It’s not a fluke, it’s not just the drought, and it’s not careless smokers. Decades of all-out logging and all-out fire suppression torched Yellowstone in 1988, ignited the fatal Colorado fire last summer, and set the stage for the thousands of fires in between.
No more free lunch
Sea lions that gorge on steelhead trout trying to swim around the locks in Seattle, Wash., may have to worry about getting eaten themselves. The Muckleshoot Indian tribe has asked the National Marine Fisheries Service for permission to harvest the meat, hides and teeth from sea lions if the agency targets them for execution, reports…
Hunter-harassment law stands
The Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to Montana’s “hunter harassment” law which prohibits intentional interference with lawful hunting. A Gallatin County, Mont., court convicted animal rights activist John Lilburn of a misdemeanor under the law in 1990 for stepping in front of a buffalo hunter’s rifle and shouting, “Don’t shoot!” The conviction was…
You abandoned your standards
Dear HCN, Your recent issue on the new Denver airport (HCN, 1/23/95) has caused me to conclude that your standards of journalistic and intellectual honesty are about on the same level as the slickness of your production. Never before have I encountered anything in your paper where you are so wrong (my opinion) and where…
Utah imitates Denver
Dear HCN, Here’s how to save time and effort preparing your next special issue: Take the Denver Airport article and, wherever it says “Denver,” write in “Salt Lake City,” replace “International Airport” with “Winter Olympics.” Seriously, while there obviously are some differences, I was struck by the similarities. Utah politicians are falling over themselves singing…
A rural lifestyle is a romantic vision
Dear HCN, Every time I read a “protect our constitutional rights’ or “jobs save our rural lifestyle” rap (HCN, 1/23/95), I think of two things: The first is that a “rural” lifestyle is a romantic vision that these people have not lived for several generations, if then. They do not grow much of their own…
Welfare kings
Dear HCN, If the administration and Congress want to reform the welfare program, they should not overlook ranchers that graze livestock on federal lands. Some of the richest people in the United States are welfare ranchers: William Hewlett and David Packard, of Hewlett-Packard Co., the computer manufacturing giant, graze cattle on more than 94,000 acres…
Why should a college rate a cabin in a national forest?
Dear HCN, There is a healthy dose of irony in the Dec. 26 article regarding the battle between Arizona’s Prescott College and Tonto National Forest over a 60-year-old cabin. This otherwise unnoteworthy controversy serves to expose the major shortcoming, and in my mind, insincerity, of the organized environmental movement. Reporter Peter McBride neglects to consider…
Don’t forget an “old curmudegon’s’ opinion
Dear HCN, Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes, 1933-1946, made a powerful public statement in 1935 supporting wilderness at a conference of state park authorities. Given the public mood, I believe it is time to hear from the old curmudgeon once again: “I am not in favor of building any more roads in the national parks…
Road plan gets rough reception
A Forest Service proposal to close 425 miles of road in the Bridger-Teton National Forest has provoked strong opposition. Forest officials said the plethora of roads made by all-terrain vehicles were chasing wildlife out and damaging vegetation. “Two-track roads are increasing from hunters on ATVs and the land can’t stand that kind of use,” says…
James Watt charged with felonies
A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., has indicted former Interior Department Secretary James Watt for lying to Congress and obstructing an investigation of fraud and influence peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Federal prosecutor Arlin Adams says that after Watt left the Reagan cabinet in 1983, he earned $500,000 for interceding…
Excerpts from Flame and Fortune; Quote from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. The fire-as-war metaphor fails, as all metaphors must. It fails first because, without a human antagonist, the moral drama centers within people, not between them. Firefighters get killed but don’t kill. The metaphor fails more…
‘Indifference’ caused deaths
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. “I didn’t like going down in there. I talked to Mackey about it. Not burning too active. I was going by his judgment; his best judgment was to go direct. I thought that was the…
Multiple firefighter fatalities in the United States in wildland fires, 1900-present
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. No. of fatalities – Year – Location 78 1910 Forest fire, Idaho 25 1933 Griffith Park, Calif. 15 1953 Rattlesnake fire, Mendocino National Forest, Calif. 15 1937 Blackwater, Wyo.,Shoshone National Forest 14 1994 South Canyon…
Excerpts from South Canyon Fire Accident InvestigationTeam report
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. “The fire spotted on the west side directly below the line at the bottom of the drainage. The spot grew quickly and I could see hardhats above it. The spot moved fast. I did not…
Bill would fight fire with chain saws
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. Like a hotshot smokejumper, Congress has leaped into the debate over forest health and fire. All too predictably, say critics, it is wielding a chain saw. Proclaiming that he wants to “break the cycle of…
Pride and Glory of firefighting is hard to resist
The southwest winds brought waves of red smoke streaming into the valley from the fires near Boise and McCall every day last summer. A helicopter would come in overhead, and I’d hear the almost subsonic whump-whump-whump that meant a big craft. The smoke and the morning air and the noise took me back to a…
Democrats resort to banana bread
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The scene was vintage Washington power breakfast: a private room at the Old Ebbitt Grill across from the Treasury Department. The table held plates of bagels and banana bread. The burgundy napkins complemented the Oriental rug and the velvet chairs. Those are the lures reporters expect from a deposed potentate or a…
The word according to a weighty Republican
Alaska Republican Don Young, the new chairman of the House Resources Committee, (he removed “Natural” from the committee’s name) recently talked at length with reporter Angela Bouwsma: A congressional committee stumbles on the diversity of life: I’m, by the way, the only member of that (House Resources) committee that ever voted for the Endangered Species…
Dear Friends
Odds and ends The Feb. 20, 1995, essay by Jon Margolis – -Waaaaaaaah! The West refuses to be weaned’ – set the telephone to ringing and filled P.O. Box 1090. Rancher Sid Goodloe of Capitan, N.M., argued that it “didn’t have enough class to make the wastebasket beside your desk, much less the back page…
Logging protesters say they won’t give up
High in Idaho’s snow-clad Nez Perce National Forest, chain saws whine and logging trucks thunder down frozen roads through the night in a frantic effort to fell 8 million board-feet of timber. Downed trees – in stacks higher than ever before seen on the forest, protesters say – tower above the logging trucks. “They’re cutting…
How Montana fouled a family’s water
If they were not so tired, so sad, so damn disgusted, Jan and David Zimmerman might summon enough spite to say, “We told you so.” The Zimmermans, residents of tiny Pony, Mont., learned late last year that cyanide had contaminated their well water. There was no doubt about the poison’s source: A cyanide-process gold mill,…
How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes
BOISE, Idaho – Sluggish all morning, the Rabbit Creek fire swept up the North Fork of the Boise River with a fury Kevin Brown will not soon forget. “It is very difficult to put into words,” said Brown, who was monitoring air traffic from a helicopter over the wildfire last September. “Awesome seems understated,” he…
Yellowstone snowmobile crowd may hit limit
Yellowstone National Park’s steaming geyser basins and pristine snowscapes used to be practically deserted in winter. But in the last 35 years there has been a veritable explosion of cold-season tourism here. In 1993, winter visitors – most of them on snowmobiles – topped the 143,000 mark, a level park officials had not expected until…
Excerpts from Hellroaring: The Life and Times of a Fire Bum
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. I keep an empty turtle shell on the window sill. It’s discolored and peeling, but not from decay. The shell was burned over by a wildfire in Minnesota during the crackling-dry season of 1988. Its…
Motorized beasts are noisy and stinky – and fun
Note: this article is a sidebar to a news story titled “Yellowstone snowmobile crowd may hit limit.” YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – At 18 degrees below zero, the bison we meet on the road near Fishing Bridge are crusted and draped with frost. We pull our rented snowmobile over to one side and wait for…
After the fire comes the real devastation
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. BOISE – John Thornton, a hydrologist for the Boise National Forest, remembers staring out of the helicopter in disbelief. Below him, a major wildfire was raging, devouring trees and brush. But what caught his eye…
A delicate question: When is an arch crowded?
MOAB, Utah – Two’s company, 30 is a crowd, visitors to Delicate Arch have told researchers trying to figure out how to protect the experience of viewing one of Utah’s most famous natural attractions. Using a pilot program that will likely be adopted at other national parks, Arches National Park has developed a method for…