After getting hammered by protests from loggers on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Forest Service abruptly killed an old-growth research project it had backed for the last 18 months. University of Washington scientists wanted to erect a 300-foot crane to study one of the least known areas of old-growth forests – the canopy. The Olympic Peninsula […]
Staff
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Debt for nature swap
In an odd twist on modern economics, conservationists want to use the savings and loan debacle to protect the largest privately owned old-growth redwood grove in the world. The 3,000-acre Headwaters Forest of northern California is owned by Pacific Lumber, which was a family business until it was taken over in 1985 by junk bond […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Coming up dry
The bull trout is disappearing, says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but the agency cannot protect the trout as an endangered species because it doesn’t have the money. In a ruling June 7, the Fish and Wildlife Service found that the listing of the rare fish was “warranted but precluded.” Doug Zimmer, an Olympia, […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
So much for badges
Between 1953 and 1967, workers at Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver, Colo., were either incorrectly monitored for radiation or not monitored at all. Now, the Department of Energy is telephoning hundreds of current and former employees at the closed weapons plant to tell them they were exposed to more radiation than anyone knew. […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Mount Graham fight continues
Environmentalists and Apache traditionalists have a new legal wrench to throw into the controversial Mount Graham telescope project the University of Arizona is building. The site designated for the $200 million project is outside the area approved by Congress in 1988, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court May 25. The university pushed […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Lepidopterist poaching ring netted
-I plan on really cleaning house on Rocky Mountain butterflies next year. Am bringing 20,000 envelopes and I expect to fill them all up!” wrote one of three men indicted in a large butterfly poaching ring. All allegedly traded and poached butterflies between 1983 and 1992, from such places as Grand Canyon and Yosemite. An […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Earth voices
Inspired by the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Colorado Sacred Earth Institute hosts its first international Voices of the Earth conference July 29-31 in Boulder, Colo. The gathering of environmental, business and spiritual leaders includes Noel Brown, United Nations environmental official; Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop; Matthew Fox, director of […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Roads are the enemies
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt says he will halt all construction of new roads, hotels and entertainment facilities in national parks and monuments. “Roads are the enemies of national parks: They disrupt, divide and fragment,” Babbitt said in a speech to Park Service employees on the steps of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “Our task is to […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
The restless West
Western writers, journalists, historians and photographers will gather at Wallowa Lake in Oregon, July 8-10, to take part in the Summer Fishtrap Gathering. This year’s theme, “The Restless West: World War II and After,” brings together novelists Ivan Doig and Sandra Scofield, historian Richard White, poet Benjamin Saenz, essayist Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and others to […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
The Chapman saga continues
The U.S. Forest Service, with approval from Secretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons, has signed a deed of trust with Colorado developer Tom Chapman. The deal gives Chapman 105 acres of federal land near the Telluride Ski Area in return for Chapman’s 240 acre inholding in the West Elk Wilderness near Paonia. Chapman must also remove […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Wolves in the schools
The superintendent of Wyoming’s Fremont County School District recently canceled wolf presentations at three elementary schools in Lander. Wild Sentry, a Montana-based wolf education program, has successfully taught thousands of kids in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho about the controversy and stereotypes surrounding the animal. But when area ranchers learned the program was coming to town, […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Guide for green loggers
The Forest Trust, a non-profit group in Santa Fe, says logging doesn’t have to flatten forests. In a new publication, the group describes the work of more than 30 groups that both provide jobs and conserve resources in rural communities. Forest-Based Rural Development Practitioners features mainly non-profit groups in California, New Mexico and eastern states, […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Same old DOE?
U.S. Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary may be displaying unprecedented candor by disclosing her agency’s sordid history of radiation experiments on humans. But two reports by the General Accounting Office suggest that the agency remains an old boys’ club. According to one report, the DOE has yet to investigate what happened to $30 million of goods […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Drought for the Northwest
Although snowpack levels throughout the West are average or better this year, the Northwest faces another year of drought. As of mid-May, the water content in Washington’s and Oregon’s snowpack was between 20 and 59 percent of normal, while precipitation in the Snake River Basin averaged just half of normal. Low reservoir levels and trickling […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Five star visitor complex
The Bureau of Reclamation is now building the nation’s first boondoggle tourist stop. Thanks to cost overruns and management neglect, the Hoover Dam visitor center in southern Nevada will cost $119 million instead of an estimated $32 million. Scheduled to be finished in 1995, the 44,000-square-foot center, which sits on the side of a cliff, […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Could a treaty block a mine?
Although international treaties are best known for settling wars, a treaty could affect an underground gold mine proposed just outside Yellowstone National Park. Under a 1972 international treaty known as the World Heritage Convention, ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1973, Yellowstone was deemed a “world heritage site.” The 136 nations that approved the treaty […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Grazing allotment in hot water
Oregon environmental groups sued the Malheur National Forest May 11 for violating the Clean Water Act on a grazing allotment along the John Day River near Camp Creek. The groups say grazing has destroyed vegetation along river banks, causing water temperatures on the John Day to hit 75 degrees, seven degrees above the state standard […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Tribe courts nuclear utilities
A New Mexico Indian tribe’s controversial plan to house high-level nuclear waste on its reservation may be rolling. The Mescalero Apache Tribe obtained written commitments in April from more than 30 private utilities to spend $5,000 apiece studying how to finance and manage open-air waste storage. The facility would use concrete bunkers to hold more […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Not for the birds
A grizzly bear that found the seeds in a bird feeder to his liking was recently moved to the southwestern area of Yellowstone National Park. The two-and-one-half-year-old male bear was trapped by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks on private land near Big Sky, Mont., reports AP. The bear was the first trapped […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
A new Navajo newspaper
The Navajo Nation newspaper market already has three major papers competing for readers among the reservation’s 200,000 residents. But Deswood Tome, publisher of a new monthly newspaper, Dinéh Tribune, says there’s still room for one more. “We want to be a newspaper that provides more in-depth news. We want to be the news source for […]