The U.S. government must respond this month to a citizens’ petition accusing one of its Army bases of helping to dry up Arizona’s last free-flowing river, the San Pedro (HCN, 6/12/95). The river boasts North America’s largest surviving expanse of cottonwood and willow forest and serves as a migratory coridor for many birds. The petition […]
Trade treaty may protect Arizona river
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
No nagging or preaching here
Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things John C. Ryan and Alan Thein Durning, Northwest Environment Watch, 1997. 86 pages, illus. $9.95 paperback. When was the last time you heard an environmentalist complain that we’re recycling too much? No street-corner shouter or mealymouthed apologist, John Ryan is the sober, credentialed research director of Seattle-based Northwest […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Heard around the West
When birds fall from the sky as thick as snowflakes and a stunned moose splays itself over the hood of a car, does this portend something … weird? First, the phenomenon of the falling web-footed grebes: 3,000 of them plummeted to the snow-covered fields of central Utah apparently believing they were dropping safely onto bodies […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Agency hopes fees will protect a crowded wilderness
Desolation Wilderness in eastern California is one of those places that doesn’t come close to living up to its name. Its beauty, some say, is only matched by its crowding. Thanks to its accessibility from San Francisco (three-and-a-half hours away), Sacramento (two hours away), and Lake Tahoe (just a few minutes away), the wilderness is […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Drug smuggler’s ranch falls into public lands
CLARK, Wyo. – Stewart Allen Bost had a dream, he told his drug ring buddies while smuggling more than three tons of cocaine into south Florida in 1986. He wanted to own a ranch in Wyoming. So after retiring from the drug trade, he bought a secluded riverfront spread here, then guarded it and his […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Ben Nighthorse Campbell: A U.S. senator who shoots from the hip
He improvises more than he calculates.
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Will an elusive cat evade federal listing?
When a southern Arizona rancher recently cornered a black-spotted beast the likes of which he’d never seen before, he shot it with his camera. Turns out he’d found a jaguar – the largest cat in the Western Hemisphere and an animal that’s been seen north of the Mexican border only a handful of times in […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Oregon governor says volunteers can save coho
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, an avid fly fisherman, has landed $30 million to restore coho salmon populations and clean up the state’s degraded streams. In late February, leaders of the legislature and the timber industry announced they would each chip in $15 million for the programs. With that, the Democratic governor ended an intense period […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Activist who survived bomb leaves a legacy
Judi Bari listened to a special call-in show on Mendocino County public radio Feb. 21, and said afterward that it sounded like a funeral eulogy – her own. The Earth First! activist had hosted a weekly “Punch and Judi” public affairs show at the station for years. Now, dying from inoperable breast cancer that had […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Montana Legislature ‘swirlies’ to the right
HELENA, Mont. – Montana’s Republican-dominated Legislature has taken such a sharp turn to the right, its critics say, that it will take moderate Republican Gov. Marc Racicot to keep it from going off the deep end. A slew of bills have been introduced that would weaken environmental protection or make citizen redress more difficult. A […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Dear friends
Like a moth Idaho storyteller and folk singer Rosalie Sorrels sang at Paonia’s Paradise (movie) Theater last week, and thanks to two Stupid Band sound engineers from Montrose, Colo., her voice was clear and powerful. Yet the setting was as intimate as a cabaret, and the audience of 70 or so seemed entranced. Sorrels sings […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
A Chicago bank will try to invigorate Willapa Bay
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. After spending nearly two years in the early 1990s scouting Washington’s Willapa Bay for entrepreneurs with plausible ideas for sustainable businesses, Alana Probst of Ecotrust found more than a dozen. But few local financial institutions were willing to make high-risk loans, and the chances […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
An optimistic man
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Spencer Beebe is the founder of the nonprofit Ecotrust, based in Portland, Oregon. Spencer Beebe: “To think that we can destroy the planet is a kind of backhanded pride. It reflects an inflated sense of our own importance and a contempt for the power […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Defender of fish
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Les Clark has fished the lower Columbia and Willapa Bay for 52 years. He is a third-generation gillnetter and his sons are the fourth. Les Clark: “When we first moved here, paper mills dumped everything in the Columbia River. It finally got so bad […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
A newsman’s overview of Willapa
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. For five years editor Matt Winters has followed the efforts of the nonprofit Willapa Alliance for the Chinook Observer, based in Long Beach, Wash. Matt Winters: “Economic development is long-term and hard to nail down sometimes. Groups like the Willapa Alliance can work for […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
A 1,000-year plan for Willapa Bay
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Alana Probst works for the nonprofit Ecotrust and looks for ways a community can create sustainable businesses. Alana Probst: “When I worked in Eugene, Ore., in the early ’80s, I learned the hard way that recruiting industry can be a nightmare. The whole city […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Working the Watershed
Washington’s Willapa Alliance melds science, economic development and plenty of time to plot the restoration of a battered coastal ecosystem
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Let ranches equal water
Dear HCN, I want to offer what I hope people will perceive to be a constructive alternative to the controversial Animas-La Plata dam project. The solution is simple: Purchase ranches in southwest Colorado and give them to the two Ute tribes and their members (HCN, 11/11/96). Most ranches come with significant, high-priority water rights. The […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
We should be making public lands whole
Dear HCN, I’m fed up with members of Congress who claim that the government doesn’t have the money to do right by our national lands. Steve Stuebner’s story on the threatened subdivision inside Idaho’s Sawtooth National Recreation Area is a prime example of how our elected leaders are letting us down (HCN, 12/9/96). Each year […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Condos, in any case
Dear HCN, The report by Steve Stuebner on subdivisions in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Idaho (HCN, 12/9/96) included one remark that requires some commentary. Stuebner said reducing cattle grazing along streams to protect salmon habitat may result in the subdivision of private ranchland, and condos are worse than cows – aren’t they? I […]