The condition of a grazing allotment in southern Wyoming is at the center of a dispute between the National Wildlife Federation and the Bureau of Land Management. The wildlife group’s attorney, Tom Lustig, is protesting the agency’s temporary extension of a grazing permit to rancher Wright Dickenson. Lustig says the impact of 1,000 cows on […]
Rancher stonewalls an agency
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
More internal fire at the Forest Service
NEW MEXICO More internal fire at the Forest Service The list of resignations in the Forest Service’s Southwest region is growing (HCN, 3/30/98). Renee Galeano-Popp, a career agency biologist, stepped down from her position at Lincoln National Forest in late April, saying in a letter to the incoming regional forester that “the Forest Service has […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
The Wayward West
In early June, GOP leaders in the House promised to end logging subsidies for the timber industry, agreeing with the Clinton administration that “road credits’ should die. Soon after, the Forest Service, for the second time in its history, posted a number for what its road-building program really lost last year: $88 million. Jet-boat enthusiasts […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Tribe seeks its key peak
Tohono O’odham Indians have long gazed up at the soaring tower of Baboquivari Peak, southwest of Tucson, Ariz., with mingled reverence and consternation. They have never accepted a 1917 boundary survey that placed the east side of the tribe’s most sacred mountain on federal land, outside their main reservation. Now, the tribe hopes the dispute […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
It rhymes with scourge
I was out weeding my native plants garden when a houseguest chided me about the ethnic cleansing that seemed to be happening there. Targets were dandelions, salsifies, thistles, chicories, henbit and donkeytail spurge, which try to crowd out naturalized grasses and bee-balm, penstemon and Jacob’s ladder. I have the satisfaction of knowing that what I […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
In the Sonoran Desert, a lesson already learned
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Twenty years ago, cattle roamed the open range near here, and the only sound during the night, besides coyotes, was a car bumping over a cattleguard on north Scottsdale Road. The metal strips hummed like a stroked guitar in the stillness of a desert night. Now the cattleguard is gone, and the […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Heard around the West
Maybe it had to happen. The “green glow” emanating from cool corporations in the laid-back Northwest has faded, reports the Los Angeles Times, with just the merest hint of gloating. There’s gigantic Microsoft, targeted by the Justice Department for monopolizing computer software, and Starbucks, assailed for cruelty to songbirds for removing shade trees from coffee […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
A lively memoir out of the National Park Service
For a variety of reasons, I have been reading about the National Park Service – reports, histories, and bilious (but also far-seeing) polemics like Alston Chase’s Playing God in Yellowstone. They’re useful but tend to be lifeless. Now we have a restorative potion to go with the reports and histories: a book that breathes life […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Activists join forces against mining law
NEAR DURANGO, Colo. – Some of us at this conference for mining activists are feeling as if we’ve just been sent to summer camp. The main building of the former silver mining camp, with its long wooden picnic tables, picture-window view of San Juan National Forest and cafeteria meals, is making people nostalgic. “Every time […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Locals stand behind an aging dam
For years, irrigators who benefit from the Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River in southern Oregon have resisted removal of the salmon-blocking structure. In the past, when the district’s board members agreed to removal, local voters removed those members. Now, irrigators have won another reprieve from federal and state pressure, thanks to a court […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Dear Friends
A “genius” in Arizona Composers, artists, writers and historians have all won those coveted John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur “genius’ grants, but Bill McDonald, 46, is the first rancher to receive a hefty $285,000 for his efforts to preserve huge stretches of undeveloped land in southern Arizona. McDonald, along with other ranchers, such as […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
We wanted to democratize Western water
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Denise Fort, a faculty member at the University of New Mexico’s School of Law, chairs the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission. She is a former director of New Mexico’s Environmental Improvement Division and is a member of the National Research Council’s Water, Science […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
This report could destroy irrigated agriculture
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Patrick O’Toole raises cattle, sheep and hay near the Wyoming-Colorado border. He serves on the Wyoming Open Space Committee, the Colorado River Coordinating Council and is a director of the Family Farm Alliance. The lone agricultural member of the Western Water Policy Review Advisory […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Western water: Why it’s dirty and in short supply
Note: in two sidebar articles that accompany this feature story, rancher Patrick O’Toole and chair of the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission Denise Fort share their views in their own words. First, you notice the coyotes. Then shadows swirl near shore – a group of razorback suckers, an endangered species, moving in to spawn. […]
Posted inJune 8, 1998: Don't fence me in
Recreation: “as bad as clearcutting’
Dear HCN, I just received my April 27 issue of HCN and it’s without a doubt your best issue. I can’t thank you enough for Jon Margolis’ article on the coming threat of industrial recreation. Like Scott Silver, most of my personal life outside of work has been taken over by trying to get the […]
Posted inJune 8, 1998: Don't fence me in
Article didn’t cover the real immigration issues
Dear HCN, I have been an avid reader of High Country News for several years and have enjoyed its insightful take on the issues shaping the West as we head into the 21st century. I am, however, deeply disturbed by your recent coverage of the Sierra Club ballot question, “Give me your tired, your poor, […]
Posted inJune 8, 1998: Don't fence me in
Margolis is just envious
Dear HCN, “A treatise on columnist Alexander Cockburn,” (HCN, 5/11/98), seems to be Jon Margolis’ search for a journalistic Viagra. So envious is Margolis that he lashes out the gawky bewailment: “Cockburn has been abusing reality for decades …” That’s bad? I hope someone has, or will, say the same about me. Margolis’ gripes range […]
Posted inJune 8, 1998: Don't fence me in
What’s better for Arizona
Dear HCN, For the past year I’ve been part of a group including ranchers, environmentalists and scientists exploring ways to find common ground over public-lands policy in Arizona and the West. Early on we found our mantra by paraphrasing James Carville: It’s land fragmentation, stupid! But no matter how much progress we make, we keep […]
Posted inJune 8, 1998: Don't fence me in
Lyons answers his critics
It’s difficult to respond to such off-issue, personal attacks and the chest-thumpings of Idaho nationalism as Peterson’s (HCN, 5/25/98) and Medberry’s (HCN, 4/13/98) – weak and flaccid as they are, full of red herrings and other beneath-the-belt cow droppings – but my point remains: Idaho doesn’t work for the poor, for persons of color, or […]
Posted inJune 8, 1998: Don't fence me in
Capulin Volcano National Monument
How should a “recent extinct volcano” greet visitors in the future? The National Park Service invites the public to help plan the management of Capulin Volcano National Monument in northeast New Mexico. To comment or to receive a newsletter, contact the National Park Service, Capulin Volcano National Monument, P.O. Box 40, Capulin, NM 88414 (505/278-2201 […]