Conspiracy of Optimism Until World War II, private forests provided 95 percent of the nation’s wood products; from 1945 to 1960, the timber industry turned away from its overcut land to publicly owned trees on the national forests. Confident in their talents and technology, Forest Service managers embraced clearcutting over selective harvesting and built 65,000 […]
Conspiracy of optimism
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
A place of one’s own
A PLACE OF ONE’S OWN Are you thinking of buying a few acres of land to satisfy that pastoral desire? It may be more complicated than you think and not as much fun. That’s why Montana has published a brief booklet for small-acreage landowners called Tips on Land & Water Management for Small Farms and […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Baiting continues unabated
Baiting continues unabated When the Forest Service announced last year that it would write a new policy regulating bear baiting, environmentalists and animal rights advocates were hopeful. They thought the agency might take a hard look at the controversial practice of laying out rotting foods to attract bears within shooting distance. But the new policy, […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Bring in more wolves
BRING IN MORE WOLVES The private group Defenders of Wildlife recently extended its Wolf Recovery Fund, established in Wyoming in 1987, to cover the Southwest. The program reimburses ranchers for livestock killed by wolves by raising funds from “the millions of wolf supporters all over the nation,” says Hank Fischer of Defenders. A Phoenix-based citizens’ […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Wild symposium
WILD SYMPOSIUM “Always Cry Wolf” is the theme of a symposium during the 17th annual MountainFilm festival in Telluride, Colo., May 26-29. Speakers include author Rick Bass and wildlife photographer Jim Brandenburg, and on tap are wolf films and talks by filmmakers such as Ray Paunovich, who is now documenting the lives of wolves released […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Goats in the crosshairs
GOATS IN THE CROSSHAIRS Managers at Olympic National Park propose shooting mountain goats to save the stuff they graze, wallow and walk on – native plants. A recent draft environmental impact statement recommends killing the park’s 300 non-native goats rather than transferring them outside the park, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Park managers say efforts to […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
A last laugh
A Last Laugh Although environmentalists don’t have much to laugh about these days, Orlo, a Portland, Ore.-based environmental education group, wants to help lighten the mood. Its free exhibition of environmental cartoons called “The Last Laugh” is now showing at The Art Gym on Marylhurst College campus until May 20, featuring more than 150 editorial […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Slashing water welfare
Slashing water welfare The Bureau of Reclamation released new rules this month to stop corporate farms from using subsidized water meant for family farmers. In a 1993 court settlement with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Bureau promised to look comprehensively at the Reclamation Reform Act of 1982 and propose regulations to close loopholes. Subsidies […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Bleak future for cutthroat
Fishery experts agreed at a February conference that there’s no practical way to eliminate the illegally planted lake trout that are killing native cutthroat trout in Yellowstone Lake. “There isn’t a fix, there isn’t a silver bullet – even suppression is a forever commitment,” federal biologist Lynn Kaeding told the Billings Gazette. A draft report […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Jail for a poacher
A Utah construction worker who killed a large, photogenic elk along a major road through Yellowstone National Park in the fall of 1993 and pleaded guilty to the crime will serve four months in prison and pay $30,000 in fines. But the rank act of poaching the elk was not what led Chad S. Beus, […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Non-native bird ruffles feathers
Conservationists clipped the wings of a controversial plan to introduce a non-native game bird into southwestern Colorado. Although the state Division of Wildlife hoped to release 40 ruffed grouse in the San Juan-Rio Grande National Forest in April, four environmental groups and two individuals sued the Forest Service to stop the transplant. The day after […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Wolf lovers give Idaho sheriff a piece of their mind
SALMON, Idaho – Linda Borton of Tucson, Ariz., was furious when she heard that one of the Canadian wolves released in central Idaho had been shot, and that Lemhi County Sheriff Brett Barsalou said he didn’t “give a damn who shot it.” That same night she fired off a letter to Barsalou. “I’m very much […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Midnight subdividing creates unsanitary messes
DOäA ANA COUNTY, N.M. – Felix Ledesma stares out at the border shantytown where his family now lives and he shakes his head: “We moved here because New Mexico is the land of opportunity.” But Ledesma’s children play nearby in muddy pools, and around them rise an odd assortment of homes – cinder block shacks, […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Forest Service scrambles to obey law it long ignored
It’s a case of a bureaucratic train wreck creating a congressional train wreck. After refusing for decades to apply the National Environmental Policy Act, the U.S. Forest Service is now applying the law so fiercely that it’s put a host of other programs on the back burner. The Forest Service is delaying timber sales, archaeological […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Dear friends
Stacked deck? When Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young decided to leave the Beltway to hear opinions on changing the Endangered Species Act, he set no House (Natural) Resource Committee hearings in what we think of as The West: Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Montana, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, or South Dakota. Young selected mainly small […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Heard around the West
The Montana legislature is determined to take that state’s clean water. It passed two bills that allow degradation of Montana’s streams and lakes. The bills were pushed by mining, ranching, logging and real estate. Developers succeeded in loosening septic tank standards for new homes. That could spell death for the purity of Montana’s immense Flathead […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
It’s deja vu yet again, says Bruce Babbitt
Washington, D.C. – On Dec. 24, 1992, while most Americans were eating Christmas Eve dinner, the four Marstons were listening to All Things Considered on National Public Radio. The occasion was Bill Clinton’s nomination of Bruce Babbitt to be secretary of Interior. To be honest, the occasion was NPR reporter John Nielson’s taped interview of […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Montana State University to local environmentalists: Get lost!
In an editorial in their monthly newsletter, which I’ll call the Big Sky Cow Pie, the Montana Stockgrowers Association branded me the “Ralph Nader of the West.” It was not meant as a compliment. I’m not exactly sure what set them off. Perhaps it was something I’d said while president of the National Wolf Growers […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
If rain doesn’t fall, the money will
LAS CRUCES, N.M. – Drought returned to the West last summer, with a little help from the federal government. Ranchers from Oregon to New Mexico – their herds grown too abundant as a result of a well-intentioned drought relief program – let grass-starved cows and sheep strip parched rangelands bare. The emergency feed program, run […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
An in-your-face range scientist
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue on the West’s land grant universities. LAS CRUCES, N.M. – In the wake of a drought that left the Southwestern range parched and degraded, scientists at New Mexico State University are busy: They’re figuring out which cattle breeds do the best in the […]