The practice of “green-scamming’ – stealing an environmental group’s name to further an opposing cause – may be acquiring a whole new meaning on the Internet. Members of the Pulp and Paper Workers Resource Council at the Potlatch Inc. mill in Lewiston, Idaho, got so mad at the Idaho Conservation League for opposing timber sales […]
News
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Strangling the Last Best River
Montana statesman Mike Mansfield, summing up the highlights of his career in the U.S. Senate, claimed to be most proud that he “had saved the Yellowstone River from the Corps of Engineers.” But while the Yellowstone is still the longest undammed river in the Lower 48, it is now a long way from “saved.” A […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Charting the course of the San Pedro
In the hot, dry grasslands of southeastern Arizona, the San Pedro River is an oasis. Unlike many other desert rivers, the shallow San Pedro is free-flowing, and its banks are soil – not concrete. Cottonwood and willow forests line the northward-flowing river, from its origins in Sonora, Mexico, to its confluence with the Gila River, […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Gold mine capsizes in Westwater Canyon
Kayakers and rafters are planning celebratory boat trips down Westwater Canyon on the Colorado River this spring. As they float past the redrock walls, they can look around and see, well … othing. Their joy stems from the recent removal of mine claims situated on 960 acres in the canyon, within a wilderness study area. […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Land deal links desert parks
A California-based land trust has arranged to put almost 500,000 acres of mountaintop forests, sand dunes and volcanic cinder cones into public hands. The $61.5 million deal now awaits a decision by Congress to release $36 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The Wildlands Conservancy, based in Yucaipa, Calif., will pay the remainder. […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
The Wayward West
In North Dakota, legislators passed a law that makes it illegal to gather the purple coneflower on state lands. Often known by its Latin name, Echinacea angustafolia is a medicinal plant booming in popularity (HCN, 2/15/99). The new law also slaps a stiff fine on anyone caught taking the plant from private land without permission. […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Outdoor schools get squeezed
Two outdoor schools in Summit County, Colo., are feeling the pinch of development in their high country domains. For the past 20 years, Keystone Science School has used the outdoors as a teaching tool. But the school’s backcountry assets are threatened by Keystone Ski Area’s real estate expansion on the fringes of the school’s 23-acre […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Officials seek the “complete’ Canyonlands
A new proposal by Canyonlands National Park superintendent Walt Dabney would more than double the park’s size, from 368,000 acres to about 852,000 acres. Dabney says the proposal “completes’ Canyonlands by drawing park boundaries along natural features. He hopes it will serve as a model for future park planning. “This is in the public arena […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Bison ranch in the balance
A bison ranch that sits in the shadow of the towering Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado could be sold to developers this year if The Nature Conservancy doesn’t come through. Rocky Mountain Bison Inc. has promised to sell its 100,000 acres to the nonprofit Conservancy if the group can raise the purchase price […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Air Force lands a deal
Environmentalists fighting the expansion of a U.S. Air Force training range in southern Idaho lost a round. At issue was a 961-acre tract of grazing land that the U.S. Air Force says it needs for its 12,000-acre Juniper Butte training area (HCN, 4/13/98). Favoring the military, Idaho’s Land Board turned down a $5,000 bid from […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Tree lovers are willing to pay
Washington’s Loomis State Forest has 25,000 roadless acres, and environmentalists say they’ll spend millions to preserve it. In just a few months, the Loomis Forest Fund raised $3 million, but contributors say they need $10.1 million more to compensate the state for the cash it could make by logging. The forest, which borders Canada, is […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Secretary Babbitt meets a tough crowd
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt got an earful when he announced his plans for a new national monument on the Shivwits Plateau, or “Arizona Strip” north of the Grand Canyon. About 500 people packed a meeting March 8 in the Cline Library at Northern Arizona University to debate the proposal. Calling the plateau […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Plans for a new park in Arizona
In 1966, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall drafted a plan to turn more than 1 million square miles of desert in his home state of Arizona into a national park. But the idea for a Sonoran Desert National Park died at the hands of a lame-duck President, Lyndon Johnson. Now, the park idea has resurfaced, driven […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Where do we put the condos?
DRIGGS, Idaho – This southeast Idaho town is like a forgotten cousin to the ski mecca town of Jackson, Wyo., 40 miles away on the other side of Teton Pass. The wave of development that has descended on Jackson has mostly bypassed this part of Idaho, even though both communities share a spectacular view of […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
Julia Butterfly won’t come down
Julia “Butterfly” Hill has become something of a celebrity. She has lived in a 1,000-year-old redwood tree near Stafford, Calif., for over a year, spreading the message that “each and every one of the old-growth trees is ancient, precious, and priceless.” From the 300 to 500 letters she receives daily, Hill is confident that people […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
Toxic cleanup turns up frogs
During a routine survey of a toxic-waste dump near Santa Maria, Calif., EPA staffers stumbled upon a peculiar surprise. Hiding in the vegetation surrounding a series of rain-filled ponds were an estimated 300 red-legged frogs, a species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. While the discovery was welcome news, biologists now worry that […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
The Wayward West
Missing: more than 600 boxes of documents from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in southern Idaho (HCN, 9/29/97). Federal scientists studying the effects of the laboratory’s underground radioactive storage facility on downwinders fear the boxes were lost or destroyed by past INEEL employees; they say that at least 60 of the boxes may […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
Paying for a gold mine
When the Dakota Mining Corp. abandoned its Stibnite gold mine in the rugged mountains of the Payette National Forest last year, it left a mess behind. Shacks were stuffed with barrels brimming with unknown chemicals; it took a bomb squad from Mountain Home Air Force Base to remove one bottle of particularly volatile acid. Almost […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
State senate says voters weren’t very smart
Were Montana voters confused last year when they passed an initiative halting any expanded or new cyanide leach gold mines? Yes, say some state legislators, and not only confused, but wrong. “Just because the people said that is what they wanted, that does not make it right,” said State Sen. Lorents Grosfield of Big Timber. […]
Posted inMarch 15, 1999: Selling off the Promised Land
Here comes a wayward wolf
When the lone gray wolf appeared ahead of a snowplow driver on Highway 7 in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon, it became the state’s first official wild wolf sighting since 1946. Leaving Idaho, the two-year-old female had traveled hundreds of miles over mountains, rivers and highways, looking for a mate, but its days in […]