Outdated plumbing at tourist lodges in Yellowstone National Park is spilling sewage into lakes and streams, and the state of Wyoming has taken an unprecedented step: In October, it threatened to fine the National Park Service unless it fixes antiquated sewage systems pieced together over the last 50 years. Such fines are unprecedented in Wyoming, […]
Sewage fouls Yellowstone
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Ice Bump survives congressional ax
For the second year running, the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP, or Ice Bump) has survived an attempt on its life in the U.S. Congress. The plan is the federal government’s most ambitious ecosystem management plan ever, covering 72 million acres of public lands sprawling across seven states. The $40 million environmental impact […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
The Wayward West
There’s grim news for the Yellowstone cutthroat trout: Whirling disease, the fatal parasite that wiped out several trout populations in Colorado and Montana in 1994 (HCN, 9/18/95), has resurfaced in the prize fisheries of Yellowstone National Park. The extent of the disease in the park is not yet known, but the Salt Lake Tribune reports […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Not a creature was stirring…
The endangered Preble’s meadow jumping mouse has Colorado Front Range developers running scared (HCN, 3/16/98), but proposed temporary protections from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may calm their fears. The small, secretive mouse lives near foothill mountain streams, and biologists believe that urban sprawl near Denver is contributing to its decline. The agency’s proposal […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Murmurs about a new monument
The 3 million-acre swath of Bureau of Land Management land between the Grand Canyon and the Utah border, unromantically known as the Arizona Strip, is getting more visitors than usual these days. In late November, Bruce Babbitt toured the area and suggested that nearly 400,000 acres of the wide-open desert lands are worthy of stronger […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Uphill for these Idahoans
Gene Bray and Irene Wright of Meridian, Idaho, stopped by the HCN office just before Election Day with an insiders’ view of Idaho politics. Bray is a board member of the Idaho Watersheds Project, well known in the state for its confrontational anti-grazing billboards. The 900-member group aims to give state grazing allotments a break […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Heard around the West
Who hasn’t bought a gadget or item of clothing that makes no sense but embarrasses us forever? The unscrewable ceramic soap dispenser, the one-cup hot plate, the rhinestone-edged tie, the round ice-cube maker – all mock us: “You are a foolish consumer; you buy useless objects!” A public TV station in Salt Lake City, KUED […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
The last living Democrat in Idaho lays it on the line
Cecil Andrus writes the way he governed – in a brisk, plain-spoken style. His autobiography, Cecil Andrus: Politics Western Style, is as much a survival guide for Western Democrats and conservationists in hostile terrain as it is the story of his political life. How did Andrus, a former logger and an outspoken Democrat, survive 27 […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Fallen forester
Did whistleblowers destroy a fine public servant?
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Wolf killers sought in Southwest
ALPINE, Ariz. – Four Mexican gray wolves splashed with fluorescent paint and wearing brightly colored radio collars scurried into the wild here in mid-December. Their controversial release is the latest act in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s bullet-riddled effort to bring the wolf back to the Southwest. Earlier this year, biologists had released 11 […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Dear Friends
Join us in Utah Readers in southern Utah and southern Nevada are invited to a High Country News potluck Friday, Jan. 22. Board members of this nonprofit newspaper plus several staffers will be on hand at the St. George Community Arts Complex, in the Pioneer Center for the Arts, 47 E. 200 N., St. George, […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Boating in the bathtub
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Another note: the drawing and layout of this article can only really be appreciated in the print issue. Here they come! The dories! Headed for the most difficult rapid in the Grand Canyon, at the worst possible water stage. This morning, blue skies and […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
River guide quits and tells why
I began my “career” as a Grand Canyon river guide in 1971, in the heart of what we later referred to as the clueless years. Few boatmen had more than a couple dozen trips under their belt; some were on their first. We had few wizened veteran guides to tell us where to hike, how […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Grand Canyon Timeline
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. 1869 John Wesley Powell’s first expedition 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt makes Grand Canyon a national monument. 1911-12 Emery and Ellsworth Kolb make a movie of a river trip. 1919 Grand Canyon becomes a national park. First airplane overflight. 1922 Phantom Ranch is built. 1935-36 […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
A brief brilliant life on the river
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In 1869, John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, was the first to explore and record the canyons of the Green and Colorado. Launching with nine sturdy men, Powell spent 100 days working his heavy, keeled boats downriver. There was no art to […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
From the journals of Buzz Holmstrom
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Camp on right at lower end Rapid – mile 247 with the last bad one above me – the Bad Rapid – Lava Cliff – that I have been looking for – nearly a thousand miles. I had thought – once past there – […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Grand Canyon Gridlock
Note: four sidebar articles accompany this feature story: an excerpt from the journals of Buzz Holmstrom describes the first solo river trip through the Grand Canyon in 1937, a timeline of significant events within the Grand Canyon, a book review of “The Doing of the Thing: The Brief Brilliant Whitewater Career of Buzz Holmstrom,” and […]
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
Arson: What a lesson
Dear HCN, It was a pleasure to read in the Nov. 9 issue the letter by Michael E. Adams supporting the arson at Vail. This man and every member of the Earth Liberation Front should be canonized for their visionary efforts in advancing the environmental cause. I only regret that someone wasn’t killed in the […]
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
Everyone is wrong but me
Dear HCN, I have found recent letters to the editor and the latest essay by Stephen Lyons to contain some bits of hidden wisdom. The larger message that I get from these writings is that when all is said and done, at the end of the day, we’re all a bunch of selfish bastards. Opinions […]
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
In Idaho: A grizzly consensus plan didn’t exist
Dear HCN, Kudos on HCN’s most recent issue covering the “Grizzly War” (HCN, 11/9/98). The piece by Todd Wilkinson is both timely and dead on target. I must say, however, that I was rather amazed to read under “Idaho grizzly plan shifts into low gear,” that “Environmentalists are silent on grizzly reintroduction.” Environmentalists, both in […]