Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. Lynn Fritchman is used to spending time with dead bears. The third-generation Idaho hunter inspects bears for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game after they’ve been killed by hunters. But over the years Fritchman heard […]
Idaho hunters ask public to bear with them
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Outfitters take aim at four-wheelers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. After a poor deer and elk hunt this year, many Colorado outfitters are calling for a thinning of the herds. Not the herds of big game – it’s the all-terrain vehicles that thundered through the state’s […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
One does not hunt in order to kill
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted. If one were to present the sportsman with the death of the animal as a gift he would […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
He stuffs what they kill
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. John Stevenson, who runs Wyoming Taxidermy in Evansville, near Casper, used to mount 500 kills a year. But bad winters have taken a toll on local antelope herds, the number of hunting permits has been reduced […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Is hunting morally acceptable?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. Editor’s note: The people she most wants to talk to are the men and women who stalk animals and shoot to kill – the people who make moral choices in a split second. She is Ann […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting
Lee Metzgar took up hunting as a youngster, as soon as he could handle a rifle. At first he hunted mostly birds; then he moved west to teach ecology at the University of Montana and, as he phrases it, his hunting got serious. For the next 22 years, stalking in the Rockies, Metzgar bagged deer, […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
What’s historic? What’s worth preserving?
Dear HCN, Hooray for Tom Casey who wants to preserve the nuclear power plant structures west of Olympia, Wash., according to HCN’s Heard Around the West column Oct. 16. They are an honest representation of our cultural heritage, and, like charming 1800s brick buildings, their presence on the landscape tells us, over time, just where […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Our dictators are home grown
Dear HCN, I noticed in a recent article by Elizabeth Manning that the residents of Catron County, N.M., support Dick Manning and his anti-government proclamations (HCN, 10/30/95). As a resident of Catron County I can assure you that is not true. At least half, if not more, of the residents think he is a loud-mouth […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Former Elko resident tells why he moved
Dear HCN, I was delighted that Jon Christensen did an article on Elko County, Nev. (HCN, 10/30/95). I just wish he had done so while I was still living there. I worked as an engineer for one of the gold-mining companies in the area until I decided to leave after being informed that my political […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
A losing battle
Dear HCN, I was disappointed and extremely saddened after reading “In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one” (HCN, 10/16/95). Disappointed that with so many other environmental problems facing this country, the Sierra Club Foundation has chosen to pick on a small rural cooperative to the tune of $2.5 million. It seems […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Ganados never attacked anyone
Dear HCN, Ganados del Valle is not an organization which “attacks reputations’ and smears them in our valley’s “red brown mud” (HCN, 10/16/95). Over the past five years we have had several opportunities to tell the story of the history of the lawsuit brought by the attorney general of New Mexico against the Sierra Club […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Watch out for guns
It was killing season again, and in Colorado it might have been safer to romp through the woods in blaze orange than to stay near a hunting camp. A 16-year-old girl in the Uncompahgre National Forest hopped off her four-wheeler while unloading her rifle Oct. 21, only to shoot her father in the leg. He […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Dam project called a “bungle’ and a “porker’
A committee of the Catholic Diocese of Pueblo, Colo., surprised everyone, including Pueblo Bishop Arthur Tafoya, by blasting the proposed Animas-La Plata water project as an “environmental, economic and social bungle.” The Human Development Commission of the diocese also asked, “Who is responsible for the continuing agitation to support a project so badly conceived? We […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Lakotas want Crazy Horse off silver screen
Lakotas want Crazy Horse off silver screen As a Turner Network Television crew packed up its cameras after filming Crazy Horse in Hot Springs, S.D., members of the Lakota tribe picked up their pens to sign a petition against the latest TNT movie focusing on Native American history. Descendants of Crazy Horse and Lakota Sioux […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Ranchers win again
Ranchers win again Environmentalists in New Mexico plan to follow a trend set in Idaho and Oregon: taking the state to court after having bids for state grazing permits rejected. They charge that the land office is discriminating against them and violating state law by not managing state land for maximum profit. Forest Guardians and […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Traffic flow 1, trees 0
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – When the bulldozer smacked a 40-foot-tall cottonwood tree, the tree first wavered and wobbled. Then, a loud crack rang out, and the tree toppled, its bright green leaves crushed as they glistened in the sunlight. This scene was repeated more than a dozen times in mid-October, as the Albuquerque city government started […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Rare native fish found in Utah, then poisoned by mistake
A project launched by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to protect a recently discovered population of rare native trout killed almost every fish in the stream instead. The fish, located in Parley’s Creek close to Salt Lake City, were believed to be pure Bonneville cutthroat trout, one of only two varieties of trout native […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Utility found guilty of polluting a wilderness
Tourists noticed it first. A thin brown haze hung in the air like a nylon stocking obscuring the view of the Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area in northwest Colorado. Alerted by complaints, the Forest Service set up cameras at the Storm Peak Weather Lab on top of the Steamboat ski area. The cameras took pictures three […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Voters say yes to elk, no to takings, jets
In state and local elections Nov. 7, environmental initiatives followed the law of the pocketbook: Measures that would have cost taxpayers money usually failed. Although fiscal conservatism spelled defeat for slow-growth initiatives in Colorado and Utah, it also contributed to a major victory for environmentalists in Washington state, where voters defeated Referendum 48 – the […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Dear Friends
Hello, hello? We’re still not used to the sudden disappearance of staffers at the Bureau of Land Management or Forest Service. Humans all over the West once answered our annoying and time-consuming questions; now recordings announce: “Sorry, due to a lack of budget appropriations, this office is closed.” Then a Denver Post story Nov. 16 […]