Northern spotted owls are still disappearing. The
Northwest Forest Plan of 1991 was intended to lower the rate of the
bird’s decline to 1 percent a year, by halting old-growth logging
in spotted owl habitat (HCN, 11/23/98). But The Wall Street Journal
reports owl populations are falling at four times that rate. “The
plan is not working,” says Tim Hermach of the Native Forest
Council.
By month’s end, loggers could be at work
in the beetle-infested forests of the Idaho Panhandle and Colville
national forests in Washington and Idaho (HCN, 3/1/99). “Anybody
that looks at the forest needs to conclude action is needed –
there’s just a sea of dead trees out there,” says Jim Riley of the
Intermountain Forest Industry Association in the Spokane
Spokesman-Review. Critics call the danger-of-fire talk “scare
tactics’ and promise a lawsuit.
On the western
edge of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, a Canadian company is
scheduled to begin exploratory oil drilling later this summer (HCN,
10/12/98). The tribe is split over the prospect of drilling for oil
and gas on the reservation, where unemployment is nearly 70
percent, but the tribal administration has already signed on with
the oil company. “We have the right to determine the destiny of our
land,” said Tribal Chairman William Old Chief in the Los Angeles
Times.
The press secretary for Montana Gov. Marc
Racicot has signed on with the George W. Bush campaign. Andrew
Malcolm, a former New York Times reporter, will be deputy press
secretary. Environmentalists said they won’t be sorry to see the
press aide go: “If they like arrogance in the Bush campaign, he’ll
fit like a glove,” said Jim Jensen of the Montana Environmental
Information Center.
The Navajo Nation is suing
the Peabody Coal Co. for $600 million in unpaid royalties. The
tribe alleges that between 1964 and 1983 it received only $2.7
million in royalties, although Peabody earned $141 million from the
coal mined from the reservation. Navajo President Kelsey Begaye
said the damage caused by Peabody’s “influence peddling is
staggering,” reports the Arizona Republic.
*
Dustin Solberg and Pat Dawson
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
