Defending the desert In the minds of far too many people, says former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, the Southwest’s public lands are a wasteland. “Indestructible because there is nothing to destroy; unworthy of protection.” Now, a new handbook by the Environmental Defense Fund provides activists and educators with the tools to tackle this myth. Defending […]
Defending the desert
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Environmental Activism 101
Environmental Activism 101 The University of Montana will train activists as well as scholars during a new 16-week joint venture with the federally funded Green Corps. Called the Environmental Organizing Semester, it will teach 26 college juniors and seniors from around the country how to run petition drives, investigate environmental abuses, write press releases and, […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Writers for Utah wilderness
We are not, of course, in dire need of roads, transmission towers, dams, reservoirs, and gas pipelines. We are in dire need of courtesy. We are in dire need of a broadly intelligent conversation about human fate. We are in need of a thorough and piercing review of our plan for economic development, a plan […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Rural reality check
RURAL REALITY CHECK Four years ago, economist Ray Rasker began touring towns in the Greater Yellowstone region with a slideshow. His message: New growth in local economies comes mostly from high tech and service industries, not resource extraction like mining or grazing. Rasker, with The Wilderness Society in Bozeman, Mont., says, “Most people told me, […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
The butterfly and the golf course; and the widow’s story
The butterfly and the golf course The Allegation: In a cover story titled “The Butterfly Problem,” in the January 1992 issue of The Atlantic, the authors portrayed an Oregon developer whose lifelong dream of carving fairways on a section of the Oregon coast was snuffed out in the morass of Endangered Species Act protection of […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Guy Pence leaves Nevada
The Forest Service has ordered Guy Pence off of the front lines in Nevada. The district ranger in Carson City has been the target of two bombings this year (HCN, 10/30/95). The agency is reassigning him to a staff position at the regional office in Boise, Idaho, out of concern for his personal safety and […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Clinton says: Stop logging
President Clinton says he’s distressed because the salvage rider he signed in July opened up the wrong ancient forests to logging. Faced with growing civil disobedience in the Northwest, the president said last month that he wants Congress to change the law. As interpreted by a federal judge, part of the salvage law mandated the […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Round and round and round it goes, where it stops…
Note: this article appears in the print edition as a sidebar to the news story titled “Idaho’s new crop: nuclear hot potatoes.” The continuing question of where to bury nuclear waste has high stakes for the West. Federal officials have focused on permanent burial of the waste in two locations: Yucca Mountain, Nev., for commercial […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Idaho’s new crop: nuclear hot potatoes
Just before dawn on Oct. 24, police officers from the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe in Fort Hall, Idaho, parked a patrol car across railroad tracks at the border of the reservation. Then they waited. Hours later, the engineer of a train hauling six casks of radioactive nuclear waste from Navy ships spotted the car and slowed to […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
The anecdotal war on endangered species is running out of steam
Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth stepped up to the podium at the Wise Use Leadership Conference in Reno, Nev., this summer and charged the Endangered Species Act with a series of assaults: Californians lost homes to the 1993 fire because they were not allowed to clear weeds where endangered kangaroo rats live. Snails smaller than a […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Dear Friends
A near visitor He was probably looking for the High Country News office. Where else would a bear go in Paonia? But it got distracted by its stomach and began lunching on discarded produce at neighboring Don’s Market on Oct. 14. The bear temporarily eluded the town’s entire police and public works departments – all […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Sinclair Lewis’ George Babbitt would be at home in this Congress
When I read recently that a couple of Republican congressmen were still fighting an impending ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), I was overtaken by a literary obsession: I had to re-read Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt. Let me explain. About a year ago, while still gainfully employed, I wrote a column about Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, who […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Heard around the West
When you buy Nikes, you get more than shoes. You become part of the wise-use movement, or perhaps of your local militia, judging by a Nike ad printed in the November Outside and elsewhere. The ad leads with: “Boundaries are set by dictators. Created to regulate cattle grazing and employ tollbooth attendants. With no regard […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
DC’s green power-brokers look for new home
A chastened national environmental movement, watching the progress it fought for over decades being dismantled by a hostile Congress, is going back to its roots. Or so its leaders say. Big national organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, the National Audubon Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Wilderness Society, […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
A new breed of academic at Colorado State
Note: this story is one of several feature articles in a special issue about the West’s forestry schools. Fort Collins, Colo.- At 6:38 a.m., Rick Knight is happily installed in his campus office, propelling himself about at high velocity on a chair with well-greased rollers. He drums out memos on his computer, organizes slides for […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Silencing science at UW: one researcher’s story
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The ax falls at the University of Washington, in a special issue about the West’s forestry schools. When the University of Washington offered aquatic biologist Steve Ralph a job in 1989 directing a major new stream-research program, he jumped at the chance. His […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
The ax falls at the University of Washington
Environmental institute is chopped; other programs cut
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Reformation in the Vatican of sawlog forestry
History takes Oregon State for a ride
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Northern Arizona U. looks back, moves forward
Presettlement forests provide map for management
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Critics say an Idaho think tank could be more scholarly
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Two views of forest health at the University of Idaho, in a special issue about the West’s forestry schools. Controversy comes with the territory in Jay O’Laughlin’s job. He directs the University of Idaho’s Policy Analysis Group, which is charged with explaining natural […]