South Dakotan Michael Melius sells jewelry you plant – -Seed Beads’ loaded with seeds of increasingly rare native grasses and wildflowers and strung on scraps of linen thread. It was the simplest packaging Melius could think of. “I had tried to sell seed mixes in packets with little success, I think, because that packaging implies […]
Wear what you sow
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Even in Quiet Places
It is a secret still, but already your tree is chosen. It has entered a forest for miles and hides deep in a valley by a river. No one else finds it; the sun passes over not noticing. But even while you are reading you happen to think of that tree, no matter where sentences […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Roll on, Columbia
It’s easy to sum up the view of two new books on the Columbia River, the Nchi-Wana in a native tongue: It was wild, dammed, polluted and mutilated. Pulitzer Prize winner William Dietrich tells a fascinating tale in Northwest Passage: The Great Columbia River as he leaves no aspect of the river untouched. Beginning with […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Rein in those planes
Anyone who has had their solitude blasted by the sudden scream of low-flying military jets while hiking in the West will want a copy of the 24-page Citizen’s Guide to Opposing Military Airspace Expansion. While the military has downsized its airfleet almost by half since the demise of the Soviet Union, it continues to seek […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Coyote Angels
Bart Koehler, director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council and a co-founder of Earth First!, always took time out from fighting for environmental issues to sing about them. Now he and his Coyote Angels band have released a CD featuring songs about the wild life of the West. Some, dedicated to green greats such as […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Belonging to the West
-My pictures concentrate on landscapes that lie between the extremes of wilderness and metropolis.” * Eric Paddock I moved to the West because of spectacle: the mountains, their streams, the canyons those streams cut, the summer flowers in high meadows. I stayed because of the landscapes Eric Paddock shows in Belonging to the West – […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
County trashes waste plan
Elmore County, Idaho, residents voted overwhelmingly this past election to allow the continued shipment of out-of-state nuclear wastes to a site 200 miles to the east of them. But they are putting their foot down on a plan to place the state’s largest landfill in their backyard. The planning and zoning commission decided to deny […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Where’s the fish?
Maps from Washington state’s Department of Natural Resources show more than a thousand miles of the state’s streams contain no fish. But they’re wrong. This distinction is important because state law requires that loggers and developers leave protective corridors of vegetation for erosion control next to fish-bearing streams. But biologists fear the mapping mistakes have […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Checks are in the mail
Home siding by Louisiana-Pacific Inc. sold as a cheap alternative to cedar turned out to be more expensive than expected. When it swelled, buckled, soaked up water, rotted and even grew a mushroomlike fungus in wet weather, customers began frantically calling the company about their Inner Seal siding (HCN, 8/21/95). Now, Louisiana-Pacific says it will […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Judge tells EPA to hurry up in Idaho
Conservationists won a major court ruling this fall in their two-decade-long battle with the state of Idaho and the Environmental Protection Agency to implement and enforce the Clean Water Act. In a sharply worded opinion, federal district judge William Dwyer, of northern spotted owl fame, chided the EPA and the state for failing to develop […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Let’s increase the supply of outdoors
Dear HCN, Writer Dyan Zaslowsky suggests that we stay home and give parks a rest (HCN, 9/16/96), which ticks me off for two reasons: If you go more than three miles on almost any trail, you are going to be alone. So the issue of parks being elbow-to-elbow with people is silly. Crowding is usually […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
He’s boldly going outside
Dear HCN, I love optimists, I really do. I’m one myself. I’m especially fond of the quintessential pie-in-the-sky optimists like Dyan Zaslowsky, who recommends just saying “no” to whatever hot spot is being loved to death in your neighborhood (HCN, 9/16/96). Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether someone is starry-eyed, or just loves the sound […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Don’t worry yet
Dear HCN, The tentative agreement that would forever end the prospect of mining gold adjacent to Yellowstone National Park will turn out to be a good deal for the West and the nation. Details of the agreement, which includes a $22.5 million company cleanup at the site and swapping $65 million in federal assets for […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
National groups were latecomers
Dear HCN, In his opinion piece on the demise of the New World Mine outside Yellowstone (HCN, 9/2/96), Rocky Barker writes: “Just as important was the fact that the grass roots led the fight. If national environmental groups had taken the lead as they did in the Northwest’s ancient forest campaign, my guess is that […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Zakin skewered historian
Dear HCN, I have a great deal of respect for Susan Zakin as a writer and, for the most part, I was quite interested in her article, “Shake-up: Greens inside the Beltway” (HCN, 11/11/96). However, I was concerned by her disparaging comments about William Cronon, and the way she frames his book, Uncommon Ground, as […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Predators also have rights
Dear HCN, As a Colorado urban dweller for 21 years and a Colorado resident again in my future, I feel more than qualified to respond to Ellen Miller’s essay, “Should city slickers dictate to trappers?” (HCN, 10/28/96). I was born and raised in the hellhole of the Midwest, Muscatine, Iowa, population 23,000, but apparently I […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Locals learn the value of a good view
STANLEY, Idaho – A proposal for two subdivisions on private land within the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, one of the nation’s scenic treasures, has stirred up long-held resentments between landowners and the Forest Service. A local outfitter’s plan to build 10 homes on a five-acre parcel has prompted a cease-and-desist order from the Forest Service. […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Whiskey Peak: Great air, deteriorating ground
WHISKEY PEAK, Wyo. – Two hang-glider pilots ran into the air off the top of Whiskey Peak one day last summer and began circling over treetops. Just 20 minutes later they were soaring at 16,000 feet. “You just catch a thermal and blow downwind,” said Kevin Christopherson, who set two world distance records from the […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Forest Service building is torched by night raiders
A Forest Service ranger station in Oregon has become the latest target in the wave of violence directed at federal installations around the West. The Oakridge Ranger Station, about an hour’s drive southeast of Eugene, burst into flames early on the morning of Oct. 30. By the time firefighters had arrived, the 25,000-square-foot building had […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Agency ordered to study trout – again
The beleaguered bull trout has been given another chance to make the endangered species list. U.S. District Judge Robert Jones ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to review its 1994 decision that the fish doesn’t warrant immediate protection because other species have more pressing needs. Jones called parts of the Fish and Wildlife Service […]