Is the small American farm a dying species? Not according to Jeff Rast, founder of the for-profit Center for Small Acreage Farming in Camas County, Idaho. After working on a large-scale farm for 10 years and serving as an extension agent for the University of Idaho, Rast says he has realized his dream of operating […]
Small is back
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Literary natural history
Scientists are not well known as communicators but a memorable few have mastered both fields – Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson and E.O. Wilson, for example. The University of Nevada at Reno will pay tribute over the next seven months to similar contemporary scientists through a series of free public readings and discussions titled Literary Natural […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Unplug America: Give mother earth a rest day
Unplug America: Give mother earth a rest day asks people across the country to experience a voluntary blackout Oct.13 by turning off anything that consumes energy, including gas, coal and electric power. Native American environmental groups, including the Seventh Generation Fund, started the event in 1992 to raise awareness of our energy consumption and its […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Wilderness: The Foundation of Culture
To help people understand the ways different cultures look at land that has never been roaded or developed, the New Mexico Wilderness Coalition and the Santa Fe chapter of the Sierra Club are sponsoring an Oct. 5 workshop in Santa Fe, N.M., on Wilderness: The Foundation of Culture. Registration is free. For more information call […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
The Producer/Consumer Connection
Would you like to find a mentor who knows how to run a small farm? The Alternative Energy Resources Organization, a Montana group that links aspiring farmers with retiring ones, is holding its 22nd annual workshop, The Producer/Consumer Connection, Oct. 11-13 on Flathead Lake near Rollins, Mont. To register for the event, contact AERO at […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Colorado resort shelves ski expansion
After spending two and a half years and some $400,000, the Crested Butte ski resort in Colorado suddenly dropped plans to build new ski runs on a mountain adjacent to the existing resort. “It appears their attitude has changed and we look forward to working with them,” said a relieved Vicki Shaw of the local […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Will counties de(grade) wilderness?
If dirt roads in southern Utah suddenly seem free of ruts, washboards and washouts, you can thank Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. Environmentalists believe Babbitt’s recent announcement of a new BLM inventory of wilderness led to a flurry of illegal road work by county crews. For if roads exist, the Bureau of Land Management can’t include […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Tribal group tries again to save mountain
When Congress gave the University of Arizona a go-ahead to ignore environmental studies and build its third and largest telescope on Mount Graham, construction crews jumped into action (HCN, 5/13/96). Now, an obscure federal advisory group says builders moved too quickly and possibly illegally. According to the President’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the Forest […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
If they build it, will more come?
What’s better for controlling and educating crowds of hikers in Utah’s Grand Gulch – a brand-new visitors’ center visible from the highway or more rangers on the trail? The Bureau of Land Management has removed an old mice-infested trailer and wants to build a 1,600-square-foot center to teach people how not to disturb sensitive archaeological […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
All is not quiet on the Front
Though oil and gas developers have long had their eyes on the vast reserves that geologists say lie beneath Montana’s rugged Rocky Mountain Front, environmental concerns have held most of them at bay. Now, a more immediate threat looms over the area. Wyoming businessman Mark Alldredge has filed 104 mining claims over 3.4 square miles […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Feds go after Summitville boss
Taxpayers got mixed news in late August about the cleanup of southern Colorado’s notorious Summitville gold mine. The good news came from the Justice Department, which announced that it had convinced a Canadian bank to freeze $152 million in stocks owned by the mining executive who oversaw Summitville. That mine’s toxic wastes killed 17 miles […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Who snatched the salmon?
The fish had beaten the odds. After swimming 900 miles from the Pacific Ocean, past eight dams and up to over 6,000 feet, the almost three-foot-long endangered chinook salmon finally reached the Sawtooth Hatchery in Stanley, Idaho. It was one of only 132 adult salmon to make the journey this year to spawn in the […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Redwood summer roars back
Musician Bonnie Raitt wasn’t singing the blues in California Sept. 15 when she was arrested with 896 others for acts of civil disobedience – trespassing onto Pacific Lumber Co. property and chaining themselves to mill gates. Their mission was saving the Headwaters grove, the world’s largest ancient redwood forest in private ownership. An estimated 4,000 […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Snail’s trail leads to Yellowstone
Wolves and exotic lake trout aren’t the only new denizens of Yellowstone National Park. New Zealand mudsnails, as tiny as BBs and as prolific as fruit flies, have rapidly spread throughout the park’s upper Madison River. Although trout eat the snails, they pass through the fish undigested and alive, and reproduce so quickly that they […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
It ain’t over till it’s over
When President Clinton announced a $65 million land swap with Crown Butte Resources Inc. to stop development of a gold mine on the boundary of Yellowstone National Park, it sounded like a done deal. But federal officials have only six months to come up with property that Crown Butte must agree to accept; if not, […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
A harsh and priceless gift to the world
“There was a hardness of stone,” Theodore Roethke starts a poem, “an uncertain glory … Between cliffs of light / We strayed like children.” The Harsh Country, the poem is called. I’m miles away from what I think of as the harsh country, the cliffs of light, the country of bright stone. It has a […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Clinton learns the art of audacity
Editor’s note: On Sept. 18, just before President Clinton announced the creation of the nation’s newest monument, writer and University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson talked about the historical precedents for protecting land through presidential action. GRAND CANYON, Ariz. – The grandest, most electrifying moments in American conservation history have always been reserved for […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Managing the monument: The devil is in the details
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. If it survives expected legal challenges, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will in all likelihood stop the industrialization of the Kaiparowits Plateau. While the proclamation creating the monument did not take away Andalex’s right to mine its rich coal fields, federal land managers acknowledge that […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
A daunting, beautiful place
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Covering an area larger than the state of Delaware, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument encompasses some of the wildest, most desolate land in the country. The expanse of canyons, bluffs, grasslands, cliffs is dotted with fossils and Native American archaeological sites. If you stand on […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
The mother of all land grabs
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah: “In all my 20 years in the U.S. Senate, I have never seen a clearer example of the arrogance of federal power. Indeed, this is the mother of all land grabs. And, the declaration by President Clinton is being made without […]