Dear HCN, The recent article (HCN, 9/29/97) on the Quincy Library Group bill (S.1028) once again implies that this is a divisive issue caused by friction between the national environmental groups and the grass roots. That’s just not accurate. The vast majority of the environmental community is opposed to S.1028. Rather than dividing, this legislation […]
Quincy bill unifies opposition
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Why should locals speak louder?
Dear HCN, Regarding the Quincy Library Group’s involvement in the management of national forests, the American national forests belong to all Americans, and the opinions of those who live in or near a national forest should have no more influence than that of any other American (HCN, 9/29/97). Maybe things need to be left alone. […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Quincy bill revealed as a bad idea
Dear HCN, Finally, the press has opened the glossy wrapper on the Quincy package and peeked inside. Your article, “The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace” (HCN, 9/29/97), exposed some of the problems with the Quincy Library Group legislation pending in the Senate (S. 1028). While we are eager to see people […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Banning the buzz
The National Park Service is developing rules to allow local park officials to restrict, and perhaps ban, personal sit-down or stand-up watercraft. Park Service program manager Dennis Burnett says although the fast watercraft make up only 7 percent of all boaters, they cause more than half of all boating accidents. They also dump about a […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Plumas lake poisoned despite civil disobedience
The California Department of Fish and Game poisoned Lake Davis despite a last-minute barrage of legal assaults and pre-dawn civil disobedience hours before the Oct. 15 treatment occurred. A week after pumping Nusyn-Noxfish and powdered rotenone into the lake north of Lake Tahoe, state officials had collected 15 tons of dead fish, including an 18-pound […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Serious trouble for snow geese
The skies over Midwestern states will be dotted white this fall by snow geese moving south for the winter. But many biologists have concluded that the birds are too prolific for their own good. The goose population has skyrocketed over the past 30 years, up from 750,000 in 1969 to almost 3 million today. As […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
The Wayward West
Patrick Shipsey wanted to take a stand against the folly of Oregon’s “open range” law. It allows ranchers to let their cattle roam and forces property owners to build fences if they want to keep them out (HCN, 11/25/96). Shipsey killed 11 of his neighbor’s cows after they wandered onto his property once too often. […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Bison killing goes inside
Rangers in Yellowstone National Park have permission from park brass to shoot bull bison headed out of the park this winter. It is the first time in decades that rangers may, as a matter of policy, kill wildlife they are charged with protecting. Park managers say the change is intended to control disease, rather than […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Taxpayers subsidize cheap vacations
In one of the most beautiful – and affluent – parts of central Idaho, 182 cabins on the Sawtooth National Forest have for decades been the best real estate bargain around. Many of the cabins are in stunning locations like Petit Lake, a remote body of water at the northern tier of the 2.1 million-acre […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Heard around the West
If your product is ostrich and emu and you call your Missoula, Mont., business the Alternative Meat Market, it just makes sense to try to send some un-beef steaks directly to the White House, right? Right, though marketer Kim Mecca first found herself trapped in switchboard limbo. Finally she connected with White House chief usher […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Rail merger brings delays, derailments
Last year’s merger between the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads was supposed to create a 35,000-mile transportation system with greatly improved service west of the Mississippi River (HCN, 8/5/96). But shippers are complaining that they’re losing millions of dollars because of bad service from UP, now the nation’s largest railroad. Service is so bad […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Cows get marching orders
Tucson environmentalists beat stream-loving bovines
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
On a Montana ranch, big game and big problems
DARBY, Mont. – It’s almost September, and dozens of “shooter bulls” have been turned into the shooting enclosure of Big Velvet Elk Ranch, just south of here, in western Montana’s Bitterroot Valley. Ranch owner Len Wallace has booked 80 clients for the fall and every one of them is going to shoot a trophy elk, […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Y2Y: A vast concept gets a hearing
WATERTON, Canada – The irony wasn’t lost on anyone attending the Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) conference in Waterton/Glacier International Peace Park Oct. 2-5. As some 300 environmentalists, wildlife biologists, federal, state and provincial employees and Native North Americans met, mountain goats scavenged for garbage in the heart of town and three grizzly bears munched on […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Dear friends
El Nino 1, Denver 0 The Denver area’s horrendous weekend of Oct. 24-26 began with blowing snow and didn’t quit until some 21 inches had fallen. The storm spared the western half of Colorado and most ski areas, but 10 people in the eastern part of the state, as well as livestock, died in the […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Reclaiming a lost canyon
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – The first time Phil Pennington saw Glen Canyon was in June of 1961, from the window of a search plane. A graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, Pennington and a handful of university hiking club members had come to southern Utah to backpack in the canyonlands. A few […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
A tale of two rivers: The desert empire and the mountain
“We’ve done our best and worst and a lot of inattentive average work in settling this our Western place.” – Colorado Justice Greg Hobbs, at Bishop’s Lodge 1997 “It would be quite a remote period before (the Upper Colorado Basin) would be developed – 50 or 100 or possibly 200 years.” – Delph Carpenter, testifying […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Note: this front-page essay introduces this issue’s two feature stories: “A tale of two rivers: The desert empire and the mountain” and “Reclaiming a lost canyon.” The proposal to drain Lake Powell is exhilarating. Not because it is necessarily a good idea. That remains to be seen. The proposal is exhilarating because it means democracy […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Water project creates bad precedent
Dear HCN, Heather McGregor’s article on the proposed sale of the Collbran reclamation project does a good job of making a complex dispute understandable (HCN, 9/15/97). Nonetheless, there are a couple of points in the article I need to address. I represent a dozen western Colorado, regional and national environmental groups, as well as the […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Humans are more dangerous
Dear HCN, I am writing in response to your article, “A Colorado reality check: lions roam and kill” (HCN, 8/4/97). The article draws attention to two mountain lion attacks that took place during July in Colorado. While everyone would agree these attacks are tragic, your story, and the rather melodramatic headline, draws too much attention […]