Connie Berto was walking her horse down a wide fire lane in Marin County, Calif., when a mountain biker, traveling at high speed, missed her by inches. It’s not an uncommon experience on the West’s public trails. Pressed by other trail users, horses and their riders are finding themselves less welcome on some trails. “Equestrians […]
News
Posted inAugust 30, 1999: Who's stopping sprawl?
Grand Canyon development sparks debate
The Forest Service says a new 272-acre development near the south entrance of the Grand Canyon can control growth near the park. Critics, including some environmentalists, are not convinced. “They’re creating mass development … ext to one of our crown jewels,” says Sharon Galbreath of the Sierra Club’s southwest office. Canyon Forest Village, which got […]
Posted inAugust 30, 1999: Who's stopping sprawl?
The Wayward West
A golf course planned for a national forest has landed in the rough. In 1998, the Sierra Club legally challenged a 1997 decision allowing Dempsey Construction to expand Snowcreek Golf Course onto 95 acres of national forest (HCN, 2/16/98). This month, Inyo National Forest Supervisor Jeff Bailey withdrew the permission. “We have determined that there […]
Posted inAugust 16, 1999: Standing up for the underdog
The Wayward West
A railroad must pay for illegally dumping toxic waste in Montana in the 1970s and 1980s. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad Co. used the Park County landfill to dump perchloroethylene, a solvent that can cause cancer and birth defects. The discarded barrels were marked “non-hazardous.” On July 21, a Montana jury ordered the railroad […]
Posted inAugust 16, 1999: Standing up for the underdog
Judge halts nine timber sales
After five years of an uneasy truce, both sides in the Pacific Northwest timber wars are slugging it out again (HCN, 11/23/98). On Aug. 2, federal Judge William Dwyer sided with 13 environmental groups and blocked nine major timber sales while threatening to stop dozens more. Dwyer ruled that the Forest Service and Bureau of […]
Posted inAugust 16, 1999: Standing up for the underdog
Taylor Ranch sells
A land deal in southern Colorado has added another chapter to the tumultuous history of the Taylor Ranch. In the final days of July, owner Zachary Taylor sold the final 54,000 acres of the ranch to Western Properties Investors for $13 million. The ranch has been embroiled in a bitter land dispute since 1960, when […]
Posted inAugust 16, 1999: Standing up for the underdog
An island becomes a protest ground
PIERRE, S.D. – Thunderheads had been building over South Dakota’s capital city, and by dusk, most locals, on the lookout for a tornado, took cover. But a dozen or so Sioux Indian activists, camped in tepees and nylon tents on La Framboise Island in the middle of the Missouri River, didn’t go anywhere. They’ve been […]
Posted inAugust 16, 1999: Standing up for the underdog
Reviving a refuge
TULE LAKE, Calif. – It goes by the unappealing name of “Sump 1-B,” and it is a far cry from the vast lakes and marshes that covered much of the lower Klamath Basin at the turn of the century. Only inches deep, its murky water is too hot for fish. Sump 1-B has a twin, […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Weighing artifacts against gold
The Bureau of Land Management has decided that a cyanide heap-leach gold mine in California near Yuma, Ariz., can’t get under way for at least two years. The moratorium was hailed as a victory by opponents of Glamis Imperial Corp., who say the mine would ravage the habitat of threatened desert tortoises and infringe on […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Life in the dead zone
BUTTE, Mont. – For years, engineers have assumed that the water inside the Berkeley Pit, an abandoned copper mine on the edge of this hillside town, could not support life; the water has the pH of battery acid. Then a few years ago, a curious analytic chemist, William Chatham, noticed a small clump floating on […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Politicians talk tough
In mid-July, a billboard suddenly appeared on the boundary of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument, advertising three 40-acre lots at the lip of the 2,000-foot-deep canyon (see page 16). The price? $190,000 each. It’s the latest attempt by real estate developer Tom Chapman to cash in on private land inside protected federal […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Gambling with the future?
Gambling has been an economic jackpot for a handful of Indian tribes in recent years. But in northern New Mexico, some members of the Taos Pueblo fear that plans to add a five-star resort hotel and casino may bankrupt their tribe. The Taos Pueblo opened the Taos Mountain Casino, its first, two years ago to […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Poisoning a stream back to life
A plan to poison a 77-mile-long trout stream on Ted Turner’s Flying D Ranch in southwest Montana is raising the hackles of some unlikely critics. The plan is the brainchild of the state of Montana, which hopes it will bolster westslope cutthroat trout populations and ward off a federal listing under the Endangered Species Act. […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Old growth by the numbers
In 1987, foresters on the Clearwater National Forest in north-central Idaho pledged to set aside 10 percent of the Clearwater’s 1.8 million acres in old-growth forest reserves. The agency says it has lived up to that pledge, reserving almost 200,000 acres. Environmentalists in Idaho who have studied the agency’s data say the numbers don’t add […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
The Wayward West
A 25,000-acre swath of the last wilderness on Washington state land is now safe from chainsaws (HCN, 6/22/98). Shortly before organizers of the Loomis Forest Fund stepped before the Washington Board of Natural Resources to ask for an extension July 6, in came an anonymous $1.5 million check. The 11th-hour check gave fund raisers the […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
DDT doesn’t just fade away
A half century after the National Park Service dumped DDT on the northern part of Yellowstone National Park, traces of the deadly pesticide remain in the ecosystem. Scientists studying cutthroat trout last summer tested fatty tissues of the fish and found DDT – even though it has been banned in this country since 1972, a […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
A disaster puts spotlight on pipeline safety
When a pipeline carrying gasoline exploded near a city park in Bellingham, Wash., earlier this summer, it fanned the flames of a battle over a new pipeline proposed for the state. Two 10-year-old boys and an 18-year-old fisherman died when the explosion ripped along Whatcom Creek, scorching 1.5 miles of riverbank and setting one home […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
No luck for this lynx
On the morning of June 19, a truck driver hauling road base to the Vail ski expansion reported he had seen what he believed was a squashed Canada lynx on Vail Pass. He had. A radio collar revealed it was a small, two-year-old female, trapped in British Columbia in December and released into Colorado’s San […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Protests proceed at Vail
The White River National Forest near Vail, Colo., was a busy place on the morning of July 1. After a springtime break for the elk calving season, work was scheduled to begin anew on the controversial expansion of the Vail ski area, which will increase the size of North America’s largest ski area by 25 […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Tribes find a future in the past
DENVER, Colo. – The students were three men and two women, all members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in Pine Ridge, S.D. Last spring, they enrolled in a new, pilot course at their tribe’s Oglala Lakota College. This class was so unique, the professor said, it was best taught on the prairie. Some of its […]