A visit to the biggest forest fire in Colorado history — the Hayman Fire — and time spent with some of those battling it leads the author to speculate on the mystery and complexity of humanity’s relationship with fire.
Feedlots story falls short
I appreciate the time and effort Karen Mockler put into writing the article on Wyoming’s feedgrounds (HCN, 4/29/02: Are Wyoming’s feedgrounds a hotbed of disease?) as well as the editing that was done to consolidate all the information on this complicated issue. Unfortunately, in that process, some of the essence of the interview was lost. First, the Wyoming…
Matthews wrote wet-blanket litany
Dear HCN, In a recent article, writer Mark Matthews agonized over alleged radical shifts in philosophy and direction here at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (HCN, 5/27/02: Elk conservation group sharpens its ax). Our immediate response was, “Huh?” Bewildered, we’re still not sure how (or why) Matthews weaved his handful of scrap info into such…
White River Forest plan friend to all – and to none
COLORADO When a draft plan for how to manage Colorado’s White River National Forest was released in 1999, it was hailed as a precedent that would steer the agency toward emphasizing endangered species habitat and conservation over resource extraction and recreation (HCN, 1/17/00: STOP – A national forest tries to rein in recreation). Now, five…
Wolf killing hard to swallow
Dear HCN, It has taken me a week to bring myself to read the lead story “Wolf at the door” (HCN, 5/27/02: Wolf at the door). By the time “Ace” Niemeyer finished wiping out the Whitehawk pack, I was crying so much, I couldn’t see to read. That Defenders of Wildlife, to which I and…
A landslide suit for salmon
OREGON Six years ago, a landslide that began in a clear-cut slammed into a house in western Oregon, killing four people (HCN, 12/23/96: Rain and clearcuts make fatal brew). That tragedy prompted state officials to limit logging on steep slopes near homes and busy roads. Now, a coalition of Oregon environmental groups says salmon should…
Salty solution for Bay wildlife
CALIFORNIA If all goes according to plan, the San Francisco Bay will be home to the nation’s second-largest coastal wetland restoration project – good news in a state that has lost 90 percent of its coastal wetlands to development. Agricultural giant Cargill Corporation announced that it will sell almost 12,300 acres of salt ponds to…
Big stink over factory farms
UTAH As more large-scale confined animal feeding operations move into the rural West, state and local governments are slowly moving to regulate the industry (HCN, 4/15/02: Raising a stink). But in Utah, a new state law has aborted one county’s attempts to make such operations criminally liable for their impacts on local communities. A bill…
The Latest Bounce
The National Park Service has abandoned its quest to kick snowmobiles out of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks (HCN, 4/1/02: Move over!). Now, the agency is developing a plan that will reduce the number of snowmobiles in the parks, require four-stroke engines to minimize noise and air pollution, and require the use of licensed…
Scientists uncover a weevil gourmand
COLORADO In the early 1990s, the U.S. Forest Service released approximately 500 flower-head weevils on the edge of Gunnison National Forest, near Almont, Colo., to control the invasive Canada thistle. Apparently, tastes change. In the 12 years since a 1990 study suggested that the weevil preferred Canada thistle to native species, the insect has been…
HCN offers bogus theories
Dear HCN, We had the fantastic “theories” of Columbus “finding” North America when as many as 140 million North Americans had not “lost” it. And the “stories” of Pilgrims encountering “wilderness” when indigenous people cultivated a wide variety of crops the colonizers’ pigs wreaked havoc upon. Now in the May 13, 2002, HCN, we have…
The anatomy of fire
I came like an investigator to a crime scene, notebook open, walking slowly, alert to changes in the perpetrator’s footprints, to oddities in the smoke-smell air. Anything could be evidence revealing the mind of fire: a blade of grass still alive in a forest of black skeletons; an unburned swing set that had parted an…
Heard around the West
Aren’t bees busy enough without being harnessed by the military? Apparently not. The Pentagon is training honeybees to ignore flowers and zero in on the faint molecular trails left by explosives. A downside is the high probability that bomb-sniffing bees would not go over well in crowded airports. Bees also don’t care to buzz about…
Dear Friends
“Momentous” is often used inappropriately, but when Maggie Coon used it at a meeting in Park City, Utah, on Saturday morning, June 15, it seemed perfectly scaled. The High Country Foundation board president was describing the task her fellow board members faced in choosing a new leader for the organization that publishes this newspaper; publishes…
A sonnet to a problem river
The Pecos River begins its 900-mile run high in the Sangre de Cristo Range of the Colorado and Northern New Mexico Rocky Mountains, and descends through New Mexico’s lowlands “of Western myth and solid American values,” as Emlen Hall writes in High and Dry: The Texas-New Mexico Struggle for the Pecos River. Finally, the author…
Human wildness on the range
Frank Clifford has no trouble holding two clashing ideas in mind. The first is his love of wild country, the second is his love of the wild people most of us see as the enemy of wild country. A gold miner’s son who is now an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Clifford comes…
No ranchettes for the rest of us in Jackson
Citizens of ritzy Wyoming town reject government-backed development
Southwest drought desiccates fish before farmers
Agencies let Rio Grande and Pecos rivers dry up despite minimum-flow agreements
Re-opening Glen Canyon’s floodgates
Six years after an experimental flood, enviros want more
Prescribed burns tame the beast
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Ten days after the Hayman fire erupted southwest of Denver, Colo., and began spreading to the north and east, firefighters finally found a place where they could stand their ground: Polhemus Gulch. Weeks earlier, firefighters there gained the upper hand against the Schoonover Fire;…
The tail of a dragon?
Arizona is just the beginning
Life amid fire – the mundane and the macabre
Life in Durango, Colo., has taken on a surreal quality. Even for those of us not directly affected by it, the fire dominates our days. Handling mundane problems, pursuing our normal jobs and hobbies, grocery shopping and gassing up the car – everything takes place against a backdrop of disaster. It’s a crisis situation, but…