Eight-legged frogs give biologists the willies. They say the deformed amphibians – like canaries in a mine – indicate environmental problems that could affect the two-legged as well. So when extra-legged Pacific tree frogs surfaced in three westside Oregon communities last summer, researchers took notice. No one knew what to make of the phenomenon until […]
Frogs sport too many legs
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
A Utah vendetta
When some members of the Utah Legislature get mad, they try to get even. A rural Utah lawmaker, furious at actor Robert Redford’s support of the state’s new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, introduced a resolution recently to turn Redford’s Sundance resort into a wilderness. “Mr. Redford has made a tremendous amount of money off what […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Cows aren’t “wild and scenic’
For the second time in six months, a federal judge has slammed grazing on public lands. Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Ancer Haggerty ruled that grazing was a “non-point source” of pollution, forcing Oregon cattlemen to comply with the federal Clean Water Act (HCN, 10/28/96). Now, he’s ordered cattle off parts of southeastern Oregon’s […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Don’t hail this new lord
Dear HCN, When Jon Christensen writes about the new lord of the West who will replace the old lords of extraction (HCN, 12/23/96), it is clear what the name of this new lord is: Midas! Under the magic touch of the recreation industry, public lands will turn to gold. Nature as ATV commercials, ecosystems as […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Money: the real political organizer
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Now about this soft money business. As a descriptive term, “soft money” isn’t. It’s vague, if not downright misleading, considering that “soft money” is no softer than any other money. So let’s approach the subject from another perspective, not as an abstract “issue,” but as a case study of a real, living, […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Cars and wilderness collide on a rim
Separating Oregon and Idaho, Hells Canyon is so vast between rim and river it forms two distinct climates. The Snake River that shaped it is gathered from 30 rivers crossing five states; its gorge is the deepest cut by a river in North America. Standing on the wind-carved Oregon side of Hells Canyon eye-to-eye with […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Judge tells feds to list and protect
In a slap at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a federal judge ordered the agency March 14 to list four species as endangered and to set aside the most important habitat for them and two others already listed. District Judge Roger Strand chided the service for having repeatedly missed congressionally imposed deadlines under the […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
ESA ruling: More sound than fury
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. […]
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 […]