Under increasing political pressure from the Bush
administration and its appointees, agency scientists find it
difficult to keep both their jobs and their integrity
Magazine
December 20, 2004
Under increasing political pressure from the Bush administration and its appointees, some agency scientists are finding it difficult to keep both their jobs and their integrity. Also in this issue: The omnibus appropriations bill just passed by Congress contained more than a few anti-environmental riders, but not all of them survived for the president’s pen to sign.
Feature
Sidebar
Earle Dixon says the Bureau of Land Management fired him
because he tried to enforce environmental and public safety laws in
the course of the Yerington Mine cleanup in Nevada
Environmentalists and some of his own biologists say James
Lecky sold out the endangered fish he was charged with protecting,
but NOAA Fisheries has just given him a promotion
Editor's Note
Like their military compatriots in Iraq, the American
civil servants charged with managing our public lands, water and
wildlife lack adequate funding, back-up, or the moral support of
their higher-ups
Uncommon Westerners
When a gravel company locked a gate on a road into
California’s Yuba Goldfields, a 70-year-old retired salesman
named Bill Calvert suddenly became a citizen activist, and fought
for public access to public lands
Essays
A writer spends time in a primitive cabin in the Colorado
mountains, and discovers the wonder of silence and
darkness
Book Reviews
The Energy Department is calling for public comment on its
plans to clean up a 130-acre pile of uranium tailings and
contaminated soils just upstream from Moab, Utah, on the Colorado
River
The Cyanide Canary by Joseph Hilldorfer
and Robert Dugoni tells a chilling tale of an environmental crime
in Idaho that ruined a worker’s life
Writers on the Range
New Senate minority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., brings to
Capitol Hill the lessons learned from a hardscrabble Nevada
childhood
Heard Around the West
Pork and mariachi; Victoria’s Secret vs. trees; Zach
Mann vs. Starbucks; poaching preachers; elk poachers get popped;
crimes solved in Jackson, Wyo.
Dear Friends
Skipped issue; High Country News open
house; Boulder board meeting and potluck; corrections and
clarifications
News
The omnibus appropriations bill just passed by Congress
contained more than a few anti-environmental riders, but not all of
them survived for the president’s pen to sign
Judge puts stay on initiative to keep more nuclear waste
from coming to Hanford Nuclear Reservation; Phoenix Mine expansion
approved in Nevada; Western governors discuss reforming Endangered
Species Act
Utah’s attempt to take over backcountry roads begins
to unravel, largely because of problems stirred up by the attempt
to claim the remote Weiss Highway in Juab County as an R.S. 2477
road
Recent decisions not to list as endangered the
white-tailed and black-tailed prairie dogs and the greater sage
grouse open the door to increased energy exploration and
development in the West
In response to Oregon’s recently passed Measure 37,
Bend, Ore., adopts a rule that allows people to sue their neighbors
if nearby development reduces property values
Despite nearly unanimous support for designating the Ojito
Wilderness Area, New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, R, is stalling over
reserved water rights and – according to critics –
trying to undermine the Wilderness Act
As soon as the National Park Service announced its new
snowmobile rules – which slightly reduce the number of
vehicles allowed in Yellowstone and Grand Teton – lawsuits
began flying from both sides of the political divide
Hovenweep National Monument in remote southeastern Utah
narrowly escapes an attempt to lease nearby land for oil and gas
drilling
Letters
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