As a last resort, Westerners start talking to each other, in consensus-building groups that seek to find common ground in the land.
Contradictions on the Columbia
One environmentalist called it “a case of schizophrenia’: Oregon officials recently extended Boeing Aviation’s permit to divert water from the Columbia River even though the state has spent more than $1 billion augmenting the river’s flow to restore salmon. Environmentalists hadn’t paid much attention to Boeing’s permits in the past because the aerospace firm never…
Ellensburg wins back its beauty
-Hideous,” “grotesque” and “like massive spikes in a sci-fi movie,” were some of the kinder phrases residents of Ellensburg, Wash., employed to describe an addition to their community. The addition consisted of 12 power poles, 110 feet high, erected by Central Washington University through the center of town. The looming power poles spurred the formation…
‘Boom’ potential at Rocky Flats
-Boom” potential at Rocky Flats When the FBI raided and closed the Rocky Flats nuclear facility just outside Denver, Colo., in 1989, agents found illegal emissions of radioactive materials. But more problems were on the way. Sam Cole of Physicians For Social Responsibility says that since then, plant managers have been “spinning their wheels,” and…
Some not-so-easy steps to successful collaboration
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Howdy, neighbor!, about collaboration efforts in the West. Can citizen collaboration solve every environmental conflict? Nope. “This isn’t a magic bullet,” says Gerald Mueller of Missoula, Mont., who has been a mediator since 1988. It is successful under limited circumstances, he says,…
Idaho learns to share two rivers
Note: this article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about collaboration in the West. ASHTON, Idaho – In a potato-farm warehouse, about 50 members of the Henry’s Fork Watershed Council sit in a circle of folding chairs. They stare quietly at the floor or close their eyes in silence. “I hate…
Consensus even came to Washington, D.C.
Jim Jontz, feisty director of the Western Ancient Forest Campaign, showed up at the seventh American Forest Congress in Washington, D.C., planning to stomp out in protest. Scores of other environmental activists, all passionately opposed to the “logging without laws’ timber salvage rider, planned to join Jontz’s demonstration at a conference its organizers called the…
A Colorado county tries a novel approach: work the system
Note: this article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about collaboration in the West. One day in the winter of 1992, officials from Montezuma County in southwestern Colorado did what many of the West’s county officials were doing: They attended a public-lands conference in Steamboat Springs. Amid the Sturm und Drang…
A progressive commissioner takes the heat
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, A Colorado county tries a novel approach: work the system, in a special issue about collaboration. The last hurdle rancher Tom Colbert has to clear as county commissioner may be his toughest. The commissioners are working to complete a county-wide comprehensive land-use plan…
Howdy, neighbor!
As a last resort, Westerners start talking to each other
Bringing back grizzlies splits environmentalists
Note: this article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about collaboration in the West. It seems a deal made in heaven. The timber industry in the Northern Rockies and two major environmental groups have agreed to back the restoring of grizzly bears to central Idaho and western Montana. The proposal is…
Dear Friends
Going with the flow Locally, things are hopping. A cold snap wiped out up to half the fruit crop, and police say a “little old lady” mistook where the reverse gear was and plowed into the Paonia Post Office, demolishing three newspaper stands and a concrete wall. Both events were not novel. Fruitgrowers have always…
View 1 of the grizzly bear controversy
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Bringing back grizzlies splits environmentalists, in a special issue about collaboration in the West. Tom France is an attorney with the National Wildlife Federation. He lives in Missoula, Mont. He is a board member of High Country News. It was at the Interagency…
Mt. Graham telescope rides through Congress
The setting was as apocalyptic as a Gothic novel: While President Clinton was signing the bill April 26 approving the University of Arizona’s construction of a third telescope on Mount Graham, fire raced through the Coronado National Forest, up the base of the mountain, into red squirrel habitat and toward the two telescopes already pointed…
View 2 of the grizzly bear controvery
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Bringing back grizzlies splits environmentalists, in a special issue about collaboration in the West. Hank Fischer runs the Northern Rockies’ office of Defenders of Wildlife. He lives in Missoula, Mont. I think the timber people share some of our frustrations with this endless…
View 3 of the grizzly bear controversy
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Bringing back grizzlies splits environmentalists, in a special issue about collaboration in the West. Seth Diamond is with the Intermountain Forest Industry Association. He has a degree in anthropology and lives in Missoula. The trouble is that in the past grizzlies were used…
View 4 of the grizzly bear controversy
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Bringing back grizzlies splits environmentalists, in a special issue about collaboration in the West. John McCarthy is conservation director of the Idaho Conservation League. He lives in Boise. The local citizen management committee is the main stumbling block. Everyone except Defenders and NWF…
View 5 of the grizzly bear controversy
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Bringing back grizzlies splits environmentalists, in a special issue about collaboration in the West. Michael Scott recently became program director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Before that, he was with The Wilderness Society. He lives in Bozeman. There is a lot of overlap…
The Northwest gets theatrical
Democratic candidates in the rural Northwest who want to moderate logging, mining and ranching usually don’t get too far. But recent miscues by some of their opponents could change the usual dynamic. Take, for example, Rep. Wes Cooley, R-Ore., who is best known for his bill to allow jet boats to blast through Hells Canyon,…
View 6 of the grizzly bear controversy
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Bringing back grizzlies splits environmentalists, in a special issue about collaboration in the West. Keith Hammer heads the Swan View Coalition. He lives in Bigfork, Mont., near Kalispell. What hit me hardest was that their agreement says the forest plan is adequate and…
A faint ray of hope for Northwest salmon
For centuries, Snake River salmon have followed the force of raging rivers on their 750-mile journey from Idaho’s mountains to the sea. Yet their migration hasn’t been natural since the mid-1970s, when the Snake and Columbia rivers were converted into a hydroelectric factory and a 350-mile-long navigation canal. Now the fish have a technical alternative,…
Everyone helps a California forest – except the Forest Service
Note: this article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about collaboration in the West. QUINCY, Calif. – In the context of the burned and dying forests of the West, the Quincy Library Group was supposed to be a good news story. Loggers and environmentalists sat down in the local public library…
Farm bill helps the land – sort of
For more than 60 years, farmers stopped by their local farm services agency each spring and signed their names to join the farm program. It felt like insurance: If the market prices for certain crops fell below a floor, the government would pay the difference. But security came at a price. The government told producers…
A sampling of the West’s collaborative efforts
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories: Everyone helps a California forest – except the Forest Service Collaboration groups in the West now number in the hundreds, and range from informal grassroots organizations to government-mandated advisory councils. A cross-section follows: * The Willapa Alliance is a private, nonprofit organization started…
Heard Around the West
It’s not unusual to find strange items along road shoulders, but David Shiffler’s discovery along a New Mexico road last October deserves special mention. While taking a pee break, the 3-year-old toddler decided to do a little excavation with his yellow Tonka backhoe. According to The Denver Post, he came back to the car with…
The skeptic: Collaboration has its limits
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Howdy, neighbor!, about collaboration efforts in the West. Editor’s Note: Michael McCloskey, chairman of the Sierra Club, distributed this memo to the club’s board of directors last November. McCloskey wrote it to spur discussion; it does not represent an official position of…
A wet winter misses the Southwest
Refreshed by last year’s drought-ending weather, most Westerners will wallow in water again this spring. Except in parts of the Southwest, where the fire season has already started, it should be a wet spring. Federal weather forecasters say reservoirs are full across most of the West and snowpacks are extremely high in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming…