In an interview with HCN's publisher, Bruce Babbitt looks
back on eight challenging and productive years as Secretary of
Interior.
Magazine
February 12, 2001
In eight years as Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbitt has known some failures but more successes: reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone, halting the New World gold mine, and creating many national monuments, starting with the Grand Staircase-Escalante.
Feature
Editor's Note
In eight years as Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbitt has
known some failures but more successes: reintroducing wolves to
Yellowstone, halting the New World gold mine, and creating many
national monuments, starting with the Grand
Staircase-Escalante.
Uncommon Westerners
Environmentalist, logger and HCN reader Don Ewy wonders
who vandalized the bulldozer he used to selectively log trees in
the North Fork State Forest in Colorado.
Essays
It's not easy being a person who lives in a high mountain
ski town but hates snow and winter weather.
Post-election analysts are mistaken in their claims that
the traditionally Republican West fits cultural
stereotypes.
Book Reviews
A new kind of easement, put together by the Montezuma Land
Conservancy and landowner Don Dove, will protect ruins and buried
artifacts on archaeologically rich land near Cortez,
Colorado.
A legendary Colorado journal, the "Mountain Gazette," is
being resurrected in Breckenridge, Colo., after two decades of
dormancy.
"Speaking through the Aspens: Basque Tree Carvings in
California and Nevada," by J. Mallea-Olaetxe, studies and
celebrates the 'arborglyphs' left on tree trunks by lonesome Basque
sheepherders over the last century.
Salmon researchers are puzzled by their discovery that 84
percent of female salmon sampled tested positive for a male genetic
marker, suggesting that these females began life as
males.
A new report by the Morrison Institute for Public Policy
at Arizona State University, "Hits and Misses: Fast Growth in
Metropolitan Phoenix," takes a hard look at the rapid growth of the
sprawling Sunbelt metropolis.
Heard Around the West
Arcata, Calif., "eco-house"; metal pink pig in Joseph,
Ore., gets the boot; tidying up utility poles in Portland, Ore.;
fancy fruit gift boxes; sagebrush seed rustlers caught in Hanford,
Wash.; Reno comedians replaced by bingo.
Dear Friends
Winter kicks in; calling all lapsed subscribers; deaths of
poet and conservationist Geoffrey Platts and photographer Sherm
Spoelstra.
News
Bruce Babbitt strengthens BLM mining regulations,
requiring bonds to cover cleanup costs, enforcing air and water
standards, and giving the agency discretion to deny mining
proposals that threaten habitat or scenic beauty.
Right after taking office, Pres. Bush put a freeze on
Clinton's last new regulations -- the USFS's roadless plan, Mexican
owl critical habitat, and other environmental rules -- giving the
new administration time to review and maybe overturn
them.
User-fee protester faces prosecution; Utah state Sen.
Terry Spencer proposes four bills to stop nuclear waste storage on
Goshute Reservation; Hopi tribe may be allowed to take eaglets;
electric cars encouraged in California.
Indians, ranchers and conservationists are fighting a plan
by Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad to construct almost 300
miles of new track to haul coal in South Dakota and
Wyoming.
The Colorado Wildlife Commission has approved a nine-year
coyote-killing experiment in western Colorado.
Anglers and biologists warn that cutthroat trout and bald
eagles on the South Fork of the Snake River are threatened when the
water is saved behind dams for summer irrigators.
Scientists counting clams on the Colorado River Delta say
the region has lost 95 percent of its biological richness since
Hoover Dam was built in the 1930s.
Denver-area developers are eager to get their hands on the
Front Range land preserved on the former Lowry Bombing
Range.
At long last, the Bureau of Indian Affairs recognizes the
existence of the Chinook Tribe.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated 4.6
billion acres in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah as critical
habitat for the Mexican spotted owl, but the Center for Biological
Diversity says that is not enough and plans to sue.
A coalition of environmentalists and smart-growth
advocates, including Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, has filed
lawsuits to stop construction of the Legacy Parkway along Utah's
Wasatch Front near the Great Salt Lake.
Watchdog groups are worried that a Park Service photo
contest, organized and sponsored by Kodak, sets a bad precedent of
corporate entanglement with national parks.
The Forest Service has released its final plan for 11
national forests in California's Sierra Nevada, but the timber
industry is already planning to appeal the Sierra
Framework.
Activists should be worried because President George W.
Bush is surrounded by people who scorn and disdain
environmentalism.
Letters
- Unraveling the mystery of a stolen ceremonial shield
- A Washington town isolated from the U.S. is now cut off from Canada, too
- As a plague sweeps the land, zealots see a gift from heaven
- New bill would permanently protect 130,000 acres of Montana’s Badger-Two Medicine
- How the Supreme Court upended a century of federal Indian law
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