Note: two sidebar articles, titled “A difference of opinion over numbers” and “For some, horse meat ain’t all bad,” accompany this feature story. BRITTON SPRINGS, Wyo. – From the top of the ridge we can hear the helicopter droning behind pastel desert hills, and see the distant slopes of the Pryor Mountains just across the […]
Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Scat dogs earn their keep
Moja and Molly aren’t ordinary Labrador retrievers – they earn their keep by locating animal scat for senior scientist Sam Wasser of the Center for Wildlife Conservation in Seattle, Wash. “This is going to completely revolutionize the science of animal monitoring,” Wasser said. Wasser has trained the dogs to sniff out bear and wolf droppings […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
A scarlet “A’ for ASARCO?
A controversial open-pit copper mine proposed for the Santa Rita Mountains of southern Arizona (HCN, 9/1/97) has been put on hold. In a Jan. 21 letter from ASARCO Inc. to the Coronado National Forest, the company blamed low copper prices for the pullout and said the project would be delayed for “at least a couple […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
7th Annual Land Use Continuing Education Conference
Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt and John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War, will be among the guest speakers at the 7th Annual Land Use Continuing Education Conference in Denver, March 12-13. Topics will include preserving open space, private property rights, small town economic development and urban growth boundaries. Contact the Rocky Mountain Land Use […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
From orchards to Philadelphia
Utahns who live in the booming Salt Lake City area need to manage growth now, says Baseline Scenario, a study by the nonprofit Utah Quality Growth Partnership. The partnership is a coalition of government, civic and business leaders concerned about urban sprawl in a 10-county area, including Salt Lake City. In the 1960s and “70s, […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
BirdSource Great “98 Backyard Bird Count
If you have a birdfeeder, binoculars and access to a computer, you can join the BirdSource Great “98 Backyard Bird Count, Feb 20-22. Sponsored by the National Audubon Society and Cornell University, the project will use the Internet to collect sightings from birdwatchers across the continent, documenting some unusual migration patterns observed this winter. Anyone […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Mesa County Water Association
The Mesa County Water Association will hold its fifth annual water course Feb. 17 and 25 and March 3 in Grand Junction, Colo. Call 970/242-7490 for information. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Mesa County Water Association.
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
7th annual Winter Fishtrap Gathering
-We cannot deal exhaustively with the water concerns of the world in a few hours,” says Rich Wandschneider, director of Fishtrap, a group that explores writing and public policy in Enterprise, Ore. “But we can spend time thinking, talking, reading and writing about water.” Join Fishtrap and writer George Sibley, philosophy professor and nature writer […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Gunnison River Basin/Grand Valley Water Quality Forum
The chemicals we use on our gardens, lawns, and highways, and the stuff we dump down the drain can cause big problems for streams and rivers, says Steve Glazer with Colorado’s High Country Citizens Alliance. You can learn more at the Gunnison River Basin/ Grand Valley Water Quality Forum Feb. 26 in Montrose, Colo. Contact […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Western Colorado Pollution Prevention Program
You can’t pick your regulators, but you can pick their brains, says the Western Colorado Pollution Prevention Program. Learn more about environmental regulations from state regulators at an April 22 seminar in Grand Junction, Colo. The daylong seminar costs $15 and class size is limited to 50. Call Sue Kiser at 888/685-8576 or write to […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Green Building Resource Center
Design professionals interested in incorporating “green” practices into their work have a new site on the Web. From straw-bale houses to national parks, the Green Building Resource Center provides information about energy efficiency, water conservation and other sustainable-design issues. The site is operated by two nonprofits, the Salt Lake-based Global Environmental Options (GEO) and Building […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Working the Watershed
Richard Manning’s article “Working the Watershed” (HCN, 3/17/97) could easily have been titled “Overworking the Watershed.” It described efforts to restore salmon fisheries and oyster beds to Willapa Bay, a part of southwestern Washington state that has been logged and logged and logged again. Now the neighboring, and similarly overworked, Chinook watershed is the subject […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Quincy comes up short
A professor at the University of California at Berkeley has taken a scholarly look at the Quincy Library Group and at its plan and decided that both are flawed, but not because he opposes consensus efforts. In the same article, Timothy P. Duane finds that a consensus group in California’s Yuba River watershed does something […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
When green becomes red
Red ink is red ink, but the U.S. Forest Service and The Wilderness Society color their images of commercial logging on our national forests in grossly different shades. The Forest Service says it made $16 million from commercial timber sales in Oregon and Washington in fiscal year 1996. The Wilderness Society estimates the agency lost […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Soul in your soles
When was the last time you felt mud ooze between your toes? Richard Frazine in The Barefoot Hiker encourages readers to free their feet as well as their minds. No joke: Frazine, who lives in Connecticut, has been hiking unshod for over 20 years even through sleet and snow. He recommends a woodland trail for […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Intel Corp. denied desert water rights
Money can’t always buy water, even in cash-poor New Mexico. Intel Corp., the world’s largest computer chip manufacturer, has lost a $1.5 million bid to buy water rights from southern New Mexican farmers near rural Socorro. The company’s 1994 water-use permit requires that it buy water rights, then retire them to offset 4 million gallons […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Water for people and fish
Photographs of Aspen Village mobile homes and Snowmass Creek are not likely to oust images of the Maroon Bells Wilderness from Aspen, Colo., postcards and calendars. But the 150-unit trailer park and a small but valuable water right from Snowmass Creek have jumped into the conservation limelight. Their fame comes from an effort by citizens, […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
The Wayward West
The League of Conserva-tion Voters congressional scorecard is out. The only Western senators to score 100 percent on their voting records are Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both Democrats from California. The entire Senate delegations of Idaho, Texas, Utah and Wyoming scored 0. The League gave 0 scores to 30 senators, all Republicans, and 12 […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
No, ma’am, this isn’t Mississippi
When people think of catfish, they’re more likely to imagine roadside cooking shacks in Mississippi than desert streams. But that could change now that the native Yaqui catfish has been restored to Arizona. In October, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released 350 of the blue-gray fish in the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge near […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Ken Toole speaks for the politically correct
Dear HCN, I was disappointed to see Ken Toole’s essay, “How the far right spreads its “wacky” ideas’ (HCN, 12/8/97). In publishing this article, you clarified for one and all that your agenda is a political and lifestyle one, not environmental. You have just alienated the conservative fringe of your readership at a time when […]