Magazine
September 30, 2002
California's sprawling San Joaquin-Sacramento river delta has been mercilessly shaped by agriculture and water-development projects. A massive $8.7 billion plan holds hope for restoring the Delta and helping sate California's growing thirst, but political infighting and a lack of funding have clouded the project's future. Also in this issue:</b> In central New Mexico's Sandia and Manzano mountains, drought, hunting and traffic accidents have cut black bear populations in half. But for the second year in the row, the state's Department of Game and Fish has extended the bear hunting season.
Feature
CALFED, a huge Clinton-era project designed to restore the
California Delta, now seems to be stalled and unraveling under an
indifferent Bush administration.
Essays
The Mormon Church would like to buy all of Martin's Cove,
Wyo., where Mormon pioneers died 146 years ago, but the writer
believes the historical site should stay in the hands of the
public, so the full story can be told.
Writers on the Range
As Boise celebrates the opening of its Anne Frank Human
Rights Memorial, the late Bill Wassmuth is remembered as the
activist who helped lead the charge against Idaho's neo-Nazi
extremists.
Dear Friends
California's balancing act, part 2; fall interns Jamie
McEvoy and Joshua Zaffos; Visitors; correction and credit due; and
a message to Iraq.
News
The black bear population of New Mexico's Sandia and
Manzano mountains is already under stress from nearby population
growth and development, but the state's Game Commission wants to
keep an extended fall bear hunting season.
Groups appeal White River Plan; Wyoming Game and Fish
wants dual classification for gray wolf; judge orders BuRec to
release Rio Grande water; Interior Sec. and Assistant Sec. held in
contempt; woman's body strapped to hood of vehicle.
Montana ranchers Steve and Jeanne Charter say that
mandatory "checkoff" payments, taken from cattle sales to promote
the beef industry, favor corporate and foreign producers at the
expense of small and independent ranchers.
The plan for a golf course and housing development on the
Snake River near Jackson Hole, Wyo., would allow the developer to
displace or kill up to 18 bald eagles.
Environmentalists are battling the Umatilla Chemical Agent
Disposal Facility in northwestern Oregon over its plans to burn
chemical weapons.
The BLM says a congressionally mandated land swap will
trade public land on the Utah-Colorado border for Moffatt County,
Colo., acreage that has not been identified as necessary or
desirable.
Recent road accidents involving nuclear waste-carrying
trucks on the road from Idaho to the Waste Isolation Pilot Project
in Carlsbad, N.M., are statistically normal, WIPP says, and no
cause for special concern.
In southwestern Colorado, a judge has temporarily halted
the use of seismic "thumper trucks" to explore for oil and gas in
the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.
Volunteers at Arizona's Fossil Creek tackled the problem
of invasive crawfish by rounding them up and leaving them on the
ground to die, when they proved too small to eat.
Book Reviews
CommunityViz's powerful new planning software allows
citizens to get a clear look at how planned developments will
actually look in the local landscape.
The Quivira Coalition is offering a workshop in low-tech
river restoration methods on the Dry Cimarron River in northeastern
New Mexico.
In the anthology The River We Carry With Us, writers and
poets celebrate the enduring beauty of Montana's Clark Fork River
and grapple with the environmental problems facing it.
At the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, Calif.,
scientists, activists, artists and dreamers meet to talk about
sustainability and ecological and social restoration.
Heard Around the West
Bumper stickers and sheepdog trials; PETA billboards go
after fat carnivores; pro-polygamy billboards irk Utahans; activist
mauled by bear; keeping golf courses green without water; political
ponytails; and "edgy" ads pulled for being annoying.
Letters
Sidebar
California anvironmentalists are pleased that the Bureau
of Reclamation has given up on completing the planned Auburn Dam
for the Middle Fork of the American River.
The Water Education Foundation's beautiful color maps make
California's natural and human-made water systems comprehensible,
even for the layperson.
- Kent Schoberle on Ranch Diaries: A New Mexico cattle company is born
- Rich & Terry Fairbanks on Rural communities in the West need a fair shake
- on Jim Deacon, pioneering desert fish biologist, dies
- Larry Bullock on Ranch Diaries: A New Mexico cattle company is born
- Randy Piper on Bark beetle kill leads to more severe fires, right? Well, maybe
