GRAZING THICKENS FORESTS A June 12 report from the Oregon Natural Resources Council blames livestock in addition to the usual culprits – fire suppression and poor logging practices – for the declining health of Western forests. The group’s ecologists, Joy Belsky and Dana Blumenthal, reviewed four case studies from Washington, Utah, Idaho and the Southwest, […]
Grazing thickens forests
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
She fights for ferrets
A veterinary technician fired for protesting an ill-fated plan for releasing black-footed ferrets into Badlands National Park in South Dakota now wants to start her own care facility for geriatric or neglected ferrets. Carolyn Kinsey was hired to manage a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “conditioning” facility in Pueblo, Colo., for ferrets soon to be […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Logan Canyon: Round 1,000
LOGAN CANYON: ROUND 1,000 A controversy that began in 1959 over widening and straightening the road through scenic Logan Canyon in Utah continued in May when the Forest Service decided against a citizens’ group. The group, the Logan Canyon Coalition, had submitted an 187-page critique of the state highway department’s plan to enlarge the road […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Back at the Diamond Bar…
-USFS Tags Diamond Bar as Green Showplace,” headlined the pro-ranching Hatch, N.M., Courier, after the Forest Service evaluated the 227-square-mile Diamond Bar grazing allotment near Silver City (HCN, 5/1/95). The agency cut ranchers Kit and Sherry Laney’s permitted cattle numbers from 1,188 to 300, but the ranchers will be able to up that to 600-800 […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
BLM stumped by squatter
Ken Medenbach, a former militia member who “seized” 10 acres of federal land in spring, is still causing headaches in central Oregon. BLM managers planned to escort Medenbach back onto federal land to retrieve his possessions and then close the case. But Medenbach, who was barred from the land by court injunction, showed up with […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Idaho woods again inspire “acts of conscience’
Summer’s here and it’s protesting time in the woods: Cove/Mallard Coalition’s third summer of logging resistance has begun in central Idaho. Protests and civil disobedience will once again be the tools of the campaign as loggers start building the third of nine access roads into the mostly roadless area. Holding a banner that read “The […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Falling arches
Tourist Jim Lin and his wife, Dafang, stopped to snap a picture of the 306-foot-long Landscape Arch at Utah’s Arches National Park June 5, when they were startled by a loud cracking noise. “It was a very big sound, like a dynamite explosion,” Lin said. What they heard was a 44-foot slab tearing away from […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Utah wilderness goes coast-to-coast
Run over by a political juggernaut in their state, Utah’s environmental groups are trying to dust themselves off and sound a nationwide alarm. The state’s congressional delegation has united in pushing a bill that most environmentalists see as disastrous. It would make 1.8 million acres of Bureau of Land Management wilderness official, but release at […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Turkeys for timber
An unearthed federal report reveals that Kaibab Forest Products Co. deliberately stole more than 1,200 trees from the Kaibab National Forest north of the Grand Canyon. According to the 1992 report, made public after a Freedom of Information Act request by Robin Silver of the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, a cozy relationship existed between […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Militias busting rural budgets
Officials in Darby, Mont., a town of 625 in Ravalli County, estimate that dealing with militia leader Cal Greenup and his family cost $7,000 in enforcement and legal expenses. That scuffle, along with $13,000 in legal fees spent on another anti-government resident who sued the town over a drunk driving arrest, took nearly all of […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
A progressive bureaucrat signs off
Daniel P. Beard, who resigns as commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation effective Sept. 1, snorted when asked the question he’d already heard dozens of times: “Why are you really resigning?” But the long-time reader of High Country News loosened up, and then talked for a half-hour, when publisher Ed Marston noted: “You’ve been one […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Heard around the West
The National Park Service’s Park-‘N’-Drive Competition is getting intense: One tourist pulled a knife on another last fall in a fight over a Grand Canyon parking space. Already this season amid the canyon’s gridlock, a woman who boldly stood in a parking space – trying to save it for her husband and their car – […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Memo incontinence strikes again
Leaked memos seem to be a recurring problem for Republican Sen. Slade Gorton. The Washington lawmaker received unwanted publicity in February when environmentalists obtained a memo revealing that industry groups had written his Endangered Species Act reform bill (HCN, 5/1/95). Now comes a second memo, dated June 1 and directed to the managers of three […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Endangered law backed in court, ripped in Congress
The Endangered Species Act continues to thrive in courtrooms. But lawmakers on Capitol Hill have targeted it for extinction. In a highly anticipated ruling June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments by the timber industry that the 1973 law mostly exempted private lands. By a 6-3 count, the justices overturned a lower court ruling […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Four-ton bandage applied to trampled peak
Some hikers bag Colorado Fourteeners – the peaks that top 14,000 feet elevation – as others do trout. But what happens when trails are trampled to death? There was so much wear and tear on the North Mount Elbert Trail, which bears nearly 10,000 hikers each summer, that it had to be closed and the […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Wolf revival spreads to Southwest
A bronze likeness of the Mexican wolf stands in front of the University of New Mexico’s gymnasium in Albuquerque – the lobo is the mascot for the school’s sports teams. About the only other place to see the endangered predator today is in the zoo. But now, after a decade of environmentalist-rancher-government wrangling over Mexican […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Rural monster homes may not fly
ASPEN, Colo. – To 72-year-old Betty LaMont, her 40-acre piece of land in remote Pitkin County, Colo., is her bank account. The land LaMont’s family homesteaded in the late 1880s lies at 8,000 feet in a grove of aspen, three miles from Thomasville, population 25, and 50 miles from the county seat, Aspen. LaMont says […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Dear friends
Snowplows in June Summer in this 6,000-foot mountain valley unofficially arrived July 5; up until then snow fell and dusted the West Elk Mountains overnight, and something called rain dripped every other day. The air felt more like October. Finally, 90-degree heat moved in – this was more like it! – though we could still […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Mount Graham time line
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Making a mountain into a starbase. About 9000 BC As continental glaciers retreat, conifer forests of the Pinalenos – where 10,720-foot Mount Graham is the highest peak – become isolated from those of the Mogollon Rim and other mountain islands in what is now […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Sound-bite slogans distort a complicated reality
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Making a mountain into a starbase. In the acrimonious conflict over Mount Graham, middle ground is harder to find than red squirrels. Some opponents like to say the telescopes will drive the squirrel extinct. According to the best scientific knowledge, that’s not exactly true. […]