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 […]
A park boss goes to bat for the land
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 […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Gold medal watchdog
To ensure that “environmentally and socially responsible choices’ are exercised in the planning of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Ivan Weber has founded the Olympic Watch League (OWL). Weber is a member of the environmental advisory board to the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee, but he warns that environmental issues are not […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Rendezvous at Cove-Mallard
The Cove-Mallard logging area in central Idaho, scene of protests and arrests, may attract 500 people for this year’s Earth First! Rendezvous, June 30 through July 7. The event marks the group’s fifth year of campaigning to save trees in the largest roadless area in the lower 48 states. Mike Roselle, one of Earth First!’s […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Malpractice as usual
Taxpayers are paying the price because Forest Service officials in California handed out timber contracts without adequate environmental reviews, according to a report from the Washington, D.C.-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Business As Usual: A Case Study of Environmental and Fiscal Malpractice on the Eldorado National Forest describes how top managers weren’t penalized […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Christensen goes quarterly
In the maiden issue of Great Basin News, editor and publisher Jon Christensen lays out the mission: “We believe the time is right to bring the Great Basin together to understand itself, to relish its own iconoclastic visions, to ponder its own quirky fate. You might consider this a test of that idea.” Christensen, who […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Stop the flooding
The devastating floods that swamped Oregon early this year could be reduced in the future by restoring former wetlands and woodlands in the Willamette River floodplain. That’s the conclusion of a study commissioned by River Network, a Portland, Oregon-based conservation group. The 60-page study, written primarily by Kevin Coulton of Philip Williams & Associates, an […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Retreat
-It is better to conquer yourself than win a thousand battles.” “The Buddha. The Vallecitos Mountain Refuge in New Mexico’s Carson Forest will hold three eight-day meditation retreats from August through September for environmental and social activists. Not for networking or strategizing, these retreats provide silence, meditation training and spiritual renewal for a limited number […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Take a seat
By the beginning of the 1996 school year, the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Public Affairs will choose a professor to hold the Timothy E. Wirth Chair in Environmental and Community Development Policy. The chair honors the former Colorado senator who is currently undersecretary of state for global affairs, appointed by President Bill Clinton. […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Stirring things up on the Colorado River
As a media event, the Grand Canyon spring flood of “96 was a roaring success. On cue from the Today Show, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt turned a wheel, pushed a button, pulled a lever and opened the first of four jet tubes to send Lake Powell water downstream into the Grand Canyon. Whether the flood […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Forest Service Economics 101
It seemed an offer the Forest Service couldn’t refuse: The government gets the best price for its timber, and the buyer never cuts down any trees. Yet on March 21, the agency rejected an environmental group’s high bid of $28,875 for 275 acres of fire-damaged trees in the eastern Cascades of Washington near the Canadian […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Indian gaming still in legal muddle
States and tribes fighting over Indian gaming were looking to a U.S. Supreme Court case, Seminole Tribe vs. the State of Florida, to clarify the future of the contentious, $4-billion-a-year industry (HCN, 4/1/96). Instead, legal experts are hailing the March 27 ruling as a clear victory for states’ rights but an unclear directive for Indian […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Utah wilderness proposal rises and dies
The Utah wilderness bill is dead again, but not without a struggle. In mid-March, Alaska Republican Sen. Frank Murkowski sent the Utah delegation’s controversial plan opening 2 million acres of southern Utah to development on to the Senate as part of an omnibus parks bill. The bill linked wilderness designation of 1.2 million acres in […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
For further reading
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Raising a ranch from the dead Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire, by Stephen J. Pyne, Princeton University Press, 1982. World Fire, by Stephen J. Pyne, Holt and Co., 1995 New Mexico Vegetation: Past, Present and Future, William A. […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Sid Goodloe
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Raising a ranch from the dead “Allan Savory said it best when he said we’re grass farmers and not animal ranchers. But I would say that much more emphasis has been put on breeding animals than on proper care of the range. Ranchers are […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Dance with a cow, and the cow will lead
In 1985, in mid-career, I went back to college. I wanted to be a range conservationist. At the time, I thought I was the only student who wanted to study range management so I could later have an excuse to chase cows on government time. Silly me. Even at granola-crunching, holistically groovy Humboldt State in […]