Dear HCN, We who live east of the Rockies have looked on with dismay, disbelief and, I hope, with compassion as people of the Pacific Northwest suffered devastating floods, mudslides and resultant power outages. Another billion-dollar disaster and the media blame it all on the weather (HCN, 1/20/97). The real truth must be told: Deforestation […]
We made it flood
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Stop immigration
Dear HCN, In the seven pages of your special issue “El Nuevo West” devoted to illegal immigration, I wish you’d found space for at least a few lines on the wholesale transformation of the environment and quality of life in “El Futuro West” if present record levels of both legal and illegal immigration are allowed […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
‘Slaughtered hulks’
Dear HCN: A few days ago I witnessed something that challenged my concept of the person I thought surely I was. At 46, I have lived in Montana over half my life, most of that time in the rugged area near Cooke City. I have lived the life of the “manly man.” Hunter, logger, log […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
INS raid leads to lawsuit
Three people who believe they were mistreated in an immigration raid in Jackson, Wyo., last summer have filed paperwork seeking more than $1.8 million in damages from three government agencies. The first is AgustÆn Perez, a legal alien from neighoring Driggs, Idaho, who alleges that two guns were held to his head during an Aug. […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Water deal quenches many thirsts
In a triumph of negotiation over litigation, local, state and federal officials in Utah recently ended a decade-long dispute over water near Zion National Park. By swapping two potential dam sites above the park for a new one below it, negotiators ensured water both for the national park and for local faucets. Most importantly, says […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Injunction lifted in the Southwest
A 16-month logging injunction on national forests in New Mexico and Arizona was lifted by a federal judge Dec. 4. Judge Roger Strand ruled that the Forest Service had completed a biological opinion on how its forest plans would affect the threatened Mexican spotted owl. The decision means the agency can proceed with logging in […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Hunters need young blood
Generation X doesn’t hunt. That’s the conclusion of a National Shooting Sports Foundation’s recent survey, which found that only 8 percent of hunters are between the ages of 18 and 24, down from 17 percent in 1986. The last decade has seen the percentage of hunters in the 25-34 age bracket drop as well, down […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Renegade county gets a makeover
For two years, the county commissioners in Chelan County, Wash., have led the state’s property-rights movement. They thumbed their noses at Washington’s Growth Management Act, challenged its planning requirements in court and even suffered economic sanctions for ignoring them (HCN, 6/10/96). But the county’s outlaw image changed dramatically when voters threw out one of the […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Sting nets bird killers
In today’s booming black market for migratory bird parts, a single bald eagle feather can fetch $100. Given such prices, it’s not surprising that a two-year U.S. Fish and Wildlife sting operation netted 35 individuals and businesses allegedly involved in the killing and selling of protected migratory birds in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. The […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Down with dams?
Dave Wegner, the scientist who studied the Grand Canyon ecosystem for more than a decade, said he thinks Glen Canyon Dam is just one of many that could go. “I’d take out Glen Canyon. I’d take out Flaming Gorge. And I’d look at Navajo Dam on the San Juan River,” he said, while attending the […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Green hate in the land of enchantment
A hate movement has grown up in northern New Mexico, fueled by decades of Forest Service mismanagement and sensational media coverage (HCN, 12/25/95). It has fostered an unusual alliance across racial barriers to oppose conservation on federal lands. The political alignment became visible more than a year ago during a Christmas candlelight demonstration organized by […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Heard around the West
“Hello” seems like such an innocent word. It’s not Western and boisterous like howdy! stuck up like How-do-you-do? or ethnic like hola, but it does the job; it gets the gab going. But not in Kingsville, Texas. There, hello smacks of Satan. So county employees now answer their phone with a cheery “HEAVEN-O,” avoiding all […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
The report is readable – and grim
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Columbia Basin plan staggers home.” Though politics may delay and water down the final plans of the Interior Columbia Basin Management Project, the science documenting the condition of the basin is strong and available. In late December, […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Columbia Basin plan staggers home
It was heralded as the flagship of an effort to launch ecosystem management in the interior Northwest, an unprecedented attempt to knit together the needs of people and nature. So far, the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project has languished for three years and cost taxpayers $40 million, with few tangible results. The first draft […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Is Craig’s bill Salvage Rider II?
One of the hottest environmental topics of the last Congress – forest management – is back, and, if early reaction is any gauge, it hasn’t cooled down any. Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, R, whose Energy and Natural Resources Committee produced the controversial salvage logging rider two years ago, recently drafted a massive bill that would […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Greens turn from defense to offense
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Something there is about January in these parts – a crispness in the air, the residue of New Year’s resolutions – that infuses even cynical political types with a sense of possibilities. That sense is enhanced when a new Congress comes to town, and every fourth January, when a president is inaugurated. […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Grizzlies and tourism collide on Wyoming road
CODY, Wyo. – They razed the best patch of angelica. The nondescript low forb is a favored food for grizzly bears along the highway corridor from Cody to the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park. The North Fork Highway, as U.S. 14-16-20 is called, was once described by Theodore Roosevelt as one of the most […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Utah takes waste that Arizona rejected
Chalk one up for the little guy. After four months of pressuring the Environmental Protection Agency and garbage giant Waste Management Inc., environmentalists in Arizona and California have scored a major victory. Trainloads of DDT-contaminated mud from a San Francisco Bay Superfund site are no longer headed to Waste Management’s landfill in Mobile, Ariz., a […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Build it, and folks will come
We came and went like the storms that passed over our heads, living at 11,300 feet in the Gore Range above Vail, Colo., where we raced against “old man winter” to build a log hut for the Tenth Mountain Division. Four of us lived in a tepee for five months while we labored, working too […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Dear friends
About that toilet paper Cadillac Desert author Marc Reisner sent us a copy of a letter he wrote to former Durango, Colo., mayor Jeff Morrissey, a friend of the Animas-La Plata project and an enemy of all A-LP’s opponents. Morrissey was quoted as saying he wipes his *** with Reisner’s book. Reisner’s response, only the […]