Washington’s Okanogan County is divided between those who support Battle Mountain Gold’s planned Buckhorn Mtn. mine for its economic promise, and local and Native American activists fighting what they see as impending ecological disaster.
Oregon Natural Desert Association
Desert rats in eastern Oregon will cavort near fossil beds, on the river and under the stars at the Oregon Natural Desert Association’s annual membership meeting, Sept. 25-27. Contact Gillian Lyons at 503/525-0193 or glyons@onda.org. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Oregon Natural Desert Association.
Could I see your permit to pray?
Anxious about protecting its $200 million telescope complex, the University of Arizona recently required a “prayer permit” for Native Americans who want to visit the summit of Mount Graham. San Carlos Apaches and other native peoples who hold sacred the high peaks of the Pinaleno Mountains, 120 miles southeast of Phoenix, say the permits attack…
Peaks to Prairies: A Conference on Watershed Stewardship
Case study workshops at Peaks to Prairies: A Conference on Watershed Stewardship, Sept. 27-30 in Rapid City, S.D., will test ideas about community and the environment to see if they hold water. Speakers include history professor Patricia Nelson Limerick; contact Thorne Ecological Institute, 5398 Manhattan Circle, Suite 120, Boulder, CO 80303-4239 (303/499-3647) or e-mail dir@thorneecoinst.org.…
There goes the neighborhood
-We’re basically Middle America, except we’re off the grid,” says Diane Mitsch-Bush, a longtime resident of Steamboat Springs, Colo. Her neighborhood, only a few miles from the center of town, has powered itself with solar and propane energy since the early 1980s. But Mitsch-Bush and other residents say their low-key and environmentally conscious lifestyle is…
Water for Fish vs. Water for People: A Real Conflict?
Western cities that drink water like a fish may actually compete with fish for water. The Western Regional Instream Flow Conference, Water for Fish vs. Water for People: A Real Conflict?, Oct. 8-9 at Copper Mountain Resort in Colorado, features speakers including Colorado Supreme Court Justice Greg Hobbs, and High Country News publisher Ed Marston.…
Westslope cutthroat trout
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has added 60 days to the comment period on the petition to list the Westslope cutthroat trout as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. See the petition at www.mcn.net/~amwild and send comments by Oct. 13 to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Native Fishes Management, 4052 Bridger Canyon Rd.,…
The Wayward West
Climbers are off the hook and back on their bolts (HCN, 8/17/98). Undersecretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons halted a U.S. Forest Service ban on fixed anchors in wilderness – for now. USDA official Stephanie Hague says public groups will begin “negotiations’ about a new rule in the next few months. Climbers and wilderness advocates want…
Department of Energy Web site
A redesigned Department of Energy Web site aims to be a clearinghouse for a variety of sustainability issues. Learn about land-use planning, “green” buildings, and join a dialogue at the Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development. The Web site address is www.sustainable.doe.gov. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline…
National parks pull the plug on jet skis
The National Park Service will ban personal watercraft by mid-September on all of its waterways except 11 national recreation areas and two national seashores. The prohibition follows bans by individual parks, including the Everglades in Florida, Canyonlands in Utah, and most recently Olympic National Park in Washington, where Lake Crescent will see its last jet…
Only Grand Teton knows
Who was first to reach the top of 13,770-foot Grand Teton in Wyoming? Was it Yellowstone National Park’s first superintendent, Nathaniel Langford, who said he did it in 1872? Or a group of climbers who documented their ascent later, in 1898? No one will ever know for sure, but the Park Service did not take…
Air Force drops a sweetheart deal onto ranch land
In an unorthodox move, the U.S. Air Force plans to offer an Idaho rancher around $1 million to turn his grazing allotment into a bombing range. The deal, which was added to the defense appropriations bill by Idaho Republican Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, would pull Bert Brackett’s cattle off 12,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management…
From croaks to chirps
I used to spend a lot of time chasing frogs. It would be easier to say that I quit doing this at age 12, like the other kids, but the truth is a little harder to explain. I would show up at work – I got paid for this – with a long-handled net and…
Tribes struggle for a free press
-On the banner of our paper it says, “The newspaper of the Navajo people.” We’re here first and foremost for them. Not for the government; not for the politicians; not for one single person or viewpoint.” * Tom Arviso Jr., editor of the Navajo Times, in From the Front Lines; Free Press Struggles in Native…
Musings on the Big Sky
MUSINGS ON THE BIG SKY From several hundred miles away, Montana is a place of contradictions: occupied by people who deeply love the land and the rivers that run through it, except when they are voting by a lop-sided majority to turn those rivers into toxic, metal-laden sewers. Now comes John B. Wright with 10…
Justice for All: Racial Equity and Environmental Well-Being
-Environmental concerns cannot stand apart from social arrangements of power and opportunity,” says the Center of the American West, introducing Justice for All: Racial Equity and Environmental Well-Being, a conference Sept. 11-12. Speakers will try to link environmentalists of color, who have done much in urban areas, to the larger conservation movement. Contact the center…
Colorado Environmental Education Conference & Expo
Educators in Colorado are invited to discover what’s new in environmental curricula, where to find speakers and ideas for classroom presentations, and how to share information to help build a statewide environmental education master plan. Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education hosts the Colorado Environmental Education Conference & Expo Sept. 26 at Red Rocks Community College…
Dear Friends
A subscription of his own After several years on HCN’s circulation desk, staffer Kathy Martinez is hard to surprise. But even she was taken aback when a Kansas mail carrier called to subscribe because the people who used to take High Country News moved off his route. “I didn’t get a chance to finish that…
New Mexico Greens here to stay
When New Mexico held a special election to replace the late Republican Rep. Steve Schiff this June, people compared the race to a mud-wrestling match, only less dignified. The Republican was Rhodes Scholar Heather Wilson; the Democrat, millionaire Phil Maloof. He mailed videotapes in black boxes questioning Wilson’s ethics, and she countered with a flier…
Timber mills close in the Northwest
BOISE, Idaho – When an angry mob of Boise Cascade Corp. sawmill workers gathered in front of the Idaho Conservation League office in late July, staffer John McCarthy thought twice about going outside. At a similar rally earlier this year, a timber worker grabbed McCarthy by the neck and said, “If I was younger, I’d…
Heard around the West
When Ed Abbey aficionados get together in Death Valley, Calif., Nov. 6-8, hospital-lab worker Gail Hoskisson is sure to be the cynosure of all eyes. Well, maybe not her, but the vintage vehicle she’s driving. It doesn’t look like much, this blue, 1973 Ford F100 pickup that has logged 197,000 miles through the deserts of…
How the Canyon Became Grand
Stephen Pyne, who is best known as an historian of fire, has written an audacious book which shows how, for a few wonderful decades in the 19th century, the Grand Canyon stood near the center of the intellectual development of the Western world. During those years, the Canyon was, all in one, the Hubble Telescope,…
These legislative riders sit low in the saddle
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In Pale Rider, a 1985 third-rate version of the movie Shane, Clint Eastwood plays the slow-talking, straight-shooting gunman (and clergyman to boot, credibility not being this flick’s strong suit) who saves settlers from a big mining company. The riders being discussed hereabouts are pale enough, but not one of them would discomfit…
Writing on native ground in New Mexico
ZUNI PUEBLO, N.M. – From far out in the high desert of western New Mexico, green-leaved Chinese elms create a sharp burst of color, an island in the sagebrush and juniper and high red mesas that make up the Zuni landscape. This is home to 6,400 Zunis, one of 19 Indian pueblos that spread across…
Excavating Ecotopia
Note: two sidebar articles accompany this feature story under these headlines: “A run at sustainable development” and “Tribes strike back at mining.” OROVILLE, Wash. – The first gold in the state was discovered over that ridge,” says 84-year-old Web Hallauer, pointing across shimmering Lake Osoyoos and this small lakeside town and its orchards, to the…
A run at sustainable development
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Former Highlands Alliance President Michael “Buffalo” Mazzetti is promoting sustainable development by bottling water from Buckhorn Mountain. Mazzetti debuted the company at the Northwest Natural Foods Show in Seattle last April and secured distribution deals for the first 17,000 bottles. The bottling company has…
Tribes strike back at mining
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. COLVILLE INDIAN RESERVATION, Wash. – When the Battle Mountain Gold company came to this 1.4 million-acre reservation in 1994, tribal elder Georgia Iukes says, “Boy, that got my dander up.” At the meeting, she spoke forcefully against the exploration contract the company wanted the…