The Quincy Library Group Bill is tangled in holiday traffic, after flying through the U.S. House of Representatives last July (HCN, 9/29/97). Sens. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., put holds on the bill, stalling it in the Senate. But proponents like Sen Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., are confident it will move quickly when Congress […]
The Wayward West
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Is the Park Service too timid?
When Washington’s Mount Rainier blew its top 5,600 years ago, a massive mud flow buried much of the Puget Sound under hundreds of feet of mud and rock. Today, smaller mudslides from the volcano, called one of the world’s most dangerous, threaten Mount Rainier National Park. In the past decade, slides have destroyed a bridge […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
The greening of Mount St. Helens
Dick Ford didn’t think it possible. Weyerhaeuser Co.” s timber lands near Mount St. Helens, the volcano that erupted in Washington state 17 years ago, are turning green. “I remember thinking that it would never be a normal forest,” says Ford, who managed Weyerhaeuser’s replanting operations around the volcano through the 1980s. In the months […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Salvage law haunts Utah
Salvage law haunts Utah When Forest Supervisor Janette Kaiser announced plans for a huge salvage timber sale on central Utah’s Manti-La Sal National Forest in August, environmentalists thought they’d seen a ghost. The sale was approved under a law they thought long dead: the salvage logging rider. Now, they hope a recent agency decision will […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
A visit with the River People of Hanford Reach
“In time to come the white men will build dams which will close the Columbia River to the salmon. At Priest Rapids, there is nothing the white people want in our little life, and there we may live unmolested.” – Prophecy of Smowhala, founder of the Dreamer Religion of the Wanapum people in the mid-1800s, […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Heard around the West
What, me worry? That’s the question Alfred E. Neuman has been asking ever since his creation in 1950 by Al Feldstein, a Brooklynite who recently moved to the Paradise Valley, near Livingston, Mont. Sacred cows from political pundits to the pontiff were all fodder for Feldstein’s Mad Magazine, which encouraged kids to question authority and […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
How the far right spreads its ‘wacky’ ideas
I’m standing at a podium in the back room of the Elks Lodge in Libby, Mont., in front of about 40 Democrats. The event is their annual Jefferson-Jackson Day fund-raising dinner. I’ve been invited to speak at several of these things over the last several months, and it occurs to me that somewhere along the […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Saving species: A guide for the perplexed
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Policy is complicated. The goals of policy – a strong economy, peace (or war, depending on circumstances), clean air – are simple. But in a diverse, sometimes disagreeable society with conflicting institutions, a sprawling government and an intricate legal system, achieving those goals requires gobs of … well, process, and process can […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Completing a prairie ecosystem
Ranchers say the cost of recovery is exorbitant
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Amax returns with a vengeance
Twenty years ago it was a classic David vs. Goliath battle. Helped by a drop in the worldwide molybdenum market, residents of the ski-resort town of Crested Butte, Colo., chased the world’s largest mining conglomerate out of their valley. But now, Amax is back, locals are crying “blackmail!” and the town council is building a […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Dear Friends
Looking back Each year in the fall we take stock of our work over the last 12 months and ask you to do the same. About the time you receive this issue, you should also find an annual report from us in your mailbox. You may also find a request for help in continuing the […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
A court deems a lake worthy of water
Note: This essay accompanies this issue’s feature story. The water developers of Los Angeles and their lawyers knew from the first paragraph that they were in trouble. Court opinions about Western water invariably carried a pragmatic, detached, utilitarian tone. This case was supposed to be about the needs of a thriving but thirsty metropolis – […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Note: an essay by Charles Wilkinson about Mono Lake accompanies this feature story. LEE VINING, Calif. – Mono Valley hovers at the western edge of the Great Basin on the Sierra Nevada range, a majestic place of stark horizons and haunting skies. In autumn, Lombardy poplars and cottonwoods blaze golden along the highway and seem […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
With friends like these …
Dear HCN, As I am accustomed to seeing my name on bathroom walls and bulletin boards in certain public buildings, the implication (from developer Milo McCowan) that I support the dozing of Utah’s Rockville Bench merely adds another zit to an already blemished reputation (HCN, 9/29/97). It is not OK, however, to drop the name […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
If Congress says yes, so what?
Dear HCN, In your story on the Quincy Library Group (HCN, 9/29/97), I read the comments of Kent Connaughton, shaking my head in agreement, until I got to his statement, “When you work through the Congress, you get the validation of the American people. It says that these are a valid set of priorities that […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Quincy bill deserves to pass
Dear HCN, I’m writing to compliment High Country News on its coverage of the Quincy Library Group (QLG) and bill (HCN, 9/29/97). It was as calm, complete, unbiased, and delightfully wry an overview of the situation as I have seen to date. My response is enhanced by my being a rural county supervisor in the […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Charge bovines, too
Dear HCN, I’d like to comment on your article about user fees for mountain bikers, campers and hikers in the Sand Flats/Slickrock Trail area of Moab. It has been a few years since I’ve been there, but what I clearly remember is the grazing damage was far worse and much more pervasive than any recreational […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Freedom is what’s at stake
Dear HCN, I’m afraid we are missing the boat when it comes to the issue of user fees on our parks and public lands. Many who support the idea would have us believe it’s primarily an economic issue. While that is true in part, it is also an issue which raises profound moral questions. Our […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
What’s really behind user fees
Dear HCN, The current “recreation funding crisis’ has less to do with trail fees than with management direction. Congress and top federal agency managers are rapidly shifting their focus from one commercial forest “product” to another: from timber production to industrial recreation. The “Demonstration Recreation Fee Program” is but a small part of a larger […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Let locals in free
Dear HCN, I’ve just finished reading the articles about usage fees for hiking, camping, climbing, etc., and I must admit, it’s one of those peculiar times when I feel strongly both ways. My initial emotion is resentment. I despise unnecessary regulation – signs, signs, everywhere a sign, or a fee or a form. But I […]