Don’t expect to hear Utah environmentalists crying
for 5.7 million acres of wilderness, says Kevin Walker of the
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (HCN, 8/4/97). SUWA and other
groups are almost finished with a two-year “re-inventory” of the
state’s wild lands. Since the first inventory, new trails, roads
and mines have knocked some areas out of the running, but Walker
says some wild areas were skipped the first time around. Rather
than playing numbers games with acreage, activists are focusing on
protecting all places that meet wilderness standards. Walker’s new
rallying cry: “Protect Wild
Utah!’
Near Moab, Utah, the
Bureau of Land Management’s Kate Kitchell says an agency study
shows there’s not enough gold in Westwater Canyon to allow brothers
Ray and Ron Pene to work their mining claims (HCN, 10/16/95). The
Penes have vowed to fight the decision. “They can leave me alone,
talk to me about buying me out or go to court,” Ron told the Moab
Times-Independent.
Nevada
rancher Wayne Hage may get his day in court with the federal
government in September. Hage sued the government for $28 million
in 1991, arguing that agents kicked his cattle off federal
allotments to make room for a national park northeast of Tonopah
(HCN, 10/30/95). The state, not the feds, had control over the
allotments, he told the Associated Press, because “the federal
government cannot create property.”
The former manager of the
Louisiana-Pacific waferboard plant in Olathe, Colo., will spend the
next five months in prison. In April, Dana Dulohery pled guilty to
disabling pollution-control equipment and lying to state officials
about smoke leaving the plant. The company’s motto was to “maximize
production, and to hell with the law and the environment,” said
U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock. Dulohery has agreed to testify
against the company in further hearings in
April.
Wyoming’s South Pass,
which served as a passage west for thousands of immigrants in the
1800s, has a new line of defense against the Altamont Corp.” s
planned oil pipeline. The pass made the World Monument Fund’s list
of the world’s most endangered sites. Lander, Wyo., historian Tom
Bell hopes the designation will convince the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission not to renew Altamont’s permit in the area.
Also on the global list: Fort Apache in Arizona, Colorado’s Mesa
Verde cliff dwellings, and the California gold mining ghost town of
Bodie.
* Greg
Hanscom
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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