The second week of April is a brutal time to drive through Wyoming; windblown blizzards coat everything with ice. But that’s what 70 people in Cheyenne did last spring to view my photographic safari about the return of wolves to Wyoming and Montana. I was prepared for more than brutal weather. While antagonism toward wolves […]
Will Wyoming warm to wolves?
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
The buffalo underground: Now it can be told
WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont. – Shortly after last New Year’s Day, Vickie Dyar’s cat started acting strangely. When the gift-store owner stepped into the frigid air to investigate, she saw deep tracks leading through the deep snow toward a small barn near the house. As Dyar walked toward the barn, a bison, its magnificent black head […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Politics tangles with science
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. As bison pushed their way out of Yellowstone National Park last winter, Republican lawmakers from the surrounding states of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana blasted the Park Service for allowing the herd to get out of control. When the Park Service responded by citing a […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
One scientist’s forbidden fruit
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. “This is the tree that started this mess,” says Richard Keigley, kneeling for a closer look at the trunk of a scraggly juniper. The tree stands on a hillside above Mammoth, just inside the northern gate of Yellowstone National Park. Its base is as […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Is nature running too wild in Yellowstone?
It’s June 5, and spring is hitting hard in Montana’s Paradise Valley. The Yellowstone River is over its banks. Water the color of creamed coffee washes around streamside cottonwoods and drowns fence posts. Storm clouds over the snow-heavy high country mean there’s more on the way. I’m riding shotgun with Richard Keigley, an ecologist with […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Feds take on a sneaky species
Two years ago, Pat Mehlhop waded through a willow thicket on the shore of Elephant Butte Reservoir in southern New Mexico, carrying a 20-foot-long pole with a mirror attached to one end. The ecologist with the New Mexico Natural Heritage Program was in search of what has become a rarity along the state’s waterways: the […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Agencies dunk endangered songbird
ROOSEVELT LAKE, Ariz. – A tall stand of Asian salt-cedars next to a man-made reservoir is the last place anyone would expect to find colonies of one of America’s most endangered bird species. But that’s exactly where several southwestern willow flycatchers were flitting on a warm mid-June afternoon. Less than six inches tall and pale […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Bigger might be better for Utah’s parks
Lockhart Basin isn’t part of southern Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, but activists and park managers are saying it should be. Just outside the park’s eastern boundaries, the basin will soon be home to a drilling rig from Legacy Energy Corp., which has a permit from the Bureau of Land Management to explore for oil. Opponents […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
For sale: a Colorado water district – maybe
COLLBRAN, Colo. – At first, it seemed simple: The federal government would sell its small irrigation projects to the local water conservancy districts that use them. The idea sprang from Vice President Al Gore’s mandate to reduce federal bureaucracy. But officials in three Western states are learning that purchases can turn nasty when they go […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Wet summer a bust for firefighters
MISSOULA, Mont. – Across the West it’s been a good year for rain and a bad one for firefighters. Heavy snows, spring rains and little dry lightning have made this fire season a bust so far. In the Northern Rockies area, the Forest Service says 1,052 fires had burned less than 10,000 acres by Aug. […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Dear friends
“Depressing … diligent” Last spring we asked you to “give us a piece of your mind” by filling out our ninth annual reader survey. We asked for it and you delivered: 1,820 replies (10 percent of the paper’s readers) telling us what you liked, what you thought stepped over the line, what other newspapers and […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Note: this front-page essay introduces this issue’s feature story. In June 1986, Max Peterson, then chief of the Forest Service, went to Yellowstone National Park. In the course of his speech, he mentioned how nice it was to be in Montana. Unfortunately, he was standing in Wyoming. The press hooted. We shouldn’t have. It’s a […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Speaking up for Summo
Dear HCN, Team Summo, as you refer to us in your recent issue (HCN, 6/23/97), feels an obligation to respond to your article which focuses on us and our exploration and mine development activities in the central West. Gerald Nailor has a colorful past which lends itself well to the human interest side of Ms. […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
A South Dakotan protests
A South Dakotan protests Dear HCN, I found Paul Krza’s article on Wyoming in the July 7 issue fascinating, since I recently saw some of the things he discussed – the instant boom towns, the huge trailer parks, the endless coal trains, the deserted towns in the rural areas. But will Wyoming “become more like […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
No hand-wringing here
No hand-wringing here Dear HCN, I read with some dismay your front-page article by Paul Krza (HCN, 7/7/97). I feel that this was a very negative slant on our state. Mr. Krza is a very negative third-generation Wyomingite. I am also a third-generation Wyomingite, with both of my grandfathers in Wyoming before the turn of […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
A High Plains rejoinder
Dear HCN, Jeffery Smith’s plaintive essay, “Sensory Deprivation on the High Plains’ (HCN, 7/7/97), reflects what Patrick Jobes has called the “deconstructing” of Western communities. In his decade-long study of demographic trends in the Gallatin Valley of Montana, Jobes found that newcomers had, on average, moved four times in the past decade. “Newcomers have a […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
American Birding Association
To encourage young people interested in wildlife and conservation, the American Birding Association is sponsoring the Young Birder of the Year Competition, with lots of prizes, beginning at the end of September. In this year-long contest, kids 10 to 18 years old will be asked to write two essays, and keep a field notebook of […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Connections
The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative has a mission: to connect 18,000 miles of wildlife corridors and protect biodiversity for an area that is larger than most states. The Connections conference, from Oct. 2-5 in Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park, includes speakers Dave Foreman, current chairman of the Wildlands Project, and Colleen McCrory, a director […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Great Old Broads for Wilderness
You don’t have to be old or a broad to attend the Great Old Broads for Wilderness Annual Broadwalk and Conference Sept. 29-Oct. 5, but it helps to be feisty. The Boulder, Colo.-based environmental nonprofit, started by women over 45, is meeting in southern Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument this year. After a five-day “Broadwalk,” […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Waterton-Glacier International Writers Workshop
For people interested in writing about nature and conservation, the Waterton-Glacier International Writers Workshop Sept. 25-27 features workshops and speakers such as John Rimel, publisher at Missoula’s Mountain Press, The Nature Conservancy’s Jim Mepham and many Canadian writers, including Candace Savage. There will also be backcountry hikes, lake cruises and trips to area ranches, watersheds […]