On South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, some Oglala
Lakota are defying the federal government to grow industrial hemp,
hoping that it can help to revitalize both the tribe's economy and
its government.
Magazine
March 4, 2002
On South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, some Oglala Lakota are defying the federal government to grow industrial hemp, hoping that it can help to revitalize both the tribe's economy and its government.
Feature
Sidebar
Agricultural or industrial hemp lacks the psychoactive
qualities of marijuana, but the DEA refuses to make a
distinction.
Essays
Life in western Colorado leads to many close encounters
with deer and elk, both living and dead.
Book Reviews
Tucson pilot Sandy Lanham wins a MacArthur "genius grant"
for her work flying scientists and conservationists while charging
no more than the cost of fuel and airport fees.
The federal government plans to allow gas companies to
drill nearly 40,000 new coalbed methane wells in Wyoming's Powder
River Basin over the next 10 years.
Earthjustice's free 2002 calendar, "(Dis)Appointments:
Bush Officials and the Administration's Environmental Record,"
offers discouraging words about, and unflattering photos of, the
Bush administration's appointees.
Writers on the Range
A new database that allows one to register the fancy names
of luxury homes for $75 a house will not get a lot of use by those
who live in houses with names like Sagging Floor and Mortgage
Manor.
A "Time" magazine column about satellite radio that
described the New Jersey Turnpike as "the middle of nowhere"
provides unintentional humor to Westerners who know the real
meaning of nowhere.
Heard Around the West
Gas masks at Yellowstone; don't say "New Jersey"; thrifty
woman fends off bank robber; California water absurdities;
unintentionally funny headlines; sand-skiing; Albee or Abbey?;
Damien Hirst's "art" accidentally tidied away.
Dear Friends
Greg Hanscom writes from the Winter Olympics in his home
town, Park City, Utah, and predicts an Olympic-sized hangover for
the state; red-tailed hawk or northern goshawk? And a heart-warming
letter from Dave Catterson about his late father, Paul.
Judge William L. Dwyer, the man behind the 1991 spotted
owl ruling and a lifetime friend of the environment, dies at the
age of 72.
News
A controversial National Academy of Sciences report on
Oregon's Klamath Basin states that federal biologists had no
scientific basis to withhold water from farmers to protect
endangered fish.
Nevada sues over Yucca Mountain; lawsuit against Enron
involves Taylor Ranch in Colo.'s San Luis Valley; Blackfeet Tribe's
wind-power project stalls; Mark Warren Sands sentenced for torching
homes in Ariz.; Steve Huffaker heads Idaho Fish and Game.
Hopi Indians fear that Peabody Western Coal is draining
the aquifer that provides their water even as the company's
royalties bring money to the reservation.
The last herd of mountain caribou in the U.S. is down to
30-some animals, and biologists and conservationists say lack of
funds stalls rescue work.
The Colorado Legislature is mulling over a bill that would
allow farmers and cities to retain rights to any water they leave
instream for fish and boaters.
State and federal officials fight over how to clean up
Idaho's Silver Valley, where mining pollution has spread past the
Bunker Hill Superfund Site into Lake Coeur d'Alene and a huge swath
of northern Idaho.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agrees to designate
critical habitat for the threatened bull trout.
Critics say that Washington's Growth Management Act failed
to do its job in protecting small towns like Roslyn, which will
soon see its population quintupled by the development of the
MountainStar Resort.
The Montana Shooting Sports Association is fighting a BLM
ban on prairie dog hunting intended to save habitat for the
endangered blackfooted ferret.
Royal Dutch/Shell wants to take another crack at producing
petroleum from oil shale in northwestern Colorado's Piceance Basin,
but local towns such as Parachute are wary, remembering the last
energy boom and bust in the region.
Snowmobilers and wilderness advocates come to an agreement
on motorized access in Montana's Flathead National
Forest.
The Environmental Working Group has put together a Web
site that lists the amounts of federal subsidies farmers have
received since the 1996 Farm Bill was passed.
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