Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. Dick Carver barnstorms the West telling crowds of ranchers how he faced down an armed federal agent to open a road in the Toiyabe National Forest. “We’re going to bring the power of […]
County commissioner courts bloodshed
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
A bitter rancher and a failed compromise
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. Great Basin National Park was born compromised. Established in 1986, the park covers 120 square miles of the Snake Range, centered on Wheeler Peak near the border of Nevada and Utah. It is […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Scientists search for biological treasures
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. The story of change in the Great Basin is written on the landscape. The tectonic forces that shaped the land can be seen in the twisted layers of rock that rise abruptly from […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue about the Great Basin. The landscape casts a rhythmic spell in the Great Basin. You feel it driving Highway 50 across Nevada. Grinding up a steep grade to the summit. Seeing a broad valley, and more mountains, one range after another, like waves […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Don’t give up
Dear HCN, During the last 15 years of my 27 years as a fish and wildlife biologist, I came to realize that good range conservationists in the Bureau of Land Management can do more for our public lands than all other disciplines combined. For reader-clarity sake: A “good” range con is one who constantly and […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Three provocative essays
Dear HCN, The Feb. 20 HCN had three very provocative opinions expressed on its back pages. I was startled, however, by Ray Rasker’s comments which followed “Education … is an important determinate to individual success …” He meant that old-timers need to become educated, which is true. I had assumed that he was going to […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
One-size-fits-all environmentalism can be disastrous
Dear HCN, Last summer I spent several days in Salmon, Idaho, as part of my research on the human dimensions of ecosystem management. I expected to hear the same sort of petulant threat-mongering that Jon Margolis mocked – something I’ve heard increasingly often in my years of listening to the voices of the rural West […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Counties can’t “take back’ federal land
Dear HCN, County officials throughout the West are talking about “taking back the land” by abolishing the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service. Last year we began hearing a legal argument that New Mexico was denied statehood on an “equal footing” with the original 13 states, contrary to the U.S. Constitution. This old theory […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Taking our time, too
Dear HCN, If the concept of “takings’ is to be a part of our way of life, then the concept should extend to population growth. Increased traffic congestion resulting from population growth could, for example, cause a person to spend an extra half-hour a day commuting to and from work; added up over a working […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Bigoted drivel
Dear HCN, We read the “Waaaaaahh” essay you published on the back page of HCN Feb. 20, and found it beyond insulting and beneath contempt. It made us sad to see you endorse such sweeping cruel generalizations and obvious vulgar innuendo. Sadder that it appeared just when polarizations and lack of trust over wolf, water […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Telling the truth is hard but necessary
Dear HCN: The February 20 High Country News article about the Idaho salmon lawsuit painted a misleading picture. The issues are not about minor legal technicalities, nor gaps between urban and rural folks. The court’s slam-dunk decision was the result of the continued failure of the Forest Service to follow the law and protect dwindling […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Tales from the West
The in-laws are a steady, insistent, increasingly frantic chorus of disapproval over her plans. But, Mary! How can you expect to go to college and take good care of a husband and a baby? Finally, We’re going to put our foot down! She knows that somehow she has got to extricate herself from these sappy […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Gambling with small towns
In three Colorado mountain towns where gambling has been allowed since 1990, four out of 10 residents would now like to move out, according to a study by the University of Colorado. Knocking on every door, researchers found that residents want to take flight because of the rapid and drastic changes in their communities. Although […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
You can’t cut them all
The Forest Service drastically overestimated the number of trees it could cut from Northwest forests, according to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO found that the Forest Service exaggerated allowable sale quantities for three of the most productive forests in the region – the Deschutes, Gifford Pinchot and Mount Hood. […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Our hot legacy
OUR HOT LEGACY “Where and how will we treat and dispose of the backlog of wastes from nuclear weapons production? How clean is clean? Should we exhume large volumes of contaminated soil in order to allow for unlimited use of the land in the future? To foster a sustained and informed public debate on these […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
How to nominate an environmental innovator
Hoping to galvanize the environmental movement in the United States, one of the biggest philanthropic organizations in the world began five years ago to give money directly to the country’s best and brightest conservationists. It’s the Pew Charitable Trust’s Pew Scholars Program, which so far has doled out 50 grants of $150,000 to people from […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Wolves feel the urge
In a promising sign for the effort to restore the ecosystem of Yellowstone National Park, wolves imported in January are already trying to breed. Although the 14 wolves shipped from Canada to Yellowstone are still cooped up in one-acre pens in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley, rangers have observed male wolves attempting to mount female wolves. Biologists […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Feds flex their muscles
Federal attorneys fired a warning shot March 8 at county governments in the West trying to assert control of public lands. Justice Department lawyers sued rural Nye County, Nev., where local officials have harassed federal land managers. In one instance, Nye County commissioners threatened Bureau of Land Management staff trying to enforce grazing regulations. In […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Life among the ruins
A subdivision in southwestern Colorado encourages buyers to build homes closely around the ruins of ancient Anasazi dwellings. California developer Archie Hanson bought 1,200 acres of the archaeologically rich land after visiting the area just six miles east of Mesa Verde National Park, near Cortez, Colo. Now he’s offering 31 “Indian Camp” lots of about […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
R.S. 2477 detoured again
The Department of the Interior has delayed for a third time its deadline for resolving a dispute over an outdated law known as R.S. 2477. In 1866, it granted rights-of-way to rural counties for roadbuilding across public lands in the West. When it was repealed in 1976, pre-existing claims were grandfathered in, creating a flurry […]