Anyone who has wandered the convoluted canyons of Arches National Park knows this landscape doesn’t lend itself to ruler-straight boundaries. But find the park on a map and you’ll see a stair-stepped outline that cuts across canyons and over mesas. Walt Dabney, the outspoken superintendent of both Arches and Canyonlands national parks, has been trying […]
News
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Logging slated for many roadless areas
The success of environmentalists in protecting what’s left of the old-growth forests in the Northwest and Southwest means that logging corporations are often forced to look elsewhere. So they have looked at Colorado and southern Wyoming, where, according to a coalition of more than 15 environmental groups, the U.S. Forest Service plans in 1998 to […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
A rancher sees red over a timber sale
Of all the timber sales currently being proposed in Colorado and southern Wyoming, the Sheep Flats timber sale on Grand Mesa has been called the worst – so bad ranchers and environmentalists have united against it. Sharon Jordan, who has been ranching with her husband in Collbran for 25 years, is rallying support among her […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Montana congressman sweetens a buyout
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Mysterious are the labyrinthine hallways of the Capitol; who knows what spirits lurk therein? Down those twisted tunnels and curved corridors are things that go bump in the night. Some of those bumps can vibrate all the way to Montana. One dark, murky night – indeed, it may have been Halloween night […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Freak wind storm flattens 6 million trees
For hundreds of years, the spruce forest in the mountains north of Steamboat Springs, Colo., close to Wyoming, endured everything Mother Nature could throw at it: deep winter snows, severe drought, lightning strikes and gusty winds. But on the night of Oct. 24, the forest got hit by something new: 120-mile-per-hour winds blowing from the […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
The Wayward West
Patrick Shipsey wanted to take a stand against the folly of Oregon’s “open range” law. It allows ranchers to let their cattle roam and forces property owners to build fences if they want to keep them out (HCN, 11/25/96). Shipsey killed 11 of his neighbor’s cows after they wandered onto his property once too often. […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Serious trouble for snow geese
The skies over Midwestern states will be dotted white this fall by snow geese moving south for the winter. But many biologists have concluded that the birds are too prolific for their own good. The goose population has skyrocketed over the past 30 years, up from 750,000 in 1969 to almost 3 million today. As […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Plumas lake poisoned despite civil disobedience
The California Department of Fish and Game poisoned Lake Davis despite a last-minute barrage of legal assaults and pre-dawn civil disobedience hours before the Oct. 15 treatment occurred. A week after pumping Nusyn-Noxfish and powdered rotenone into the lake north of Lake Tahoe, state officials had collected 15 tons of dead fish, including an 18-pound […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Banning the buzz
The National Park Service is developing rules to allow local park officials to restrict, and perhaps ban, personal sit-down or stand-up watercraft. Park Service program manager Dennis Burnett says although the fast watercraft make up only 7 percent of all boaters, they cause more than half of all boating accidents. They also dump about a […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Taxpayers subsidize cheap vacations
In one of the most beautiful – and affluent – parts of central Idaho, 182 cabins on the Sawtooth National Forest have for decades been the best real estate bargain around. Many of the cabins are in stunning locations like Petit Lake, a remote body of water at the northern tier of the 2.1 million-acre […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Bison killing goes inside
Rangers in Yellowstone National Park have permission from park brass to shoot bull bison headed out of the park this winter. It is the first time in decades that rangers may, as a matter of policy, kill wildlife they are charged with protecting. Park managers say the change is intended to control disease, rather than […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
On a Montana ranch, big game and big problems
DARBY, Mont. – It’s almost September, and dozens of “shooter bulls” have been turned into the shooting enclosure of Big Velvet Elk Ranch, just south of here, in western Montana’s Bitterroot Valley. Ranch owner Len Wallace has booked 80 clients for the fall and every one of them is going to shoot a trophy elk, […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Cows get marching orders
Tucson environmentalists beat stream-loving bovines
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Rail merger brings delays, derailments
Last year’s merger between the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads was supposed to create a 35,000-mile transportation system with greatly improved service west of the Mississippi River (HCN, 8/5/96). But shippers are complaining that they’re losing millions of dollars because of bad service from UP, now the nation’s largest railroad. Service is so bad […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Y2Y: A vast concept gets a hearing
WATERTON, Canada – The irony wasn’t lost on anyone attending the Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) conference in Waterton/Glacier International Peace Park Oct. 2-5. As some 300 environmentalists, wildlife biologists, federal, state and provincial employees and Native North Americans met, mountain goats scavenged for garbage in the heart of town and three grizzly bears munched on […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Germany targets U.S. airspace
The German Air Force has trained quietly over the American Southwest for 30 years. Now, a proposed bombing range for German planes has attracted the ire of ranchers and environmentalists. The U.S. Air Force, which manages the training program, wants to put the targets on part of the McGregor Range in southern New Mexico. The […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
The Wayward West
The Sierra Club finally has decided to take a stand on the touchy issue of immigration. The club currently has a neutral policy, but in March, members will be asked to vote on endorsing a drastic reduction in immigration. Pushing for this switch are “restrictionists’ who say that all environmental issues hinge on population size, […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Monumental conflict continues
The saying, “time heals all wounds,” may not apply to Utah, at least not to its politicians. Though more than a year has passed since President Clinton created the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, the state’s congressional delegation continues to try to dismantle it. Republican Rep. Jim Hansen told the Salt […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Activists wade through mudslides
Idaho environmentalists say that while the Senate debated cutting subsidies for logging in September, the Forest Service withheld politically damaging evidence that logging on steep slopes harms forests and native fish. After heavy rains triggered 905 massive mudslides during the winter of 1995-96 on the Clearwater National Forest in central Idaho, agency officials ordered an […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Big trees fall in contested sale
Big ponderosa pine trees came crashing down Sept. 30 near Ojo Caliente, N.M., after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco denied yet another attempt by the environmental group Forest Guardians to stop part of the La Manga timber sale. “This is the last 3 percent of the forest that has old-growth […]