RBM Lumber in Columbia Falls, Mont., is a small,
family-owned mill that is a pioneer in a brand new kind of timber
economy, one that would restore rather than deplete forests and
create low-volume, high-value wood products in a sustainable
way.
Magazine
May 8, 2000
RBM Lumber in Columbia Falls, Mont., is a small, family-owned mill that is a pioneer in a brand new kind of timber economy, one that would restore rather than deplete forests and create low-volume, high-value wood products in a sustainable way.
Feature
Sidebar
The Idaho Conservation League's John McCarthy talks about
the tremendous changes coming to the Northern Rockies
forests.
Teresa Catlin, an ecologist and forest consultant, says
that her community forestry project is coming together because
locals want much the same thing.
Hunter, naturalist, writer and logger Bob Love talks about
practicing wild forestry.
Forest Service veteran and now chairman at a collaborative
forestry group, Tom Kovalicky, describes his enthusiasm for his
forest stewardship projects.
Evenlyn Thompson of RBM Lumber talks about working for
sustainable forestry.
RBM Lumber is not your typical forest products firm, but
others could learn a lot from it.
Editor's Note
Now that the big timber companies are abandoning the
Northern Rockies, the region must decide what to do with millions
of acres of cut-over land.
Essays
The writer, who works for the Forest Service, is
optimistic about the possibility of restoring forests and
sustaining logging communities.
The writer describes the wonderful, fascinating, unique
people one can encounter if one gets out of the automobile and
shares the bus with others.
Book Reviews
Red Rock Mesa, an artists' community, will offer studio
space and cabins for all kinds of artists who wish to spend time
near Zion National Park in Utah.
A report from the Montana Human Rights Network says
anti-Indian groups are on the rise in Montana.
Bart, the famous acting grizzly, is the spokesbear for
Colorado State University's Animal Cancer Center's new research
facility, following the bear's own recent brush with
cancer.
The BLM says that burros are better than llamas, goats or
horses in the backcountry, and is encouraging people to adopt wild
burros from Arizona and train them.
Colorado State University, Department of Engineering,
seeks one-page abstracts for next January's Conference on Tailings
and Mine Waste.
The National Park Service and Department of Interior are
sponsoring a conference to help land managers on the Colorado
Plateau in July.
Volunteers are being sought by the Forest Service for the
Rocky Mountain region.
Environmentalists and Steelworkers Union members have
formed the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment to
fight unsavory corporate practices.
Some fertilizer sold in Washington since 1998 contained
uranium and other nuclear wastes.
The video "Ancient Forests: The Power of Place" is
designed to educate people to the harm done by logging in the
Northwest's old-growth forests.
If all works out, grizzly bears may be reintroduced into
the Northern Rockies' Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area in as
little as a year.
The Telluride MountainFilm Festival, set for Memorial Day
weekend, celebrates the outdoors in a compelling variety of ways
through filmmaking.
"Living on the Earth" by Alicia Bay Laurel, a
counterculture handbook for back-to-the-landers, is back in print
30 years after it first appeared.
A guide of schedules of Native American pow wows across
the nation is offered through Indian Country Today.
Lifelong social and environmental activist Hazel Wolf is
honored in a 30-minute documentary, "Voice of the Centenarian:
Hazel Wolf."
The 17th Sitka Symposium lets writers and scientists
explore the relationships between religious traditions, sacred
stories and scientific facts, June 15-21 in Sitka,
Alaska.
Heard Around the West
Sweaters for penguins; potbellied pig turned to pork;
Audubon member enraged at ATV ads in magazines; crashing a Mormon
church in Wyo.; disguised cellular phone towers; Canadians don't
want to share bears; toilet-to-tap water; anti-gun rally.
Dear Friends
Spring visitors; Tom Kenworthy visits; HCN staff
transitions; bragging about our interns.
News
With the summer shaping up to be a hot one for fires,
especially in the Southwest, the Forest Service is worried about
finding enough money, firefighters and also avoiding the problems
that contributed to the deaths of 14 firefighters in
1994.
The EPA wants to remove a dam on Montana's Clark Fork
River that had been holding back contaminated mine tailings from
Butte and Anaconda, and have the waste cleaned up.
A look at this last winter in the West shows snow in the
Northwest and Sierra Nevada, variable weather in the Rockies, and
what looks like the beginning of a long, hot, dry summer in the
Southwest.
Pres. Clinton's new nat'l monument in CA's Sequoia Nat'l
Forest; snowmobiles not welcome in most nat'l parks; Yellowstone
N.P. can cash in on "bioprospecting" microbes; Clinton vetoes bill
to send nuclear waste to Yucca Mtn., Nev.; Mexican spotted
owls.
Faced with what appear to be increased cancers in their
communities, neighbors are beginning to question the way the Sierra
Army Depot in Herlong, Calif., disposes of unsafe weapons by
burning and exploding them, perhaps releasing toxins into the
air.
The deals made to get support from Sen. Pete Domenici,
R-NM, for buying the Valles Caldera or Baca Ranch in northern New
Mexico have some conservationists troubled that too much will be
lost in the process.
Critics in Congress, the media and citizens' groups are
calling for reforms and more accountability from the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers.
Conservationists will need to come up with $3 million to
buy a 247-acre caldera near Flagstaff, Ariz., called Dry Lake, from
the developer whose plans for the site were stalled by
them.
Residents of Nucla and Naturita in Western Colorado want
to take uranium waste from near Denver and bury it in the former
uranium company town of Uravan, but other Western Slope communities
are fiercely opposed to the idea.
As ATV and snowmobile use increases in the backcountry,
Montana wildlife advocates are worried that the machines and the
roads they make will harm grizzly bears.
Related Stories
Green-labeling for forest products is becoming more common
throughout the country, but not all green labels are created
equal.
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