Pilots of “personal watercraft” such as Wavejammers
and WetJets may get reined in at Lake Powell. The National Park
Service is considering making parts of the reservoir “Jet Ski
free,” because of increasing complaints – many from houseboaters
calling from cell phones. A federal rule is expected soon allowing
all national park superintendents to restrict the sport (HCN,
11/10/97). Walt Dabney, superintendent of Utah’s Canyonlands, dove
in last month, banning personal watercraft from the Colorado and
Green rivers within the park.
Motorheads in
Yellowstone National Park will zoom unimpeded this winter. Park
officials dropped a proposal from the Fund for Animals and
Biodiversity Legal Foundation to close a snowmobile trail through
the Hayden Valley. The groups say snowmobile trails make it easy
for bison to wander outside park boundaries (HCN, 10/27/97). “It’s
clear that the political and economic pressure on the Park Service
is so intense that they are either unwilling or unable to make
decisions based on the best interest of Yellowstone,” Jasper
Carlton, head of the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, told
AP.
Bison activist Delyla Wilson is paying the
price for dumping a bucket of bison guts on a table in front of
federal officials last March. The gut-dumping was to protest the
killing of bison that wandered outside Yellowstone last winter
(HCN, 4/14/97). A federal judge gave Wilson two years’ probation
for “congressional assault,” and a local justice added $630 in
fines and 190 days in jail. Perhaps her penalty is minor compared
to the two-year jail term and $14,594 in fines facing animal rights
activist Clinton Ellerman, convicted of releasing thousands of mink
from a Utah fur farm last year. Judge Robert Hidler said
21-year-old Ellerman commited “an act of terrorism.”
A federal judge in Seattle has given the Forest
Service the go-ahead to trade 4,362 acres of national forest for
30,253 acres of Weyerhaeuser land in Washington’s Cascade
Mountains. Judge William Dwyer’s ruling halted lawsuits brought by
the Pilchuk Audubon Society and the Muckleshoot Indian tribe, which
argue the agency is giving away ecologically and culturally
valuable forest for land that has been heavily clearcut. The Sierra
Club, which wants to replant the clearcuts, praised the
decision.
After two years as director of the
Colorado Division of Wildlife, John Mumma is on his way out. Mumma
made news as a staunch defender of wildlife when he quit his job
with the U.S. Forest Service in 1991, rather than accept
reassignment to Washington, D.C., for resisting pressure to
increase logging in Montana and Idaho (HCN, 10/7/91). The
resignation came as a surprise, according to the agency’s Todd
Malmsbury, but, he adds, Mumma is just “worn out.” Mumma and his
wife plan to move back to Montana when his contract expires July
1.
* Greg
Hanscom
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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