High Country News December 18, 2000
Feature
Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
A writer considers the philosophical questions that underlie endangered species protection, and how it is that one predator - the human kind - now finds itself assisting other predators, and also trying to help their prey.
Dear Friends
Dear Friends
HCN gets a new printer and mail house, both in Denver; Marstons to teach in Berkeley, Calif.; death of Carolyn "Tee" Murray Child; HCN up for Utne Reader awards.
News
EPA reins in ranchers
In Oregon, the EPA fines 10 ranchers for letting their cows' manure pollute streams and rivers.
People for the USA! disbands
People for the USA! says it is officially disbanding due to declining membership and funding, but its members plan to keep their wise-use mission alive by merging with another conservation group, Frontiers for Freedom.
Park sues notorious developer
Officials at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park plan to sue to keep TDX, a corporation with ties to notorious developer Tom Chapman, from developing an inholding on the park's south rim.
The latest bounce
Marchers commemorate anniversary of World Trade Organization protests; Julia Butterfly Hills' redwood tree attacked; Santa Fe starts logging its watershed; Northern Utes regain 85,000 acres of land in Utah; Colorado bans sport-hunting of prairie dogs.
When two traditions collide
The Department of Interior is considering allowing Hopi Indians to collect baby golden eagles from Wupatki National Monument, Ariz., for later sacrifice in a religious ceremony, and some conservationists are worried about the precedent this could set.
Los Alamos piles on more waste
Local watchdog groups are worried that radioactive waste intended for temporary storage at Los Alamos National Laboratory will be there permanently, as new waste arrives with no definite future destination.
Feds fight chaos in a desert playground
Off-road vehicle users are upset by the BLM's decision to close to ORVs about half of Southern California's Algodones Dunes.
Troubled harvest: Washington's fruit industry is a hotbed of federal immigration policy gone wrong
Farmers, government officials and immigrant advocacy groups are at odds over the best way to deal with the burgeoning population of illegal immigrants picking Washington state's fruit crop.
Counties want a park road opened
ORVers and local county commissioners are battling the Park Service over the closure of the popular Salt Creek road to Angel Arch in the Needles district of Canyonlands.
Mine all dressed up with nowhere to go
The controversial proposed Carlota copper mine near Pinto Creek in southern Arizona has all the permits it needs, but activists hope an uncertain copper market and the company's financial troubles will keep it from opening.
Is a gold mine's discharge illegal?
The Cripple Creek & Victor gold mine near Victor, Colo., is the largest open-pit gold mine in the state, and, according to the Sierra Club and the Mineral Policy Center, is also the state's biggest polluter.
Ombudsman could be town's ticket
EPA ombudsman Robert Martin has met with Alberton, Mont., residents who say they are still suffering health effects from a 1996 train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals.
Cure or curse?
With Chronic Wasting Disease appearing on elk farms, some have begun to question whether the unregulated trade in velvet antlers, used for Oriental and folk medicine, might expose people to a variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease.
Students' snowmobiles show up industry
In the Clean Snowmobile Challenge, held in Jackson, Wyo., university students from New York designed a cleaner, quieter snowmobile than the industry has ever made.
Little town shows big heart in the face of growth
The residents of a small California town, Cambria, successfully joined with a state-funded preservation group to protect open space from a development planned by Hong Kong investors.
Unclassifieds
Book Reviews
Atomic farmgirl
"Atomic Farmgirl: The Betrayal of Chief Qualchan, the Appaloosa and Me," is Teri Hein's memoir of growing up in eastern Washington, on farmland contaminated by nuclear weapons production at Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Agency gets rebuked
A National Academy of Sciences report on the "Long-Term Institutional Management of U.S. Department of Energy Legacy Waste Sites" says that the Dept. of Energy still doesn't know how to manage the more than 100 federal nuclear sites in the country.
Bring back towns
"Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream" by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zybrk and Jeff Beck brings to life the "new urbanism" which is largely a return to old-fashioned, small-town living.
Bovine weedeaters
Natural resources professor Leigh Frederickson is working with ranchers to test whether carefully managed grazing can help control the spread of noxious weeds, particularly whitetop, on the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado.
Of raptors, rats and roadkill
"Raptor Room News: A Non-Scientific Journal of Goings-On" is the voice of the Northern Rockies Raptor Center, which has been nursing injured birds back to health for 12 years.
Heard Around the West
Heard around the West
San Francisco billionaire creates cat and dog refuge; topless fur protest; teacher dumps computers on BLM land; wild mountain cows; Cedaredge, Colo., editor takes off; hunting permit for Democrats; Sport Utility poem; bumper sticker.
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