WILDFLOWERS MADE EASY If you’ve ever struggled to differentiate between pinnate and palmate vennation or corymb and cyme inflorescence, you’ll be happy to hear there’s a new wildflower guide for botanical novices. Written by G.K. Guennel, a spore and pollen expert, the two-volume Guide to Colorado Wildflowers is remarkably easy to use and includes some […]
Wildflowers made easy
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Saved by the hair of a bear
Saved by the hair of a bear This summer when Yellowstone grizzly bears enjoy a nice back-scratch, they could be saving their own hides. Researchers from the Yellowstone Grizzly Foundation will set up triangular corrals of barbed wire at various locations in hopes that the bears will rub against the wire and leave a little […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Ten at risk
10 AT RISK The Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone in Montana and Wyoming is one of the nation’s wildest rivers outside Alaska. It’s also the most endangered, according to American Rivers. For three years running, it’s topped the group’s annual report, North America’s Ten Most Endangered and Threatened Rivers. The reason: Plans for the proposed […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
A Colorado canyon faces an uncertain future
Demaree Canyon, a steep-walled sagebrush and pinon-pine expanse in the Bookcliffs area outside Grand Junction, Colo., could become part of the national wilderness system. Or the wilderness study area might be transformed this summer into a series of natural-gas drilling pads. The small canyon’s fate could set a precedent for how much development can be […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Wyoming’s Red Desert: 15 million acres of contention
ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. – It was the Friday night before the big event, and the first of 300 conservationists bound for this oil and gas boomtown in southwestern Wyoming had started trickling in. They gathered in a local art gallery, where they snacked on hors d’oeuvres and viewed artwork of the state’s vast Red Desert, […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Colorado Democrats ponder electability vs. purity
Tom Strickland and Gene Nichol are two 40-something former Texans who have used their law degrees to help the Sierra Club. They live 35 miles apart on Colorado’s Front Range, and they’re applying for the same job – Democratic replacement for retiring Republican Sen. Hank Brown. Most similarities end there. Strickland is a partner with […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Open your wallet; visit a national park
It’s 1911 and your grandparents are braving mountain roads to visit the year-old Glacier National Park. The charge: $4 to cover everyone in their black Model T. Now jump ahead to 1996. You’re braving the roads to Glacier as your grandparents did before you. But though your burgundy Volvo station wagon is new, the fee […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Salvage rider will destroy sacred sites
When Rip Lone Wolf felt it was time for his 14-year-old son’s vision quest, he did what Oregon’s Nez Perce have done for generations: He headed for the sacred land at Enola Hill. The 350-year-old Douglas fir trees that loom over this part of the Mount Hood National Forest, 45 miles east of Portland, shelter […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Dear Friends
Woe is Montana Poor Montana. And we aren’t even counting the Freemen extortionists who won’t come out of their rooms. No, the latest slam against the “last best place” comes from a grumpy editor of the (need we say powerful?) New York Times Magazine. James Atlas’ family vacation near Yellowstone and Glacier national parks was […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Imagine a West without heroes
Heroes have always come with the West. When Indians blocked homesteaders, the cavalry came. When cattle barons closed the open range, President Cleveland reopened it with the Unlawful Enclosures Act of 1885. When aridity slowed settlement, the Bureau of Reclamation built dams. When Western forests succumbed to flames and cutting, Gifford Pinchot’s Forest Service pledged […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
It’s Chase who’s lost in the dark wood
In a Dark Wood: The Fight Over Forests and the Rising Tyranny of Ecology, by Alston Chase, Houghton Mifflin, $29.95. Review by Alan Pistorius Alston Chase’s new book sets out to chronicle the continuing fight between the timber industry and environmentalists over old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest and to determine why, in his view, […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Heard Around the West
Ah, spring. Tender new buds of May. Raging rivers. Baseball. Senior prom. And, in at least one Western county, an explosion in teen pregnancies. “Going to the prom does not mean that you have to have sex,” Terrie Guthrie of Campbell County, Wyoming’s Planned Approach to Community Health coalition, pointed out to the Associated Press. […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
There’s plenty of money to study Utah’s game
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion Officials in Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources barely had time to note the news that Dick Carter was mothballing his Utah Wilderness Association before the perennial thorn in their sides was back demanding action on another issue. Carter spent […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Frogs: The ultimate indicator species
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion Native frog populations are plummeting all over the world. No one knows exactly why, but there are six prominent possibilities. Destruction of wetlands is one, contamination of water supplies by biocides, pollutants, and acid rain another. A third is […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
In the middle of the last century, thirsty pioneers traveling along the Humboldt Trail through Utah knew how to find potable water: If there were snakes and frogs in a spring or pool, it was safe to drink. This method never failed them. When Brigham Young and his plucky tribe of Mormon refugees from persecution […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
‘Boom’ potential at Rocky Flats
-Boom” potential at Rocky Flats When the FBI raided and closed the Rocky Flats nuclear facility just outside Denver, Colo., in 1989, agents found illegal emissions of radioactive materials. But more problems were on the way. Sam Cole of Physicians For Social Responsibility says that since then, plant managers have been “spinning their wheels,” and […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
Ellensburg wins back its beauty
-Hideous,” “grotesque” and “like massive spikes in a sci-fi movie,” were some of the kinder phrases residents of Ellensburg, Wash., employed to describe an addition to their community. The addition consisted of 12 power poles, 110 feet high, erected by Central Washington University through the center of town. The looming power poles spurred the formation […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
Contradictions on the Columbia
One environmentalist called it “a case of schizophrenia’: Oregon officials recently extended Boeing Aviation’s permit to divert water from the Columbia River even though the state has spent more than $1 billion augmenting the river’s flow to restore salmon. Environmentalists hadn’t paid much attention to Boeing’s permits in the past because the aerospace firm never […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
Heard Around the West
It’s not unusual to find strange items along road shoulders, but David Shiffler’s discovery along a New Mexico road last October deserves special mention. While taking a pee break, the 3-year-old toddler decided to do a little excavation with his yellow Tonka backhoe. According to The Denver Post, he came back to the car with […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
A sampling of the West’s collaborative efforts
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories: Everyone helps a California forest – except the Forest Service Collaboration groups in the West now number in the hundreds, and range from informal grassroots organizations to government-mandated advisory councils. A cross-section follows: * The Willapa Alliance is a private, nonprofit organization started […]