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 […]
A town with a desert heart
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 […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Excerpts from a New West dictionary
cal*i*for*ni*an (kal’ u forn’ yun) n. 1. resident of the state of California. 2. imprudent spender single-handedly responsible for inflated values of real property. [earlier form: Texan] en*dan*gered spe*cies (en dan’ grd spe’ sez) n. 1. every group that has had a representative address a public hearing in the West: “Ranchers, miners, etc.: We’re the […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Heard around the West
“Welcome hunters!” say the blaze-orange signs on stores in many rural Western towns. Out in the woods, the sentiment is not necessarily shared by other mammals. One bowhunter in Wyoming unexpectedly became prey himself, AP reports. A grizzly bear with two cubs nearby charged Greg Dolph, who thought to escape by climbing 15 feet into […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
How a foe saved the Quincy Library Group’s bacon
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Politics has always made strange bedfellows, but this one was stranger than most. One day last July, George Miller took Don Young into one of those rooms near the House Chamber and did him a favor. Well, OK, it was only sort of a favor. But Miller is a liberal California Democrat, […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
We’re much stronger together
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. “Charismatic,” “feisty,” “a bulldog,” and “non-stop talker” are just a few of the adjectives used to describe environmental attorney Michael Jackson. He has lived and worked in Quincy, Calif., for 20 years. Michael Jackson: “I’ve taken part in listing almost every salmon on the […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
I was always welcomed there
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Terry Terhaar worked for the nonprofit Pacific Rivers Council in 1995. She spent 10 months attending Quincy Library Group meetings. Before that, she was a regional vice president for the Sierra Club in northern California and Nevada. She is now a graduate student at […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
My experience with the Quincy group wasn’t positive
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Erin Noel grew up in a small town within the region the Quincy Library Group has staked out as its domain. She founded Forest Alert, which monitored the Lassen, El Dorado and Tahoe national forests. She now studies law at the University of California, […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
The stress was very heavy
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Rose Comstock is president of California Women in Timber. She also manages Clover Logging, which has shrunk from about 60 employees to two. The Barkley sale she refers to was a salvage-logging-rider sale that the timber firms on the QLG refused to bid on […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
We may be seeing the devolution of the environmental movement
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Undersecretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons is the presidential appointee to whom the chief of the Forest Service reports. Jim Lyons: “All these environmental groups have signed on against the Quincy Library Group bill because they object to legislating how the national forests are run. […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
QUINCY, Calif. – One requirement for belonging to the Quincy Library Group is a strong bladder. The group’s July 29 meeting – roughly its 50th since its 1993 founding – ran from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and while a few people came and a few people went, most of the 20 participants never left […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Putting wildlands back together
Dear HCN, As one of the founders and the current president of The Wildlands Project, I must respond to your article, “Foreman finds hope amid ecological rubble” (HCN, 8/4/97). At the end of the article you comment that Dave failed to describe how our reserve designs were to be implemented. You also asked about the […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Bring back the wild buffalo
Dear HCN, Thank you for publishing Dan Flores’ well-written cover essay, “The West that was, and the West that can be” (HCN, 8/18/97). But I must protest one huge glaring error: Mr. Flores says there are only 250,000 bison left, down from multiple millions. Wrong! There is not one bison truly alive today. Every single […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Jackson Hole tries “unnatural’ elk management
-Three, four, five. There are a lot of them!” says the driver of the minivan with Georgia plates parked beside the highway. Behind us, a screen of spruces hides the famous peaks of Grand Teton National Park. In front of us, on a sagebrush plain golden with June flowers, are the rich brown coats and […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
New facts about old fish
They have weathered volcanic eruptions and landslides, seen woolly mammoths come and go and outlived the dinosaurs. Now the Pacific Northwest’s white sturgeon are enduring the scrutiny of scientists who want to understand more about North America’s largest fish. The scientists working for Washington and Oregon have been tagging white sturgeon in the Columbia River […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Rid-a-Bird works too well
Rid-a-Bird, a two-man company in Wilton, Iowa, has been killing unwanted birds for over 40 years with the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval. But two dead raptors in Washington have called into question the company’s method of pest control. Rid-a-Bird’s product lures birds to a perch containing fenthion, a fatal nerve poison which paralyzes them. The […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Maps may save lives
Participants in an Oregon mapping project want to keep history from repeating itself. When five people were killed by landslides that hit their homes or cars in 1996, many observers blamed logging of steep slopes above the houses and highways. They said the Oregon Department of Forestry should have prevented the situation (HCN, 12/23/96). Defending […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Wolves take heavy toll in Montana
In the Tobacco Valley of northwest Montana, wolves killed at least 30 sheep in six weeks. One rancher lost 28 animals on a single night in June, prompting the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife to shell out its largest-ever wolf-kill reimbursement – $4,000. This was one of the worst wolf attacks on livestock in the West, […]