The drought of 2002 has left the West blistered and burnt,
scientists predict worse to come. Have we learned anything yet?
Also in this issue: This
year’s drought has killed 10,000 cattle and ravaged the range. But
corruption and resentment over earlier attempts to control grazing
are stifling reform just when it’s needed most.
The Latest Bounce
An emergency spending bill to fund the war on terrorism may bring some relief for the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow (HCN, 7/8/02). The $28.9 billion bill, signed Aug. 2 by President Bush, includes $4 million for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to lease water from Albuquerque to maintain river flows in a crucial stretch…
Killer bee corrections
Killer bee corrections Dear HCN, As a commercial, sideline and hobbyist beekeeper (at different times in my life) for 30 years, it was interesting to see HCN cover the Africanized bee story (HCN, 6/24/02). Unfortunately, you did not cover it well. Let me try to indicate why I say this with quotes from your story…
Bee story belongs in a tabloid
Bee story belongs in a tabloid Dear HCN, I can’t let the cover story “The BUZZ business” (HCN, 6/24/02) pass without comment. While I wouldn’t dispute the fact that Africanized bees can react to disturbances with ferocity, the author chooses to take an unnecessarily hysterical approach to the subject. For example, while it may be…
Mi rio, mi agua
TEXAS Tension over Rio Grande water – or the lack of it – is rising to an all-time high. Under the terms of a 1944 treaty, Mexico owes the U.S. almost 1.5 million acre-feet (456 billion gallons) of water – a debt the country amassed over the last decade of drought. The shortage is leaving…
The author responds
The author responds Thank you, Chuck Hunt and Tom Theobald, for help on clarifying some facts. Bees cannot hear, but killer bees react to vibrations such as lawnmowers, sudden movements and exhalations of breath, so I would not recommend that anyone accompany Mr. Hunt if he shouts in the face of killer bees. The word…
Suit may hamstring wildland firefighters
MONTANA A $54 million lawsuit filed against the U.S. Forest Service in July may remove a valuable tactic from firefighters’ toolboxes. On Aug. 6, 2000, in an attempt to stop the Spade Fire as it burned toward houses near Connor, Mont., federal firefighters lit backfires to deprive the fire of fuel in its path. But…
Chinook tribe loses recognition
WASHINGTON In July, when members of the Chinook Tribe were invited to the White House for a kick-off to the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, they came bearing gifts – a hand-carved dugout canoe and beads – for the Bush family. Two days later, the descendents of those who saved Lewis and Clark from starvation in…
Why not put forests to good use?
Why not put forests to good use? Dear HCN, With the big summer fires in full flame, and all the talk of need for “treatment” of the forests to make them less fire-prone, the question comes to mind, “Why not use all the extra trees in the forests to fuel biomass power plants?” Has anyone…
A fish is a fish is a fish – or is it?
Are some fish created more equal than others? This conundrum is the subject of a draft policy released in late July by the National Marine Fisheries Service, regarding which salmon and steelhead deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act (HCN, 10/8/01). On one side of the debate are some Northwest farmers and landowners who bear…
Remember Rocky Flats
Remember Rocky Flats Dear HCN, Several weeks ago, the White House asked Congress and the Senate to exempt the Defense Department from the environmental laws of our country in the interest of national security. Currently, Congress is evaluating this request to make the Defense Department exempt from both the Clean Air and Clean Water acts…
Bikers waffle on wilderness
CALIFORNIA A new proposal to add two and half million acres to California’s 14 million acres of wilderness is gaining support, but not from the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA). Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., says her California Wild Heritage Act will protect the land from logging, oil drilling and road building. IMBA, however, is leery…
Smokey is rolling in his grave
Smokey is rolling in his grave Dear HCN, There are no benefits to prescribed burns that cannot be duplicated by judicious logging practices, replanting and application of a little fertilizer. The air and water pollution, destruction of resources, property and loss of wildlife (and human life!) are not worth the “perceived” benefits of wildfires. Still,…
Attack of the bark beetles
ISLAND PARK, Idaho – Oblivious to the dry summer heat, Forest Service silviculturist John Councilman hikes through a stand of trees looking for signs of violent struggle. It doesn’t take long. “There’s a beetle hit,” he says, pointing out a Douglas fir drizzled with thick threads of dull yellow pitch. “That tree is already dead.…
The Great Western Apocalypse
The drought of 2002 has left the West blistered and burnt, and scientists predict worse to come. Have we learned anything yet?
Shrinking water supply makes room for birds
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Attack of the bark beetles.” This year’s drought is bad news for most wildlife, but not for the endangered southwestern willow flycatchers at Roosevelt Lake in Arizona. During the six years of drought since…
Dear Friends
A high country jinx We probably should have seen it coming. After a positively wilting June and July and reports from around the West of drought, heat and wildfire, we decided to run a special issue about the Great Drought of 2002. The moment we started work on the stories in this paper, however, we…
The sod squad wants to soak you
Look out, you water scofflaws – it’s “water-efficiency month,” and enforcement agencies across the West will not look lightly upon water-wasting infractions. Water cops are tossing out tickets that range from a slap on the wrist (and a free how-to-conserve-water brochure) for leaky faucets, to a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail…
Happy 100, Mardy Murie
Happy 100, Mardy Murie On August 18, conservation legend Mardy Murie will turn 100 years old. Mardy was the first woman to graduate from the University of Alaska in 1924. She would later write Two in the Far North, chronicling her romance with renowned biologist Olaus Murie, and in 1998 win a Presidential Medal of…
Hot town, summer in the city
Flash! “Did you see that?” She didn’t. Instead, my wife rolled over atop the sheets, too deep in half-sleep to witness the lightning ripping through the blinds. Lightning. Seems like years since we’ve seen any over downtown Denver. But sure enough, a third of the way into Colorado’s Summer of Fire, it might be working…
Blame game sheds little light on fires
It was boring, made-for-C-SPAN stuff, a round of congressional testimony on June 12 by Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth on what his agency has named “The Process Predicament.” The Forest Service has been hobbled, he said, by excessive environmental analysis requirements, management inefficiencies and a breakdown in “collaborative” public involvement. That, said Bosworth, had put…
Presidential hopeful plays with fire
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Could Tip O’Neill have been wrong? Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle may be about to find out, perhaps to his regret. With one artful insertion of law, the South Dakota Democrat demonstrated that even if “all politics is local,” as O’Neill famously said, the local and the national become easily enmeshed, with…
New desert town no home to the fringe-toed lizard
Massive development could doom the dunes
Heard around the West
Rancher Rod Hall was checking cattle when he stumbled onto a wild pool party in his stock pond in the foothills above Hotchkiss, Colo. It wasn’t people cavorting but 30 cow elk, beating the heat and having a blast. “One cow started charging around the pond and others followed in great bounding leaps with water…
Corruption and tragic history paralyze range reform on the Navajo reservation
This year, conditions on the 17 million-acre Navajo reservation in the Four Corners have followed a bleak timeline. A winter with lower than average snowfall was trailed by a dry, windy spring. In March, Navajo Nation President Kelsey Begaye declared a “drought emergency” and cattle owners – most of whom run 20 head, each of…
Chasing hope amid the hedonists
Odonata was her name, the first woman I met at Burning Man. “Odonata …” I fumbled aloud. “Is that Norwegian?’” NO-wegian, brother. It was her playa name. Odonata, the Latin word that orders insects such as dragonflies. The woman Odonata was deep in discussion about totemic traits as I walked up. The dragonfly totem, she…
New Mexico ranchers push to graze preserve
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Corruption and tragic history paralyze range reform on the Navajo reservation.” Northern New Mexico is known for more than fiery red chilis and smoldering mountain sunsets; it’s also notorious for skirmishes between its mostly…
Walla Walla Basin sidesteps a water war
MILTON-FREEWATER, Ore. – For more than 100 years, the Walla Walla River has dried up each summer like clockwork, as its water is shunted off to farms on the river’s journey from Oregon’s Blue Mountains to the Columbia River in eastern Washington. Endangered bull trout and steelhead have been stranded in shallow pools, and volunteers…
Can the tide turn for Walker Lake?
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Walla Walla Basin sidesteps a water war.” SCHURZ, Nev. – Robert Quintero, the chairman of the Walker River Paiute Tribal Council, apprehensively surveys the sun-baked view of his tribe’s 360,000-acre reservation near the Nevada-California…