Eastern Oregon’s 11th annual Summer Fishtrap Gathering and Workshops July 6-12 will explore the nature of work in an age of increasing automation and the ways that people write about it. Stephanie Coontz, award-winning author of The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, will deliver a keynote; for more information write […]
Summer Fishtrap Gathering and Workshops
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Natural Resource Laws and Public Lands Protection Conference
If the law of the land confuses you, look for answers at the Natural Resource Laws and Public Lands Protection Conference in Bozeman, Mont., June 12-13. The conference, sponsored by American Wildlands and the Law Fund, will discuss laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Freedom of Information […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard and Idaho Sen. Larry Craig
Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard and Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, both Republicans, aren’t happy about the Colorado BLM’s recent reinventory of potential wilderness areas, and they’ll be in Grand Junction, Colo., June 6 to talk about it. Their public meeting will be held at the Avalon Theater from 8-11 a.m.; on the night before, the nonprofit […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Star Valley Historical Society
Wyoming’s Star Valley Historical Society hosts a “summer trek” June 26-28 for state Historical Society members. Walking tours near the Idaho border will lead to museums, emigration trails, geysers and historic factories for everything from guns to cheese. Registration forms appear in the May Wyoming History News and can also be obtained from the Star […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Glen Canyon Institute’s expanded Web site
The free-flowing past – and future – of the Colorado River is explored at the Glen Canyon Institute’s expanded Web site, www.glencanyon.org. The Salt Lake-based nonprofit group, dedicated to the restoration of Glen Canyon, has added an online bookstore featuring water issues in the desert Southwest. Also available are “Restore Glen Canyon” bumper stickers, and […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Hot and beautiful
Clean energy can emerge from deep beneath the earth’s surface, but will it interfere with the natural beauty of the volcanoes, hot springs and geysers that make it possible? That’s a question asked in Tapping the Earth’s Natural Heat, a 63-page report produced by Wendell Duffield for the U.S. Geological Survey. Compared to other sources […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Survey says: Go wild!
Most supporters of wilderness are just espresso-sipping urbanites, right? Not so, according to a survey of 500 Colorado voters, released in April by a coalition of environmental groups. “We’re talking about four out of five Coloradans,” says Elise Jones of the League of Conservation Voters’ Boulder office. “These are pretty bomb-proof numbers.” The poll, conducted […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Seaside dinosaurs
Theropods – meat-eating dinosaurs that walked on their hind legs – once preyed on small animals near Wyoming’s prehistoric Sundance Sea. To his surprise, geologist Erik Kvale found the dinosaur tracks preserved in fossilized mud along the BLM’s Red Gulch/Alkali National Back Country Byway near Shell, Wyo. While exploring the rippled sandstones last summer, Kvale’s […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Snow geese have become too plentiful
Because snow geese have become too successful for their own good, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is asking for a wholesale hunt. The conversion of pastures to fields of grain has provided a bountiful harvest for the birds, causing the population to soar over the last three decades. Now, say agency biologists, snow geese […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Land swap splits conservationists
Saguaro National Park officials and Tucson environmentalists are praising a recent land exchange that adds 632 acres of prime wildlife habitat to the park’s holdings. They say the expansion helps to protect the cactus forest from urban sprawl, but others are wondering if too much was sacrificed in the process. The Tucson Mountains acreage, owned […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Five Navajos say Utah cheated their tribe
Some Utah Navajos say their tribe has been cheated out of at least $52 million in oil and gas money by the state of Utah during the past 30 years (HCN, 12/16/91). Although the state says the tribe’s claims are too old to be valid, a district court judge has rejected that argument and given […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Ranchers fight a railroad
SOUTH DAKOTA, WYOMING Ranchers fight a railroad Ranchers living on the prairie of southwestern South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming say they’re being railroaded. The Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern railroad wants to extend its line 144 miles from South Dakota into Wyoming to the Powder River Basin’s coal mines. About 54 miles of the new line […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
The Wayward West
Albuquerque, N.M., Mayor Jim Baca, always outspoken, is hopping mad. President Clinton recently signed an emergency spending bill that included chopping 8 1/2 acres out of the city’s Petroglyph National Monument. It’s “dishonest and cheating,” Baca told the Albuquerque Journal, “but that’s life in Washington.” The deleted acreage will go for a road extension to […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
We’re consuming the West
Dear HCN, I would like to respond to Mike Moxcey’s letter, headed “Ranchettes aren’t all bad” (HCN, 3/16/98). Even with the “best” ranchette development, roads, houses, outlying buildings, power lines, sport utility vehicles and cats, dogs, children and adults can strip a land of its wildlife far quicker than can any mismanaged herd of cattle […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
‘Such is life’
Dear HCN, Your cover story about the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity in the March 30 issue reminded me of a vicarious confrontation I had with a cattle rancher in Arizona. First some background: I’m retired from the Forest Service and was the regional geneticist for Region 3 (Arizona and New Mexico) from 1978 to […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Someone’s dreaming
Dear HCN, I could not believe the naivete of Jeff Burgess when he questioned in his letter why Western towns need to be based on ranching, logging and mining (HCN, 4/13/98). His suggestion that we imagine a “quiet little town where most people spend their work week writing innovative software programs … while their weekends […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Idaho can be whatever you are willing to make it
Dear HCN: Writer Stephen J. Lyons failed in his attempt to accurately quote the slogan “Idaho is what America was,” just as he also failed in his attempt to accurately portray the state of Idaho (HCN, 3/16/98). I know. I’m the guy who coined the phrase in 1978. I’ve also lived in the state for […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Lyons did the right thing
Dear HCN, I understand why Stephen J. Lyons moved to Washington state. I don’t understand why he didn’t do it sooner (HCN, 3/16/98). Here in Arizona we have the same problem. Many people move here (mostly from California) and discover that they hate it because of our “bad welfare system, conservative politics, low wages, poor […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Exotic predators swallow the Southwest’s native frogs
LEWIS SPRINGS, Ariz. – Phil Rosen is knee-deep in a disaster this spring day. Just a few years ago, native leopard frogs filled algae-covered pools in this side drainage of the San Pedro River, one of the last free-flowing rivers in the Southwest, 70 miles southeast of Tucson. Now, Rosen keeps turning up bad news. […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
A summer like no other looms ahead
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 […]