RESERVE, N.M. – To hear Ed Werheim tell it, 1993 was a lifetime ago. That’s when he took out a mortgage on a ranch in the mountains of southern New Mexico. The range was wet, cattle prices were high and the 57-year-old cabinet maker was looking forward to running cattle on the Gila National Forest […]
Drought cuts to the bone on Southwest range
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
The salvage rider – down, but not quite out
For environmentalists concerned about public forests, this was supposed to the summer of dread. Timber companies, shielded by a salvage logging law, were expected to have a free-for-all on thousands of acres of roadless land. But now, with summer half over, environmentalists have reason for optimism. They may even salvage a victory. Congress passed the […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Santa Fe mayor’s friends now foes
When the Santa Fe activists who are organizing an overhaul of the town’s government discuss Mayor Debbie Jaramillo, they sound like initiates to a self-help group. “I spent 14 years of my life promoting her. It’s grossly sad and disappointing,” says activist Don Brayfield. “I worked with her for six years like a lapdog. I […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Dear friends
Back with a bang Staff is back on the job, returning just in time for the 4th of July parade up Paonia’s Grand Avenue, an event which usually requires 30 minutes, tops. This time it took an hour for more than 100 entries to pass, what with past Cherry Days queens representing five decades, Shriners, […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Heard around the West
As people like you and me swarm through the West’s national parks and forests, transmuting into that dreaded specimen, the summer tourist, agency staffers resort to trading quotes by e-mail to make the hot, hectic days pass more pleasantly. We are deliciously quotable because we are uninformed, stubborn, and we lie a lot. Darryl Stone, […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Deciding what kind of river we want
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river It is too early to predict whether the river now will be run in peace and harmony. The Glen Canyon environmental impact statement recommends to the secretary of the Interior that an “Adaptive […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
In the context of the place, it was a very strange idea. We were sitting in a boat on dark green water deep in a red-walled canyon, a few hundred yards downstream from a 10 million-ton mirage. The mirage of smooth brilliant white looked curiously fragile in that otherwise raw landscape of red sandstone, green […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Mountain outposts of empire
Although the Sangre de Cristo Mountains are almost synonymous with New Mexico, the range – the longest in the United States – extends about 110 miles into Colorado. Tom Wolf, a writer and one-time forestry student, explores these northern Sangres in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Starting with the Anasazi and continuing through the Spanish, […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Still stealing trees
Since the U.S. Forest Service disbanded its special timber-theft task force nearly a year ago, investigations of large-scale timber theft have ground to a halt. That’s the conclusion of Unindicted Co-Conspirator, a report by the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Governmental Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington, D.C.-based group that protects government […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Living with wildlife
As suburbia swells into wild country throughout the West, conflicts between humans and wildlife increase: Deer graze in gardens and dogs lope into the hills after packs of singing coyotes. Occasionally, a black bear wanders close to a subdivision or a mountain lion lunges for someone’s pet. To keep such inevitable encounters as positive as […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Making history on the prairie
The Prairie Plains Resource Institute got its start 16 years ago when its founders gathered seeds from prairie grasses near Aurora, Neb., and planted them along a muddy creek in town. By restoring this small 15-acre corridor, “we were making a new history,” says institute manager Bill Whitney. Since then the land trust has sponsored […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Can the silence be unbroken?
Rocky Mountain National Park has so far been spared the headache – and earache – of commercial scenic overflights for one reason: no tour operators exist yet. Hoping to head off possible conflicts, Transportation Secretary Federico Peûa has proposed a ban on commercial overflights in the park. Peûa’s May 11 recommendation came with three alternatives: […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
It’s the pits
Summo USA Corp. hopes to extract 34 million pounds of copper each year over a 10-year period from the Lisbon Valley southeast of Moab, Utah. The operation would include four open-pit mines as well as waste-rock dumps and a processing plant on 1,030 acres of public, state and private lands. According to a draft environmental […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Lessons of Lewis and Clark
Our Natural History: the Lessons of Lewis and Clark describes the wilderness of the American West as the two explorers encountered it during their journey 1804-1806, and compares it to today’s American West as shaped by industrial civilization. Long the subject of historians, the famous journals also offer author Daniel B. Botkin, a leader in […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
No pay for pooches
Will Defenders of Wildlife, the nonprofit group that compensates ranchers for livestock killed by wolves, also pay for pets that become prey? Several private citizens and government employees have raised that question since a hunting dog was killed by a pack of wolves near Fishtail, Mont., last December. The answer is no, says Hank Fischer, […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Clean air victory in Colorado
The operators of the polluting, coal-fired Hayden Power Plant in northwestern Colorado have agreed to reform. The pressure began in 1995, when the Sierra Club won a lawsuit holding the plant accountable for more than 17,000 clean air violations (HCN, 11/27/95). The EPA followed this year with a notice of 10,234 additional violations. Rather than […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Proposed hatchery breeds conflict
If the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has its way, a new steelhead hatchery will be built on the moss-covered ruins of an abandoned federal hatchery. But the agency’s plan for the $4 million Grandy Creek steelhead hatchery – the state’s 91st – faces stiff opposition. Many conservation and fishing groups, as well as […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Twenty-something takes Sierra Club’s helm
In the midst of moving its offices from San Francisco’s run-down Tenderloin district to the trendy South of Market district, the Sierra Club elected a new president, 23-year-old Adam Werbach. Werbach will be in charge of a network of 5,000 volunteers and the club’s professional staff. He is 24 years younger than the average member. […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Ranger charges ranchers with assault
When Chuck Oliver’s job with the Forest Service in Montana fell victim to an agency consolidation three years ago, he seized the chance to return to his native New Mexico. But Oliver, a range conservationist on the Gila National Forest in Catron County, found that public-lands grazing was much more contentious in the Southwest than […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Marvel ups the ante
Marvel ups the ante Sporting a bright-green button that said: “I support welfare ranching,” Hailey, Idaho, conservationist Jon Marvel bid $12,000 for the right to lease a 960-acre parcel of state land. After rancher Mike Ward bid $12,050 for the 10-year lease, Marvel folded and declared victory. “We’ve approximately tripled the cost of the lease […]