In Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin, a natural gas boom is threatening pronghorn antelope and other wildlife, and some Pinedale-area residents are beginning to fight back.
Also in this issue: The West is likely to be the loser under the new energy bill just passed by Congress.
Gas, the clean energy?
If High Country News were in the habit of dispatching reporters to the Los Angeles area, we could begin our cover story there, in the metro hive of 17 million people. We could open with the average guy or gal, cranking on the air conditioner against the summer heat. Then we could follow the aftershocks…
Editor’s Note
The tribes believe the payments did not cover what they lost. The 1971 court ruling only calculated the land’s market value, not the other economic and cultural losses the tribes sustained when the federal government divided up their reservation, and sold off more than 400,000 acres to non-Indians. On the question of dollars alone, a…
A tale of tough women walks out of the past
Why do we take this trip? Well, to make money … I have simply got to make a stake some way, for I don’t want to lose the farm and it is the only way I can see of saving it. — Helga Estby, quoted in the Spokane Spokesman-Review, May 5, 1896 In 1896, when…
Calendar
The 16th annual Arizona Hydrological Society’s Symposium will be held in Mesa on September 17-20. This year’s theme is “Sustainability Issues of Arizona’s Regional Watersheds.” To register, call Pete Kroopnick at 602-567-3850 or log onto www.azhydrosoc.org. The Water Education Foundation is holding a tour of Northern California’s water facilities and fisheries from September 24-26. Participants…
Film sheds light on sacred spaces
Many Americans look for divinity inside a church, temple or synagogue. But for American Indians, places of worship exist beyond the confines of walls, in the landscape itself. Now, a film by Christopher McLeod exposes the obstacles American Indians face when they try to protect their sacred places. In the Light of Reverence features the…
Follow-up
There’s cause to celebrate in New Mexico: The Salt River Project has decided to pull the plug on its plans for a coal strip-mine near the Zuni Reservation (HCN, 10/08/01: Salt Woman confronts a coal mine). Tribes and environmental groups have fought the mine for more than 10 years, and earlier this year, Gov. Bill…
A fire maverick is resurrected
The work of Omer C. Stewart reminds us just how far we’ve come in our thinking about fire. In Forgotten Fires, Henry T. Lewis and M. Kat Anderson have resurrected Stewart’s 1954 manuscript, outlined the events of his life, and critiqued his research based on current knowledge of fire. Stewart wrote at a time when…
Groovers required for Deschutes boaters
That ammo-can groover — or its more modern counterpart, a pickle bucket fitted with a toilet-seat lid — is required gear for overnight boaters on the lower Deschutes River in Oregon this summer. The Bureau of Land Management has long beseeched river rats to pack out their sewage from trips along the popular 100-mile stretch…
More helicopters to buzz Glacier Park
The skies over Glacier National Park will be noisier this summer, and helicopters lugging seat-belted tourists don’t deserve all the blame. Park managers are increasing their own helicopter and airplane traffic to do backcountry chores, adding 52 flights to their recent average of 50 per summer. According to an environmental assessment, the park’s air force…
Vidler is a water predator
Matt Jenkins did a good job of tying together the complex threads of the Vidler Water Company story (HCN, 8/4/03: Pipe Dreams), a mind-boggling tale of the potential horrors of water commodification and the boundless greed of resource predators like Vidler. Vidler certainly deserves our wary attention, but it is also important to point out…
The Wilderness Society’s fire policy, clarified
I am writing to clarify a statement regarding policy positions of The Wilderness Society in the debate over fire and fuels legislation (HCN, 7/7/03: As fires rage, governors counsel discretion). I believe the statement that we support “loosening up environmental laws” could be taken wrong and wish to set the record straight. The Wilderness Society…
Don’t give bison range back to tribes
I must respond to the article, “Back on the range?” (HCN, 7/7/03). The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes were paid TWICE for the land that became the National Bison Range: Once at $1.56 per acre in the early 1900s, and again in 1971, when the tribal government successfully sued the federal government and won something…
Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play
In Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin, gas drillers lock horns with the locals
If you’re not outraged, you’re not a true optimist
A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with a cheery woman I love to be around. She’s an artist, still a diehard Ralph Naderite, and a dedicated organic gardener. But one day, when I was ranting about some ongoing environmental disaster or another, she stood up in her broccoli patch, gave me a withering…
Dear Friends
Louisiana’s Big Oil slayer There may be any number of environmental activists who run thriving Cadillac dealerships, but we only know of one: Harold Schoeffler of Lafayette, La. The grizzled 63-year-old recently camped overnight on Lamborn Mesa outside Paonia with the Boy Scout troop he founded 20-some years ago. They were taking an eight-day tour…
Energy bill will likely boost drilling in the Rockies
Western senators parry over the nation’s future energy supply
Trouble over the Badlands
Oglala Lakota Sioux fight for control of part of Badlands National Park
Everyone needs a place apart
Some years back, Marypat and I bought 20 acres of land in central Montana, two hours from our home in Bozeman. An unremarkable spot — a sandstone bluff, an intermittent creek, ponderosa pines, views of distant peaks. Beyond building an outhouse and a campfire ring, we have done nothing to develop the place. We go…
Former employees blow the whistle on Nevada mine
Is the state shirking its duty to enforce mining regulations?
Heard Around the West
IDAHO Editorials across the country spanked Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig for wielding his formidable clout just to bring what the New York Times called “wasteful pork” to Boise — in this case, eight C-130 cargo planes that the Air Force supposedly promised to Boise’s Air National Guard seven years ago. Only four planes have…
Gas crisis puts Rockies in hot seat
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play.” Since last spring, Congress, the White House, economists, consumer groups and business leaders have been sounding the alarm about a natural gas crisis. While there’s plenty of disagreement on the cause and the solution, nearly everyone…
The Red Desert braces for a gas boom
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play.” Plans for extracting natural gas are piling up in southwest Wyoming. In addition to the drilling in the Upper Green River Basin, industry is targeting fully one-fourth of the federal land in the region that environmentalists…
In the rush to get out the gas, wildlife gets short shrift
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play.” One of the reasons the demand for natural gas is outsprinting the supply is that it takes too long to navigate the federal environmental rules. At least, that’s the story according to the industry and its…