CARBON COUNTY, Wyo.- Bruce Morley stands on Foote Creek Rim, the high ridge he hopes to cover with a forest of wind turbines, and eyes the brown haze from a power plant 150 miles away. “Every month this project would generate as much power as a coal train a mile long,” says Morley, raising his […]
Soft energy may shred Wyoming raptors
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Study or preserve: Ideals collide at Arizona park
ORACLE, Ariz. – Before she died in 1976, Lucille Kannally willed her ranch here to the Defenders of Wildlife, on the condition that the national environmental group preserve the 4,000-acre patch of desert foothills as wildlife habitat. But the group later handed off the ranch to a government agency, Arizona State Parks, which now plans […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Counties may shrink Utah wilderness
On a frozen night in mid-February, about 300 people crammed into an art gallery in Salt Lake City for an old-fashioned rally. While writer Terry Tempest Williams spoke about the need for wild places, a jar was passed among the crowd until it was stuffed with bills; sign-up sheets were filled with names of people […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Dear Friends
Spring visitors Two roving college classes each spent several hours at High Country News listening to talks about the West and asking questions about this nonprofit newspaper. They wanted to know how to cover a vast area with no staff, and in particular, more about Glen Canyon Dam, which both groups had just toured. By […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
So far, it is the rivers of the region that have suffered
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. So far, it is the rivers of the region that have suffered the greatest change in canyon country. This is not the fault of Major John Wesley Powell, a largely self-taught naturalist, geologist and ethnologist. Powell went on to organize […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
One project seems like the same old BuRec
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. Although the Bureau of Reclamation says it is now a water-conserver, and not a dam-builder, one ghost from the past continues to linger. Southwestern Colorado’s Animas-La Plata water diversion project, first approved by Congress in 1968, is still slated for […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Grand Canyon flood postponed
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. Biologists and Colorado River raft guides alike thought it was a sure thing: For one week in the spring of 1995, floodwaters from Glen Canyon Dam would roar through the Grand Canyon as they hadn’t since the high water summer […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Dams were built on breathless prose
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. To have a deep blue lake Where no lake was before Seems to bring man A little closer to God. A sweet breeze Across deep water The campfire’s glow Day’s end Peace – From Lake Powell: Jewel of the […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
The fight for Reclamation
When John McPhee, in Encounters with the Archdruid, rides down the Colorado River with Floyd Dominy, the bullheaded Commissioner of Reclamation during the 1950s and 1960s, and David Brower, Dominy plunges into the Lava Falls rapid with a cigar clenched between his teeth. Doused by the maelstrom, the cigar, minutes later, glows again: McPhee’s sly […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Don’t forget an “old curmudegon’s’ opinion
Dear HCN, Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes, 1933-1946, made a powerful public statement in 1935 supporting wilderness at a conference of state park authorities. Given the public mood, I believe it is time to hear from the old curmudgeon once again: “I am not in favor of building any more roads in the national parks […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Why should a college rate a cabin in a national forest?
Dear HCN, There is a healthy dose of irony in the Dec. 26 article regarding the battle between Arizona’s Prescott College and Tonto National Forest over a 60-year-old cabin. This otherwise unnoteworthy controversy serves to expose the major shortcoming, and in my mind, insincerity, of the organized environmental movement. Reporter Peter McBride neglects to consider […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Welfare kings
Dear HCN, If the administration and Congress want to reform the welfare program, they should not overlook ranchers that graze livestock on federal lands. Some of the richest people in the United States are welfare ranchers: William Hewlett and David Packard, of Hewlett-Packard Co., the computer manufacturing giant, graze cattle on more than 94,000 acres […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
A rural lifestyle is a romantic vision
Dear HCN, Every time I read a “protect our constitutional rights’ or “jobs save our rural lifestyle” rap (HCN, 1/23/95), I think of two things: The first is that a “rural” lifestyle is a romantic vision that these people have not lived for several generations, if then. They do not grow much of their own […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Utah imitates Denver
Dear HCN, Here’s how to save time and effort preparing your next special issue: Take the Denver Airport article and, wherever it says “Denver,” write in “Salt Lake City,” replace “International Airport” with “Winter Olympics.” Seriously, while there obviously are some differences, I was struck by the similarities. Utah politicians are falling over themselves singing […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
You abandoned your standards
Dear HCN, Your recent issue on the new Denver airport (HCN, 1/23/95) has caused me to conclude that your standards of journalistic and intellectual honesty are about on the same level as the slickness of your production. Never before have I encountered anything in your paper where you are so wrong (my opinion) and where […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Hunter-harassment law stands
The Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to Montana’s “hunter harassment” law which prohibits intentional interference with lawful hunting. A Gallatin County, Mont., court convicted animal rights activist John Lilburn of a misdemeanor under the law in 1990 for stepping in front of a buffalo hunter’s rifle and shouting, “Don’t shoot!” The conviction was […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
No more free lunch
Sea lions that gorge on steelhead trout trying to swim around the locks in Seattle, Wash., may have to worry about getting eaten themselves. The Muckleshoot Indian tribe has asked the National Marine Fisheries Service for permission to harvest the meat, hides and teeth from sea lions if the agency targets them for execution, reports […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
James Watt charged with felonies
A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., has indicted former Interior Department Secretary James Watt for lying to Congress and obstructing an investigation of fraud and influence peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Federal prosecutor Arlin Adams says that after Watt left the Reagan cabinet in 1983, he earned $500,000 for interceding […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Road plan gets rough reception
A Forest Service proposal to close 425 miles of road in the Bridger-Teton National Forest has provoked strong opposition. Forest officials said the plethora of roads made by all-terrain vehicles were chasing wildlife out and damaging vegetation. “Two-track roads are increasing from hunters on ATVs and the land can’t stand that kind of use,” says […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
A delicate question: When is an arch crowded?
MOAB, Utah – Two’s company, 30 is a crowd, visitors to Delicate Arch have told researchers trying to figure out how to protect the experience of viewing one of Utah’s most famous natural attractions. Using a pilot program that will likely be adopted at other national parks, Arches National Park has developed a method for […]