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,” […]
Great Old Broads for Wilderness
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 […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Montana Environmental Information Center
Members and friends of the Montana Environmental Information Center will rendezvous in the Bitterroot Valley Saturday, Sept. 13, to exchange stories and revitalize. The gathering at the Teller Wildlife Refuge near Corvallis, Mont., will include workshops on transportation, weeds and the proposed gold mine near Lincoln. All are welcome. For information, call 406/443-2520. This article […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Trailfest 1997
Hikers and trail activists will converge on Vail, Colo., Sept. 6-7 for a Continental Divide Trail Alliance conference, Trailfest 1997. There will be workshops and outdoor demonstrations about the 3,100-mile trail, which was designated a National Scenic Trail nearly 20 years ago, but which still needs work to connect trekkers from Canada to southern New […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Quincy Library Group
Michael Jackson, co-founder of the Quincy Library Group, known for its controversial plan for northern California forests, will speak in Olathe, Colo., Sept. 5. The Delta/Montrose Public Lands Partnership, a coalition similar to the Quincy Group, is hosting environmental attorney Jackson, who will speak at 2 p.m. at the Olathe Community Center and participate in […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Close those roads
Up Stevens Gulch near Paonia, Colo., some Coloradans want to drive all-terrain vehicles on logging roads the Forest Service once promised it would close off. Now, the agency is offering two more timber sales, which means even more road construction, and then more ATVs. The Colorado Wildlife Federation, Colorado Environmental Coalition and the Western Slope […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Fixing Fish Creek
The past 50 years have not been kind to Mount Hood National Forest’s Fish Creek watershed. In the past two years alone, over 200 landslides have ravaged its 30,000 acres, where unstable slopes have been made even weaker by decades of logging and road building. Now, with the forest at 60 percent of its original […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Fleeting forests
For more than two decades, Utah wilderness advocates have been chanting, “5.7! 5.7!” Now, a similar cry is rising in Idaho: “8 million! 8 million!” There are 8 million acres of unprotected roadless land in Idaho’s national forests, according to Idaho’s Vanishing Wild Lands, a report by the Wilderness Society. The number is falling fast. […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Abnormal amphibians
Have you ever been mucking about in the local swamp and found a one-eyed frog or a five-legged salamander? If you have, you’re not alone. In the last decade, malformed amphibians have turned up in about a dozen states around the country, including Washington, Oregon, California and North Dakota. Herpetologists, the scientists who study amphibians […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Something fishy about this pollution
Industrial waste. Raw sewage. Atlantic salmon. One of those wasn’t considered an environmental threat until recently. Environmentalists from Washington charge that escapees from large floating salmon farms in Puget Sound should be regulated just like factory and sewage-plant discharges. They say Atlantic salmon raised in hatcheries compete with wild stocks, spread diseases through accumulated wastes […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
The Taylor Ranch downsizes
In a surprise development, Zachary Taylor, owner of the controversial 121-square-mile Taylor Ranch in southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley, sold one-third of the property to an undisclosed buyer in early August. Since 1993, the state of Colorado and some valley groups have looked for money to purchase the ranch, which Taylor has been intensively logging […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Crossing borders to save hawks
For more than a decade, biologist Brian Woodbridge watched hundreds of Swainson’s hawks raise their young in the fields of Butte Valley in northern California. Each fall, the birds headed south, but Woodbridge spotted a strange pattern. “I noticed that some years a lot more adults returned from migration than others,” he says. “That really […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
The Wayward West
When membership and funds drop, most nonprofits pinch, prune and make minor adjustments. Greenpeace USA crashed. In early August, the organization announced it would close each of its 10 regional offices, lay off over 300 employees, end its neighborhood canvass and concentrate only on its climate change and logging campaigns. Employees who work on less […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Floods hammer Southwest
A moving wall of water following a severe thunderstorm Aug. 10 forced residents and tourists in a Havasupai Indian village outside Grand Canyon National Park to evacuate. Two days later, thunderstorms southeast of Page, Ariz., near Glen Canyon Dam, pushed a flash flood down a slot canyon, where it drowned 11 hikers. “It was chocolate […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Injunction shakes forests
Federal judges sided with environmentalists in July, ruling that the U.S. Forest Service has failed to make good on its promise to protect endangered species in Southwestern forests and streamside areas. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a six-week ban on over 20 timber sales and barred grazing on 11 Southwestern […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
An Idaho daily breaches the Northwest’s silence over tearing down dams
The Idaho Statesman likes to think its editorials are felt far beyond the modestly populated Boise metropolitan area in southwestern Idaho where the paper is headquartered. We were never sure just how far, however, until recently. That’s when the six members of the editorial board, which includes the publisher, top editors and a community representative, […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Comment on the Idaho Statesman’s editorial series
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to an essay, “An Idaho daily breaches the Northwest’s silence over tearing down dams.” The Idaho Statesman’s July editorial series on saving salmon signals that this long-unresolved issue in Pacific Northwest politics has become critical. The Statesman’s support for a radical […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Heard around the West
Now people all over the country, if not the world, refer to it as the “sunscreen speech”: “Wear sunscreen” it begins. … “Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth … Do one thing every day that scares you … Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly … Get to […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Prairie dogs tunnel their way to a military stalemate
HELENA, Mont. – The Montana Army National Guard has stood ready when called upon to fight any foe. Then it met the prairie dog. The rodents, known for their intricate tunneling, have expanded their stronghold here at Fort Harrison, threatening underground power lines and communications systems. The guard would like to take action, but it’s […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
A nuclear dump proposal rouses Utah
Over the past two decades, Steve Erickson has spent many days in his aged truck visiting the scattered ranches and dry valleys of Utah’s West Desert. “People have an image of this area as a dried-up lake bed,” says the peace activist, but to him, “it’s a beautiful place.” Erickson has fought dozens of schemes […]