When Paonia, Colo., resident Richard Rudin challenged a
local mine's plans for expansion, the town was painfully divided,
until the efforts of the North Fork Coal Working Group brought
miners, environmentalists and agencies together for a
solution.
Magazine
July 31, 2000
When Paonia, Colo., resident Richard Rudin challenged a local mine's plans for expansion, the town was painfully divided, until the efforts of the North Fork Coal Working Group brought miners, environmentalists and agencies together for a solution.
Feature
Sidebar
In Montana, the Stillwater Mining Co. and local citizens'
groups have signed a legally binding "good neighbor" agreement that
holds the palladium mine to strict environmental standards in
exchange for environmentalists agreeing to drop a
lawsuit.
Ed Marston interviews Steve Hinchman, former HCN staffer
and director of the Western Slope Environmental Resource Council,
about the different kind of environmental activism and
consensus-building needed in rural Western communities.
Book Reviews
The National Bighorn Sheep Interpretive Center in Dubois,
Wyo., will display the skull of the biggest bighorn ever known, a
15,000- to 22,000-year-old relic.
A compound from the Fremont barberry bush on Colorado's
Western Slope is helping researchers fight antibiotic
resistance.
Biologist Nikolle Brown is seeking photographs and
information on any reptiles seen in the Grand Canyon for her Snakes
of the Grand Canyon Identification and Distribution
Project.
A coalition of environmentalists has raised the money to
protect a historic ranch in Utah's Wasatch Mountains from the
sprawling development of nearby Park City.
Golfers are working with conservationists to encourage
bees and other native pollinators to inhabit golf
courses.
"Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir" by Murry A. Taylor
tells the story of the sometimes "irreverent, vulgar, uncouth and
crass" folks who parachute in to fight forest fires in the
West.
Doug Hawes-Davis' new video documentary, "Killing Coyote,"
goes inside the battle waged by humans against one of the most
resilient predators, the coyote.
"Raging River, Quiet Mind: Field Notes from the Grand
Canyon" wonderfully reproduces the illustrated journal writer
Teresa Jordan kept on a 12-day river trip through the Grand
Canyon.
The third annual Sacred Buffalo Conference is held Aug.
13-15 in Santa Fe, N.M.
A conference on Riparian Ecology and Management in
Multi-Land Use Watersheds is held Aug. 28-31 in Portland,
Ore.
Hiking and mountaineering clubs are sponsoring a National
Mountain Conference Sept. 14-16 in Golden, Colo.
Volunteers are sought for Colorado's Natural Areas
Program.
A new directory features maps, cross-references charts and
an index of various communities.
A Michigan-based nonprofit, Musicians United to Sustain
the Environment, is giving away CDs in drawings.
The Society for Human Ecology is sponsoring a conference
for scientists, educators and urban planners Oct. 18-22 in Jackson,
Wyo.
Open-space advocates will gather at a National Land Trust
Rally Oct. 19-22 in Portland, Oregon.
Heard Around the West
San Francisco vs. tourists; "Billionaires for Bush (or
Gore)"; camping at Wal-Mart; Yellowstone Web site pulls ads begging
for corporate money; lawn ornament bandits in Oregon; lawn mowers
vs. people.
Dear Friends
Paonia, Colo., and HCN; visitors from near and
far.
News
A group of unrelated Utah activists who first came
together as the "Bastille Family" during anti-war protests in 1969
celebrates its 30th anniversary with a family reunion in Salt Lake
City.
The Jarbidge Shovel Brigade's July 4 rally failed to
reopen a controversial closed road along Nev.'s Jarbidge River, but
the Forest Service's proposal to rebuild the road in a slightly
different place so far has satisfied neither wise-users nor
enviros.
Clinton administration delays dam-breaching decision;
critics call Army Corps of Engineers' Los Alamos, NM, dam
unnecessary; W.R. Grace repurchases vermiculite mine in Libby, MT
and revokes EPA access; Californians vie to get $ for their
polluting cars.
The federal government wants to downlist the gray wolf
from "endangered" to "threatened" status, a move conservationists
say could endanger the whole wolf recovery program.
A California environmental group says that building a
Buddhist retreat center in Morse Canyon near Rancho Cucamonga would
harm endangered species, especially the California gnatcatcher and
the kangaroo rat.
The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, until recently
thought to be part of New Mexico's state government, is actually a
federal agency, and could be forced to keep enough water in the
river to protect the endangered silvery minnow.
A proposed land swap by the Colorado State Land Board
would trade the Little Cochetopa Creek School Section near Salida
to a Kansas developer, a move critics say would harm elk and deer
habitat and end local access.
A county jury says the state of Washington must pay SDS
Co., a logging company, to protect endangered spotted owls on the
company's private land.
Future human-made floods from Glen Canyon Dam, designed to
help restore the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, are on hold
until scientists find a way to protect and recover an endangered
subspecies, the Kanab ambersnail.
A recent wildfire on Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Wash.,
released plutonium into the air, and watchdog groups are not
satisfied by the Department of Energy's claim that there is no
cause for worry.
For the first time ever, the environmental group Forest
Guardians has recommended thinning and prescribed burning in the
dense pine forests on Santa Fe's watershed.
In the wake of forest fires, mountain communities along
Colorado's Front Range are working with agencies to protect homes
and watersheds from storm-caused floods that could race over burned
and eroded ground.
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