Land swaps, in which the Forest Service and BLM trade odd parcels of public land for ecologically valuable private land, have a long history in the West, but some say the trades too often profit land spectators at the expense of the public and the land.
Officials seek the “complete’ Canyonlands
A new proposal by Canyonlands National Park superintendent Walt Dabney would more than double the park’s size, from 368,000 acres to about 852,000 acres. Dabney says the proposal “completes’ Canyonlands by drawing park boundaries along natural features. He hopes it will serve as a model for future park planning. “This is in the public arena…
Bison ranch in the balance
A bison ranch that sits in the shadow of the towering Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado could be sold to developers this year if The Nature Conservancy doesn’t come through. Rocky Mountain Bison Inc. has promised to sell its 100,000 acres to the nonprofit Conservancy if the group can raise the purchase price…
Air Force lands a deal
Environmentalists fighting the expansion of a U.S. Air Force training range in southern Idaho lost a round. At issue was a 961-acre tract of grazing land that the U.S. Air Force says it needs for its 12,000-acre Juniper Butte training area (HCN, 4/13/98). Favoring the military, Idaho’s Land Board turned down a $5,000 bid from…
Tree lovers are willing to pay
Washington’s Loomis State Forest has 25,000 roadless acres, and environmentalists say they’ll spend millions to preserve it. In just a few months, the Loomis Forest Fund raised $3 million, but contributors say they need $10.1 million more to compensate the state for the cash it could make by logging. The forest, which borders Canada, is…
Secretary Babbitt meets a tough crowd
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt got an earful when he announced his plans for a new national monument on the Shivwits Plateau, or “Arizona Strip” north of the Grand Canyon. About 500 people packed a meeting March 8 in the Cline Library at Northern Arizona University to debate the proposal. Calling the plateau…
Lose the gratuitous racism
Dear HCN, In Dustin Solberg’s story about alternative forest products on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation – where one-third of the people live below the poverty line – I was angered by the author’s comment, “whether (earnings from the sale of coneflowers are) spent on school clothes or 12-packs, everyone seems to like the new…
Not many fun-hogs here
Dear HCN, In response to Michael Cohen’s letter, (HCN, 3/l/99), Mr. Cohen needn’t worry about recreational fun-hogs filling the Escalante River Canyons. Aside from Coyote Gulch being overrun, in my 28 years of backpacking the Escalante River, I have never seen more than a handful of people, and most of them were up Death Hollow,…
Outdoor writers and prairie dogs
Dear HCN, We recently became aware of a “Heard Around the West” article in your publication that addressed the upcoming Outdoor Writers of America Association conference in Sioux Falls (HCN, 3/1/99). The Outdoor Writers of America Association did not plan the prairie dog shooting trip you mentioned in your article and the excursion does not…
Not our photographer
Dear HCN, In your article, “A Question of Photography Ethics,” reporter Dan Oko unfairly impugns the integrity of the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) over a bear photograph which he charges was taken in an unethical manner and subsequently appeared in National Wildlife magazine. But Mr. Oko leaves out some important facts. First, the photographer in…
The joy of hunting
Dear HCN, Please allow me to respond to the letter from Marc Gaede which addresses hunting (HCN, 3/1/99). I find Mr. Gaede’s remarks fascinating. I also sense an unhealthy anger towards hunters simmering just beneath the surface of his views. I suggest the cure for this anger is for the inflicted to spend a day…
An abnormal hunter responds
Dear HCN, The last time I heard a spiel like Marc Gaede’s letter, a male forester was telling me that women shouldn’t be foresters because the cave MAN went out and clubbed the mammoths (HCN, 3/1/99). Give me a break. Gaede chooses to define “hunting” only as the tracking and killing of large animals by…
Land deal links desert parks
A California-based land trust has arranged to put almost 500,000 acres of mountaintop forests, sand dunes and volcanic cinder cones into public hands. The $61.5 million deal now awaits a decision by Congress to release $36 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The Wildlands Conservancy, based in Yucaipa, Calif., will pay the remainder.…
Junk mail can save you money
Dear HCN, I think your readers who are complaining about receiving too much junk mail are possibly taking the wrong attitude toward this matter (HCN, 2/1/99). Think positively! I remember hearing about a man who intentionally got his name onto as many catalog mailing lists, etc., as he could. He heated his house with a…
The Wayward West
In North Dakota, legislators passed a law that makes it illegal to gather the purple coneflower on state lands. Often known by its Latin name, Echinacea angustafolia is a medicinal plant booming in popularity (HCN, 2/15/99). The new law also slaps a stiff fine on anyone caught taking the plant from private land without permission.…
Consensus is not the answer
Dear HCN, I enjoy High Country News, but am continually dismayed by your promotion of consensus. Wallace Stegner once characterized the American West as “stretches of picturesque poverty.” It is the most salient fact about the West. And the fact most missing when visionaries talk about what the West should be. The idea that public…
Outdoor schools get squeezed
Two outdoor schools in Summit County, Colo., are feeling the pinch of development in their high country domains. For the past 20 years, Keystone Science School has used the outdoors as a teaching tool. But the school’s backcountry assets are threatened by Keystone Ski Area’s real estate expansion on the fringes of the school’s 23-acre…
Cantankerous and contradictory: Remembering Ed Abbey
Edward Abbey changed my life. He saved me from becoming a Republican. Twenty-five years after a friend of my father’s handed me a worn-out copy of Desert Solitaire and a decade after his death, Ed Abbey is, to me, an honest hero in a time and a world where we don’t allow heroes. He’d throw…
Where do we put the condos?
DRIGGS, Idaho – This southeast Idaho town is like a forgotten cousin to the ski mecca town of Jackson, Wyo., 40 miles away on the other side of Teton Pass. The wave of development that has descended on Jackson has mostly bypassed this part of Idaho, even though both communities share a spectacular view of…
Take the green elephant off the endangered list
WASHINGTON, D.C. – When the congressional crunch comes – and come it will – over torpedoing the Forest Service road-building moratorium, or the president’s plan to add 5 million acres of national park land to the wilderness system, or another slew of riders on an appropriations bill, here are some of the congressmen on whom…
Wheeling and dealing
Note: a sidebar article, “A muckraker throws a well-aimed wrench,” accompanies this feature story. WESTON HILLS, Wyo. – Larry Gerard’s blue work shirt whips in the wind as we stand among ponderosa pines on this ridge. To the west, the Bighorn Mountains glitter with spring snow. Just below, rancher Joe Collins is planting wheat. The…
A muckraker throws a well-aimed wrench
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In the end, Wyoming’s self-appointed public-lands watchdog wasn’t able to halt the “Big Trails’ land swap atop the Bighorn Mountains. But his one-man battle against the controversial deal changed the way land exchanges are handled in the Cowboy State. The watchdog is John Jolley,…
High Country Schmooze
Yet another new intern Sporting a black beret and a cheery attitude, the paper’s newest intern blew into the High Country Schmooze office last week, fresh from a blizzard of subpoenas and a lively book tour. “All I want to do is buckle down and work real hard,” Moniker Looinsky said, smiling and winking at…
Plans for a new park in Arizona
In 1966, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall drafted a plan to turn more than 1 million square miles of desert in his home state of Arizona into a national park. But the idea for a Sonoran Desert National Park died at the hands of a lame-duck President, Lyndon Johnson. Now, the park idea has resurfaced, driven…
Heard around the West
There will be no chapped skin from nude skiing when the season ends April 18 at the Crested Butte resort in western Colorado. As the Denver Post put it: “Crested Butte is cracking down on bare butts. And it has nothing to do with smoking.” Last spring, the 25-year tradition of clothing-optional skiing erupted into…