They lobbied. They staged sit-ins. They crashed town hall meetings. They chained themselves to trees. They scrounged for pennies and sued every despoiler of public lands they could find. The guerrilla tactics of the Southwest’s disparate environmental activists have worked. They have contributed to an enormous decrease in logging in the region’s 11 national forests: […]
Can Southwest activism and money coexist?
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Democrats gag on bitter budget pills
WASHINGTON – How strange have things gotten in negotiations over the 1996 budget? Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt unveiled an ambitious 1997 budget last month even though his department doesn’t have one for 1996. “This is surely the most unusual budget year in the history of our nation,” Babbitt said. He accused Republicans of “misuse and […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
A very large subdivision riles a very small town
BIG HORN, Wyo. – Residents of this unincorporated township stared bug-eyed at the lead story in the afternoon paper nearly two years ago. “700 homes planned for subdivision,” the 72-point headline read. Disbelief reigned; seven hundred homes could mean 2,100 people. Big Horn, which doesn’t even have paved streets, barely had 400 residents. But it […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
‘Two weeks of hell’ saves a stand of old-growth trees
Six years ago, Francis Eatherington fought to keep loggers out of a roadless area in western Oregon’s Umpqua National Forest. A seasonal employee for the Forest Service, she felt passionately about the area’s 1,000-year-old trees and the spotted owls and runs of salmon and steelhead they harbored. With the help of a lawsuit, she and […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Utah’s Burr Trail still leads to court
A tentative cease-fire over the management of southern Utah’s Burr Trail ended abruptly Feb. 13 when a Garfield County road crew bulldozed a hillside inside Capitol Reef National Park. Garfield County officials say it was “just something that had to be done” to maintain the “county-owned” road. But Terri Martin of the National Parks and […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Dear Friends
Hello, uh, fire department Pastures smudged with black ash, fast-rising billows of smoke visible from miles away, these are the signs that signal spring in this medium-altitude (5,600 feet) mountain valley. “Burning ditch” is an annual rite here, followed in more than a few instances by emergency calls to a town’s volunteer fire department (-Come […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Stephen Pyne
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Raising a ranch from the dead “As I read the record, there were grasses everywhere in the Southwest linking all its different environments. Even ponderosa pine was more of a savanna than a forest. The grass provided the interstitial medium, and that’s what carried […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Experts line up on all sides of the tree-grass debate
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Raising a ranch from the dead If only Sid Goodloe had confined himself to his six or so square miles of private property. Then his would be a straightforward story about the rejuvenation of a piece of exhausted land. But Goodloe doesn’t stop at […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Raising a ranch from the dead
For almost four years I have been biting down on Sid Goodloe’s story as though it were a suspicious gold coin. I have also been telling bits and pieces of it to audiences, testing ideas I wasn’t ready to put on paper. Putting it on paper meant confronting the audacity and complexity of Goodloe’s story, […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Tribe fights salvage logging
Tribe fights salvage logging An Indian tribe has jumped into the legal fray surrounding the salvage-logging rider signed by President Clinton last summer. The Klamath Tribes of southern Oregon filed a lawsuit March 13 against the Forest Service, charging that the federal government has shirked its responsibility to preserve traditional hunting and fishing grounds. When […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Top dog loses patience
Top dog loses patience Biologists at Yellowstone National Park expected the wolf to knock the coyote out of the top dog position in the ecosystem, but not this quickly. Biologist Bob Crabtree of Yellowstone Ecological Studies has counted 12 coyotes killed by wolves this winter, and says the actual number could be three times higher. […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Rebels without a case
Rebels without a case Nineteen months after Nye County, Nev., County Commissioner Dick Carver challenged federal authority by bulldozing a road into the Toiyabe National Forest, the government has pushed back. On March 14, a U.S. District Court in Las Vegas struck down a controversial Nye County ordinance claiming ownership and management authority over Forest […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Greens want to draft Nader
Greens want to draft Nader Third parties have had a miserable political history. Their candidates either get forgotten in the media hoopla or face charges of spoiling the race. But beginning with the “96 presidential campaign, the Green Party hopes to establish third parties as an election choice of the future. Its goal is to […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Yellowtail throws in his hat
Yellowtail throws in his hat Environmentalists in Montana have a congressional candidate they can enthusiastically support to fill the seat vacated by Democratic Rep. Pat Williams. He is Bill Yellowtail, 48, who quit his job March 18 as regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in Denver. Three other Democrats, Mignon Waterman, Leo Hudatz and […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Symposium on Nonviolence and Civil Disobedience
Environmental activists and students will gather on the Whitman College campus in Walla Walla, Wash., for the Symposium on Nonviolence and Civil Disobedience Earth Day weekend, April 19-21. Hosted by the Columbia River Bioregion Campaign and the college, the symposium is based on the teachings and lives of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Johann Galtung, […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Managing Natural Resources
Utah State University holds an annual Natural Resources Week symposium, and this year’s get-together April 17-19 focuses on Managing Natural Resources at the Urban Interface: The Challenge of a Changing West. Speakers include Richard Knight of Colorado State University, Luther Propst of the Sonoran Institute in Tucson, and sustainable-business advocate Paul Hawken. Contact Conference and […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Clearing the air on the Colorado Plateau
CLEARING THE AIR ON THE COLORADO PLATEAU It’s decision time for the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission, the group charged with restoring clean air to the five-state Colorado Plateau. Congress established the commission, which includes five Western governors and industry and environmental representatives, in 1991, allowing it five years to develop a plan to reduce […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Wild Wyoming under siege
Sporting and conservation organizations will gather in Rock Springs, Wyo., April 26-28, to discuss the increasing conflict between oil and gas development and Wyoming’s clean air and wildlife. Many residents are alarmed by industry predictions that natural gas production will boom in the next 20 years, says the nonprofit Wyoming Outdoor Council, organizers of Red […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
80,000 tons of nuclear waste may head for Nevada
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Thousands of casks of highly radioactive nuclear waste would begin crossing the West by rail and truck as early as 1998 under a proposal that recently gained preliminary approval. The proposal hasn’t yet hit the floor of the House or Senate. But the Senate Energy Committee, in a 12-6 vote, approved creating […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Yellowstone: Geysers, grizzlies and the country’s worst smog
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – Wendy Ross traveled the globe before settling into a job at Yellowstone National Park. Now she suffers from what she calls “the worst air I’ve ever breathed.” She and her co-workers at the park’s west entrance depend on air pumped into their glass booths from a port about 75 feet […]