(Note: this article accompanies another feature story in this issue, Utah hearings misfire.) When Utah’s congressional delegation announced almost a year ago that it would introduce a bill designating BLM wilderness, environmentalists in the state were shocked. They knew they faced a potentially disastrous alignment of political planets: Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, […]
Congress weighs the fate of Utah’s wild lands
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
The delegation’s bill gets shellacked
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Utah hearings misfire. In a Christmas gift to Utah environmentalists, Rep. James V. Hansen, R-Utah, unceremoniously yanked the Utah delegation’s wilderness bill off the House floor Dec. 14. Hansen said he pulled the bill because there wasn’t enough time to properly debate it. […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
A 4 million acre difference
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Utah hearings misfire. 1. The Book Cliffs: BLM and adjoining state and Indian reservation lands comprise a natural area of over 1 million acres spanning the Tavaputs Plateau and mile-deep Desolation and Gray canyons. It is one of the largest blocks of unprotected […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Utah hearings misfire
Unidentified speaker: What I would like to do is have a political (poll) … and just let everybody express what they can’t express because of time limits; so until that red light goes off, (inaudible) make noise and … The crowd, chanting: 5.7, 5.7, 5.7, 5.7, 5.7, – Official transcript, Salt Lake City Wilderness Hearing, […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Revving up rural schools
Without the drama of guns and gangs, the popular media usually leave rural education in a time warp of little red schoolhouses and outdated textbooks. But rural schools, which house one-quarter of the nation’s students and teachers, turned decades ago to interdisciplinary studies, multi-grade classrooms and community- based learning – all “innovations’ being introduced in […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
How rivers really run
Ever wonder how rivers shape mountains? How to classify stream erosion? Wildland Hydrology Consultants, a firm based in Pagosa Springs, Colo., offers courses from spring through fall in Applied Fluvial Geomorphology, Stream Classification and Applications and River Assessment and Monitoring. The five-day courses for hydrologists, fisheries biologists, and other riparian ecosystem specialists cover urban, agricultural […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
The plumber’s guide to the Colorado Basin
When John Wesley Powell rafted down the Colorado River, he was probably not thinking of plumbing. But that’s the metaphor the Dinosaur Nature Association brings to life in a poster of the dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts that have transformed the rivers of the Colorado Basin. Based on Lester Doré’s illustration from HCN’s book, Western Water […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Western Images
The University of Southern Colorado is now accepting papers for a March 21-23 conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., The Image of the American West in Literature, the Media, and Society. Topics may include anything from rodeos to tourism, immigration to heroism. One-page abstracts are due Jan. 5. For more information, contact Professor Steven Kaplan, 719/549-2764, […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Southwestern writers hit the airwaves
-Every writer has one thing they want, need to work out desperately in their writing … I seem to be dealing with transformation, a way to make sense of, to rectify, a terrible, beautiful history.” * Joy Harjo Joy Harjo, a Creek poet, screenwriter, and saxophonist, is one of 13 Southwestern authors featured in Writing […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Green fellows
Environmental journalists with at least three years’ experience are invited to apply for a fellowship year at Harvard University. The two selected Nieman fellows – one U.S. and one international – will take undergraduate and graduate classes. They will also meet with distinguished figures from journalism, business, education, the arts and public service. The fellowships […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Fire on the mountain
Synthetic rubber, sulfa drugs, nuclear power – those are a few of the better-known medical and technological byproducts of war. Less known is that World War II also spawned the snowmobile, the snowcat and the modern ski industry. Those are some of the stories told in Fire on the Mountain, a film that documents the […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
More and more friends
Following the lead of other states that face a fast-growing population and diminishing open space, New Mexico residents recently established 1000 Friends of New Mexico. The organization hopes to “encourage responsible land-use planning and find innovative alternatives to the expansion of suburban sprawl,” says Ken Balizer, a planner who is the group’s founder and president. […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Saga of Enid Waldholtz
Utah Democrat Karen Shepherd is considering a bid to retake the congressional seat she lost to free-spending Republican Enid Waldholtz. Authorities continue to investigate allegations Joe and Enid Waldholtz are at the center of a $1.7 million check-kiting scheme which may include violations of federal campaign-spending laws in the 1994 race against Shepherd. Waldholtz, a […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
John Mumma takes another helm
Four years after jumping out of the political frying pan, John Mumma has leaped into the fire. The former Northern Region forester for the Forest Service has been hired as the new director of the embattled Colorado Division of Wildlife. Mumma quit the Forest Service after 28 years rather than accept reassignment to Washington, D.C., […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Thou shalt not build a dam
After a several-week delay, the Roman Catholic bishop of Pueblo, Colo., has spoken, and not to the liking of backers of the Animas-La Plata water project. In early November, a nine-person citizens’ group, the Human Development Commission of the Pueblo Diocese, blasted the project proposed for southern Colorado as wasteful and destructive (HCN, 11/27/95). Outraged […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Logging opponents lose – again
In Moscow, Idaho, you can tell it’s fall when Cove/Mallard timbersale protesters start showing up for trial. In the last four years more than 100 people have argued their cases before a variety of magistrates and federal judges, and nearly all have lost. This year was no exception. The largest trial this year involved 12 […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Thundering against Thunderbolt
When the U.S. Forest Service set aside a steep and damaged portion of the Boise National Forest for a timber sale called Thunderbolt early this fall, environmentalists in Idaho filed one of the first lawsuits against a salvage sale. Now the 13 million board feet has sold for $1 million, and the Sierra Club Legal […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Hunger striker to head East
The so-called “logging without laws’ salvage rider signed by President Clinton last July has catalyzed many people to commit acts of civil disobedience. But one person has mounted an unusual protest in front of the federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon. Tim Ream, 33, set up a tent on the courthouse steps Oct. 3 and has […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
`Goddamn goshawks’
Last summer, loggers discovered a nest with two rare goshawk fledglings on the Headquarters timber sale, west of Laramie, Wyo. With permission from the Forest Service they cut trees within yards of the nest, causing the adults to abandon the nest and the fledglings to die. Environmentalists blasted the agency and loggers for failing to […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
She knows about jets
Dear HCN, Your Oct. 2 article about the jet noise in a Colorado wilderness made me realize that I might be able to help after fighting the jet noise from San Francisco Airport for 25 years. First, start by learning everything about the way the Federal Aviation Administration handles takeoffs and landings in every type […]