Writers on the Range

The Bureau of Reclamation’s grandiose plans — laid out in the 1971 North Central Power Study — to turn parts of Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas into an energy sacrifice area haven’t come to pass. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/21.5/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

Writer Wallace Stegner has a rule of thumb: The more arid a state, the worse its congressional delegation. I have a corollary to that rule: The more a state is “blessed” with natural resources, tile worse off it will be economically, socially and politically. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/21.4/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

The Idaho National Energy Lab is the biggest blind spot in Idaho politics. Politicians who rail against the evils of big government while pulling every string for INEL projects are faithfully reflecting those who elect them. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/20.24/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

There is no getting around this ecological fact of life: Within nearly all forest communities of the Rocky Mountains, fires are essential form maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/20.16/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

O’Toole has done all of us, including the Forest Service, a great favor. His genius and hard work have shown us that the national forests are governed by a welter of laws whose purpose and workings are exactly the same as those of the 1872 Mining Law. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/20.13/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

The traditional view of the West and its wild rangeland is changing. No longer are conservationists and environmentalists a fringe interest group. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/20.11/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

Petrified Forest-Painted Desert National Park in northeastern Arizona is about 200 miles and a mountain range away from Phoenix, Ariz. But Phoenix, with help from even more distant Los Angeles, is the primary cause of air pollution at the park. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/20.10/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

Knowing that the history of water development in the West is marked by waste, fraud and assorted other abuses does not make it easier to accept new reminders that the government is pouring our money down some drain. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/20.7/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

Lack of understanding of the fragility of our Western range and forest lands, combined with unenforced regulations, have allowed off-road vehicles to seriously damage our public lands. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/20.6/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

The McClure-Andrus package is obviously superior, statewide, to McClure’s 1984 proposal. But the transformation of public perceptions that we require has not occurred. Now the exigencies of substantially improving or fighting this legislation will dominate our time. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/20.2/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

Transportation of nuclear waste is an issue waiting to get hot. Federal plans for finding a place to put it are unclear, but the government’s ultimate goal is disposal of radioactive debris from the civilian reactor and nuclear weapons industries in a deep geologic formation. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/19.24/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

There is much to admire about the wolf. He is strong and brave and invisible to all except the lucky who catch fleeting glimpses of rare individuals. But let’s save him for real wilderness where he won’t impact ranchers or eagles or grizzlies. Let’s be thankful he roams the Snake River plain no more. Download […]

The war fought by the Reagan administration for the Department of Interior and the 500 million acres of public land it manages occurred in two great battles, waged by Secretary James Watt and his successor, Donald Hodel. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/19.19/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

Few of our waters are free of polluting discharges. There are local success stories, but many state water agencies say they are barely able to maintain water quality at 1972 levels. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/19.18/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

Environmentalists should look beyond the regulate-litigate approach and consider things like superconductivity, which could have substantial long-term environmental benefits. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/19.15/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

Our belief is that America will recover itself by the end of this decade, and stop the destruction of the forests. To do that, it will have to destroy the once-proud U.S. Forest Service. That will be easy, for the agency has deeply wounded itself. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/19.12/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

The old “Oregon I” was built upon the seemingly endless supply of never-cut timber called old-growth. After 40 years of accelerated logging of these towering forests after World War II, less than 10 percent now remain. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/19.11/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

There are a thousand and one ways to get rid of a drum of hazardous waste, but only a handful of them are legal. Despite shelves of hazardous waste laws and regulations with their well-defined civil and criminal penalties, environmental crime is  increasing roughly in proportion to the country’s escalating chemical production. Download entire issue […]

Even as we make our alliances, there is no doubt that the environmental movement’s next great effort will be to contain and civilize the “recreation” industry, the “retirement” industry, and whatever else moves into the economic vacuum in the rural Rockies. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/19.3/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E

The 1986 High Country News index beginning on page 8 lists hundreds of individual stories, but all are about the same question: the use and control of the land. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/19.1/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E