Yellowstone is not only our first national park; in 1922, it was also the nation’s second-largest bus company (right behind Greyhound), operating a fleet of 400 yellow convertible buses for visitors who traveled to the park by rail. But by the 1960s, as automobiles became the preferred transportation to the park, the yellow buses were […]
Book Reviews
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Revisiting Alcatraz
In November 1969, a small group of Native American students and “urban Indians” landed on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay and occupied the former prison for more than 19 months. The “invasion” was a protest of the U.S. government’s Indian policies and programs, and some say it kicked off the fiery “Red Power” movement […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Does dam breaching make cents?
For years, the Hells Canyon dams in Idaho have been the subject of intense debate: Should we breach them and restore the Snake River, or keep the dams and save the local economy? Now, two reports have come out, representing both sides of the issue. After more than 10 years of research, Idaho Power, which […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
A rez-to-rez film debut
Chris Eyre, director of Smoke Signals, just finished a one-of-a-kind movie premier for his new film, Skins: For four weeks, Eyre brought Skins to Native American reservations across the country in a mobile cinema trailer, outfitted with 100 seats, surround sound and a concession stand. Based on a novel by Native American writer and poet […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
An activist who never let up
Norma Smith’s biography, Jeannette Rankin: America’s Conscience, records the inspiring courage, integrity and optimism of the first woman elected to Congress, dramatically recounting Rankin’s struggles and successes as an activist. Smith, a personal friend of Rankin, writes that as a congresswoman, Rankin’s interests shifted from suffrage to pacifism. She often said, “The first vote of […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Peer pressure
Violence against National Park Service law enforcement employees – including shootings and assaults – increased 940 percent in 2001. And just this past August, Mexican fugitives killed a park ranger in Organ Pipe National Monument in Arizona. These alarming statistics are included in a report released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a private nonprofit […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
The coalbed methane super-prime
Coalbed methane wells are quickly spreading across the West, with the BLM projecting 80,000 to be developed by 2010 (HCN, 9/16/02: Backlash). So the Rocky Mountain Mineral Foundation, a cooperative project of law schools, bar associations and industry associations, is holding a two-day conference in Denver entitled “Regulation and Development of Coalbed Methane.” The program […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Research, Lake Mead style
It’s a research laboratory, it’s an environmental education center, it’s É another houseboat on Lake Mead in Nevada. “Forever Earth” was dedicated at the lake in early October. The floating laboratory is a specially designed, 70-foot luxury houseboat, furnished with water and air quality monitoring equipment and a myriad of other scientific instruments. A research […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Native Waters
The era of the Indian land treaty ended more than a century ago, but now the West is in the midst of another treaty era – this time focused on water. So writes Daniel McCool, a longtime scholar of federal Indian policy and the head of the University of Utah’s American West Center, in his […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Have you ever seen the cranes?
The Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge straddles the Rio Grande south of Socorro, N.M., and serves as the wintering grounds for thousands of sandhill cranes and snow geese. Witness this rare spectacle at the 15th annual Festival of the Cranes, a six-day event organized by the Friends of the Bosque del Apache that coincides […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
A new planning tool takes flight
Have you ever endured an incredibly boring planning meeting at Town Hall? Some developer, standing before a blizzard of maps and charts, drones on about how his subdivision will fit seamlessly into your community. You know that the size and location of the project will forever mar the incredible view over the river to the […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
A dry old time
The Dry Cimarron River is called “dry” because it has a tendency to sink, then rise again, as it flows from Johnson Mesa in northeastern New Mexico, through a deep canyon, across a corner of Oklahoma and into the Arkansas River near Dodge City, Kan. Along the way, the Dry Cimarron nourishes rangeland that has […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
A flood of admirers
The Clark Fork River in Montana suffers from more than a century of extraction, but there’s no shortage of praise for the resilience and enduring beauty of the river and its tributaries. Just as the river runs over boulders, drops through cascades, and meanders through its floodplain, the collection of works in The River We […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
Magical, mystical and down-to-earth
They’ve been coined “boineers” – for biological pioneers – and they look to nature for models of sustainability and ecological and social restoration. This translates into topics as varied as transforming toxins using natural shamanic rituals to exploring the role of marine ecosystems. Now, you can see what these cutting-edge scientists, artists and activists have […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Learn about everything
Learn about everything from fueling your car with vegetable oil to how Aspen, Colo., manages its “alternative building” at the Fourth Annual Sustainable Communities Symposium, Sept. 20-22 in Crested Butte, Colo. The conference kicks off with words from Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (HCN, 7/6/98:Defining a scientific movement), and features workshops […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Yes, I’m gonna eat that!
After visiting the Fertile Crescent, where he eats “local” food for the first time, Lebanese-American writer Gary Paul Nabhan returns to the U.S. determined to do the same at his Tucson home. To most of us, that would have meant growing a larger garden and buying a lamb or cow from a neighbor. But Nabhan, […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Island Hoping
Island hoping In Arizona and New Mexico, a unique complex of 27 mountain ranges encompasses vast stretches of desert scrub, grasslands and oak woodlands, and is home to more than 75 species of reptiles. Called the Sky Islands (HCN, 4/26/99:Can science heal the land?), the landscape inspired Aldo Leopold to write that ” … these […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2002: Backlash
An inspiring, devastating story
The Navajo grassroots environmental group Dine CARE has worked to protect forests, water and human health on the Navajo reservation for more than a decade (HCN, 10/31/94:’People of the Earth’ stress “natural laws’). When group founders Leroy Jackson and Adella Begaye first started fighting irresponsible logging on the reservation, they thought the battle would take […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2002: Backlash
River’s end
The numbers are impressive: 25 million people depend on the Colorado River, which falls 14,000 feet in its 1,700-mile journey, and is home to 20 power plants, 10 major dams and 80 diversion channels. Over the past year, the humanities councils of seven Western states have worked together on Moving Waters: The Colorado River and […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2002: Backlash
Telling it on the mountain
The mountains, for many of us, are a source of inspiration, adventure, work and play. But for a lot of the world, mountain life means extreme poverty and a rapidly declining quality of life. A disproportionately high number of the world’s hungry and chronically malnourished people live in mountain regions. The United Nations has declared […]