A wild river is “a necessity of the human spirit.”
Items by Geoffrey O'Gara
Although the use of toxic chemicals for agriculture in the Rocky Mountains is a public health concern, it is not a matter of public record.
Tourists following the Lewis and Clark Trail may not get
the eager welcome from Native Americans that they’d
like
Wyoming’s Green Mountain Common Allotment is one of
the West’s last big, wide-open landscapes – but these
days, ranchers, environmentalists, history buffs and the BLM are
arguing over whether it’s time to start putting up
fences
Midvale, Wyo., farmers worry after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed last year that the tribes of the Wind River Reservation have rights to over 500,000 acre-feet of water.
The effort to get the word out -- about wilderness, about archaic mining laws, about illegal shooting of golden eagles, and so many more issues besides -- would cost Bell his ranch, many of his friends, and, very nearly, his sanity.
Has much changed since Rudyard Kipling toured Yellowstone in 1889 and wished he were dead, rather than be among preening American tourists?
Wildlife killed by poisonous, hydrogen sulfide-laden "sour gas" leaking from a natural gas well raises concerns about future oil and gas drilling in Wyoming.
To an energy industry stretched thin, Interior Secretary James Watt's temporary ban on oil and gas drilling in wilderness areas is something of a favor.
Is U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service head Robert Jantzen cutting an already undernourished budget and favoring ranching interests over wildlife in his predator control and grazing policies?
Livestock grazing and wildlife clash in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's management plan for the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.
A natural gas boom around Evanston, Wyoming, has brought a rise in violent crime, traffic and disintegration of rural culture, but funds set aside to mitigate the impacts haven't been properly applied.
With his small plane, Michael Stewartt flies journalists, government officials and activists around the Rocky Mountain region to give them a birds-eye view of strips mines, coal-fired power plants and areas of scenic beauty.
No philosophical or psychological rationale speaks to the effectiveness of ecotage, Politically, what made sense for the Sixties activists is unlikely to work for wilderness advocates in the Eighties.
In Jeffrey City, Wyo., a 25-year-old boom town that lies in one of the most hostile environments in the country, the local union struggles to hold the town together amid layoffs caused by a downturn in the uranium industry.
Citing antiquated equipment, pollution control problems and foreign competition, Atlantic Richfield Co. announced recently that it will not reopen its Anaconda, Montana, copper smelter, which employs nearly 1,000 people.
Chicago and North Western Transportation Corp. is inching its locomotives towards the coal fields of the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. But local ranchers, Wyoming's governor and the powerful Burlington Northern Railroad are all trying to keep it out.
Even as strip mines multiply throughout the Rocky Mountain states, the federal agency responsible for overseeing reclamation of mined lands -- the Office of Surface Mining -- is reeling under a series of blows.
The fate of Wyoming's first commercial-size in situ uranium mine remains uncertain following a Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision giving the operation 90 days to prove it can operate without polluting ground water near Buffalo, Wyo.
Farmers and advocates of Front Range growth winced last month when the U.S. Forest Service and State of Colorado recommended that most of the Cache la Poudre River be protected from major development.
Two large "sweetening" plants -- which remove toxic hydrogen sulfide from natural gas -- are slated for construction near Evanston, Wyoming.
The future of federal gas and oil leasing has been thrown into turmoil by evidence of extensive fraud, an Interior Department shutdown of the present program, and a report critical of legislation intended to overhaul the system.
The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, a group of game experts from state and federal agencies, may determine the future of the grizzly.
States apply a variety of severance taxes to non-renewable resources such as coal, defying efforts to create a unified, national approach.
Oil pumped from the federal oil reserve at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, sells at prices six times higher than oil from adjacent private fields because of price controls.
After more than seven years of trying, Congress is close to enacting a comprehensive national energy program that would include a government-sponsored synthetic fuels program and a "fast-track" board to speed domestic energy projects.
A Holiday season ode to the West's environmental issues of 1979: "It's time for reviewing the year first to last: // A remembrance of two dozen deadlines past. // Water and wilderness, endangered species, // Oil, Alaska, railroads and coal leases;"
Despite its problems and dissidents, the Council of Energy Resource Tribes -- comprising 25 tribes who own one-third of the low sulfur coal west of the Mississippi and as much as half the privately owned uranium in the country -- is emerging as a serious player in the energy development game.
The small town of Buffalo, Wyoming, may face an influx of more than 20,000 people if Texaco Inc. and Texas Eastern Corp. go ahead with plans for a strip mine and coal gasification plant near Lake DeSmet.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management are cutting back on grazing permits in Montana's Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, angering ranchers.
The 1,500-mile Northern Tier pipeline, which would transport Alaskan crude oil from Port Angeles, Wash. to Clearbrook, Minn., is expected to be approved by Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus and President Carter.
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