High Country News April 29, 2002
Feature
The Great Salt Lake Mystery
The brine-shrimp industry of Great Salt Lake has helped put that misunderstood ecosystem under a microscope; can the lake be saved from its history of abuse and a rapidly increasing population around it?
Dear Friends
Dear Friends
Busy ex-interns; staffers clean up adopted Highway 133; former intern David Havlick and HCN associate journalist Niels Sparre Nokkentved publish books; new senior editor Lolly Merrell; European readers critical of wolf management.
Writers on the Range
Leave my town out of your 'Top 10'
When an article appears in Men's Journal proclaiming his home town in the "top 10" of best places to live, the author can't understand what criteria the decision was based on.
News
Zion's geriatric cottonwoods
Cottonwood trees in Utah's Zion National Park may vanish in the next few decades, according to a study by the park and the Grand Canyon Trust that recommends removal of flood-protection stone levees as a way to save the trees.
Wilted West staggers into summer
The fourth year of a crippling drought throughout the West is potential for trouble, not only for farmers, but wildlife and the human population, as well.
The Latest Bounce
Off-roaders in the Mojave Desert must yield to desert tortoises; BLM reverses its ban on four-wheelers in California's Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area; Forest Service denies Boy Scout camp on White River Forest near Aspen; Forest Service cancels Eagle
Are Wyoming's feedgrounds a hotbed of disease?
Conservation groups want to phase out 23 elk feedgrounds managed by the state, claiming they are expensive breeding grounds for disease.
Bush will edit NW Forest Plan
The Bush administration aims to overhaul the Clinton-bred forestry plan, and environmentalists pledge to oppose efforts to dilute it.
Griz ordered to get scarce
Several communities surrounding Yellowstone National Park have passed regulations banning grizzlies, wolves and other "unacceptable species," even though the laws are unenforceable.
Book Reviews
Mountainfilm
This year's Mountainfilm festival, held May 24-27 in Telluride, Colo., features 25 films that celebrate mountains and the people who love them.
Sagebrush artistry
In "Living in the Country Growing Weird," Nevada potter Dennis Parks celebrates his exit from the rat race by conveying the challenges of rural existence.
Sprawl is in the numbers
A study by Numbers USA, "Weighing Sprawl Factors in Large U.S. Cities," analyzes relative contributions of land-use decisions and population growth to sprawl in the nation's 100 largest urbanized areas.
Fateful harvest a scary read
Duff Wilson's book, "Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret," investigates a local agricultural chemicals provider who attempted to pass toxic waste off as recycled fertilizer.
Wildlife Saloon
Wildlife such as deer, elk and bighorn sheep can find water using an artificial reservoir, the "Wildlife Saloon," a new invention developed by Cedaredge, Colo., geologist Greg Hunt.
Essays
Muscle car of the prairie
The writer reminisces about the time he was a teen-age boy and encountered "nature" with Leviathan, his 1966 Pontiac LeMans, on the plains east of Aurora, Colo., which he discovered was a place of rugged beauty.
Heard Around the West
Heard around the West
Alligators on treadmills embarrass researchers; Colorado's state mineral must be right color; Montana coyote hunter shoots up plane's wing; ticked-off bees attack in Oregon; Basalt, Colo., turns down second-home buyers; 107-year-old Jessie Reimers of Lewi
Letters
Outlandish slaughter
Native crops for the niche West
Sibley said it for me
Under charter plan, forests would fall
But, can they reproduce?
'Sense of place' bought and sold
Re: 'Looking for the good'
Roslyn development update
Related Stories
Suburbanites compete for the lake's fresh water
Activists continue to fight against dams on the Bear River, one of three sources that feed Utah's Great Salt Lake, in their push for stricter water conservation along the Wasatch Front.
Lake stops sprawl in its tracks ... for now
Environmentalists and SLC Mayor Rocky Anderson denounce the Legacy Highway, a disputed 14-mile road that would connect Salt Lake City to Farmington, arguing that it would destroy wetlands, encourage sprawl, and degrade the Front's already murky air.
