Ski resorts begin to resemble the Third World as Africans and others come to take low-paying service jobs, but have trouble finding housing.
Forest supervisor cries crocodile tears
Dear HCN, Even crocodiles cry, and Steve Mealey’s tears, lamenting the post-Foothills Fire dearth of biodiversity on the Boise National Forest, fall like acid rain. This is the same myopic, good-old-boy “Barber of the Boise” who rammed through the huge Foothills timber-salvage fire sale on previously heavily logged national forest land. Fred Neuman Monument, Oregon…
Outdoor museum preserved for now
OUTDOOR MUSEUM PRESERVED FOR NOW Two geologists working for the Bureau of Land Management in Boise, Idaho, began documenting a treasure trove four years ago: the carved bedrock of the Big Wood River, some 12 miles north of Shoshone. Terry Maley and Peter Oberlindacher were fascinated by the complex shapes that turbulent water, beginning some…
How does a boom feel?
How does a boom feel? Everyone who lives in the West is a transplant or has felt the impact of migration; few places have not experienced the region’s booms and busts. What makes urbanites pull up stakes, and how is the latest influx affecting Western land and communities? Academics such as geography professor Bill Riebsame…
Restoring the Truckee River
Restoring the Truckee River The Truckee River has been unraveling from its headwaters at Lake Tahoe to its terminus in Pyramid Lake. But now people along its course through California and Nevada are trying to figure out ways to braid the river back to health. A Truckee River Conference, April 27-29 in Reno, will bring…
Blueprint for salmon survival
Blueprint for SALMON survival The new recovery plan to bring back endangered Columbia and Snake river salmon hits all “four H’s’ – hydropower dams, habitat degradation, hatcheries and harvest by fishing – but critics charge it’s still too soft on dams. The 500-page federal plan, required by the Endangered Species Act and announced by the…
Congress helps ranchers, too
Congress isn’t just looking out for the timber industry. In an uncontested voice vote, the Senate approved an amendment to its budget recision bill requiring the Forest Service to reissue grazing permits to ranchers “notwithstanding any other law …” Such legal “sufficiency” language would prevent citizens from challenging permits, even where land has been degraded…
Land grant says wilderness hurts
Land grant says Wilderness hurts A new study by Utah State University, a land-grant institution, concludes that federally designated wilderness could harm rural economies. The study, which features a picture of a paved road running through southern Utah on its cover, drew immediate praise from anti-wilderness groups. “This study validates what the counties in Utah…
Forest Service lops off timber task force
Agents of the Forest Service’s elite Timber Theft Task Force received two form letters at an April 6 meeting with Forest Service law enforcement director Manuel Martinez. The first letter thanked them for their service; the second said their unit was immediately dissolved. “It defies understanding that you’d take the most successful agents in the…
The people problem
THE PEOPLE PROBLEM Is bigger better? The effects of population growth on the people of Utah and the state’s environment will be discussed at a conference in Salt Lake City, April 29. Keynote speaker Judith Jacobsen, a consultant to the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, will talk about the international conference on population held in…
Forest Service bombed in Nevada
A bomb blew out windows and ripped a hole in the wall of a Toiyabe Forest Service office in Carson City, Nev., in the early evening of March 30. No one was injured in the explosion, which scattered debris and damaged computer equipment in the office of District Ranger Guy Pence in downtown Carson City.…
Big groups drop appeal
Big groups drop appeal Eleven environmental groups, including the Wilderness Society and National Audubon Society, have decided not to appeal a recent federal court decision upholding President Clinton’s Pacific Northwest forest plan, known as Option Nine. While the groups agree the plan fails to protect and restore the heavily logged ecosystem, they say they’ll focus…
Back to grazing reform … maybe
With little fanfare, the Bureau of Land Management released “final” livestock grazing regulations Feb. 17. The new regulations look much like those forwarded in a draft last spring, with the glaring exception of grazing fees, which Department of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt dropped from his Rangeland Reform package shortly before Christmas (HCN, 1/23/95). Environmentalists say…
A grim Wyoming hearing for BLM and greens
WORLAND, Wyo. – Colored balloons decorating the Elks Club here April 3 did little to lighten the hostile atmosphere of a public hearing on the BLM’s new plan for managing a million acres in northwest Wyoming. The area is called Grass Creek, and it takes in roughly a third of the Bighorn Basin, ranging from…
A modest proposal
Utah county commissioners passed wilderness recommendations on to Gov. Mike Leavitt March 31, and, as expected, they didn’t ask for much. The counties recommended about 1 million acres of Bureau of Land Management wilderness – about half what the BLM itself recommended and one-sixth of that urged by the Utah Wilderness Coalition. The counties left…
Salvage logging bill spits in our eye
Dear HCN: The emergency timber salvage sale amendment tacked on to the budget package in the House and the Senate spits in the eye of the public and does nothing to improve the health of our national forests (HCN, 4/3/95). Now, we must urge President Clinton to veto this attack on our forests and our…
Wild again
After several days of milling around their newly opened pens, all 14 Yellowstone Park wolves are wild once more. Most of the wolves remain in packs, but two young wolves are traveling solo, according to park spokeswoman Marsha Karle. The wolves have killed a buffalo and possibly an elk inside the park, which Karle says…
Utah counties aren’t wilderness-friendly
Dear HCN, Your headline, “Counties May Shrink Utah Wilderness’ (HCN, 3/20/95), sounds downright cheerful. A more accurate headline would have read, “Counties Will Obliterate Wilderness.” Here in Iron County, Commissioner R.L. Gardner told the press before the first hearing, that “I personally feel that there is no need to set aside more land.” He was…
Endangered act on tour
Endangered act on tour Members of the House Committee on (Natural) Resources, chaired by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, will be in Vancouver, Wash., April 24 to discuss the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act. Panels organized by Republicans will feature working people who have had their livelihoods affected by the law, says staffer Steve Hansen,…
Fire was not catastrophic
Dear HCN, The March 6, 1995 edition of HCN contained several articles on fire, and most were well-balanced and informative. Unfortunately, one article, “After the fire comes the real devastation,” contained significant inaccuracies that may have misled some of your readers. Much of the focus of the article was on an erosional event that occurred…
Washington and the West
Washington and the West Ed Marston, High Country News publisher, and Guy Martin, former assistant secretary for Land and Water with the U.S. Interior Department, will discuss what Washington’s changing guard means for an also-changing West. “The New Congress and the New West,” set for Boulder, Colo., April 26, is one of the forums on…
Dear friends
Good-bye and welcome Congratulations to former HCN employee Amy Conley and spouse Robert Hayutin on the birth of their daughter Sabina. Amy was a person of all trades in the office, specializing in direct mail and circulation, until Sabina demanded her attention. We will miss Amy, who remained cheerful even when confronted with thousands of…
Salvage logging squeaks by Senate
By a razor-thin margin, the Senate agreed March 30 to suspend environmental laws in order to expedite salvage logging in national forests. An attempt by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to replace the amendment of her fellow Washington senator, Slade Gorton, R, with a milder one failed 46-48. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., cast the lone Democratic…
How Western senators voted on the Murray amendment
Note: this is a sidebar to the news article “Salvage logging squeaks by Senate“ FOR suspending environmental laws to expedite salvage logging (against Murray): Republicans Bennett (Utah) Hatch (Utah) Brown (Colo.) Campbell (Colo.) Craig (Idaho) Burns (Mont.) Thomas (Wyo) Kyl (Ariz.) Simpson (Wyo) Gorton (Wash.) Hatfield (Ore.) Packwood (Ore.) Domenici (N.M.) McCain (Ariz.), and Kempthorne…
The New West’s servant economy
(This HCN magazine cover story is accompanied by seven sidebars listed at the end.) Silverthorne, Colorado Struggling with a language that would not be his first or even his second choice, Dabo Pobot tried to explain how he and other Africans have been imported to serve ski country, USA. If I wrote it the way…
Working 24 hours straight
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Copper Mountain Ski Resort, Colorado Greg Smith was a 23-year-old ski bum when he drifted into Summit County in 1983 or so. “Now it’s just the opposite,” he says. “I work a lot and don’t get much chance to…
The Leadville-Indy 500
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Leadville, Colorado Dead of winter in the highest town in the nation (elevation 10,152 feet), and it’s the kind of morning that requires willpower – at 5:30 a.m., still dark and so cold that the snow squeaks under boots.…
Ski bums wrapped in concrete
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Vail, Colorado Jeremy Bernier finished his ski season, working his day job and going home each night to sleep like a troll under a bridge. Instead of postcard scenery, when he woke up each morning he saw a grey…
Pedro Lopez, entrepreneur
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Avon, Colorado Pedro Lopez, from Aguascalientes in central Mexico, says he’s lived for three years in esta trailer. It’s a sheet-metal shack roughly next door to the chic Beaver Creek ski resort. Duct tape holds his cracked windows together.…
‘Marvel’ous auction in Idaho
A ranch manager coughed up the money to defeat conservationist Jon Marvel at a state-land grazing auction in Idaho Falls March 7. For the first time, Marvel and his 350-member Idaho Watersheds Project lost a bid, although every time he has won in the past the Idaho Land Board overturned his victory – handing the…
It always comes down to finding a place to live
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Summit County, Colo., the top ski destination in the nation, did more business last season than all the ski areas in Utah. The county’s resorts hosted more than 3 million skier visits. Neighboring Eagle County hosted another 2 million…
He came to ski and stayed to help
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Roman Catholic Archbishop J. Francis Stafford sprinkled holy water around an apartment complex in the resort town of Silverthorne, Colo., last June. He was blessing the apartments, which the church had helped establish, and he blessed the poverty-stricken families…
Is it politics, or is it revolution?
With Republicans firmly in power after the November landslide, a kind of insurrection is brewing in nearly every Western state. In legislative halls throughout the West, it’s popular to assert states’ rights under the 10th Amendment, streamline or gut environmental regulations and push private property “takings’ legislation. Some states, including Arizona, Utah and Idaho, have…
Seeking power, a few ski workers go union
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) It was a gritty interruption of ski business: At the base of the main lift of the Red Lodge ski area in Montana, on a busy January Saturday, 15 lift operators staged a sit-down strike. Their starting pay was…