Items by Hal Clifford
The West might still be the nation’s outdoor
playground, but the Western companies that make outdoor recreation
gear are finding greener pastures overseas
Local ranchers and farmers in southern Colorado’s
San Luis Valley are working to restore the Alamosa River, site of
the infamous Summitville mine cyanide spill
A recent study by Defenders of Wildlife documents the Bush
administration’s unprecedented rollback of the National
Environmental Policy Act
Former Leadville miner Bob Elder decries the exploitation
of service workers who have to commute from Leadville to jobs in
the resort counties. Jim Zoller, a former miner who now works as
Leadville’s police chief, thinks that a lot of his
town’s problems
Twenty years after its longtime mainstay, the Climax
Molybdenum Mine, closed, Leadville, Colo., is still groping for a
secure economy and a new identity.
The Bush administration wants to permanently install user
fees for recreation on public lands, but opponents are speaking
out.
Royal Dutch/Shell wants to take another crack at producing
petroleum from oil shale in northwestern Colorado's Piceance Basin,
but local towns such as Parachute are wary, remembering the last
energy boom and bust in the region.
Colorado rancher Brad Phelps believes that cattle and sage
grouse can live together, but biologists, environmentalists and
other ranchers continue to argue over exactly what impact grazing
has.
Male sage grouse gather at leks to dance in front of
females in elaborate mating displays.
Across the Interior West, as the sagebrush sea recedes
under the environmental stress of human impacts, its emblematic
bird, the sage grouse, is also in decline, and no one seems to know
what to do about it.
A brief moratorium on drilling is giving coalbed
methane-rich Montana a chance to prepare for the coming boom in
Gallatin County and the northern part of the Powder River
Basin.
In her own words, Mickey Steward talks about seeking
consensus on coalbed methane drilling in Wyoming.
In his own words, rancher Miles Keogh talks about how he
deals with the coalbed methane industry.
In her own words, rancher Patricia Clark talks about
coalbed methane drilling on her ranch.
In Wyoming's Powder River Basin, the coming energy boom in
coalbed methane gas has local ranchers and environmentalists
worried.
In the wake of the arson at Vail two years ago, Western
ski resorts have hired security staff to keep an eye out for
ecoterrorism.
In Colorado, The Nature Conservancy begins a battle
against the exotic invader tamarisk, hoping to make the San Miguel
River tamarisk-free before the plant takes over entirely.
Some locals on southwestern Colorado are fighting an
electric utility's plans to upgrade the power line that runs
between Nucla and Telluride.
Unable to afford skyrocketing rents, a growing number of
Telluride, Colo., workers live illegally on Forest Service
land.
The ski town of Telluride, Colo., is fighting a
developer's plans to build up the Valley Floor, 857 acres of
pasture and wetlands that are currently open space on the highway
leading into town.
Sun Valley, Idaho, resident Diana Fassino, is among the
protesters who have gone to court over their refusal to pay
recreation fees.
Chris Wood, senior policy advisor to Forest Service Chief
Mike Dombeck, discusses the pros and cons of fee demo.
Former Inyo wilderness ranger Gary Guenther says that
recreation should be subsidized as the extractive industries have
always been.
In his own words, Scott Silver of Wild Wilderness
denounces the fee demo program.
Inyo National Forest Supervisor Jeff Bailey says that fee
demo is not the full answer to the forest's many needs.
While cash-strapped land managers praise the Recreation
Fee Demonstration Program, some recreationists and activists rail
against it, and others point out that the program isn't producing
as much money as was hoped for.
In the effort to preserve Western open space, land trusts
take the lead.
Staffer Jamie Williams talks about The Nature
Conservancy's efforts to preserve land in Routt County,
Colorado.
Ranchers fear the loss of their culture if they become
tenants on land owned by wealthy people in places like Steamboat
Springs.
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