Idaho environmentalists say that while the Senate debated cutting subsidies for logging in September, the Forest Service withheld politically damaging evidence that logging on steep slopes harms forests and native fish. After heavy rains triggered 905 massive mudslides during the winter of 1995-96 on the Clearwater National Forest in central Idaho, agency officials ordered an […]
Activists wade through mudslides
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Monumental conflict continues
The saying, “time heals all wounds,” may not apply to Utah, at least not to its politicians. Though more than a year has passed since President Clinton created the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, the state’s congressional delegation continues to try to dismantle it. Republican Rep. Jim Hansen told the Salt […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
The Wayward West
The Sierra Club finally has decided to take a stand on the touchy issue of immigration. The club currently has a neutral policy, but in March, members will be asked to vote on endorsing a drastic reduction in immigration. Pushing for this switch are “restrictionists’ who say that all environmental issues hinge on population size, […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Germany targets U.S. airspace
The German Air Force has trained quietly over the American Southwest for 30 years. Now, a proposed bombing range for German planes has attracted the ire of ranchers and environmentalists. The U.S. Air Force, which manages the training program, wants to put the targets on part of the McGregor Range in southern New Mexico. The […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Luftwaffe, go home
The noise began as an explosion, then quickly matured into the scream of engines. Racing across the sky, provenance obscured by speed, the jet rocketed away, leaving the blast echoing in my skull like a loose tire iron. Count me among the 13 percent of residents in areas of rural New Mexico, Texas and Arizona […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Grizzlies and the male animal
The crowd of several hundred area residents who gathered in a school auditorium in Salmon, Idaho, recently was almost totally united in its opposition to the proposal. No one wanted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to introduce some 25 subadult grizzly bears into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness on the Idaho-Montana border over a several year […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Heard around the West
Pity poor Joe Camel, the billboard cigarette huckster now out of a job. “Cancer-mongering just ain’t the same without Joe Camel,” laments Eric Scigliano in the Seattle Weekly. But thanks to the e-mail grapevine, folks in Washington state have come up with new careers for the cool spokes-cartoon. Our favorite: Filling potholes with tar from […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
River stretch ignites a fight
It’s a historic irony that the most pristine stretch of Columbia River real estate was protected from development by bomb-making at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Military patrols made sure no one got close. These days, anglers can fish freely for salmon on the Hanford Reach, a 51-mile stretch of river that boils past the chalky […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Locals rally against logging
Northern New Mexico’s Chama Valley is the last place to expect a battle over a logging operation. The valley is full of people who for generations have harvested the resources of the land. But in July, that started changing when hundreds of “No Trespassing” signs went up on the thickly forested mountains that are part […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
A deal is no longer a deal in Washington
WASHINGTON, D.C. – There was never a whole lot of certainty in these parts, but not long ago you could count on a couple of things. One was that a deal was a deal. The other was that once you had killed something, it stayed dead. No longer. Remember Bob Dole’s “takings” bill, the one […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Salmon says no bears, no way
SALMON, Idaho – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal to reintroduce grizzly bears to the Northern Rockies got a tense reception at a public hearing in Salmon, Idaho, Oct. 8. For more than four hours, speakers blasted the plan before an audience of 200, saying grizzlies have no place in Idaho. At issue is […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Snowmobiles remain an issue
Yellowstone is one of the few national parks in the world where snowmobiling is allowed, and about 100,000 people a year take advantage of that fact. But there has never been a formal study of how the noisy, smelly machines affect the park and its wildlife. That could change next year. The Fund for Animals, […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Dear Friends
Thinking out loud Patricia Nelson Limerick, the bane of the Old West’s historians – those (usually) white men who said white folks brought civilization as they rolled over a mostly empty, heathenish continent – came to Grand Junction, Colo., recently. During the afternoon she talked informally with members of the Western Colorado Congress, a coalition […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Dam deconstruction – what’s next?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Here are some of the other dams under attack throughout the West: Elwha River dams, Olympic Peninsula, Washington Built decades ago, these two dams have nearly destroyed what was once, given the host river’s size, a salmon fishery nonpareil. Estimates of the Elwha ancestral […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Deconstructing the age of dams
In the early fall of 1991, I got a call from a cheery young man named Bob Herkert, who introduced himself as the field manager for the California Rice Industry Association. He wanted to invite me on a “good will” tour of the Sacramento Valley rice-growing region, where he said I would see two salmon-blocking […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Leaning Into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West
Whenever I fill out a form that asks me to list my occupation, I put down “farmer,” the same word I use when I’m asked my husband’s occupation. The following is a true story: The man reading the form says, “Your husband is a farmer?” “Yes, my husband and I are farmers,” I reply. “You […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Big stink over northern pike
A battle over poisoning Lake Davis to rid it of non-native northern pike appears headed for a shoreline showdown. The courts have endorsed a California Department of Fish and Game plan to poison the lake 70 miles north of Lake Tahoe. A Plumas County ordinance is now one of the last obstacles, short of civil […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Rafters vs. fish
River outfitters and their supporters rallied in Stanley, Idaho, Sept. 23 to say that the Forest Service had gone too far. Led by owners of The River Company, some 50 central Idaho residents protested the agency’s shutting down of the Salmon River. The agency has been periodically closing off parts of the river to floaters […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Flattened fauna need help
For decades, Route 93 between Missoula, Mont., and Glacier National Park has earned a reputation as a dangerous stretch of highway. A bumper sticker from the 1960s reads: “Pray for me, I drive 93.” Now it seems drivers aren’t the only ones in danger. Hundreds of western painted turtles that live in pothole wetlands are […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
The Wayward West
Margaret Reeb first made headlines by saying “no.” She is making them again by saying “yes.” Last May, the deal between the Clinton administration and the Crown Butte Mining Company – the administration would pay $65 million if the mining company agreed not to mine – was thrown into question. It turned out that Reeb […]