A jumble of changes at the nation’s land-management agencies leaves two top posts empty. The opening at the Bureau of Land Management will be filled temporarily by Sylvia Baca, a New Mexico native. Baca’s permanent job is as deputy assistant secretary for Land and Minerals Management, also in the Interior Department. She replaces Michael Dombeck, […]
Jobs open up in Washington
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Boats may get bounced
Personal watercraft, those zippy, grown-up toys with names like Jet Ski, Sea Doo and Wave Runner, may soon be banned from Lake Tahoe. Some members of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the California-Nevada coalition that governs local development, have recommended ridding the lake of them, and a decision on the controversial issue is expected Feb. […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Planning begins at the ballot box
Even though Wyoming locals lost a lawsuit to stop an 18-hole golf course and 600 homes near the town of Big Horn, they took revenge: They ousted one of the county commissioners who had allowed the new development. The Wyoming Supreme Court ruling concerned the Powderhorn, a golf course resort that will be built outside […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
A-LP makes a hit list
Colorado’s Animas-La Plata project, the controversial water development plan entangling two rivers, two tribes, and nearly every politician in the state (HCN, 11/11/96), has been named one of a dozen “corporate welfare” schemes on a Washington hit list. The list was announced by Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, chair of the House Budget Committee. His coalition […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Lost and found
When last summer’s fires scorched more than 4,700 acres in Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park, one of the park’s rare petroglyph panels, Battleship Rock, was damaged beyond repair. Vegetation surrounding the site burned so hot that the rock’s surface and its 1,000-year-old pecked designs fractured and flaked off. But the fire also revealed sites park […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Utahns fight over flights
A recent decision by a Utah county to permit backcountry helicopter skiing on a private ranch above Salt Lake City has mobilized opposition. Heli-skiing opponents, including nearby residents and backcountry skiers, worry that the decision will open the door to more helicopter ski lifts along the Wasatch Front. The company awarded the permit is already […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
When it’s 25 below and dropping
I was playing poker the other day with a bunch of guys, mostly middle-aged and older, mostly native Montanans like myself. Every so often somebody would put on an extra coat, go outside and start the car, come back to play a few hands, then bundle up and turn the engine off. Nobody found this […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Heard around the West
We should all have the problem Mark Wattles has just south of Portland. “I have a lot of money. I don’t know what to do with all the money I have,” he told the Oregonian. Hollywood Entertainment Corp. president Wattles does think he needs a bigger house, so he’s building a 50,000-square-foot mansion on the […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
‘I kill them and cook them’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When officials from the Montana Department of Livestock decided they needed help slaughtering bison leaving Yellowstone National Park, they thought of Mac Carelli, owner of C&C Meats in Sheridan, Mont. Even though he says scores of reporters have been all over him “like ugly […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
We’d rather have weeds, Missoulians say
MISSOULA, Mont. – This city’s Mount Sentinel seems an unlikely place for an environmental battle. Not a grand mountain by Western standards, it’s a stoop-shouldered hill that bears the University of Montana’s “M”. It is covered mostly by open meadows, and, like much grazing land in western Montana, it is infested with weeds alien to […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
‘Ugly’ addition must go
When it comes to enforcing scenic easements on private property within Idaho’s Sawtooth National Recreation Area, the Forest Service plays hardball. The agency went to U.S. District Court in March 1995, when it discovered a barn-style addition to Kenneth and Sharon Walker’s A-frame. The Forest Service had paid previous owners of the property $26,000 in […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Clinton’s budget blows off a wilder West
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Teddy Roosevelt was in town the other day, arguing that the country is short-changing its parks and forests. No, this is not a time warp. This was Theodore Roosevelt IV of New York, an investment banker, a conservationist and – best of all – a Republican. It was a nice touch, having […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Who wins when a river returns?
OWENS VALLEY, Calif. – Between the two small towns of Big Pine and Lone Pine, the Owens River flows through a desert, its banks sprinkled with saltcedar and rabbitbrush, its denizens kangaroo rats and snakes. But it wasn’t always like this. And it will change in the next decade if an appeals court approves an […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
A tragic blend of wild and domestic
“Rowdy,” born in a cage at a Texas roadside circus and sold as a wolf-hybrid pup to a 10-year-old boy in Colorado, used his mouth the way people use their hands. As he grew larger, Rowdy would drag the boy around his pen by an arm or a leg. It was all in good fun, […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Dear friends
Out for birds We thought we were in for a noisy Saturday night. The motel parking lot was packed. In a small town like Socorro, N.M., that usually means a basketball or wrestling meet, with celebrating or mourning into Sunday morning. But the Holiday Inn Express was like a morgue, until we got to the […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
To the south, bison and cattle coexist
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. JACKSON, Wyo. – South of Yellowstone National Park near the Grand Tetons, cattle have grazed “nose-to-nose” with brucellosis-infected bison and elk for more than 75 years. How is it that this herd of nearly 300 bison that roams from Grand Teton National Park to […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
‘Humane is what’s best for humans’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. This winter has been especially busy for Yellowstone National Park photographer Jim Peaco: Jim Peaco: “I photographed a Park Service roundup where rangers on horseback were trying to move bison back into Yellowstone Park. It can be a little scary to watch. These are […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Federal agency was careless with a live vaccine
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Conservationists, animal rights groups and Park Service officials have long been wary of the federal agency that has ordered the slaughter of Yellowstone bison. Recently, they have uncovered evidence that gives some credence to their fears. Internal documents obtained by High Country News suggest […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
For bison, it’s deja vu all over again
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – For the bison here in the world’s oldest national park, roundups and slaughterhouses are nothing new. At times, park managers tried to foster the bison herds. At other times, they killed them by the hundreds. Until the early 1950s, […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
No home on the range
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Mont. – Like millions of other Americans tuned to the nightly news, rancher Delas Munns has watched in disgust as the death toll of Yellowstone bison climbs. The images of bloody gut piles and docile behemoths corralled and shipped to slaughterhouses like cattle do not make him happy. Munns and his five […]