In Washington, conservationists, farmers, and federal and
state agencies are passionately debating whether four dams on the
lower Snake River should be breached in an attempt to restore
endangered salmon and steelhead runs.
Magazine

December 20, 1999
In Washington, conservationists, farmers, and federal and state agencies are passionately debating whether four dams on the lower Snake River should be breached in an attempt to restore endangered salmon and steelhead runs.
Feature
Sidebar
Jim Baker, the Sierra Club's point man on Columbia salmon,
offers his ideas on breaching dams to save fish.
The treaty rights of Indians from the Umatilla, Yakama,
Nez Perce and Warm Springs tribes to fish for salmon in the
Columbia River are coming under attack from non-Native fishermen
and other river users.
Umatilla Indian Donald Sampson, director of the Columbia
River Intertribal Fisheries Commission, defends Indian rights to
fish for salmon.
Historian Keith Petersen talks about how Columbia and
Snake River dams have made the Pacific Northwest what it is
today.
Potlatch Corporation employee Frank Carroll explains why
he thinks dam-breaching is a poor idea.
Uncommon Westerners
In the western Colorado town of Olathe, Ted Medina's
Pueblito del Paiz serves as boarding house, dining hall and
occasionally tense meeting ground for the Mexican and Indian
workers who labor in the area's farm fields.
Essays
A National Marine Fisheries Service policy advisor says
the questions raised by endangered salmon and dam-breaching are
complicated and cannot be answered solely in deference to
ecological theory.
Book Reviews
Photographer Celia Roberts' bilingual Year 2000 calendar
"Gracias" celebrates the Latino migrant workers who harvest western
Colorado's fields.
The "Mountain Surf" chapter of the Surfrider Foundation in
Bozeman, Mont., has started the Snowrider Project to protect water
quality at ski areas.
A report in the Idaho Press-Tribune documents the trouble
Latinos have getting home mortgages in southwest Idaho's Treasure
Valley.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies has launched the "Great
Grizzly Search" to scour Idaho and Montana's Bitterroot-Selway
ecosystem for a remnant grizzly population.
New Mexico rancher Jim Winder offers tour of his ranch
Jan. 15.
The fourth annual "Mission Possible" conference, "Our
Environment and Our Health," will be held Jan. 22 in El Paso,
Texas.
A new organization, "A Hunter's Voice, has been formed by
activist George Wuerthner.
Heard Around the West
Souvenirs of "battle in Seattle"; Seattle newspaper spoof;
zealots attack wrong plants at WSU; car drives into Sante Fe
apartment; Cliff Notes founder endows chair; sexy store mannequins
in Salt Lake City; buckled-up Utahns; "Big Pig Gig" in
Cincinnati.
Dear Friends
Skipped issue, books by Ruth Mary Lamb and Malcolm Wells;
Altair to underwrite Radio High Country News.
News
As the year 1999 ends, environmentalists can point to some
victories, particularly in roadless area protection, dam
dismantling and hardrock mining control.
Protesting environmentalists and labor unions seem to be
the only winners at the end of the tumultuous meeting of the World
Trade Organization in Seattle, Wash.
Around the West, Forest Service "listening sessions" get
an earful from environmentalists and offroad vehicle fans at odds
over President Clinton's plan to protect roadless
forests.
Babbitt proposes new nat'l monuments in AZ and CA; Nev.'s
Paiute Tribe can control water from Truckee River; N.M. charges
illegal hazardous waste sent to WIPP; North Fork at ID's Payette
River stays free-flowing; NPS lays off 700 law-enforcement
workers.
Environmentalists are worried by a new House bill that
will strengthen county control of national forests and their
budgets.
Local activists led by 77-year-old Betty Feazel plan to
fight a proposed resort in the San Juan Mountains near Pagosa
Springs, Colo.
In Phoenix, Ariz., cases of "Valley Fever" are rising as
rapid development stirs up pathogens in the area's dust.
In western Idaho, locals are at odds over the proposed
"WestRock Resort at Lake Cascade."
Rep. Mark Udall, D, is battling a Colorado Department of
Resources moratorium on buying land for wildlife habitat.
Area farmers are unhappy that the Wahluke Slope, a buffer
zone for the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, may now be protected as a
wildlife refuge.
In Tucson, conservationists are angry and the Amphitheater
school distrct is rejoicing over the decision to build a new high
school in endangered pygmy-owl habitat.
In Washington, a tax-slashing ballot initiative is going
to hurt the state's clean-air program.
- Nevada lithium mine kicks off a new era of Western extraction
- ‘Wild Indian’ is much more than just an Indigenous film
- In Arizona, building a wall — and destroying a canyon
- Will the climate crisis tap out the Colorado River?
- All fracked up: A debut memoir wrestles with toxic masculinity in the oil fields
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