After years of fighting Peabody Western Coal Co., Navajos in northeast Arizona have won a court victory against a strip mine on their reservation. Citing the desecration of burial sites, poisoned livestock and filthy air and water, an Interior Department judge in Phoenix reversed a decision by the federal Office of Surface Mining to renew […]
Navajos win round in coal mine war
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
A cautionary tale in Washington state
The GOP sweep in 1994 hit Washington state like a monsoon: In seven of nine districts, voters sent freshmen Republicans to the House of Representatives. But this year’s election presents a cautionary tale: If you won your last election by a razor-thin margin, perhaps you’d better not slavishly follow the GOP line on environmental issues. […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Feds to Idaho mines: Clean up
Despite pleas from Idaho’s congressional delegation and governor, the federal government has filed suit against eight mining companies for polluting the Coeur d’Alene River basin in Idaho’s panhandle. The suit seeks monetary damages for the alleged discharge of more than 70 million tons of mining waste into the basin over the last 100 years. Each […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Locals sickened by bison slaughter
In tiny West Yellowstone, Mont., more than 350 bison have been gunned down after wandering out of Yellowstone National Park. The Montana Department of Livestock kills the bison because of fears they will transmit brucellosis, a disease that causes cattle to abort. But for residents such as Donna Lane, who watched state officials shoot 18 […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Here’s a chance to speak up for clean air
Nineteen years ago Congress directed the EPA to clean up “any existing impairment of visibility” in the nation’s cleanest areas, called Class 1, and prevent further degradation caused by pollution from man-made sources such as coal-fired power plants and vehicles. The Environmental Protection Agency failed to act. It will be 1999 before any improvement takes […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Letter to Edward Abbey from Earth: A Review
Dear Ed, You won’t, or probably you will, believe what’s currently happening in the West: Too many of us, a commercialized landscape “- all your worst predictions have come true. We’ve finally caught up with your predictions, your “good news.” Armed militias call the West their home – white-guy losers in Montana and Idaho who […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Farmers feel burned by clean air regs
Eastern Washington, with its rolling hills and mid-size cities, seems like a place where farmers and urbanites should easily coexist. But not in late summer, when farmers burn bluegrass fields to clear stubble and stimulate seed production. The conflict is most intense in Spokane, where clean air activists have long claimed that the clouds of […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Can cattle save the pygmy rabbit?
The idea is heresy to some and it sounds odd coming from a wildlife biologist, but Fred Dobler is insistent: Cattle grazing might save the pygmy rabbit. The shy, nocturnal cousin of the cottontail is an endangered species in Washington and exists on isolated chunks of sagebrush-shrub steppe in just one county. “Grazing might be […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Attempt at compromise leads to bloodbath
The Endangered Species Coalition, an umbrella group of over 100 organizations, just threw out one of its own. In mid-April, the Coalition booted the Environmental Defense Fund and severely reprimanded the Center for Marine Conservation and the World Wildlife Fund. Their offense? Some members of these groups had been holding secret meetings with industry leaders, […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Dear Friends
A confusing season We realize it’s spring when an April day combines snow flurries, afternoon rain and thunder, intermittent sun and evening temperatures in the twenties. And the next morning the grass grows even greener. On this town’s main street the look of the season is layered with the one constant: muddy boots, for this […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Erasing the Southwest’s grandest vista
It was Barry Lopez who said that one of the dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret. Until the 1970s, when air pollution from California, Mexico and coal-fired power plants in the region began to limit visibility, the […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Heard Around the West
A new logic is unfolding in Montana: If too many quality-of-lifers find your state attractive, get really, really unattractive. The much-publicized stakeout of the Freemen and the arrest of alleged Unabomber Ted Kaczynski have helped Montana step off its pedestal as the compulsory destination for those Americans who can lay claim to a laptop computer, […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Yellowstone’s wintertime blues
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, A park boss goes to bat for the land. Summer visitors aren’t the only ones on the increase in Yellowstone: the number of tourists arriving to see Yellowstone’s ice-crusted trees, virginal snowfields and clouds of hot-spring steam are skyrocketing as well. Four winters ago, […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Noranda stirs up a swarm of opposition
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, A park boss goes to bat for the land. While Crown Butte Mining Inc. already owns patented land within the Gallatin National Forest, it needs additional land for its mill and waste rock. That need has set into motion the National Environmental Policy Act, […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
A park boss goes to bat for the land
MAMMOTH, Wyo. – In late October, during the short lull between the traffic jams of summer and the snowmobile crowds of winter, the world’s oldest national park breathes a short sigh of relief. Only a few visitors climb the steaming mound of hot springs that looms above park headquarters here, and a herd of elk […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
About those buff bird-watchers
Dear HCN, While it was certainly entertaining to read that “naturalists’ go to the park to nap in the nude (Heard around the West, March 18) – and perhaps quite true – I can’t help but suspect that you meant “naturists’ instead. What characterizes most of the naturalists I know is not so much an […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Agencies help fossil collectors
Dear HCN, We appreciate the attention that High Country News recently gave to fossil ownership, but first, we need to point out that part of the nation’s fossil legacy also occurs on land administered by the Forest Service. The Forest Service has been managing fossil localities for years on a case-by-case basis, and began developing […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Dem bones are your bones
Dear HCN, The story “Who owns these bones?” (HCN, 3/4/96) addresses a timely and important issue prompted by recent introduction in Congress of the “Fossil Preservation Act” by Reps. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and Joe Skeen, R-N.M. The proposed legislation requires clarification. Your article states that, under the new law, “commercial and amateur collectors would be […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
The dam complicates everything
Dear HCN, The jet tubes of Glen Canyon Dam have been opened, the dye dumped, the posturing of politicians and politician-scientists is over. As I write this, a bunch of real scientists are down in Grand Canyon poking, prodding and monitoring the Colorado, its beaches and residents to determine if this “flood” will restore a […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Last chance for wetlands
Is the marsh in your neighborhood in danger of being bulldozed for a strip mall? In fast-growing Washington state, where experts estimate 33 to 50 percent of wetlands has been lost, that scenario isn’t farfetched. But the Washington Wetland Network (WETNET), founded by the Seattle Audubon Society, can help. WETNET is composed of more than […]