘Madam Secretary, you’re full of crap’
Department of Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary pledges to start cleaning up her agency. To read this article, download this HCN issue in PDF format. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline She wants her colleages to feel free to say: ‘Madam Secretary, you’re full of crap’.
Posted inDecember 27, 1993: Yellowstone
How military secrecy zones out Nevada
A reporter chronicles the strange happenings (that we shouldn’t know about) at the top-secret Nevada Test Site. To read this article, download this HCN issue in PDF format. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline How military secrecy zones out Nevada.
Posted inDecember 13, 1993: Jack Ward Thomas: Hail to the chief
An historic event
This editors note, about the ramifications of appointing Jack Ward Thomas as the new chief of the Forest Service, introduces the feature articles in this issue. To read this article, download this HCN issue in PDF format. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline An historic event.