Of all the timber sales currently being proposed in Colorado and southern Wyoming, the Sheep Flats timber sale on Grand Mesa has been called the worst – so bad ranchers and environmentalists have united against it. Sharon Jordan, who has been ranching with her husband in Collbran for 25 years, is rallying support among her […]
A rancher sees red over a timber sale
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Logging slated for many roadless areas
The success of environmentalists in protecting what’s left of the old-growth forests in the Northwest and Southwest means that logging corporations are often forced to look elsewhere. So they have looked at Colorado and southern Wyoming, where, according to a coalition of more than 15 environmental groups, the U.S. Forest Service plans in 1998 to […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Greens differ over plan to expand national park
Anyone who has wandered the convoluted canyons of Arches National Park knows this landscape doesn’t lend itself to ruler-straight boundaries. But find the park on a map and you’ll see a stair-stepped outline that cuts across canyons and over mesas. Walt Dabney, the outspoken superintendent of both Arches and Canyonlands national parks, has been trying […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Patience runs out in San Luis
After more than four years of work, the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant Commission voted Oct. 27 to end negotiations with Zachary Taylor, owner of the Taylor Ranch near San Luis, Colo. The commission agreed to remain in existence in case Taylor ever makes a reasonable sales offer, but “the state is fed up,” said […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Dear Friends
Into the desert HCN staffers Rita Murphy, Jason Lenderman, Sara Phillips and Peter Chilson and about 175 other anti-nuclear protesters walked onto the Department of Energy’s Nevada Test Site Nov. 9. Without fuss, security guards escorted everyone right into a barbwire detention pen because it is unlawful to enter the test site without permission. Staffers […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Do coyotes need “control’ on the refuge?
Note: this article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Mike Nunn and Dan Alonso stop their rig on a punishing track in the southeastern corner of the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge. They have sighted two female pronghorn, just dark dots on the landscape to untrained observers. The does head toward a distant […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Selling science to the agencies: an ecologist’s story
Note: this article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. David Dobkin’s epiphany occurred in New Jersey in 1989, as he drove down a road in the Pine Barrens. At each turn he encountered another trash heap of wrecked automobiles and abandoned refrigerators. The Rutgers University zoology professor knew he was in the wrong […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
LAKEVIEW, Ore. – David Dobkin crouches in an expanse of low sagebrush and admires clumps of grasses and forbs. It is morning on this sweep of high desert that stretches east from the rising fault-block mountain that gives Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge its name. Umbrella-shaped canopies of mountain mahogany grow from the mountain’s outcrops […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
The Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act will be among the topics covered at the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and Colorado CattleWomen’s midwinter conference Dec. 4-5 in Colorado Springs, Colo. More than 250 ranchers and biologists are expected to attend this panel discussion on how the act can be modified to engage the agriculture industry in endangered species’ recovery. […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
League of Women Voters
Colorado phones will ring soon, and the Colorado League of Women Voters will begin to survey the public about their knowledge of the causes of water pollution. The League has received a $150,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to educate people about how to prevent household-generated contaminants such as motor oil and lawn chemicals […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Dollars, Sense and Salmon
The Idaho Statesman is offering reprints of its landmark editorial series that argues for breaching four dams on the Lower Snake River to help save salmon populations. The series, titled Dollars, Sense and Salmon, ran three days last July, and helped push the dams issue to the forefront of Pacific Northwest political debate. Copies cost […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Continental Divide Trail
You don’t have to leave your home to experience the Continental Divide Trail. Exploring the trail is now as easy as typing www.gorp.com/cdts/ and hitting return. The Continental Divide Trail Society has created a Web page for hikers to exchange information, inquire about weather conditions and find hiking partners via the Forum, the site’s on-line […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Drawing from life
“Weather is the perfect natural phenomenon for the scrutiny of the journal-keeper. It’s always happening, you don’t have to go far to check on it, and you need no sophisticated equipment to study it… Draw the various clouds and cloud formations you see, paying particular attention to their volumes in space, their lights and shadows…” […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
A chance to go wild
Utah has no rivers protected under the 1968 federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, but that might change. This month, the Forest Service released a draft report on recommendations for possible wild and scenic designation within the Uinta National Forest. This forest alone has 92 small sections of rivers eligible for designation, but the agency […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
More ATVers than aliens
You can search for alien life forms near Roswell, N.M., and not see them, but you can’t miss all-terrain vehicles. For the past 20 years, motor-bikers have carved tracks all around 3,530-acre Haystack Mountain. But unfettered roaming may end soon. The Roswell District of the Bureau of Land Management has finished a draft management plan […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Another wild opportunity
The Bureau of Land Management has pushed 180,000 acres of Colorado outback a step closer to becoming wilderness study areas. The agency recently labeled the areas “roadless’ after completing new surveys. The surveys were prompted by the Colorado Environmental Coalition, which said the areas should have been included in the BLM’s 1980 survey of potential […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Down with user fees
Dear HCN, One thing you failed to mention in your feature article on user fees was the Park Service’s perpetual con game about being short of money (HCN, 10/13/97). To get their point across, they defer road maintenance and close campgrounds, items highly visible to the public. What the public does not see is any […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
The public domain should be free
Dear HCN, There is something fundamentally wrong when citizens are required to pay a fee to walk on land they already own (HCN, 10/13/97). Whatever happened to the concept of public domain? The bureaucrats have taken the easy low road by going after recreational users instead of doing the right thing and lobbying politicians and […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
This Earthship crashed in Santa Fe
Dear HCN, Michael Reynolds, the Taos, N.M., acclaimed visionary of the concept of using discarded tires and aluminum cans to create environmentally responsible homes called Earthships (HCN, 9/1/97), may be sailing a sinking ship. And he may be taking naive people with him. I moved from the East Coast three years ago and signed an […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Good comparison, but …
Dear HCN, Thanks for the meaningful comparison of land areas in the Quincy Library Group article (HCN, 10/13/97). I am tired of HCN writers’ comparisons of land areas in the West to small states in the East. They only serve to remind us that there are some dinky states which are similar in size to […]