Dear HCN, Your article on massive tree thinning to make room for the return of ponderosa pine forests (Northern Arizona U. looks back, moves forward, 11/13/95) offers valuable insights to conservationists. The article’s claim that thinning is economically viable raises an interesting question, namely, viable for whom? Big mills have retooled to process the smaller […]
Count in the little logger
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Now for the details
Dear HCN, Your issue on forestry schools was rich in academic intrigue, the personalities involved and what they are arguing over (HCN, 11/13/95). I strongly urge you to present another special issue on what that argument is about: the ecology and economy of healthy forests. I also hope you will use the opportunity to teach […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Get real, ranchers
Dear HCN, Your “Saving the Ranch” issue Nov. 27 really stunk. I guess I shouldn’t have expected an Aspen reporter to speak truthfully about Steamboat Springs. Your reporter states that “Nine out of 10 people surveyed in 1993 said they believe that ranch meadows and grasslands with grazing cows and horses enhance their lives.” And […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Hunting is no joke
Dear HCN, I am offended at the characterization of hunting as a sport; to me, it is serious business (HCN, 12/11/95). I have taken 25 large ungulates over the past 18 years, but I do not have any of their heads displayed on my wall. I hunt for meat, not for trophies, seeking the animal […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Beyond hunting
Dear HCN, I grew up with men; somehow, much to my mother’s disappointment, I ended up walking the fields with them instead of making pies in the kitchen. I shot the pheasant instead of staying in and stuffing the turkey. I spent weeks on the banks of rivers or the shores of lakes waiting for […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Logged hillsides collapse into Idaho’s creeks
CLEARWATER NATIONAL FOREST, Idaho – Forest Service ranger Art Bourassa pulls off to the side of the road and looks up at a raw and broken hillside. Some might assume it’s the freshly scalped victim of a strip-mining operation. Not this time. Torrential November rains washed out this section of forest in northern Idaho. At […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Clogged channel sends a river over its bank in Washington
SHELTON, Wash. – When the Skokomish River floods, Mark and Laurie Sleeper can watch salmon swimming through their front yard. They move their six kids to drier ground and try to keep their possessions from floating away. In lesser floods, the Sleepers park their car on the side of the highway and wade home. Although […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Yellowstone’s closure sparks local fury
Note: this article appears in the print edition as a sidebar to another news story, “Who felt the federal furlough?“ CODY, Wyo. – After investing in a fleet of 40 new snowmobiles, Bob Coe was counting on a busy winter at Pahaska Tepee, the lodge he runs just outside Yellowstone National Park. At least 80 […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Who felt the federal furlough?
While his colleagues paced anxiously at home during the 21-day federal furlough, Forest Service timber contracting officer Lathrop Smith administered 13 green timber sales in southwestern Colorado. He was hampered – -there were no soil scientists, hydrologists or biologists’ – but stayed on the job. Smith was not alone. Although most of the West’s federal […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Dear Friends
Hunting issue reverberates From Montana writer Scott McMillion about our exploration of some issues surrounding hunting (HCN, 12/11/95): “The top of the food chain is a pretty good place to be, and don’t forget: More money is spent each year on hunting than on movie tickets.” From California reader Bryan Hill: “Anti-hunters have a moral […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Hunting: Get used to it
Let me state right off and as unapologetically as possible that I am a member of the “hook-and-bullet” press – a field editor of the venerable Outdoor Life magazine, which along with its sister publication, Field & Stream, are America’s original conservation magazines. Both have been in business since before the turn of the century, […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Heard Around the West
Movies about Nevada’s casino life always seem to revolve around gangsters, call girls and stool pigeons. In a shocking reversal of that trend, pigeon stools brought down the marquee of the Golden Spike Casino in Carson City this month. “We are concerned about it,” casino co-owner Jim Bawden told the Reno Gazette-Journal in an article […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Hanford: Boomtown of the atomic frontier
At the beginning of World War II, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr told American scientists that “to get the fissionable materials necessary to make a bomb, you’re going to have to turn the whole country into a factory.” He exaggerated, of course. The factory took up counties, not countries. The Hanford Engineering Works in a […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
For further reading
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, At Hanford, the real estate is hot. Nuclear Culture: Living and Working in the World’s Largest Atomic Complex, by Paul Loeb, 1986, New Society Publishers. Loeb looks at the nation’s largest nuclear weapons complex through the eyes of the people working there and details […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Hanford’s prime cuts
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, At Hanford, the real estate is hot. Four pieces of Hanford will likely spur the most contention as prospective landlords jocky for control. The Hanford Reach encompasses the last 51 undammed miles of the Columbia River and is a significant spawning area for endangered […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Amid the lovely the lethal remains
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, At Hanford, the real estate is hot. During the four decades the Hanford Nuclear Reservation produced weapons-grade plutonium, it laced eastern Washington’s soil, water and air with radioactive sludge that may never disappear. Recently, Hanford also became synonymous with human radiation experiments that make […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
At Hanford, the real estate is hot
To become a Yakima Nation warrior, a young man had to run from the top of Rattlesnake Mountain to the Columbia River and back to the mountain top. That meant dropping 2,400 feet to the valley floor, sprinting 10 miles to the water, and then returning to climb this rise, which looks like a crumpled […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
They’re stepping down
Two powerful Western Republicans announced they would not seek re-election in 1996. Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said in early December that he would step down because “Thirty years of voluntary separation from the state I love is enough.” Soon after, Alan Simpson of Wyoming said that he, too, […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Allard takes aim
Last April, the League of Conservation Voters awarded Colorado Rep. Wayne Allard a score of zero for his environmental votes during his first 100 days in office. Now, Allard’s rating might dip into the negative numbers. A provision of Allard’s in the 1995 Farm Bill would prohibit the Forest Service from changing management plans to […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Round two for a grazing bill
Three months after a coalition of environmentalists, hunters and anglers shot down his grazing bill, Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico has resurrected it (HCN, 8/21/95). The new version is 60 pages leaner and ensures public-lands access for fishing, hunting, and other recreational uses. Ranchers like the new bill and its emphasis on cooperation […]