As anybody who has followed the Oprah Winfrey beef libel trial knows, mad-cow disease has never been found in American cattle. Deer and elk, though, are another matter. Chronic wasting disease, a cousin to the mad-cow plague that decimated British cattle herds, has been identified in deer and elk in three Western states. Infected animals […]
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Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
‘Ghost roads’ haunt forests
In his announcement of the Forest Service’s 18-month road-building moratorium on Jan. 22, Chief Mike Dombeck admitted that there are over 60,000 miles of unmapped “ghost roads’ in national forests (HCN, 2/2/98). This was no news to members of the Bozeman, Mont.-based Predator Project, whose Roads Scholars program has been documenting these roads in the […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Motorheads lose one
Environmental groups have put the squeeze on off-road vehicle enthusiasts in eastern Idaho’s Targhee National Forest. On Jan. 15, the Forest Service abandoned its policy of allowing snowmobiles, motorbikes or cars access to every part of the forest, on or off road. The decision is a part of the agency’s Targhee Travel Plan, which includes […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Feds ready to get WIPPed
Twenty-three years after the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., was first proposed, the controversial $2.5 billion underground storage facility is scheduled to open this spring. The Department of Energy formally approved the project on Jan. 23, and the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to certify it in May. Department of Energy officials […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
The Wayward West
The Canada lynx has gotten its due. After years of resisting, on Feb. 12 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed, under pressure from conservation groups and an order from a federal judge, to list the lynx as a protected species in the lower 48 states (HCN, 11/24/97). Conser-vationists have long argued that logging and […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Shooting down high-tech hunting
-Our tools for the pursuit of wildlife improve faster than we do,” said Aldo Leopold in his 1949 book A Sand County Almanac. But even the far-seeing Leopold might not have anticipated hunting 1990s style: Hunters locate game with airplanes and two-way radios, track animals before dawn with infrared night-vision goggles, aim with electronically illuminated […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Waste to snake through West
Nuclear waste may be coming soon through rural Western communities. As early as June, the U.S. Department of Energy plans to ship five loads of nuclear waste through Concord, Calif., to a federal storage facility near Idaho Falls in eastern Idaho. The waste, spent nuclear fuel rods from Asia, is a legacy of the Eisenhower […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
The power politics of dam removal
PORT ANGELES, Wash. – Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., startled critics and supporters alike last fall when he announced he favors removing one of two hydroelectric dams on Olympic National Park’s Elwha River. At that time, Gorton, the Senate’s most outspoken opponent of dam removal, pledged his support in the form of a trade: He wanted […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Navajo president forced to resign
Window Rock, Ariz. – Facing up to 50 criminal charges, Navajo President Albert Hale resigned from office Feb. 19. “I could fight this,” he said, “but I don’t want to subject my people, especially my mother and children, to this.” By resigning, Hale avoided prosecution for misusing tribal money. During his parting address to people […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
A conservation first for Arizona
SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Ariz. – Travelers often gasp when they reach the crest of Forest Road 58 in the Patagonia Mountains and see the San Rafael Valley spreading below to Mexico. The valley, where the musical Oklahoma was filmed years ago, is a wide bowl of grassland and gentle ridges, one of the most unbroken […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
The Grand Canyon struggles with reality
TUSAYAN, Ariz. – Just south of Grand Canyon National Park, this hamlet of 1,600 people is a model for what federal planners don’t want near a national treasure. The main street takes millions of visitors a year past an Imax Theater opposite an RV park, Babbitt’s General Store, motels and fast-food restaurants that tourists overwhelm […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
A Nevada power plant earns itself a lawsuit
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. – South of Las Vegas, Nev., the Mohave Generating Station remains the last coal-fired power plant in the Southwest to resist installing pollution controls. Now, the plant, one of the largest sulfur dioxide polluters in the West and a significant polluter of the Grand Canyon, sits in the crosshairs of the federal […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
No, ma’am, this isn’t Mississippi
When people think of catfish, they’re more likely to imagine roadside cooking shacks in Mississippi than desert streams. But that could change now that the native Yaqui catfish has been restored to Arizona. In October, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released 350 of the blue-gray fish in the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge near […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
The Wayward West
The League of Conserva-tion Voters congressional scorecard is out. The only Western senators to score 100 percent on their voting records are Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both Democrats from California. The entire Senate delegations of Idaho, Texas, Utah and Wyoming scored 0. The League gave 0 scores to 30 senators, all Republicans, and 12 […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Water for people and fish
Photographs of Aspen Village mobile homes and Snowmass Creek are not likely to oust images of the Maroon Bells Wilderness from Aspen, Colo., postcards and calendars. But the 150-unit trailer park and a small but valuable water right from Snowmass Creek have jumped into the conservation limelight. Their fame comes from an effort by citizens, […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Intel Corp. denied desert water rights
Money can’t always buy water, even in cash-poor New Mexico. Intel Corp., the world’s largest computer chip manufacturer, has lost a $1.5 million bid to buy water rights from southern New Mexican farmers near rural Socorro. The company’s 1994 water-use permit requires that it buy water rights, then retire them to offset 4 million gallons […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
A scarlet “A’ for ASARCO?
A controversial open-pit copper mine proposed for the Santa Rita Mountains of southern Arizona (HCN, 9/1/97) has been put on hold. In a Jan. 21 letter from ASARCO Inc. to the Coronado National Forest, the company blamed low copper prices for the pullout and said the project would be delayed for “at least a couple […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Scat dogs earn their keep
Moja and Molly aren’t ordinary Labrador retrievers – they earn their keep by locating animal scat for senior scientist Sam Wasser of the Center for Wildlife Conservation in Seattle, Wash. “This is going to completely revolutionize the science of animal monitoring,” Wasser said. Wasser has trained the dogs to sniff out bear and wolf droppings […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Fore! on the Inyo National Forest
For the first time in its history, the U.S. Forest Service says a golf course will be built on agency land. The owners of the Snow Creek golf course in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., have a permit to turn 95 acres of sagebrush on the Inyo National Forest into a “back nine,” despite the opposition of […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Wolves go wild in the Southwest
In the fall of 1917, Stanley P. Young rode into the Canello Hills in southern Arizona, saddlebags packed with the tools of his trade: steel-jawed traps, metal stakes and chains, leather gloves and a bottle of odiferous wolf lure. The hired gun for the Bureau of Biological Survey was following a pair of wolves whose […]