Garfield County in Utah has yet to prove historical use of the Burr Trail road through Capitol Reef National Park, a federal judge said in April. With the ruling, U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins rejected the county’s motion for summary judgment, and now a trial will likely begin this summer. An attorney defending Garfield County […]
News
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Ranchers fight a railroad
SOUTH DAKOTA, WYOMING Ranchers fight a railroad Ranchers living on the prairie of southwestern South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming say they’re being railroaded. The Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern railroad wants to extend its line 144 miles from South Dakota into Wyoming to the Powder River Basin’s coal mines. About 54 miles of the new line […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Five Navajos say Utah cheated their tribe
Some Utah Navajos say their tribe has been cheated out of at least $52 million in oil and gas money by the state of Utah during the past 30 years (HCN, 12/16/91). Although the state says the tribe’s claims are too old to be valid, a district court judge has rejected that argument and given […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Land swap splits conservationists
Saguaro National Park officials and Tucson environmentalists are praising a recent land exchange that adds 632 acres of prime wildlife habitat to the park’s holdings. They say the expansion helps to protect the cactus forest from urban sprawl, but others are wondering if too much was sacrificed in the process. The Tucson Mountains acreage, owned […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Exotic predators swallow the Southwest’s native frogs
LEWIS SPRINGS, Ariz. – Phil Rosen is knee-deep in a disaster this spring day. Just a few years ago, native leopard frogs filled algae-covered pools in this side drainage of the San Pedro River, one of the last free-flowing rivers in the Southwest, 70 miles southeast of Tucson. Now, Rosen keeps turning up bad news. […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
The Wayward West
Albuquerque, N.M., Mayor Jim Baca, always outspoken, is hopping mad. President Clinton recently signed an emergency spending bill that included chopping 8 1/2 acres out of the city’s Petroglyph National Monument. It’s “dishonest and cheating,” Baca told the Albuquerque Journal, “but that’s life in Washington.” The deleted acreage will go for a road extension to […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Turning a vista into a mess
CROZIER CANYON, Ariz. – To some, this short stretch of Route 66 is historically significant, the “Mother Road” of westward migration celebrated in song and television series. To others, the red hills rising up from the desert are sacred and not to be disturbed. Some of these hills belong to Fred Grigg. They’ve been in […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Ruckus on a recreation river
Each summer, thousands of rafters and kayakers head for central Idaho’s Middle Fork of the Salmon River, considered by many the nation’s premier wilderness river trip. During the week-long, 100-mile journey, floaters play volleyball on the beach, fly fish for native trout, surf the rapids and cook up Dutch oven feasts – all in the […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Monumental deal over Utah’s trust lands
On May 8, after months of quiet negotiations, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt resolved a major sticking point in the debate over the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (HCN, 1/19/98). Their agreement trades the scattered blocks of state-owned school trust lands within the new monument for federal lands elsewhere in […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
A summer like no other looms ahead
SWAN VALLEY, Mont. – The sweet aroma from a mock orange bush wafts through the air, but Steve Gauger is not here to look at wildflowers. He’s monitoring a wildfire. Like many firefighters, Gauger, incident commander on Montana’s recent 220-acre Goat Creek Fire, is scratching his head over this year’s early fires. On the high […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
How California poisoned a small town
PORTOLA, Calif. – The northern pike, a voracious species, has claimed what may be its biggest victim yet: this small town. Officials of the Plumas County town of 2,200 residents say they have lost their backup water supply, half their tourism business and their reputation for a pristine mountain environment – all to the predatory […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Cows get eviction notice
In what the Forest Guardians’ John Horning calls “evidence of an agency that’s finally getting it,” the Forest Service has agreed to begin removing cattle from 230 miles of Southwestern streams. The Tucson, Ariz.-based Southwest Center for Biological Diversity and the Santa Fe, N.M.-based Forest Guardians filed separate lawsuits against the Forest Service last year, […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Hanford’s full of holes
Hanford’s full of holes Whistleblowers at the Hanford nuclear reservation in central Washington now have the federal General Accounting Office on their side. Although nearly a million gallons of waste are seeping from Hanford’s underground storage tanks toward the Columbia River, the Department of Energy has long downplayed the problem, assuring critics that the soil […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Bison sleek, but suspect
MONTANA Bison sleek, but suspect West Yellowstone, Mont. – It’s been an easy winter for Yellowstone National Park’s bison. Only 11 of the shaggy giants have been killed, a fraction of the nearly 1,100 that were shot or shipped to slaughter in the brutal winter of 1996-97. Protruding ribs and jutting hip bones were bison […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Water in rivers is OK
Water can remain in New Mexican rivers and still be “beneficial,” says state Attorney General Tom Udall. Up until his decision last month, water rights could be lost unless water was diverted from a stream, and thereby put to beneficial use. Udall’s ruling opens the door to marketing water rights for environmental protection, which also […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Jet Skis: Thrill or scourge?
With 750,000 Jet Skis currently in operation, and more than 100,000 new “personal watercraft” sold annually, the industry is pushing the Park Service for access to 62 sites on national park waters – nearly double the number of sites currently available in the parks. But the Park Service and the Department of Interior can’t agree […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
To burn or not to burn
Another 40-foot stick-figure totem will be set ablaze by 12,000 revelers in the desert in Nevada if a federal agency says yes to the San Francisco-based organizers. Last year the Burning Man arts get-together was moved to private land, where county fees, including $308,000 for fire insurance alone, drove the festival into debt. That made […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
The Wayward West
Eleven Mexican gray wolves were released to the wilds of the Arizona-New Mexico border March 29 (HCN, 2/16/98); now one wolf is dead – shot and killed by a camper who said it attacked his family’s dog, reports the Albuquerque Journal. The wolf program faces a lawsuit filed by a coalition of New Mexico ranchers, […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Outfitter bill may be missing the boat
Guiding hunting expeditions and rafting trips is a risky business, but some commercial outfitters think that some challenges shouldn’t be part of the job: They say the changing policies of federal agencies make it difficult to get guiding permits. They’re hoping a new bill, sponsored by Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., will […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
‘Meltdown’ continues at state agency
Goodbyes are getting more and more frequent at the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. When attorney Ashley Olivero resigned from the agency at the end of March, describing a “museum of degradations inflicted upon the rank and file DEQ employees,” she joined seven other staffers who have angrily quit since the agency was formed three […]