Will a nuclear waste dump be Wyoming’s economic salvation? No way, says the Wyoming Outdoor Council. Its new report, Nuclear Jeopardy: A Citizen’s Guide to Understanding High Level Radioactive Waste in Wyoming, spells out the group’s opposition to a proposed private dump site. Not only would the Owl Creek Energy Project damage the state’s tourism […]
No nuclear jeopardy in Wyoming
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Program gets a C
When the 1993 Northwest Forest Plan reduced timber production in California, Washington and Oregon, the Clinton administration began the “Jobs in the Woods’ program to retrain timber workers. It sounded like a great idea: Former loggers would work with the Forest Service and other agencies to close abandoned roads and restore streams for native fish, […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
New in the watershed
When the nonprofit Western Ancient Forest Campaign (WAFC) sent Brian Vincent to California to set up a new office, he had a lot of terrain to choose from. He settled on Nevada City, Calif., one evening during a Watershed Council meeting, impressed by the sight of local Sierra Club and Earth First! members coming together […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Buffering buffalo
BUFFERING BUFFALO Don’t expect brucellosis to disappear from the Yellowstone area anytime soon, says a draft report issued by the National Academy of Sciences. The disease, common among bison and elk, led the state of Montana to shoot or slaughter nearly one-third of the Yellowstone bison herd last winter when the animals moved outside park […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Lingering stereotypes spoken here
“God gives the heavy loads to the big horses,” says Rick Swart. He should know – he’s got a heavy load. Today, at the age of 40, Richard W. Swart may be the most embattled journalist in Oregon. As editor of the Wallowa County Chieftain, a 114-year-old weekly that has been in his family for […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
On April 25, Carlos Menendez posed in front of an audience of the press and the Sierra Club leadership and joined the club. The former executive director of EDGE, a now-defunct advocacy group for immigrants, had refused to become a member for years. But Sierra Club president Adam Werbach had just announced that members rejected […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
A treatise on columnist Alexander Cockburn
WASHINGTON, D.C. – “Question Authority,” reads the bumper sticker slogan, and good advice it is. But so is this: Question the questioners of authority, who may have their own agenda, perhaps their own racket. Outrageousness sells these days, and as any viewer of “Crossfire” can attest, it sells better unencumbered by prudence or knowledge. Which […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
El Nino sweeps across the West
El Nino’s wrath hit sporadically around the West this winter, leaving more headlines than it did snow or rain. But where it hit, it hit hard, and punches are still being thrown. Last fall, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted El Nino would force the global jet streams north, causing warmer and drier weather […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Dear Friends
Busting out When High Country News moved into its new quarters in early 1992 (New Year’s Day, to be exact), we assumed the 3,600 square-foot building would serve us forever. After all, we had come out of 1,000 square feet. But when the architect who designed the building happened to be in Paonia, we asked […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Heard around the West
Maybe Denver International Airport was built to test the tempers of travelers. Flighty state-of-the-art baggage system? No backup. Access road blocked by snowdrifts? No backup. A busted concourse train? No backup – so 30,000 passengers were stalled and enraged Sunday, April 26, some of them trapped for hours in darkened train tunnels without ventilation or […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
A guide to the glue that keeps the West stuck together
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Caveat lector: The publications listed here are a basket of apples, oranges and walnuts. Some come out regularly, have many pages and are well done. Others appear sporadically and are only a single sheet. The key to the guide is: Publication name, group, address, […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
A fiery Wyoming newspaper pursues the state’s fat cats
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. If you weren’t around in 1970, when Tom Bell founded the scrappy High Country News in Lander, Wyo., you can catch a late 1990s reincarnation by reading the Grassroots Advocate, published by John Jolley out of Casper, Wyo. Bell in the early 1970s was […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
In February, High Country News asked readers to send in samples of newsletters published by grassroots environmental groups. I asked people to send in those newsletters without any clear idea of what I would do with them. And even after 70 individual newsletters had arrived, I still didn’t know what to make of them, except […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
The rural West can’t have it both ways
Dear HCN, Ed Marston’s essay, “Show me the science,” leaves me perplexed (HCN, 3/16/98). On the one hand, Ed admits that the typical rural lifestyle near and using public lands has led to environmental degradation. On the other hand, he claims environmentalists are enemies of the rural economies and life. He cannot have it both […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
A rising population is the real onslaught
Dear HCN, Greg Hanscom did an admirable and objective job describing Utah’s growing pains and the relative contributions from the 2002 Olympics (HCN, 3/16/98). The only component missing was the reality that more than two-thirds of the growth in Utah comes from within the state due to our propensity for large families. With the highest […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Suers should feel sheepish
Dear HCN, I read with disgust the story by Electa Draper about the “sheep war” outside Durango, Colo. (HCN, 3/30/98). Prohibiting sheep in southwestern Colorado is like prohibiting toy poodles in Northbrook, Ill. The anti-sheep neighbors had better move back to Northbrook or perhaps try Beverly Hills or Jackson Hole, Wyo. I also raise border […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
There’s always more traffic
Dear HCN, I question Greg Hanscom’s statement that the rebuilding of Interstate 15 in Utah “… at the breathtaking cost of $1.6 billion … (is) the biggest public works project under construction anywhere in America” (HCN, 3/16/98). The Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project here in Boston has a current, and seemingly ever-increasing, price tag of […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Southwest Center is to Disney as…
Dear HCN, Thanks for an informative piece on the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, but to the reader looking for a “real” story (HCN, 4/13/98) here’s one: To focus on Western public lands and not pay attention to the Southwest Center is like studying pop culture in America and ignoring Disney. It is so relevant […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Does Suckling know where he is?
Dear HCN, Buried within the text of Peter Aleshire’s informative story on the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity is a quote from Kieran Suckling which describes the country where the Malpai Group works as “not a national forest allotment” and “mostly private land with low-elevation grassland” (HCN, 3/30/98). On his one and (as far as […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
‘In perfect cadence with my heartbeat’
Dear HCN, Tom Reed’s article about how life is tough in Wyoming (HCN, 4/13/98) spoke in perfect cadence with my own heartbeat. There are not many of us left; the “Westerners,” like the bighorn sheep and the mule man, are singing that sad and forlorn refrain of a vanishing time. Up until a few years […]