City sprawl has swallowed up rural communities; a revised edition of Saving America’s Countryside: A Guide to Rural Conservation shows how local action can stave off urbanization. Written by Samuel N. Stokes, A. Elizabeth Watson, and Shelley S. Mastran, the book offers everything from well-honed ideas for organizing residents to sample drafts of easements designed […]
Keeping rural American rural
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
It’s a big bird
Eleven California condors are cruising the skies over Grand Canyon all the way to Moab, Utah, after being released this year in northern Arizona. Biologists with the California Condor Recovery Project suggest bird-watchers travel Highway 89A north of the Grand Canyon between Lee’s Ferry and House Rock Valley Road to see the carrion-eaters. Pull-out parking […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Chemicals aren’t the only answer
Your french fries were probably soaked in chemicals, warns the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, since potatoes are some of the most treated crops in the Northwest. But there are ways to reduce chemical use, such as rotating crops, and that’s just one of the messages the coalition hopes to convey Oct. 11 in […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Just in time for the budget requests
Forest Service mismanagement is one thing many environmentalists, ranchers and loggers agree is a problem. Now the Government Accounting Office has chimed in with a July 31 report to Congress that says the Forest Service’s decision-making culture is one of “indifference toward accountability.” The agency’s inability to make timely decisions costs taxpayers millions of dollars […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Vandals didn’t silence the past
A recent vandal attack in central Oregon’s Warm Springs Indian reservation left the three tribes that make up the reservation at a loss for words. Literally. In early August, two 12-year-old boys broke into the trailer that houses the reservation’s heritage program and caused over $10,000 in damage. What hurt the most was the destruction […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Trees refuse to croak
When Forest Service officials approved logging on 10,000 acres of Idaho’s Payette National Forest under the salvage logging rider in 1995, they said the trees had been killed by a 1994 wildfire or bark beetles. Now, they admit “dead” was an overstatement. “People may see what appear to be green, healthy trees removed from the […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Farmland wins a round
The Oregon Supreme Court has given state agriculture interests reason to celebrate. Last month the court upheld the state’s right to enforce strict rules against nonagricultural uses of farmland. That means a lot to farmers in western Oregon’s Willamette Valley, home to 70 percent of the state’s population as well as to its richest soil. […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
The drilling proceeds
The Bureau of Land Management has given Conoco Inc. the go-ahead to drill for oil in southern Utah’s new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Agency officials say finding oil is a long shot, and Conoco will probably abandon the area. Environmentalists retort that the BLM is playing dangerous games with a national jewel. Earlier this month, […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Microbes for sale here
As military bands, rangers on horseback and Vice President Al Gore marked Yellowstone National Park’s 125th anniversary in August, park officials signed a contract that formally opened the park’s famous hot springs to bioprospecting. The deal allows San Diego-based Diversa Corp. to collect samples of hot-water microbes, called thermophiles, in exchange for $175,000 over five […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
The Wayward West
After five years of ambivalence, the Animal Damage Control unit has changed its name. The U.S. Department of Agriculture agency, whose main job is to kill or remove animals such as coyotes that prey on livestock, is returning to its 1948 handle, Wildlife Services. According to a spokesman, the name change reflects a shift in […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
The writer was cynical
Dear HCN, I find the tone of Stephen Lyons’ essay, “How the writer learned he is not very spiritual,” offensive due to its cynicism (HCN, 8/18/97). Apparently all the writer did was look on the surface of things. He gives no indication of having tried to talk with a local person involved in healing or […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Too little and too late
Dear HCN, A little comment about your story on the sacred and profane colliding in the West (HCN, 5/26/97). I’m old enough to remember that when the Bureau of Reclamation was promoting Glen Canyon Dam and the resulting reservoir, which it called the “Jewel of the Colorado,” the Bureau strongly argued that now, people would […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Stop the assaults on wilderness
Dear HCN, Scott Stouder’s article about extending a road on the rim of Hells Canyon brought back memories (HCN, 4/14/97). I guided river trips in Hells Canyon, backpacked through the Oregon-side wilderness areas, and taught school in Halfway, Ore., in the early “70s. His article illustrated the continuous assault on wilderness values throughout the West […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Humility is the heart of park’s approach
Dear HCN, One of the few things Greg Hanscom got right in his article on Yellowstone’s Northern Range (HCN, 9/15/97) is that politics is running the show, and that “range managers, wise-users and Republican lawmakers are all ears’ for any criticism of natural regulation. Unfortunately, he fell into the critics’ trap and declared them the […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
We can’t trust the BLM
Dear HCN, Columnist Jon Margolis concludes that designation of the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was not a “model of cooperative federalism. Consultation with the state was non-existent, …” ” (HCN, 9/1/97). If President Clinton had consulted with the state before issuing his proclamation, he would have run up against a monolithic stonewall of resistance […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
A cleanup project can’t get going
In 1969, when the last container of radioactive waste from the Rocky Flats bomb factory in Colorado was buried at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, no one really knew what was stored underground in the one-acre landfill. Federal officials knew generally what filled the unlined pit, created by excavating 20 feet down to a solid […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
A town with a desert heart
TORTOLITA, Ariz. – The nerve center of this brand-new town is not a shopping mall, health resort or golf club. It’s 21 square miles of saguaro, palo verde, cholla and ironwood trees, packed so tightly together that you can’t walk through them without getting jabbed. A 30-minute drive northwest of Tucson, this is some of […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Park may get trashy neighbor
EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Calif. – Once home to 4,000 people and the largest iron ore mine west of the Mississippi, this desert community now features boarded-up tract homes. Yet every five blocks or so a few houses show signs of life, and down one street, prisoners in orange jumpsuits have just finished building a new playground. […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
‘Greens’ bulldoze a conservation effort
Karla Player has seen a lot of changes in the eight years she’s lived in Springdale, Utah. Each summer, more than 2 million people pass through this dusty gateway town of 300 on their way to Zion National Park. Most visitors spend just a few hours here, though lately, people are coming to stay. “You […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Dear Friends
The gardener’s payoff The best thing about the rain that continually pelted the West this summer is that gardens grew to gargantuan size. Now they’re flooding larders with zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, late corn, patty pan squash, calendula blooms to color a salad, dill and much, much more. This is the reward we reap, not by […]