SWAN VALLEY, Mont. – The sweet aroma from a mock orange bush wafts through the air, but Steve Gauger is not here to look at wildflowers. He’s monitoring a wildfire. Like many firefighters, Gauger, incident commander on Montana’s recent 220-acre Goat Creek Fire, is scratching his head over this year’s early fires. On the high […]
A summer like no other looms ahead
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Monumental deal over Utah’s trust lands
On May 8, after months of quiet negotiations, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt resolved a major sticking point in the debate over the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (HCN, 1/19/98). Their agreement trades the scattered blocks of state-owned school trust lands within the new monument for federal lands elsewhere in […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Ruckus on a recreation river
Each summer, thousands of rafters and kayakers head for central Idaho’s Middle Fork of the Salmon River, considered by many the nation’s premier wilderness river trip. During the week-long, 100-mile journey, floaters play volleyball on the beach, fly fish for native trout, surf the rapids and cook up Dutch oven feasts – all in the […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Turning a vista into a mess
CROZIER CANYON, Ariz. – To some, this short stretch of Route 66 is historically significant, the “Mother Road” of westward migration celebrated in song and television series. To others, the red hills rising up from the desert are sacred and not to be disturbed. Some of these hills belong to Fred Grigg. They’ve been in […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
How California poisoned a small town
PORTOLA, Calif. – The northern pike, a voracious species, has claimed what may be its biggest victim yet: this small town. Officials of the Plumas County town of 2,200 residents say they have lost their backup water supply, half their tourism business and their reputation for a pristine mountain environment – all to the predatory […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Dear Friends
Salt Lake City potluck The High Country News staff and board will converge on Salt Lake City Saturday, June 6, to hold a potluck. These HCN events are held three times a year around the region; they are long on good food and good conversation and vanishingly short on ceremony and speeches. This one will […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
The battle for Crozier Canyon
Arizona mirrors the paradox of the modern West – how to secure the future of tourism without butting heads with traditional, extractive industries. Discount for the moment the public lands, even Grand Canyon National Park, whose establishment may hardly be credited to Arizona. Theodore Roosevelt demanded that Grand Canyon be preserved, and he was a […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
It only seems cruel to fool a fish
“Who hears the fishes when they cry?” That question was asked by a scold, iconoclast and master angler who worried about the pain he inflicted on his quarry. His contemporaries considered him very weird. His name was Henry Thoreau. The same concern is being voiced today by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Heard around the West
Many federal bureaucrats like hiding behind a desk. Jim Furnish is admittedly gregarious. He also loves the Oregon coast and hopes eight citizens from around the United States will want to join him for an expense-paid weekend of brainstorming while taking hikes along the cliffs. Furnish makes no bones about needing help. Supervisor of the […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Fighting exotics with exotics
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Is releasing exotic insects to control exotic plants, such as the tamarisk, a good idea? The answer depends on whom you talk to. Scientists who specialize in biological control say exotic plants often explode in foreign soils because they have left behind their natural […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Killing tamarisk frees water
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Sometimes it takes a miracle to wake people up to an invasion. Sometimes it takes a lawsuit. For the ranchers and farmers who make a living along the Pecos River in southern New Mexico, it took both. The miracle occurred in 1991, when a […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Tackling tamarisk
In the exotic shrub an ecological menace or merely the best our degraded rivers can muster?
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
1998 National Wilderness Conference
Over 80 conservation groups are sending representatives to the 1998 National Wilderness Conference in Seattle, Wash., May 29-31, where David Brower is the featured speaker and Walkin” Jim Stoltz the balladeer of lands prowled by grizzlies and wolves. Contact the National Wilderness Conference, 12730 9th Avenue NW, Seattle, WA 98177 or e-mail wildcon@twsnw.org. This article […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
‘Meltdown’ continues at state agency
Goodbyes are getting more and more frequent at the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. When attorney Ashley Olivero resigned from the agency at the end of March, describing a “museum of degradations inflicted upon the rank and file DEQ employees,” she joined seven other staffers who have angrily quit since the agency was formed three […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Outfitter bill may be missing the boat
Guiding hunting expeditions and rafting trips is a risky business, but some commercial outfitters think that some challenges shouldn’t be part of the job: They say the changing policies of federal agencies make it difficult to get guiding permits. They’re hoping a new bill, sponsored by Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., will […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
The Wayward West
Eleven Mexican gray wolves were released to the wilds of the Arizona-New Mexico border March 29 (HCN, 2/16/98); now one wolf is dead – shot and killed by a camper who said it attacked his family’s dog, reports the Albuquerque Journal. The wolf program faces a lawsuit filed by a coalition of New Mexico ranchers, […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
To burn or not to burn
Another 40-foot stick-figure totem will be set ablaze by 12,000 revelers in the desert in Nevada if a federal agency says yes to the San Francisco-based organizers. Last year the Burning Man arts get-together was moved to private land, where county fees, including $308,000 for fire insurance alone, drove the festival into debt. That made […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Jet Skis: Thrill or scourge?
With 750,000 Jet Skis currently in operation, and more than 100,000 new “personal watercraft” sold annually, the industry is pushing the Park Service for access to 62 sites on national park waters – nearly double the number of sites currently available in the parks. But the Park Service and the Department of Interior can’t agree […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Water in rivers is OK
Water can remain in New Mexican rivers and still be “beneficial,” says state Attorney General Tom Udall. Up until his decision last month, water rights could be lost unless water was diverted from a stream, and thereby put to beneficial use. Udall’s ruling opens the door to marketing water rights for environmental protection, which also […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Bison sleek, but suspect
MONTANA Bison sleek, but suspect West Yellowstone, Mont. – It’s been an easy winter for Yellowstone National Park’s bison. Only 11 of the shaggy giants have been killed, a fraction of the nearly 1,100 that were shot or shipped to slaughter in the brutal winter of 1996-97. Protruding ribs and jutting hip bones were bison […]