Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Tom Kovalicky, a 30-year veteran of the Forest Service, was the Nez Perce National Forest Supervisor from 1982-1991. He still lives in Grangeville, Idaho, where he is the volunteer chairman of Stewards of the Nez Perce, a collaborative community group working with the Nez […]
Steve Thompson
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
‘It shouldn’t be all or nothing’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Evelyn Thompson is co-owner of RBM Lumberin Columbia Falls, Montana. In 1997, she was recognized as Montana’s Businesswoman of the Year by the Small Business Administration. Evelyn Thompson: “One of our biggest principles is to eliminate waste. We developed a lot of our products […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
‘Specialists in diversity’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Is RBM Lumber a one-of-a-kind operation, or could there be many such firms at work in the Northern Rockies? Judge for yourself. RBM originally stood for three Thompsons, Roy, Ben and Malcolm. Malcolm, Ben and Roy’s father, is a philosopher-ascetic who has returned to […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
After the fall
As big timber companies leave the Northern Rockies, a family mill turns to restoring forests
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Change is coming
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. John McCarthy is conservation director of the Idaho Conservation League. He lives in Boise. John McCarthy: “The big message in the forest today is, “change is coming – hard and fast.” We know the days of towns built around big, wasteful sawmills that required […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
‘We don’t need a revolution’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Teresa Catlin of Priest River, Idaho, is involved in a community forestry project called Forest Community Connection. She is an ecologist for the Colville National Forest in eastern Washington. She also operates a forest consulting company in Idaho called Total Land Management. Teresa Catlin: […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
‘We still have the opportunity to practice wild forestry’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bob Love is a hunter, naturalist, writer and logger in Columbia Falls, Montana. His company is Confluence Timber Company. Bob Love: “Our public forests in the past were corporatized, and now you could say we’re trying to communitize our forests. We need to invest […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
A political outsider wages a clever campaign
Brian Schweitzer may be a farmer, but he is no country bumpkin. When the media-savvy 43-year-old Montanan announced his candidacy for the United States Senate, he did so from a podium at the Black Star Brewery. With him were several hundred pounds of premium Montana barley. He touted the popular Whitefish brew as a symbol […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Will Wyoming warm to wolves?
The second week of April is a brutal time to drive through Wyoming; windblown blizzards coat everything with ice. But that’s what 70 people in Cheyenne did last spring to view my photographic safari about the return of wolves to Wyoming and Montana. I was prepared for more than brutal weather. While antagonism toward wolves […]
Posted inMay 26, 1997: The sacred and profane collide in the West
Uh, oh – the glaciers are growing
Whitefish, Mont. – Bundled against the driving snow of another January blizzard, the regulars stomped into the Buffalo Cafe for their morning brew. The Flathead Valley was on the verge of exceeding the annual snowfall record with almost three winter months to go. The steamy cafe buzzed with chatter about aching backs, collapsed roofs and […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 1996: Can a Colorado ski county say 'Enough is enough'?
Federal negligence turns ordinary Montanans hostile
NOXON, Mont. – Until last spring, few people had heard of Noxon, Mont., a sleepy town in the morning shadows of the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness. That changed after the Oklahoma City bombing and the media frenzy around citizen militias, including the Militia of Montana (MOM) based in Noxon. Now, most folks who have heard of […]