Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. National parks bring in lots of money but they don’t get to control how it’s spent. Private companies are the main beneficiaries of tourist traffic, and for the most part they have free rein over how to spend the tourist gold. […]
Parks as cash cows
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Shrink to fit
National Park Service may be downsized and reorganized
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
BLM: The Next Generation
Note: this is a sidebar to the news article titled “The BLM: New faces and new attitudes“ BLM: The Next Generation * Nina Hatfield, Assistant Director, Business and Fiscal Services * Maitland Sharpe, Assistant Director, Resource Assessment and Planning * Hord Tipton, Assistant Director, Resource Use and Protection ALASKA Tom Allen, state director Sally Wisely, […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Forest plan rapped
Forest plan rapped The first revision of a forest management plan in the nation is a flop, says a coalition of environmental groups that monitors activities on South Dakota’s Black Hills National Forest. The draft plan emphasizes logging and fails to implement ecosystem management, says Brian Brademeyer, conservation chair of the Black Hills Sierra Club. […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Horses must back off
Horses can’t poop in a source of drinking water for 25 homes in Lama, N.M. The Taos County court recently found Dr. John Wilson and his wife Barbara guilty of allowing their horses to pollute the El Rito de Lama Acequia, reports The Taos News. For more than 200 years, the acequias – irrigation ditches […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Enviros sue state land board
Better – but not good enough – says a coalition of Oregon environmentalists that is suing the state land board to institute “truly competitive bidding” for leases on state-owned land. In a break from tradition across the West, the board in July opened the bidding process so that conservationists could compete with ranchers for leases […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Boycott, effigy-hanging disgraces Joseph, Oregon
Dear HCN, To the people of Wallowa County, Oregon: My dictionary says an environmentalist is “a person working to solve environmental problems such as air and water pollution and the exhaustion of natural resources.” Andy Kerr and Ric Bailey are true environmentalists (HCN, 11/14/94). If you in Wallowa County are not yet concerned about the […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Victory in Idaho: Canyon lovers defeat the military
The Air Force’s decision Oct. 6 to back off on building a new bombing range in the Owyhee canyonlands is a victory – and therefore shocking. Who would have thought that a coalition of local and national environmentalists, hunting groups and a few members of Congress could stop the military and Idaho’s forceful Gov. Cecil […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
The valley around us is deep
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Beauty eludes the beast. Close to the Canadian border, Washington’s Methow Valley startles visitors with its wild 8,000-foot peaks and lively weather: sunshine one minute, boiling clouds the next. What words could do justice to its stark beauty, seen by visitors during an hour and […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Goodbye, New West; hello lords of yesterday: Dispatches from the field
Wyoming geared up for war In Wyoming, “It wasn’t the year to be seen as a thoughtful problem-solver,” says Sierra Club Northern Plains representative Larry Mehlhaff. “It was the year to have a bumper-sticker campaign.” Wyoming’s new senator, Republican Craig Thomas, lambasted Democratic Gov. Mike Sullivan during the campaign by associating him with President Clinton […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Election ’94 postmortem
Conservationists’ pre-election nightmares became real Nov. 8. A landslide gave Republicans a majority of the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years, and turned already conservative state legislatures in the West further to the right. “It’s not just the reversal, it’s the size of the reversal,” says Bruce […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Farmers spin federal dollars into hay
When Utah environmentalists began complaining about new water-conservation proposals during a recent public hearing, farmer Howard Riley leaned toward the man next to him and muttered: “It depends on how you define conservation.” Riley, a director of the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, represents farmers in Juab County and southern Utah County who would receive […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
BuRec to allow water thefts to continue
A crackdown against illegal use of federal water from dams in the West won’t take place anytime soon (HCN, 10/31/94). That’s because a long-awaited plan for curbing abuses is being shelved by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Under pressure from farm irrigators, the BuRec has begun work on what some observers predict will be a […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Dear friends
Good news, bad news This column is usually free of the “issues” that permeate the rest of the paper. The “Dear friends” column is HCN’s version of a small-town cafe’s liars’ table. It is here that we gossip, remark on who got married or had a child, and welcome visitors. But this fortnight’s mix of […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
How Methow Valley grew an economy
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Beauty eludes the beast. METHOW VALLEY, Wash. – While developers and government officials spent two decades and millions of dollars trying to turn this valley into a destination downhill ski resort, residents quietly built and maintained a world-class cross-country skiing area. Now the proposals for […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Citizens held off big money for years
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Beauty eludes the beast. METHOW VALLEY, Wash. – Only by sticking determinedly to their vision of this valley for 20 years did environmentalists force a compromise from all-out development. When the Aspen Ski Corp. and the Forest Service wanted to develop a downhill ski resort […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Beauty eludes the beast
Washington’s Methow Valley may avoid industrial tourism
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Environmental records of ranking Republican members ofcommittees addressing natural resource issues
Note: this is a sidebar to the news story titled “Election ’94 postmortem“ Environmental records of ranking Republican members of committees addressing natural resource issues. Compiled by League of Conservation Voters, based on bill sponsorship and recorded votes in the 103rd Congress. Sen. John Chafee, Committee on Environment and Public Works – 79 percent Sen. […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Greens under attack
The press has followed the wrong story, says David Helvarg, author of The War Against the Greens: The “Wise-Use” Movement, the New Right, and Anti-Environmental Violence. Zealous anti-environmentalists like to portray themselves as victims of an elite movement that has swept across the country, Helvarg says, and the national press, led by New York Times […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
From Oregon to Wyoming
A former county commissioner in Oregon has taken over the reins of the Wyoming Outdoor Council. New executive director Tom Throop was a commissioner in Deschutes County, Ore., where he helped begin a recycling program and rewrite county land-use laws to protect farmlands and forests. Throop, 47, who spent eight years in the Oregon Legislature, […]