CAVE JUNCTION, Ore. – In the red rock that rises above southwest Oregon’s Rough and Ready Creek, a unique ecosystem flourishes. “(The soil) has a composition that’s totally off-kilter with what’s in the earth’s crust,” says retired Stanford University geologist Robert Coleman. “Most plants don’t like that,” but, he adds, an odd variety flourishes there. […]
Proposed mine threatens ecosystem
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
Listening for wolf howls
When Suzanne Laverty first met Travis Bullock, who calls himself a “redneck outfitter,” she wrote a brief impression of him in her diary: “Travis Bullock – Butthead.” But Bullock wasn’t so bullheaded that he didn’t see value in Laverty’s suggestion that he capitalize on the nation’s curiosity about the wolves that had been transplanted into […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
The Rocky Mountain Front faces new oil-and-gas threat
BABB, Mont. – Chief Mountain, a 9,000-foot outlying peak west of here, stands like a boundary marker on the Rocky Mountain Front, where glacier-carved peaks meet rolling plains. It also marks the political intersection of Glacier National Park’s eastern boundary with the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. A recent plan by the Blackfeet tribal business council to […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
When government gets in growth’s way
BOISE, Idaho – Each morning, Gary Richardson looks out the front window of his foothills home and scans the skyline. Above the steel cranes towering over new high-rise office buildings, Richardson sees a yellow-brown haze hanging over the city. Below, a steady stream of cars creeps toward downtown. “I can see Los Angeles coming to […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
Dear Friends
It’s in the mail Forgive us if we sound dramatic. But this fall, as every fall, subscribers will make a life or death decision about High Country News. The decision will be whether to contribute to the paper’s Research Fund. The letter asking for your support will tell you that without the Research Fund, there […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
A tangled web of watersheds
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Rio Costilla represents only a tiny part of the overall Rio Grande system, which crosses state and international boundaries, trickles through dams, and loses volume through countless diversions during its 2,000-mile long journey. The Costilla Creek Compact distinguishes the Rio Costilla, but the […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
As mayordomo
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. As mayordomo you become the pump, the heart that moves the vital fluid down the artery to the little plots of land of each of the cells, the parciantes. Water relationships would be simple and linear were they not complicated by all those other […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
Next to blood relationships
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Next to blood relationships, which rule the valley, come water relationships. The arteries of ditches and bloodlines cut across each other in patterns of astounding complexity. Some families own properties on two or three of the valley’s nine ditches. You can argue that the […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
I am mayordomo
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. I am mayordomo of a very small irrigation ditch. My position would be a curiosity to most people I take pleasure in conversing with in the city and would be to them probably of little more importance than the identity of the plant emerging […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
No consensus on consensus
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Collaboration, consensus and community-based conservation are buzzwords invoked by federal agencies, environmental groups, and even Western governors as part of a new strategy for conservation, a happy-face solution to the gridlock over managing natural resources management. But so far there’s no consensus on consensus. […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
A river becomes a raw nerve
Along the Rio Costilla, communities have been fighting over water for more than a century. The latest round may be the most heated.
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Climbing bolts in wilderness: An attack on the counterattacks
Dear HCN, Climbing certainly touched a sensitive nerve with some readers (HCN, 9/14/98). The reactions (I should say counterattacks) brought forth complaints ranging far from fixed anchors to mountain bikes and hang gliders and even to garbage and toilet paper. Most of the writers lectured climbers for not sharing their, presumably, better wilderness ethic. One […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Colorado Trails Symposium
All kinds of trail managers – volunteers and professionals who maintain trails for everyone from hikers to ATV riders – will come together at the Colorado Trails Symposium, Oct. 8-11 in Grand Junction, Colo. For information contact: 1998 Colorado Trails Symposium, c/o Colorado State Parks, 1313 Sherman St., Rm. 618, Denver, CO 80203 (303/866-3203 ext. […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Large-Scale Hog Farming in Colorado
Corporate hog farms have targeted Colorado, and an Oct. 20 conference, “Large-Scale Hog Farming in Colorado: Sooey or Sue Me?” will discuss regulatory options. Contact the Natural Resources Law Center of the University of Colorado School of Law at 303/492-1272 or Campus Box 401, Boulder, CO 80309-0401. This article appeared in the print edition of […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Wildlands Grassroots Rendezvous
Conservation biologist Michael Soulé and activist Dave Foreman are featured speakers when the Wildlands Project holds its Wildlands Grassroots Rendezvous: Science and the Conservation of Nature, Oct. 8-11, in Estes Park, Colo. Contact The Wildlands Project, 1955 W. Grant Road, Suite 148, Tucson, AZ 85745 (520/884-0875) or e-mail: wildland@earthlink.net. This article appeared in the print […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Speaking of eating: There is no meat I would rather eat
Speaking of eating: There is no meat I would rather eat, and none I eat more of, than wild meat got with my own bloody hands as an ethical predatory omnivore. To the contrary, I go sick at the thought of swallowing “alternative livestock” flesh butchered from the bones of captive-raised wild animals. Magazines running […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Let’s talk about salmon
Wana Chinook Tymoo means “salmon stories’ in Sahaptin, a language shared by the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama tribes. It is also the name of a free magazine published quarterly since 1991 by the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. The group brings together members of the four tribes to help fight for the […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Irrigators speak a volume
After a federal water commission published Water in the West: The Challenge for the Next Century (HCN, 6/22/98), a 250-member industry group known as the Family Farm Alliance went to work on a report of its own. Irrigated agriculture has gotten the blame for the West’s water woes, members say, and they want to clear […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Prisoners for hire
A new magazine called ColorLines, with editorial offices in Oakland, Calif., takes a harsh look at what it calls the “prison-industrial complex.” It finds an unsavory relationship between corporations that improve their bottom line thanks to cheap prison labor, and our society’s desire to lock up people we’ve given up trying to socialize or educate. […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Elk: Pursuing the hunt and preserving the species
For author, hunter, woodsman and “hard-core, out-and-amongst-’em … serious wildlife watcher” David Petersen, elk are more than just a hobby, topic or even a passion; they are a religion. If books had to have subtitles that reflected their deeper messages, Petersen’s newest book, Elkheart: A Personal Tribute to Wapiti and Their World, might be A […]