No place on earth has anything quite like the roads of the Great Basin. Maybe the most distinctive recollection of my life 15 years ago at Deep Springs College along the California-Nevada border, was dropping off Westgard Pass into Deep Springs Valley driving a ratty Chevy pickup truck whose sole virtue was a passable sound […]
Endless opportunities for solitude
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Desert skin
The canyon country of southern Utah and northern Arizona – the Colorado Plateau – is something special. Something strange, marvelous, full of wonders. As far as I know there is no other region on earth much like it, or even remotely like it. Nowhere else have we had this lucky combination of vast sedimentary rock […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
The spotted owl made the rich richer
In Oregon lumber towns, a popular bumper sticker reads, “Spotted owl tastes like chicken.” But in the boardrooms of some of the nation’s largest forest products companies, the rare bird has laid a golden egg. The scarcity brought about by the federal protection of the endangered owl helped double the value of many corporations’ vast […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Irony piles on irony in Wyoming
JACKSON, Wyo. – Backers of a proposed private-federal land swap want to prevent development of the last huge chunk of ranchland in Wyoming’s Teton County. And they’re counting on the highest officials in the federal Interior Department to keep their plan alive. That’s an ironic twist in a state where Clinton administration officials are regularly […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Feds want to kill some Yellowstone bison
Where tourists visiting Yellowstone National Park see a wildlife haven for free-roaming buffalo, a cadre of federal and state scientists see a reservoir of disease that threatens to spill into the outside world. “Yellowstone National Park is a cloud hanging over us,” says Dick Rath, a veterinarian from Bozeman, Mont. Rath and his colleagues, including […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Can BLM save the grass, and itself?
Backed into a corner by legislation that threatens its existence, the Bureau of Land Management has started punching back. The agency began an aggressive Department of Interior campaign in late June, when acting BLM director Mike Dombeck delivered hard-hitting testimony against the Livestock Grazing Act before Senate and House subcommittees. Dombeck, who has already made […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Dear friends
A celebration Twenty-five years ago, schoolteacher-rancher-activist Tom Bell of Lander, Wyo., had the nutty, impractical, unsustainable idea of founding a newspaper to cover environmental issues in the rural, inland West. On Saturday, Sept. 9, Bell (who lost his ranch while establishing the paper) and scores of like spirits will gather in Lander, Wyo., to celebrate […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Hot summer reading
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Fighting fires, and indignities. Writers and photographers have been catching up with public interest to document firefighting. Michael Thoele’s Fire Line: The Summer Battles of the West collects dramatic photographs from across the front lines of wildland firefighting, focusing the summer drama of smokejumpers, […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
A hot welcome on the fire line
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Fighting fires, and indignities. History does not record the name of the first woman who got a paycheck for fighting a forest fire. Supposedly, she signed on with the Bureau of Land Management in Alaska in 1971. Today 30 to 40 percent of forest […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Fighting fires, and indignities
“Them sons-of-bitches was Mennonites who wouldn’t fight in the last war … Them sons-of-bitches took them shovels and saws and Pulaskis and put a hump in their backs and never straightened up until morning when they had a fire-line around the whole damn fire. Them sons-of-bitches was the world’s champion firefighters.” – Retired smokejumper […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Will an illegal BLM study seal southern Utah’s fate?
I’m writing a book on the Colorado Plateau and it has been one of the joys of my life. The library work has been fascinating but the best research has been with a backpack and a boy. Philip, then 13, and I headed out from Boulder, Colo., for southern Utah just after his classes ended, […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
This grazing bill is a disaster
THIS GRAZING BILL IS A DISASTER On May 25, New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici introduced the Livestock Grazing Act (HCN, 6/12/95). The bill would overturn Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s Rangeland Reform proposal. The following is a letter to Sen. Domenici from longtime Arizona activist Steve Johnson. Dear Sen. Domenici: I am completely sincere in my […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Timber theft agents weren’t angels
TIMBER THEFT AGENTS WEREN’T ANGELS Dear HCN, HCN appears to be quite concerned about the Forest Service’s Timber Theft Task Force, especially since it has been disbanded (HCN, 4/3/95). As you well know, there are corrupt people in all walks of life and disciplines, and the task force is no exception. Judging from my experience […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
An idiot’s diatribe can still be useful
AN IDIOT’S DIATRIBE CAN STILL BE USEFUL Dear HCN, Ed Marston was on the money with his review of Gregg Easterbrook’s A Moment on the Earth (HCN, 5/29/95). Curiously, Easterbrook appears to have done for liberalism what former Interior Secretary James Watt did for conservatives – sabotaging the cause of environmentalism in the name of […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Just a moment!
JUST A MOMENT! Dear HCN, Thanks to Ed Marston for critiquing both Gregg Easterbrook’s A Moment on the Earth (HCN, 5/29/95) and the gaffes of environmentalists. A friend from Philadelphia tells me that the leaf pictured on the book’s cover is a Norway maple – a weedy tree species currently wreaking havoc in Eastern woodlands. […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Tom Huerkamp: required reading
TOM HUERKAMP: REQUIRED READING Dear HCN, Paul Larmer’s skillful account of Tom Huerkamp’s magnificent struggle to hold prison expansion at bay in Delta County (HCN, 6/26/95) ought to be required reading for every county administrator in this country. If ever there was a classic example of how dumb untended markets can be, it has been […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Outsiders must now stand up for Utah wilderness
OUTSIDERS MUST NOW STAND UP FOR UTAH WILDERNESS Dear HCN, The recent defense of the Utah counties’ recommendations for Utah BLM wilderness by former Grand County Commissioner Paul Menard (HCN, 5/29/95) deserves a response. The Utah congressional delegation told Utah’s county commissioners they could decide how much Bureau of Land Management wilderness should be protected. […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Short takes
To help people understand the complicated issue of water rights in New Mexico, Recursos de Santa Fe is organizing an Aug. 9 conference in Silver City, N.M., The Prehistoric Basis for Water Use in New Mexico: Options for the Future. Registration is $25. For more information contact M. Susan Barger at Recursos de Santa Fe, […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Toughen the ESA, scientists say
TOUGHEN THE ESA, SCIENTISTS SAY In the midst of efforts to water down the Endangered Species Act, two scientific panels announced support for the beleaguered law. Convened by the National Academy of Sciences, the first panel called for swifter action by the government to denote and protect “survival habitat.” Panel chairman Michael Clegg, a geneticist […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Polluter Pork
POLLUTER PORK Renewable energy is on the congressional chopping block again. An 80-page report by the Sustainable Energy Budget Coalition blasts congressional budget cuts in the Department of Energy’s renewable energy programs. The coalition’s study, Congressional Energy Budget Proposals: Penny-Wise, Pound Fuelish is a state-by-state analysis of budget cut effects. Congress was far kinder to […]