Lawyers, get ready: People can use the Endangered Species Act to sue the federal government for protecting species too much, not just too little, ruled the U.S. Supreme Court March 19. Now, ranchers, farmers and developers may be encouraged to do what environmentalists have been doing for two decades – demand their day in court. […]
ESA ruling: More sound than fury
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Dear Friends
Plaudits for the Poppers Frank and Deborah Popper are the mom-and-pop Darth Vaders of the Great Plains. The scholars from New Jersey coined “Buffalo Commons” to describe the turn they want the depopulated region to take. Harsh feelings against the Rutgers University-based pair will not be softened by the American Geographical Society, which recently awarded […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Yellowstone’s ‘geyser guy’ was one of the park’s best friends
In the spray of Old Faithful, in the shimmer of heat within Yellowstone’s turquoise pools, in the steam rolling through the pines, Rick Hutchinson looks back at us. Rick was Yellowstone’s geyser guy, a geologist who was the foremost authority on the world’s foremost collection of geysers and hot springs. I say “was.” But I […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Heard around the West
Spring is here. We know, not because our boots sport two-inch mud platforms after a step outdoors or because sunny mornings tend to mutate into dramatic whiteouts, but because news from around the West seems to zero in on the human body: in the classroom, in the buff and in the rough. The student story […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
This rancher wants to stay
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Although other ranchers in the preserve have said they might sell their land and grazing allotments to a land trust or foundation, Rob Blair says he won’t. His family first settled here in 1913, and he hopes that one of his three children will someday […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
The Mojave National Preserve: 1.4 million acres of contradictions
Note: this story accompanies another, similar feature story in this issue. CIMA, Calif. – Like most of her neighbors, Irene Ausmus never wanted the East Mojave Desert to become a national preserve, let alone the national park that environmentalists first wanted. “We live out here because we don’t want people bothering us,” says the 64-year-old […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
A miner turns host
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Jerry Freeman, owner of the tiny town of Nipton, population less than 50, is one of the few residents of the East Mojave poised to benefit from a tourist economy: Jerry Freeman: “I first came out here in the 1950s to stake some claims when […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Let’s ‘work with the situation’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Gerry Rankin moved from Salt Lake City to Big Water, Utah, pop. 350, more than six years ago. When she isn’t teaching at the town’s only school, she is the mayor of the town, which lies just a few miles west of Lake Powell. […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
‘This monument was just plain stupid’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Roger Holland, 52, is a Kanab town councilman, a part-time rancher and a mining consultant. He has done geological surveys on the Kaiparowits Plateau within the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Roger Holland: “This monument was just plain stupid; the president did it to keep […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
A proud and defiant native
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Though as a child she lived in Idaho and for a while in Tooele, Utah, Garfield County Commissioner Louise Liston has always considered her birthplace, Escalante, home. Before becoming a commissioner 10 years ago, Liston taught in a one-room school in the town of […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast
The president’s new monument forces southern Utah to face its tourism future.
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
‘Road warriors’ spread out over Utah
The pink line drawn on the topo map looks like a small finger poked into the close contour lines of Utah’s Deep Creek Mountains. My job as a “road warrior” for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance was to find this jeep road, if it still existed in the BLM wilderness study area, follow it as […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Dave Foreman sparks wilderness drive
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. “The Great Basin is a landscape that has always called to my soul,” says Dave Foreman. “Nowhere do we see better classic wilderness than in the Great Basin.” A founder and leader of […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Loggers sued for fatal landslide
When a 10-year-old clearcut let loose a torrent of mud and debris last November, killing four people and obliterating a house in Douglas County, Ore., some said logging caused the tragedy (HCN, 12/23/96). Now the victims’ families are taking that claim to court with an $11.3 million lawsuit against the two companies that owned and […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Coyotes could get culled
For the last decade, biologist Alan Clark has watched the number of endangered Columbian white-tailed deer decline at a national wildlife refuge dedicated to protecting them. Now, with only 60 deer surviving on a 2,000-acre section of the southwestern Washington refuge – half the number there should be – Clark says the situation is critical. […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Planes beat out quiet
After hearing the complaints of air tour operators, the Federal Aviation Administration recently delayed setting up new flight-free zones over the Grand Canyon for another year. Critics blasted the postponement, which came 10 months after President Clinton ordered an immediate reduction of noise at the park. The FAA is trying to shrug off the National […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
BLM braces for Mormon pioneers
A million people – more than double Wyoming’s population – are expected to visit the state’s portion of the 150-year-old Mormon Pioneer Trail this spring and summer. The impending stampede has the Bureau of Land Management planning temporary closure of some trail sections. “At this point nobody knows the size of the elephant,” says BLM […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Founding father challenges his movement
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – On the surface, everything seemed under control at the Western States Coalition Summit VII held here last November. The wise-use movement’s leaders delivered the sermons, and the crowd of 300 responded with well-timed murmurs, hand-clapping and even outright whoops of delight. Yet, behind the scenes, the cracks of a movement […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Owls and subdivisions clash near Tucson
TUCSON, Ariz. – Some human residents of the desert on the edge of this city grind their teeth when they hear the single-note call of a cactus ferruginous pygmy owl. The tiny owl, which lives in saguaro cacti and ironwood trees surrounding their houses, sounds a monotonous whistle that irritates people so they feel like […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
National groups object to grassroots power in D.C.
The Quincy Library Group has been toasted from the Sierra Nevada to Pennsylvania Avenue, its grassroots plan to manage 2.5 million acres of national forest land hailed as a win-win for the ecosystem and for the local economy. But when Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif., introduced legislation Feb. 27, to make the plan federal law, 19 […]