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 […]
Don’t forget cows
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 […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
No profit in Kaiparowits Mine
NO PROFIT IN KAIPAROWITS MINE A company trying to open a coal mine on southern Utah’s Kaiparowits Plateau had better take a second look at its numbers, concludes a recent study by the Grand Canyon Trust. The report says the high cost of trucking coal over 225 miles of roads to rail transfer sites will […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF? Ranchers concerned about wolves killing livestock should buy a new piece of equipment – a video camera. That’s the advice in Dealing with Wolves on the Ranch, a pamphlet from the Montana Stockgrowers Association that explains the legal do’s and don’ts of dealing with endangered wolves in Idaho, […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Deals and delays for Dixie
After a five-year Forest Service study found that cattle have eaten 94 percent of their allotted grass on the east slope of Boulder Mountain in southern Utah, Dixie National Forest ranger Marvin Turner made a decision. On June 1, Turner told cattlemen to reduce their grazing levels by 42 percent. Ranchers cried foul, and three […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Grizzly plan sent back to drawing board
A recent federal court ruling may delay plans to declare grizzly recovery in Yellowstone a success. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled Oct. 4 that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 1993 Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan lacks an adequate yardstick for measuring recovery of the species, which gained federal protection in 1975. Citing the plan’s […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Logging deal struck in Southwest
Some timber cutting has resumed in the Southwest’s national forests, Christmas trees and all. An Oct. 19 agreement reached between environmentalists and the Forest Service frees up about 30 million board-feet of timber for harvesting. The negotiations came after a federal judge in August halted logging on national forests in Arizona and New Mexico until […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Olympic-sized rip-off
When Salt Lake City, Utah, applied to host the 2002 Olympics, critics warned that nearby ski resorts would attempt land grabs. Now those fears are realized: A bill proposed by Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, would force the Forest Service to exchange 1,320 acres of prime real estate next to the Snowbasin Ski Resort east of […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Sleepy St. George wakes up to hate crimes
Dave Hamilton and Claude Schneider were asleep on Sept. 23 when Utah’s St. George Fire Department called to say their bookstore was on fire. Somebody had doused the building with gasoline and lit a match, say St. George police. “This was a hate crime,” says Schneider. “Hamilton and I are gay, and there is no […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Bad luck for New World mine
A court decision handed down on Friday, Oct. 13, spelled bad luck for developers of the proposed New World gold mine. A federal judge ruled that Crown Butte Mines and its parent corporations had violated the Clean Water Act by failing to clean up old mine waste from the site, which sits on the northeastern […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Navajo spoken here
Navajo spoken here When Albert Hale was in grade school, a teacher reprimanded him for speaking Navajo, saying, “You guys lost the war. You are now in an English-speaking country, so you speak the language,” Hale told the Salt Lake Tribune. Hale, now president of the Navajo Nation, wants to make sure a cultural blackout […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
To: Mom from: Wolf 3, Somewhere in Yellowstone National Park
About the last thing I remember, we were standing around that dead elk in Canada, you and me and One Eye and the triplets. You were laying out the meal at the south end of dinner, and I was leaving a message for those brain-dead coyotes on a pine tree. Then there was this loud […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Heard Around the West
Jim Peacock, president of the Utah Petroleum Association, was apparently kidnapped on his way to a meeting with state officials in September. An impostor was sent on in his place. It is the only way to explain why the head of Utah’s free-market petroleum industry, in free-market Utah, would be asking the state for welfare […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Warriors: Navajo Code Talkers
When photographer Kenji Kawano left his native Japan in 1973 for the United States, he had never heard the word Navajo. Twenty-two years later, the Navajo Reservation seems like home, and many of Kawano’s friends are Navajo Marines who fought against his Japanese relatives during World War II. The Navajo Marines, known as “code talkers,” […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
‘Housewife from Hell’ bird-dogs a cleanup
One morning in a town close to Missoula, Mont., a Superfund cleanup pushed into Tina Reinicke-Schmaus’ life with a backhoe. The event transformed her into a “Housewife From Hell,” she jokes. As a social-services worker, student and mother, she already had plenty to keep her busy. But soon she became the local expert on a […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Tables turned on Catron County leader
When it comes to the war for the West, Dick Manning – a miner, rancher and county-movement leader in Catron County, N.M. – is used to having the upper hand. For years, Manning has frustrated and harassed federal and state employees who tried to monitor his 17-acre mining site in the Gila National Forest near […]