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 […]
Is Craig’s bill Salvage Rider II?
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 […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Desert sheep aren’t exactly thriving
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The discovery 300 years ago of a pile of over 100,000 horns at a native village in what is now Arizona suggests that the four subspecies of wild sheep collectively known as desert bighorns were once as numerous as their alpine relatives. Desert sheep, […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Not Mary’s little lamb
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. We who drink in rhymes about Mary’s little lamb and Bo Peep’s docile flock with our mothers’ milk have a hard time seeing wild sheep objectively. Our perceptions of this animal are inevitably colored by the stupid, meek, defenseless creature domestication made of it. […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Macho rams ‘take a walk on the wild side’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In the social system of wild sheep, the ram with the largest horns rules. Not only does he breed most of the ewes, but he is followed around by an admiring throng of lesser males. It is not surprising, then, that bighorn rams are […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Bringing back the bighorn
The West’s native sheep scramble for a foothold
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Environmental group responds
Dear HCN, Local environmental groups aren’t very well organized and the Idaho Conservation League is an example of this, said Greg Brothers in a letter to you Dec. 23. The same day High Country News arrived in our mailboxes, our office manager called Mr. Brothers to find out what had happened. No one in our […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Partnerships are already improving public lands
Dear HCN, While we take no exception with the New Mexico State Land Department in awarding the lease for several tracts of state-owned lands to the Forest Guardians and Southwest Environmental Center (in compliance with state law), we are concerned by some of the statements made by John Horning (HCN, 11/25/96). Mr. Horning characterizes the […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Wildlife initiative may have hidden wheels
Dear HCN, Jon Margolis’ article on the Teaming with Wildlife initiative (HCN, 12/23/96) was ironic, coming as it did on the heels of the previous issue on the increasing political power that motorized vehicle users have developed in the West. As Margolis points out, this seems to be a benign plan, only opposed by “left-of-center” […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Learn a lesson from ORV’ers
Dear HCN, ORV groups (HCN, 12/9/96) succeed mainly because they are funded by an industry that profits from increased ORV use, and because they have a one-issue focus of striving to keep and increase access to public lands. There are no one-issue groups focused on fighting them. Environmental groups all have other battles to fight. […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Noise always wins
Dear HCN: I read Elizabeth Manning’s “Motorheads’ story (HCN, 12/9/96) with fatalistic mirth: I figure if people won’t let me enjoy the outdoors quietly, I might as well make some noise. It seems we live in a society driven by those who take up the most space and make the biggest mess. All the while […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
On motorheads and responsible dirt-biking
Dear HCN, I have been riding motorcycles for 27 years, and currently my son and I have six bikes, four of them dirt bikes. Recently, Clark Collins of the Blue Ribbon Coalition was kind enough to send me a sample copy of his group’s magazine. The coalition’s aims, such as promoting responsible use of public […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Grand Canyon rafting fees inflate
For many rafters, it doesn’t get any better than a float trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Would-be boaters often spend as long as 10 years waiting for one of 200 private launch dates granted each year. A new fee increase at Grand Canyon National Park may give them second thoughts: an […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Silence wins in Colorado
Those who felt that the new rules governing flights over the Grand Canyon were too lenient now have something to cheer: On Jan. 3, the Federal Aviation Adminstration issued a separate rule banning all commercial flights over Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. “This is fabulous news to bring in the New Year,” said Colorado Rep. […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Dombeck takes on a new agency
Michael Dombeck spent his first hour as the new chief of the U.S. Forest Service greeting agency employees in Washington, D.C., as they headed to work. For some who had never glimpsed former Chief Jack Ward Thomas, it was a comforting gesture. But it also became clear that old guard members of the agency should […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
They’re still talking about A-LP
With four meetings down and who knows how many more to come, talks on Animas-La Plata, the $714 million dam and irrigation project proposed near Durango, Colo., continued this winter (HCN, 11/11/96). Ten options remain on the table – down from 70 – and some involve downsizing the project. Others propose alternatives to bring water […]