Do oil and gas leases offer citizens a chance to save the land?
News
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
Wilderness up for lease
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Buying time against the energy assault.” As industry gobbles up oil and gas leases across the West, citizen-proposed wilderness areas, which encompass millions of acres of public lands, have become battlegrounds. Under a Clinton-era policy, these areas […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Toxic chemical creeping toward Colorado River
CALIFORNIA, ARIZONA Chromium 6, the toxic element made infamous by the movie Erin Brockovich, is back in the news. In Southern California and central Arizona, water officials fear that the chemical might contaminate drinking water for some 20 million people, as it creeps toward the Colorado River from a pump station on a natural gas […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Calendar
The Sierra Nevada Alliance is holding its 11th annual conference, which includes speakers, workshops and field trips, at Lake Tahoe, Aug. 7 and 8.www.sierranevadaalliance.org530-542-4546 The olorado Foundation for Water Education is offering tours of the Upper Colorado River Basin on June 23-25. The three-day tour will focus on urban water supply, recreational water use and […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Follow-up
President Bush’s proposal to offer work visas to undocumented immigrants in the U.S. has opened a window of opportunity, and many are rushing to take advantage of it (HCN, 2/2/04: Immigration reform from Washington, DC). The Border Patrol says that the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border had declined over the last four years, […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Wolf foes get medieval
As feds prepare to take wolves off the endangered list, a rash of animal poisonings causes concerns
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
New Mexico may change wolf policy
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Wolf foes get medieval.” A troubled wolf-recovery effort in the Southwest may have found an unlikely ally: The traditionally anti-wolf New Mexico Game Commission has asked the state Game and Fish Department to re-evaluate its management of […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Cougar hunt creates uproar
Following a sensational search, Arizonar esidents push for tougher protections for mountain lions
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Property-rights lawyers score one against wild salmon
Court rulings force re-evaluation of endangered fish and habitat in the Northwest
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Follow-up
Idaho’s Owyhee Initiative — a group of ranchers, environmentalists and off-road vehicle users — has unveiled a wilderness proposal for the Owyhee Canyonlands (HCN, 12/8/03: Riding the middle path). The plan would protect 511,000 acres, including 40,000 acres that would be cow-free. U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, hopes to introduce a bill in early June […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Small steps for wilderness
Arizona activists shop for wilderness by congressional district
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Jackson can’t agree on growth
A decade after a model planning effort, Jackson’s downtown is stagnant, while its workers are priced out
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Water ‘holy war’ rages in central Utah
Will taxpayers foot the bill on a federally subsidized fossil?
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Dam’s price tag skyrockets
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Water ‘holy war’ rages in central Utah.” After decades of rancorous debate, construction is under way on the Animas-La Plata dam project in dusty southwestern Colorado (HCN, 8/27/01: A-LP gets federal A-OK). But anyone who thought the […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Seattle embarks on a dramatic experiment in restoration
Ecologists try to make second-growth forests function like vanishing old growth
Posted inApril 12, 2004: The One-Party West
Jetboats stir up the Frank
IDAHO A new Forest Service management plan for the 2.4 million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness could increase jetboat traffic, and would allow airplanes continued access to four controversial landing strips. Jetboats and airstrips normally aren’t allowed in wilderness areas, but the 1980 act that established “the Frank” allowed those uses to continue there. […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Follow-up
The Duwamish Indians have had their land confiscated by the United States government and then by the city of Seattle (which is named after a Duwamish chief), and their status as a federally-recognized tribe rescinded by the Bush administration, but the tribe is determined to keep fighting (HCN, 6/10/02: Duwamish? Duwamish who?). The 560-member tribe […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Water holes awash in controversy
ARIZONA Environmentalists and state game managers are locked in a battle over the man-made water holes that some biologists say are keeping bighorn sheep and other desert species alive in the drought. As the Sonoran Desert National Monument south of Phoenix, the Arizona Game and Fish Department and the Bureau of Land Management want to […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Drought forces Las Vegas to reach deeper for water
NEVADA Remember shoving your straw deeper into a pop bottle to slurp out those elusive last drops? Faced with the fifth year of drought, the Southern Nevada Water Authority plans to do something similar in Lake Mead, which supplies drinking water to Las Vegas and surrounding areas. Water officials are hurrying to extend an intake […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Greenhouse gases go underground
WYOMING Carbon dioxide, produced by burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal, is the major culprit in climate change, trapping heat and warming the planet. Now the federal government wants to remove it from the atmosphere by burying it all over the West, starting at the Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming. The Department […]