High Country News March 18, 2002
Feature
How I lost my town
The author remembers his early days in a small Colorado mountain town, and ponders the economic and social changes that have slowly turned "Mendicant Mountain" into a bustling, expensive ski resort.
Dear Friends
Dear Friends
March weather; Tom Bell wins Conservationist of the Year Award; Hal Clifford is finalist in journalism awards; Ed Marston talks about Ed Abbey; visitors and boo-boos; HCN is halfway to its goal in the "Spreading the News" fund-raising campaign.
Writers on the Range
In California, no water project is too big
An Alaska company's much-mocked plan to haul bags of water 400 miles along the California coast is really no crazier than the things California has come up with in its search for water.
Bush turns BLM into energy machine
President Bush's brand-new National Energy Office is designed to expedite drilling and mining on public lands.
News
Can 'charter forests' remake an agency?
The Forest Service proposes an experimental program that would create "charter forests" to be administered outside the normal agency structure.
The Latest Bounce
Eric Schaeffer resigns from EPA in protest; BLM withdraws approval of Nevada kitty-litter mine; Colorado lynx may not be reproducing; judge says Klamath Tribe has oldest water rights; timber companies want protection of northern spotted owl reconsidered.
Collaboration may prevent conflagration in SantaFe
The Santa Fe Watershed Partners Group is working with the Santa Fe National Forest to find an environmentally sensible way to thin and burn a New Mexico forest that has become a fire hazard.
BLM director forced to resign
Martha Hahn is forced out of her job as Idaho state director of the BLM, largely because she backed grazing cutbacks in the Owyhee Mountains.
Alternative livestock searches for a niche
After the enthusiastic boosterism that surrounded alternative livestock in the 1980s, emu, ostrich, elk and bison producers have seen the market - and their incomes - plummet.
Zoning code may squeeze Aspen ranchers
The few remaining ranchers in Pitkin County, Colo., feel that a rezoning plan intended to concentrate Aspen's growth will end up harming them.
A dusty lake is plumbed halfway back to life
In an attempt to stem particulate air pollution caused by dust from California's dry Owens Lake, water is being returned to the lake bed for the first time in 90 years.
Book Reviews
Will the real Gifford Pinchot please stand up
Char Miller's new biography, "Gifford Pinchot and the Foundation of Modern Environmentalism," reveals the self-serving careerist who founded the Forest Service and used his political skills to protect the environment.
Cactus Ed revisited
Two new biographies of Edward Abbey - James Cahalan's "Edward Abbey: A Life" and Jack Loeffler's "Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey," add depth and life to the legendary figure of Cactus Ed.
Heard Around the West
Heard around the West
Aspen not very sympathetic to Kenneth Lay; spuds in the news; postal pheasant dies; pigs fly in N.M. Legislature; flaming, flying cow pies; Dave Barry in North Dakota; Wyo. Sen. Bob Peck blames women for not earning more money.
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