Eccentric desert rats and clean-cut park rangers sometimes
meet in a culture clash over how to manage one of the hottest,
driest and strangest places in North America - Death Valley
National Park.
Magazine
May 24, 1999
Eccentric desert rats and clean-cut park rangers sometimes meet in a culture clash over how to manage one of the hottest, driest and strangest places in North America - Death Valley National Park.
Feature
Sidebar
Death Valley environmental specialist Dick Anderson
defends the Desert Protection Act as necessary to save wild
lands.
Local resident Jim Macey believes park status has actually
harmed Death Valley.
The decision to put the BLM, rather than the Park Service,
in charge of the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in
Utah, is part of a trend toward blurring the lines among the roles
of the federal land management agencies.
Local resident Kathy Goss is disillusioned by the way
environmentalists pushed the Desert Protection Act.
Longtime park volunteer Reuben Scolnik says the park
officials are good people but too rigid.
Death Valley Park Superintendent Dick Martin says the park
rangers are heroes.
Park enemies in Congress reduced the budget for the new
Mojave National Preserve to one dollar - an extreme example of the
way Congress often creates parks and monuments but is reluctant to
provide any money to support them.
Longtime Death Valley resident Janice Allen believes the
area is not helped by its designation as a national park.
Chief ranger Scot McElveen says local people should not
receive preference in a natural resource owned equally by all
citizens.
Essays
Physical anthropologist Christy Turner's controversial
theories that the Anasazi practiced cannibalism leave the writer
pondering the balance of good and evil that existed in the
no-longer idealized past as well as in the present.
Perspective
Solicitor John Leshy of the Interior Dept., an expert on
the 1872 Mining Law, has the industry screaming and politicians in
turmoil over his decision to enforce a long-neglected provision of
the law, which allows only a few acres per mining claim.
Book Reviews
Nancy Zubiri's book, "A Travel Guide to Basque America -
families, feasts and festivals," is a passionate and
well-researched guide to Basque culture in the Great Basin
area.
From May through October the Hansen Planetarium will host
monthly star parties and indoor slide presentations at Bryce Canyon
National Park in Utah.
Many law enforcement agents at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service say their program is corrupt, understaffed and
underfunded.
The report "A Snapshot of Salmon in Oregon" explains the
complexities of saving salmon.
A study of Clark County, Idaho, shows that tourism may not
be enough to keep suffering rural economies afloat when timber and
mining industries pull out of an area.
University of Colorado's 20th annual summer conference on
water law will be held June 9-11 in Boulder, Colo.
The Alliance will have a community involvement celebration
June 19 in Durango, Colo.
The Environmental Protection Agency hosts a free series in
Denver, July 15, Sept. 16 and Nov. 11.
The 12th annual writers' workshop will be held Aug. 8-14
near Montana's Flathead Lake.
Heard Around the West
Front Sight development in Nev. to have 13 firing ranges;
sheepherder fired for unlicensed dog; condor visits airstrips; Fake
fish mimics how fish cope with hydropower dams; dogs in pickup
controversy in Jackson, Wyo.; bag lunches in Aspen ski
resorts.
Dear Friends
30 issues for $30; 20,000 subscribers by Y2K; this and
that; new intern Tim Westby.
News
Critics say that Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard's Spanish
Peaks wilderness bill leaves a road unprotected - a "cherry stem" -
that will benefit developer Tom Chapman, who owns a mining claim at
the end of it.
Newcomers Patrick Diehl and Tori Woodward say they are
being persecuted by some longtime Escalante, Utah, residents,
because they are environmentalists who oppose construction of the
New Wide Hollow Reservoir.
BLM fines stray cows along San Pedro in Ariz.; stray bison
near Yellowstone not protected by new wildlife plan; new bus system
slated for Yosemite hits speed bump; voluntary June climbing ban at
Devil's Tower; plans to buy Loomis forest in Wash.
Battle Mountain Gold's plans to mine Buckhorn Mountain in
Washington's Okanogan Highlands hit a snag when the Interior Dept.
realizes that the mine's "waste-rock" piles will sprawl over more
land than the 1872 Mining Law allows.
The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency is ordered to pay
Bernardine Suitum $600,000 for blocking her plans to build an
A-frame house on her property by Lake Tahoe.
Dixie National Forest officials cancel a controversial
timber sale because it conflicts with the Forest Service's
nationwide moratorium on road construction in roadless
areas.
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