As encounters between bears and people – in cars, campgrounds and backyards – increase around Colorado’s burgeoning mountain communities, the state’s Division of Wildlife is conducting ground-breaking studies on the wily bruin. Veteran researcher Tom Beck has captured 42 bears so far near Kremmling, Colo., and is tagging and radio-collaring them as part of a […]
Colorado learns bear facts
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Taking aim at the Forest Service
Somebody in Nevada doesn’t like Toiyabe Forest Ranger Guy Pence, and to show it they’ve bombed both his office (HCN, 4/17/95) and a van parked at his Carson City home; the latter attack occurred Aug. 4. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., blames the attacks on “the ugly underbelly of the county supremacy movement in Nevada.” When […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Owl shuts down the Southwest
In a ruling reminiscent of the Northwest spotted owl conflict, federal Judge Carl Muecke ordered the 11 national forests of Arizona and New Mexico to halt all logging until their forest plans adequately protect the Mexican spotted owl. The Aug. 24 temporary injunction, which immediately stopped all timber operations, came in response to a lawsuit […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Pay-for-wolf play
Tourists who fail to catch a glimpse of wild wolves restored to Yellowstone National Park can troop to the nearby Grizzly Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Mont. For an undisclosed price, the privately owned center recently purchased a 10-member pack from a Montana breeder and unveiled the animals to the public Aug. 7. Director Gale […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Right-of-way or give-away?
When Congress reconvenes after Labor Day, the House is expected to mark up a new bill that could allow states and counties to bulldoze roads across national parks and wilderness areas. The legislation, introduced July 20 by Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, attempts to preserve rural rights-of-way that might not be recognized under recently proposed Interior […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Navajo Nation bails out timber mill
The Navajo Nation has fired the remaining workers at its defunct sawmill and paid $500,000 from general funds to bail out Navajo Forest Products Industry, the business it created in Navajo, N.M. Tribal leaders say they had no alternative: Defaulting on the company’s loan would have damaged the tribe’s credit rating and lost the mill […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Salvage logging means deep cuts
The rescissions bill signed by President Clinton July 27 directs the Forest Service to cut salvage timber – defined as dead, dying or at-risk trees – -to the maximum extent feasible.” What does that mean? An Aug. 18 letter from the Forest Service’s Washington, D.C., office to all regional foresters begins to spell this out. […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
A pothunter is nailed at last
Earl Shumway, the notorious pillager of Anasazi burial sites in Utah, has been convicted of looting. Shumway had built a record of illegal pillaging of historic sites since 1984, bragging that he was untouchable (HCN, 12/26/94). When asked by The Salt Lake Tribune to describe Shumway, Utah state archaeologist Dave Madsen was brief: “Pothunter. Looter. […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Babbitt begins range reform
Despite requests for yet another delay by Western senators plus a lawsuit from the livestock industry, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt traveled to Grand Junction, Colo., Aug. 22 to launch the first phase of his grazing reform. Accompanied by Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, Babbitt announced members of three Resource Advisory Councils in Colorado, where ranchers, environmentalists […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Grow up, dig in, and take root
Outside magazine recently picked six or seven towns – mostly in the West – as great places to live. But those seduced into pulling up stakes by the glossy photos and idyllic promises in July’s cover story should first consider a few facts. Here are three days’ worth of headlines from the Spokesman-Review, the newspaper […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Devastation at the center of his universe
For many of us, some places become more special than all others. One of mine is a raw asymmetrical land, lacking the scenic appeal of Colorado’s alps. It’s a quiltwork of lodgepole pine, spruce and Douglas fir, with heroic patches of alpine larch and whitebark pine hugging the highest and rockiest slopes. There’s old-growth ponderosa […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Dear readers
High Country News is put together every two weeks in much the way a Jackson Pollock-type painting is put together. And that is the approach we have taken to the ceremony marking the paper’s 25 years in the West: impromptu, short on formal presentations and long on directness. We’re thinking of Saturday, Sept. 9, as […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Heard around the West
Everyone agrees that environmentalism has been hit out of the ballpark by “Wise Users’ and Republicans. But no one knew why we’d whiffed until Glen Martin of the San Francisco Chronicle did an analysis. Deconstructing his article (it used to be called reading between the lines) shows that Greens spend too much time hiking and […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
How to get rural people to stand proud and tall
It usually takes something substantial – a dam or the earth’s 5 billion people – to annoy David Brower. But just credit him with having founded the Sierra Club and watch the scowl form. The annoyance is part vanity. The Sierra Club is now 103; Brower is a youthful 83. His reaction is also part […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
And you thought cows were bad…
I pull apart the sooty rocks, exposing wads of foil, blobs of heated plastic and paper plates. The trash goes in my yellow Woodsy the Owl bag; the ash I scatter in the bushes. This soggy alpine meadow here in Idaho offers no good burial sites for a summer’s accumulation of cinders, and I do […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Forest Service wants to play by a new set of rules
While reform of the Endangered Species Act captures headlines across the West, some conservationists say an equally important law is also in danger. It is the National Forest Management Act, or NFMA, which has governed watersheds, soils and wildlife for nearly two decades. Forest Service officials now propose wholesale changes in the regulations that implement […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
U.S. House to the environment: Die!
Attacking the environment through the yearly appropriations process is not new. But this year’s Congress may take it to new heights. No less an authority than House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., has acknowledged the scope of policy changes hooked on to appropriations bills: he called them “without precedent going back to 1933.” The attacks range […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Group tries to change how trees are cut
KALISPELL, Mont. – Strange bedfellows, the logger and the conservationist. Yet here in the Flathead Valley the two have joined forces to try to revolutionize the way America’s public forests are managed. “Our goal is to look at the entire forest,” says Steve Thompson of the Montana Wilderness Association. “Environmental goals are the prime concern […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Dear Friends
Suddenly, late summer It turned hot, and then it turned humid in this mountain valley that receives only 9 to 11 inches of rain a year. Although our swamp coolers can’t keep up, we tell ourselves to enjoy this damp and still warm August weather – slant light announces that fall isn’t far away. Lots […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
BLM land: outstanding opportunities for crowding
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook. A year ago, Bureau of Land Management rangers in southern Utah stumbled upon a remote, never-looted Anasazi ruin. To protect the site, they decided not to publicize its existence, but agency staffers’ jaws dropped recently when […]