High Country News June 21, 1999
Feature
The disappearing farm: Can cooperatives keep rural people rooted in the plains?
On the Great Plains, some beleagured farmers are pinning their economic hopes on local cooperatives, such as a pasta-making factory in Leeds, N.D.
Dreaming the prairie back to life
Gary Greff hopes to turn his small town, Regent, N.D., into a tourist mecca through the "Enchanted Highway," a series of giant metal sculptures he is erecting along the 30-mile road that links Regent to the interstate.
Homegrown leaders: Lakota educators bridge two worlds
On the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, an innovative Dept. of Education is determined to break the cycle of poverty, poor school performance and lack of economic opportunity that afflicts the Lakota youth.
Dear Friends
Dear Friends
Writer Cate Gilles; radio birdwatcher Scott Shalaway; visitors, corrections, other news.
News
Wolves get no welcoming party
In Washington state, Republican Sen. Slade Gorton is the primary obstacle to wolves ever being reintroduced to Olympic National Park.
As salmon decline, feds draw the line
In Washington's Methow Valley, irrigation ditches are bone dry because the National Marine Fisheries Service has shut off their water to protect salmon in the Methow River and its tributaries.
Big Oil down the tubes?
Environmentalists disagree over whether an oil consortium's plan to build a pipeline across the Cascades is a good thing that will reduce oil spills in the ocean, or a danger to the mountains of Washington.
The Wayward West
USFS stops poisoning prairie dogs; Wildlife Service kills five Colo. bears; Rep. Peter DeFazio tries to cut wildlife budget; no flight-free zones in Grand Canyon; ORV group sues USFS for closing Utah roads; ORVs ordered to stay off trail, Swan Mtn., MT.
A grudge against sludge
In eastern Colorado, farmers are upset by an EPA plan to transform hazardous waste from a Denver Superfund site into fertilizer to be spread on fields near Deer Trail.
Cattlemen make use of a conservation tool
The Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust is helping ranchers such as Brett Redden of Gunnison use conservation easements to save their land from developers.
An Olympic eyesore?
In Park City, Utah, locals are irate at the ugliness of a ski jump that is being carved out of a mountain for the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Rural Utah braces for a latter-day plague
Utah farmers and ranchers are trying to prepare for what is expected to be a terrible infestation of Mormon crickets and other grasshoppers.
Book Reviews
The Power of Place: Writing Out of the West
The 16th Annual Western Montana College's Writers' Conference will be held July 16-18 in Dillon, Mont.
Conservation hero?
The National Wildlife Federation is taking nominations for conservation heroes.
Sustaining and Enhancing Riparian Migratory Bird Habitat on the Upper San Pedro River
An international commission has released a report by a panel of scientists on the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona.
Siuslaw National Forest
Jim Furnish, former supervisor of the Siuslaw National Forest, is accepting essays on why Siuslaw National Forest is important.
Can poverty protect the last, best place?
A report called "Montana: People and the Economy" takes a fatalistic view of the harsh economic facts in the state.
Essays
Happy campers we shall always be
Although boring food, banged-up bodies and origami maps make camping a lot harder than it looks in the Dodge Dakota commercials, something like a middle-of-the-night look at the Milky Way makes all the trouble worthwhile.
Heard Around the West
Heard around the West
Bison bailout; busted emu ranchers; dog haiku; bald deer in Wash.; electrocuted bunny revived; Celestial Seasonings quits killing prairie dogs; sack lunches OK in Aspen; grizzlies in Mont.; Aspen no longer priciest; love-crazed turkeys; giant balloons.
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