Ronald Nowak, a national-level Fish and Wildlife Service zoologist, has resigned from his position in protest, claiming the agency has “fought tooth and nail to avoid doing its job” of protecting the Canada lynx and other sensitive species. Nowak calls the lynx – a cousin of the bobcat – -one of the most blatant examples […]
Zoologist says listing process is endangered
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Confessions of an Eco-Redneck
Certain books come along once in a generation that change the lens through which we view the natural order. Now there’s Steve Chapple’s Confessions of an Eco-Redneck – Or How I Learned to Gut-Shoot Trout & Save the Wilderness at the Same Time. Well, OK, maybe it’s not a paradigm changer. For one thing, Chapple’s […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Storm Over Mono: The Mono Lake Battle and the California Water Future
If you think preserving natural resources is all about scientific data and arcane legal maneuvers, read Storm Over Mono. In his richly documented account of the battle to save Mono Lake, John Hart focuses on the people who mounted the successful campaign against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Most were ordinary mortals: […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Heart of Home: People, Wildlife, Place
For many years I was a vegetarian, an avid anti-hunter, who cursed the arrival of the orange-clad mob in the fall that violated everything that was pure and gentle. I was cheered on by many writers, including Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, who urged a gentle alliance with nature, not a violent blood sport. […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
The bison are coming
In the December 1987 issue of Planning, we wrote what we thought was an innocuous article on land use in the Great Plains. The piece explored the state of the short-grass, semi-arid region between the 98th meridian and the Rockies, a sixth of the Lower 48. The most rural parts of the Plains faced long- […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
The scandal culture reaches Bruce Babbitt
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a rational world, one would not have to wonder whether a special prosecutor might be appointed to investigate the doings of Bruce Babbitt, endangering his tenure as secretary of the Interior. In this world? Well, we’d better take a look. In the great scheme of things, it matters little whether Babbitt […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Some cattle ranchers sell out to hunting
GREAT FALLS, Mont. – Cattle rancher John Bodner didn’t have to worry about monitoring hunters last fall on his spread in the foothills of the Little Belt Mountains in central Montana. He left that to an outfitter. “The outfitter is like a game warden,” said Bodner, who won’t say how large a ranch he runs. […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
A tiny tribe wins big on clean water
ISLETA, N.M. – A recent Supreme Court decision reaffirms a 2,500-member tribe’s right to tell the city of Albuquerque what it can and cannot dump into the Rio Grande River. The Isleta Pueblo sits six miles downstream from where Albuquerque dumps 55 million gallons of wastewater each day. Sewage from the city’s 450,000 residents makes […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Dear friends
Visit from a stalwart Once upon a time, substantial chunks of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado were to be the scene of massive industrial development. Oil shale, aka the “rock that burns,” was to be mined and crushed, with the resulting hydrocarbons liquefied and then refined, freeing the U.S. from servitude to the Middle East. It […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Heard around the West
Spam, that quivery quasi-meat, needs a support group. In a list of 1997 bests and worsts in the food world recently, the Arizona Republic zeroed in on the Jell-O-like pink substance as top contender for “worst recipe.” The winning (or losing) recipe came from Spam’s national recipe contest, which “always provides a good candidate,” according […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
A river comes apart
Nov. 30, 1995, was the day that the Clearwater Country in northern Idaho came apart. In today’s society, the words “come apart” are usually reserved for nations in apocalyptic collapse. Here it meant something much less hyperbolic, but no less real. Dirt slid into a creek – a lot of dirt. The Clearwater Country is […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Iconoclast to the end: A New West son regards his father
It was my father who gave me the Clearwater River. It was an accidental gift delivered on a hot July day in Idaho. I can remember the van ride along the river on Highway 12; I was 14 and we were on our way to put in for a river trip down the Salmon River, […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
We have no elders, we have no leaders
Being aggressively into kick-boxing and martial arts, of course I couldn’t resist responding to letter writer C.S. Heller’s taunt about my youth and his convenient implication that I am naive when I insist that the American bison be again allowed their inherent, native and ancient right to be a free-roaming, wild species (HCN, 10/27/97). Age […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Use this book to get under the West’s skin
There is nothing historian Patricia Nelson Limerick dislikes more than the word frontier when used to describe the “advance of civilization” across the arid, lightly populated 19th century American West. She built her early career debunking the notion that the West was once an empty land settled by brave white men bearing democracy. Nevertheless, the […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Looking at dams in a new way
We float rivers for fun. For adventure. For discovery. We do it for the magic around the bend. The smooth hiss of water and stone. A canyon wren concerto. The slap of a beaver’s tail. The solitary stare of a bighorn sheep. Last spring, I stumbled across something unusual on the Colorado River in the […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
We’re cheap
Dear HCN, As a frequent user of trout streams on public lands, I have been amazed at the reluctance of some of my fellow fishermen to pay user fees. People who use $400 fly rods with $200 reels holding $45 lines, whose $150 vests and $100 boots and $200 waders ride in $20,000 cars, will […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Recreationists are smarter than cows
Dear HCN, Our backyards make up the majority of the nation’s public lands, and yet we Westerners don’t know how to talk about the future of those lands. That was clearly shown by two essays on recreation user fees in the Oct. 13, 1997, High Country News. Terry Anderson and Steve Hinchman both assumed that […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Audubon should have thought it over
Dear HCN, It is more than a little ironic that the arguments of a group – the Audubon Society – trying to enforce the letter of the Endangered Species Act yielded a result contrary to the one that they had hoped for. Their intention was to extend coverage of the act to all wolves, including […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Those ideas aren’t wacky
Dear HCN, As one of the founders of King County Property Rights Alliance (King County surrounds Seattle), I take exception to Ken Toole’s essay on the Far Right and its wacky ideas (HCN, 12/8/97). I endorse the bulk of those “wacky” ideas, even though I haven’t been to church, fundamentalist or otherwise, for a good […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
The landscapes of our dreams
It’s an awful job, but somebody has to do it – register an afterthought to Kathie Durbin’s story on the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge, “Cows depart, but can antelope recover?” (HCN, 11/24/97). I have no problem accepting as fact that livestock grazing wrecked the place, that cows broke the cryptogamic crust, that Eurasian cheatgrass […]