Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt says he’s one step closer to protecting 1.1 million acres of West Desert wilderness (HCN, 7/5/99). To garner support for a federal wilderness bill, Leavitt has agreed to trade to the Bureau of Land Management 118,000 acres of school-trust land within the proposed wilderness for 128,000 acres of federal land near […]
Greg Hanscom
Greg Hanscom is the publisher and executive director for High Country News. Email him at greg.hanscom@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor.
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Westerners take sides on road ban
Around the West this winter, citizens flocked to Forest Service “listening sessions,” part of an initial scoping process to collect comments on President Clinton’s October directive to protect roadless forests (HCN, 11/8/99). Conservationists dominated regional meetings held in 10 cities, including Portland, Missoula, Salt Lake City and Albuquerque. Many supported the Oregon-based Heritage Forest Campaign: […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
Clinton proclaims a far-reaching forest plan
President Clinton made headlines Oct. 13, when he announced a sweeping initiative to protect 40-60 million acres of unroaded national forests. At a ceremony in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest in Virginia, Clinton put his full support behind permanent protection for land currently covered by an 18-month road-building moratorium, in addition to roadless […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
A tiny fish cracks New Mexico’s water establishment
Note: a sidebar article, “A water empire in the desert,” accompanies this feature story. ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sitting in his office on the outskirts of this sprawling desert city, Jeff Whitney remembers a poster that hung at an Arizona ranch where he worked as a teenager. A crotchety old cowboy smirked from the wall and […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
A water empire in the desert
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories. Albuquerque, N.M. — “I can talk,” says Subhis Shah. “But first, my wife says I need to take a coconut to the river.” The river is the Rio Grande, which flows through a bank of greenery not far from Shah’s downtown office. […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 1999: Troubled Oasis
The Wayward West
Endangered chinook salmon have put the brakes on a new traffic light at a dangerous intersection in Puyallup, Wash. Because the light will be funded with federal money, the city must complete a biological assessment to determine if construction will harm salmon or other wildlife. Nearby resident Pam Bott told AP a two-month delay is […]
Posted inJune 7, 1999: Mining the past
The Wayward West
Residents of Jackson Hole, Wyo., have some new neighbors: a pair of gray wolves and their five pups. Roughly 50 wolf pups have been born this spring around Yellowstone National Park, bringing the population to more than 160. Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is appealing a 1997 district court ruling that ordered the […]
Posted inJune 7, 1999: Mining the past
New tools for bird buffs
Spring in Colorado has brought with it the clatter of bird calls and a few new tools for finding the feathered beasties. In January, the Colorado Bird Atlas Partnership released the Colorado Breeding Bird Atlas, a 636-page book packed with profiles and pictures of birds, and maps showing where in the state they can be […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
The Wayward West
The Bureau of Land Management is cracking down on stray cattle along the San Pedro River in southern Arizona. On May 8, the agency announced that cows that wander into the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area will be rounded up, and their owners handed trespassing fines, reports AP (HCN, 4/12/99). The Arizona Cattlemen’s Association’s […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
The Wayward West
In what critics call political “shenanigans,” Utah Republican Rep. Jim Hansen stole the bill number from a wilderness proposal. H.R. 1500 has traditionally been the number for the Utah Wilderness Coalition’s wilderness bill (HCN, 8/3/98). But environmentalists withdrew the bill this winter in order to update it, and Hansen introduced his own H.R. 1500. His […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Visionaries or dreamers?
“Our vision is simple. We live for the day when grizzlies in Chihuahua have an unbroken connection to grizzlies in Alaska; when gray wolf populations are continuous from New Mexico to Greenland; when vast unbroken forests and flowing plains again thrive and support pre-Columbian populations of plants and animals; when humans dwell with respect, harmony, […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Extra photos to Visionaries or Dreamers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Extra photos to Visionaries or Dreamers.
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Can science heal the land?
From the air, west-central New Mexico is a sea of brown, lined here and there with a dry riverbed or peppered with juniper and mesquite. In places, the vegetation is so sparse that from 3,000 feet up, you can make out the pockmarks of kangaroo rat colonies. “They look like smallpox vaccinations,” says Merry Schroeder, […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
‘This is not a radical notion…’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Dave Foreman: “Earth First!, as far as I’m concerned, died in 1988. All the urban anarchist children – the monkey-wrenching types – started the modern Earth First! (after I left). It is not even a descendent of the original. All they wanted was stories […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
‘It’s like the Manhattan Project…’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Michael Soulé: “We live in an extraordinarily bleak period for nature. Things are going to get worse before they get better. We’ll lose, I would guess, half of the world’s species in the next 50 years. It’s quite tragic – and preventable. The degree […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
Indian money: Where is it?
A federal judge raked Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt over the coals last month, when he held Babbitt in contempt of court in a lawsuit over unaccounted-for Indian money. Babbitt’s department “engaged in a shocking pattern of deception of the court,” said Federal District Court Judge Royce Lamberth. “I have never seen more egregious misconduct by […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Clearcut the neighborhood
Whoever said irony is wasted on the West never met Tom Clyde. Clyde spent 17 traumatic years practicing law in Park City, Utah. In 1984, he packed his belongings into his Volkswagen bus and moved to a cabin on his family’s ranch 20 miles away. From this safe distance, he has been providing the locals […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Agencies seek quieter public meetings
This winter, hundreds of people filed into school gymnasiums, town halls and hotel conference rooms, working up the gumption to stand in front of a crowd and speak out on the future of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. To their surprise, the stomach butterflies were for nothing. They didn’t find the rows […]
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
The Wayward West
The revolving door to the Bureau of Land Management director’s office took a spin in November. On the way out was Salt Lake City attorney Pat Shea, who headed the agency for just over a year. Shea has been promoted to acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management, where he will help create […]
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
Grand Staircase-Escalante in the spotlight
When President Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah two years ago, environmentalists broke out the champagne, while many locals moped (HCN, 4/14/97). A proposed management plan for the monument has the two groups in each others’ shoes. “I thought the people doing the plan really did a good job,” Kane County […]