-You don’t start a $500 million piece of equipment and expect it to hum like a jewel the first time you turn it over. It’s gonna have bugs in it,” says Gary Griffith, a county commissioner in Tooele County, Utah. He’s talking about the Army’s chemical weapons incinerator 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, […]
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 inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Mountain bikers in Moab pay to ride
MOAB, Utah – Mountain bike pilgrims who come to ride Moab’s Slickrock trail find something new these days: a tollbooth. Next to the booth, a sign reads: “Welcome to Sand Flats. All fees are used here for improvements.” A visit to this mecca of mountain biking now costs $1 per person if you’re walking or […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
No cheap thrills in the Grand Canyon
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. For years, rafters and kayakers have paid to float the muddy Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park. Typically, the trip cost private boating groups about $130. When the price jumped to around $1,500 per group for the trip last spring, boaters were shocked. […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
The drilling proceeds
The Bureau of Land Management has given Conoco Inc. the go-ahead to drill for oil in southern Utah’s new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Agency officials say finding oil is a long shot, and Conoco will probably abandon the area. Environmentalists retort that the BLM is playing dangerous games with a national jewel. Earlier this month, […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Trees refuse to croak
When Forest Service officials approved logging on 10,000 acres of Idaho’s Payette National Forest under the salvage logging rider in 1995, they said the trees had been killed by a 1994 wildfire or bark beetles. Now, they admit “dead” was an overstatement. “People may see what appear to be green, healthy trees removed from the […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
‘Greens’ bulldoze a conservation effort
Karla Player has seen a lot of changes in the eight years she’s lived in Springdale, Utah. Each summer, more than 2 million people pass through this dusty gateway town of 300 on their way to Zion National Park. Most visitors spend just a few hours here, though lately, people are coming to stay. “You […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Is nature running too wild in Yellowstone?
It’s June 5, and spring is hitting hard in Montana’s Paradise Valley. The Yellowstone River is over its banks. Water the color of creamed coffee washes around streamside cottonwoods and drowns fence posts. Storm clouds over the snow-heavy high country mean there’s more on the way. I’m riding shotgun with Richard Keigley, an ecologist with […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
One scientist’s forbidden fruit
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. “This is the tree that started this mess,” says Richard Keigley, kneeling for a closer look at the trunk of a scraggly juniper. The tree stands on a hillside above Mammoth, just inside the northern gate of Yellowstone National Park. Its base is as […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Politics tangles with science
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. As bison pushed their way out of Yellowstone National Park last winter, Republican lawmakers from the surrounding states of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana blasted the Park Service for allowing the herd to get out of control. When the Park Service responded by citing a […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Injunction shakes forests
Federal judges sided with environmentalists in July, ruling that the U.S. Forest Service has failed to make good on its promise to protect endangered species in Southwestern forests and streamside areas. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a six-week ban on over 20 timber sales and barred grazing on 11 Southwestern […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
Accident shakes Flaming Gorge Dam
A broken pipe in Utah’s Flaming Gorge Dam gave Bureau of Reclamation officials a scare June 21. Downstream, a blue-ribbon trout fishery got a shock, too. The control room at the dam was empty the evening one of its two bypass tubes burst, gushing water into the dam’s power plant, generator room and offices. An […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
Dombeck shakes up agency
Forest Service Chief Michael Dombeck announced Aug. 8 that he will move some of the agency’s top managers. In the coming months, two of the West’s most spotlighted regional foresters will shuffle off the map. Hal Salwasser, regional forester for Montana, northern Idaho and North Dakota since 1995, is headed to Berkeley, Calif., to run […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
Babbitt brings in new brass
In one fell swoop, the president and the Interior secretary have ushered in a new Interior Department. New directors of the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Office of Surface Mining and National Park Service were sworn into office Aug. 4, after easily surviving Senate confirmation hearings. All four face major challenges […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
No-show lets roads roll
For the second time in two years, the House of Representatives has shied away from a proposal to make timber companies pay for their logging roads in national forests (HCN, 6/9/97). In July, representatives voted 211-209 against an amendment that would have slashed $41.5 million in roads funding. “We clearly had the votes to win,” […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Jaguar limps onto the list
Activists sporting jaguar costumes and picket signs outside the Tucson office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service received some welcome news in July. After 18 years and two lawsuits from environmentalists, the agency added the jaguar to the endangered species list. “The Fish and Wildlife Service has been dragged screaming and kicking through this […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Republican riders toppled
Facing growing disgust from the American public as well as inner-party revolt, Republican congressional leaders abandoned riders that stalled a flood relief bill for more than a month. President Clinton vetoed an early bill because it contained several unrelated measures – one of which would have opened public lands to road building. He blamed Republican […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
The West weathers unusually wet times
With a huge snowpack in the high country threatening severe floods this spring, Westerners prepared for the worst. They beefed up dikes and levees and stockpiled sandbags in anticipation of the big melt (HCN, 5/22/97). But for most, the worst never came. Roy Kaiser, a water supply specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Condors soar once more over the Southwest
On a Saturday morning, a small crowd gathers at Arizona’s House Rock Valley, gazing up at big black birds that glide on the thermals. The California condor has returned to canyon country. The last time anyone saw the giant cousin of the turkey vulture in this region was almost 70 years ago. The species nearly […]
Posted inMay 26, 1997: The sacred and profane collide in the West
Flood bill awash with anti-environmental riders
As Congress rushes to pass a flood-relief bill, lawmakers are tossing controversial pieces of legislation into the mix in hopes of floating them through unnoticed. The bill itself would provide $5.6 billion in relief money to flood victims and ranchers who lost livestock to bitter winter weather. But the worst of its riders could send […]
Posted inApril 28, 1997: Evangelical Christians preach a green gospel
Montana train accident derailed a small town
Alberton, Mont. – When sirens pierced the air before dawn last April 11, Lucinda Hodges awoke to find workers in Haz-Mat suits scrambling through the streets in a thick, white fog. Then it hit her. “I’ll never forget that feeling,” she says. “You breathe and there’s no air. You felt like you were suffocating.” In […]