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 […]
Heard around the West
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 […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
‘Anything you say about a whole forest is wrong’
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. Art Partridge is walking through the tall firs of the Coeur d’Alene National Forest in northern Idaho. Pausing occasionally to keep tabs on his […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Two views of forest health at the University of Idaho
Are the forests sick or well?
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Environmental paradigm spurs collaborative research
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The end of certainty, in a special issue about the West’s forestry schools. For many years, the federal government spent more money studying the breeding and production of corn than it did studying forests. Yale Forestry Professor John Gordon speculates this was related to […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
The end of certainty
Western universities learn there is more to forestry than chainsaws
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Economic tools obscure key questions
Dear HCN, As Colorado State Professor John Loomis shows, contingent valuation can be a useful tool to demonstrate how much we value “goods’ like clean air or dam-free rivers (HCN, 9/18/95). Since the valuation we ordinarily look to is that established by parties in mutually beneficial transactions, goods that are not bought and sold may […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
A cheap shot
Dear HCN, High Country News took a cheap shot to deliver a hot opening line in your article about troubles in the Endangered Species Coalition (HCN, 10/16/95). You would get the idea that the National Audubon Society just woke up one day and fired the coalition staff out of pique. Not true. We were forced […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Don’t forget cows
Dear HCN, Ray Ring’s otherwise excellent article about whirling disease and trout in torment (HCN, 9/18/95) missed a critical part of the fisheries picture in the arid West: livestock. One of the key reasons why the Idaho Watersheds Project and eight regional environmental groups filed a listing petition for the desert redband trout with the […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
A bogus claim
Dear HCN, I was very pleased to see the article about the efforts of Skip Edwards in the Westwater Wilderness area (HCN, 10/16/95). Our ranch, the Mountain Island Ranch, is the only BLM grazing permittee on the east shore of the Colorado River through the Westwater Canyon. Skip and I have had our differences of […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Thanks to all who helped save Mono Lake
Dear HCN, Regarding the anonymous letter, “Where Credit is Due” (HCN, 10/2/95), I’d like to clarify the litigative history that led to the “saving” of Mono Lake. As the letter correctly noted, the first limitation of water diversions from the Mono Basin was the product of lawsuits filed in 1984 by California Trout. The Mono […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
That waving wheat is nothing but a clearcut
Virtually all of agriculture is an attempt to artificially prolong the first stage of succession. The grasses we have domesticated … grow quickly and concentrate energy on producing seed. They store carbohydrates in these seeds, precisely why we value them as food. From an ecological sense, then, agriculture is a sustained catastrophe. It is the […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Water and faith
WATER AND FAITH “How do we live faithfully in an arid land?” Rural congregations will gather in Twin Falls, Idaho, to reflect on this question at the eighth meeting of the Forum on Church and Land, Water, Power and Place, Nov. 8-11. Among the speakers will be University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson, who […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Smog talk
SMOG TALK The crystal-clear skies of the sparsely populated Colorado Plateau have become increasingly muddied by power plants, mining operations, wood-burning stoves, and even automobile smog from Los Angeles. From Nov. 27 to Dec. 7, the public will have a chance to comment on five proposed solutions to the problem at meetings in eight Western […]