Uncontrolled growth and the relocation of Intel Corporation to Albuquerque force the city to re-elvaluate its water policy.
Raising hell
Hells Canyon, the deepest gorge on earth and one of the most spectacular canyons in the country, may one day resemble Disneyland, warns one critic. “Envision this place,” says Ric Bailey, director of the Hells Canyon Preservation Council. “It’s a backcountry place with dusty unpaved roads. The Forest Service is going to turn it into…
RX for forests
In response to last year’s devastating fire season, the Forest Service has proposed 330 projects over the next two years to reduce the threat of disease and fire while producing an estimated 1.5 to 2 billion board-feet of timber. Some 1 million acres would be affected, including as much as 150,000 acres on roadless areas.…
For forest activists
Forest activists will gather in Ashland, Ore., Jan. 13-16 to discuss ways to attract more people to their cause and promote public awareness of forest issues. The fourth annual West Coast Ancient Forest Activists Conference, sponsored by the nonprofit group Headwaters, also features workshops exploring President Clinton’s Forest Plan to protect watersheds. Conference organizers hope…
Looter nabbed in Utah
The man who once bragged he could outsmart anybody and never get caught has been indicted again for allegedly plundering an ancient Indian ruin. BLM agents caught Earl Shumway, 37, and his accomplice, Peter Verchick, 24, digging up an Anasazi alcove in southeastern Utah in mid-October, reports AP. A search warrant later turned up other…
Colorado booming
Colorado residents concerned about the fast pace and scale of growth in their state are invited to attend a Summit on Smart Growth and Development, in Denver, Jan. 25-26. Gov. Roy Romer will host the gathering, which costs $60. The governor’s office plans to hold regional meetings after the summit to allow participation. The registration…
Timber sale killed
A federal judge in Denver recently ordered the U.S. Forest Service to shelve a timber sale a decade in the making. Judge Lewis Babcock told the Forest Service on Nov. 17 to abandon a 240-acre timber sale at Long Draw in Colorado’s Arapahoe-Roosevelt National Forest. He said the Forest Service illegally favored clearcutting over less-intrusive…
Grim reading
A consortium of six scientific groups reports that the Eastside forests of Washington and Oregon are in perilous ecological shape. According to the scientists, who did their work at the request of seven U.S. representatives, the forests are almost completely fragmented or debased, and streams are in such bad shape that “large numbers of fish…
Are bears de-fenceless?
Roads closed in some national forests in Idaho to protect grizzly bears are really wide open to anyone driving a motorcycle or all-terrain vehicle, says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency conducted an unannounced inspection of about 80 gates in the state’s Panhandle National Forest this fall and found nearly 90 percent of…
Delay again for R.S. 2477
In a surprise move, the Interior Department extended its comment period a third time on R.S. 2477, a law adopted in 1866 to spur colonizing of the West. R.S. 2477 granted a right-of-way to rural counties for the construction of highways on public lands (HCN, 3/21/94). When Congress repealed the law in 1976, pre-existing claims…
The education of a scientist
Edmund Wilson tells us he wrote his autobiography, Naturalist, to learn more fully “why I now think the way I do … and perhaps, to persuade.” The Harvard University professor, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, can’t really convey what made him a consummate biologist who taught the world the significance of biodiversity. But he can…
A penchant for pee
It’s Miller Time for mountain goats in Colorado’s San Juan National Forest when hikers and hunters head home. The goats come down from the high country to congregate at campsites where visitors have urinated. Driven by a craving for salt, the animals have torn up the tundra in the forest’s Weminuche Wilderness. “It’s a strange…
Especially expensive agents
For the fourth time in five years, the BLM’s law enforcement division has been blasted for shenanigans that were at best imprudent. An audit prepared by the Department of the Interior found that during 1991-92 the division’s 69 special agents misrepresented their case loads and misused their $27 million two-year budget. According to the report:…
Arizonan gets crosswise with neighbors
A call from the Lord to erect a 70-foot Celtic cross and 30-foot statue of the Madonna has not gone over well with some people in the southern Arizona town of Sierra Vista. Jerry and Pat Chouinard plan a $500,000 project that includes a chapel and a 10-car parking lot – as well as the…
A close-up look at user fees
Dear HCN, Last summer my partner Lynn and I did some backpacking in Kootenay National Park in the Canadian Rockies, a couple of months after Canada instituted their backcountry usage fee of $5 per person per day. After we got over the initial shock, and headed back into Radium Hot Springs to pull more cash…
No development is justified in the Methow Valley
Dear HCN, Beauty has definitely not eluded the Beast, and this Beast does not turn out to be any Prince Charming … In the past I have greatly enjoyed and appreciated the journalism of HCN. The Nov. 28 article on the Methow Valley, however, was exceedingly optimistic. The idea of development based on compromise and…
Grazing reformers banned from hunting
If you’re a member of the National or Montana Wildlife Federation, don’t even think about hunting on the Japanese-owned Selkirk Ranch. Zenchiku Land and Livestock banned federation members from hunting this fall after the groups sued Beaverhead National Forest to force reform of its grazing program, reports the Montana Standard. Zenchiku president John Morse placed…
Easy does it: A sport to make your blood run slow
Even a pudgy mammal like myself knows better than to hibernate all winter, but choosing a winter sport is tricky. Downhill skiing is out; standing at the top of a steep hill with slippery little boards strapped to my feet gives me the fantods. This spell-checker doesn’t know that word, but I do. Cross-country skiing…
Don’t dump on tourists
Those who blame tourism for dissolving ties in small towns and increasing living costs are on the wrong track, say some planning experts. It’s “the real estate community that is corrupting towns,” said Myles Rademan, public affairs director for Park City, Utah, at a Telluride, Colo., summer travel symposium. Other panelists also targeted escalating real…
Peace gets no chance
Elected officials in Los Alamos, N.M., where government scientists built the first atomic bomb, recently squelched a plan hatched by Albuquerque children to commemorate peace. County council members said the proposed park might become a gathering place for peaceniks, and that a plaque on a statue there might express anti-war sentiments. The council’s rejection stunned…
We can’t save the land without first saving the West
Once a month I spend several hours with what I affectionately call my “wise-use” group. It’s not really a wise-use group but at first glance it resembles one. Members include the six county commissioners from Delta and Montrose counties here in western Colorado, a rancher, a timber mill employee, a coal miner, a banker, and…
Land-use plan is disemboweled
Kalispell, Mont. – Over the breakfast special at the Outlaw Inn, Steve Herbaly reflected on the joys of his job as director of planning for Flathead County. Only the night before, he and his staff had been called socialists, communists and general purveyors of the demise of America at a public hearing over the county’s…
Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
For about as long as anyone can remember the good citizens of Albuquerque have been living a fantasy when it comes to water. Despite receiving only eight inches of rain a year, residents have grown up washing their cars in the street, playing golf on lush coastal grass and using some 250 gallons of water…
What to do when opposition to planning turns ugly
Note: this article is a sidebar to a news article titled “Land-use plan is disemboweled.” When the numerous and vocal opponents of the Flathead plan suddenly came out of the woodwork last summer, it was a shock to many people. But it was probably no accident. “That’s a typical strategy,” says Tarso Ramos of the…
Dear friends
We break for winter Our little joke is that twice a year, to enable you to catch up with your High Country News reading, we skip an issue. That’s true. But the additional truth is that staff also needs a break every six months or so. As a result of meeting our mutual needs, there…
Northwest council says salmon should float
Despite tremendous pressure to delay a decision, the Northwest Power Planning Council approved a plan Dec. 14 to save Columbia River salmon. It relies on drawing down reservoirs – rather than on barges – to speed migrating salmon to sea. “After 14 years of studying the problem, the council finally concluded that fish float,” says…
Home, home on the subdivisions
Yellowstone National Park’s bison have come a long way since 1901, when only 44 survivors of North America’s millions grazed inside its boundaries. Stu Coleman, chief of the park’s natural resources branch, estimates the current population at 4,300 – nearly a hundred times that number – and calls the place “a bison-generating machine.” In 1988-89,…
Ranchers protect land in Wyoming
ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. – The Nature Conservancy has purchased a 4,200-acre ranch near the Big Horn Mountains, ending speculation that the prime real estate might find its way into the hands of developers. The sale of the Pete Widener ranch prompted 10 other nearby ranching families to donate conservation easements on an additional 10,223 acres.…
Agency condemns cabin as a teardown
Many visitors call a 63-year-old cabin in the Tonto National Forest, Ariz., a “half-acre garden of Eden.” The Grand Canyon Trust says it’s “a historical, aesthetical and botanical treasure.” Yet the Forest Service has decided to tear down the cabin within six months. The agency made the decision despite a spirited effort by the private,…
Coming soon: A leaner, more ecological agency
A leaner, more environmentally conscious Forest Service is about to be born, says Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas. In an 11-page memo sent to agency employees Dec. 6, Thomas unveiled a plan for “reinventing” the agency over the next two years. Regional offices would shrink from nine to seven and the agency’s 32,000-person workforce…