Another special issue It must be something about the fall that brings to culmination many months of research and interviews. On Sept. 4 we published a special, 24-page issue called Grappling with Growth, which has just gone to a third printing to accommodate requests for copies. With this issue we offer the first of several […]
Dear friends
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Three agricultural fallacies
The poet laureate of cultivated land challenges the ‘experts’
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Off campus: A sociologist tries to help Idaho’s small towns
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about land grant universities in the West. When sociologist Aaron Harp interviewed for a job at the University of Idaho, he was asked if the university had an obligation to save the state’s rural communities. “That’s a loaded question,” says Harp. “And having […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
On campus: A department head tries to change the academic culture
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about land grant universities in the West. If the West’s land-grant universities are to evolve, faculty like Glen Whipple are keys to that evolution. Whipple is head of the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Just as important, he […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
A tale of two ag programs
Evergreen State provides an alternative to giant Washington State
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Apple growers become patrons of science
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Sexy weapon thwarts bugs. Washington’s asparagus growers will pay WSU scientists $12,000 this year to figure out how to prevent asparagus spears from softening during canning. Pea and lentil growers will spend about $50,000 on researching soil conservation. And the tiny cranberry industry […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Budget cutters whack at researchers
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Sexy weapon thwarts bugs. Jay Brunner is hunched over a microscope, watching a tiny wasp crawl over a bright-green caterpillar called a leafroller. The ant-sized wasp has laid about 10 eggs on the leafroller’s dense web. When the young wasps hatch, the entomologist […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Sexy weapon thwarts bugs
Codling moths find frustration at end of pheromone trail
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Between past and future
Washington State University tries to get there from here
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Land-grant universities
Their roots loosen as the Westchanges beneath them
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Paved “paradise’ for workers
In Telluride, Colo., you can live in your car, but only if you park it in the right place. After passing an ordinance prohibiting car camping on all public land and rights-of-way within town limits, on Oct. 18 the Telluride Town Council designated a public parking lot as an alternative. The “campers’ are people who […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Eight charged with bombing a river
A former rafting guide and seven other men may be sent up the river for bombing a Class 6 rapid. A federal grand jury in Phoenix, Ariz., indicted William K. Stoner, 34, and his co-conspirators Oct. 13 on charges they blew up Quartzite Falls in Arizona’s Salt River Canyon Wilderness. The boaters are accused of […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Elk farming leads to wildlife slaughter
Gunners from the ground and the air shot dead 120 deer and other wildlife this August so that Montana officials could test the animals for tuberculosis. State veterinarians said tests were necessary because elk had developed TB at a game farm along the Bighorn River, north of Hardin, and the disease had been transmitted to […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Wake up, pragmatists
Dear HCN: Your Aug. 22 editorial is right: “The West has internalized much of what environmentalists fought for (in the Reagan-Bush years)”; it is time for environmentalists to enter the “twin tents of ecosystem management and consensus.” But the “generation of environmentalists that stopped the Reagan-Bush lawlessness may not have the skills or temperament to […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Llamas: They expect YOU to know what you’re doing
DURANGO, Colo. – Juan stares at me with soulful brown eyes. We have spent six hours on high trails without seeing anyone else, descending finally to a timberline camp. Above us looms a cirque of tundra painted with the muted, water-color palette of high country autumn. Heavy trout rise just beyond casting range in this […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
On Friday, the fish took some of it back
Note: This article is a sidebar to the essay titled “Ripples grow when a dam dies“ Chips Barry, who heads the Denver Water Department, says his major responsibility is not the acquisition of new water supplies. “It’s to hang on to what we’ve got in the face of instream flow and endangered species and interstate […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Ripples grow when a dam dies
Four years after the defeat of Denver’s proposed Two Forks Dam, water development in Colorado has changed drastically. No longer is Denver the imperialistic leader of Front Range urban development. And no longer are environmentalists a fringe influence, forever fighting the good fight against dams and forever losing. The change is visible at three major […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Wise-use power is overblown; the real threat is apathy
The 103rd Congress, which just wrapped up most of its business, was the worst environmental Congress since the first Earth Day 25 years ago. The conventional wisdom in the mainstream press is that this poor record comes from the diminished clout of the environmental movement and the rise of the wise-use movement. But is the […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
If you hear the alarm, stop breathing
That doesn’t mean take a deep breath and hold it, says the man at the front of the room. It means STOP BREATHING. Pull on your gas mask, clear it of air to get a tight seal, and breathe through it until further notice. No one gets into the new Chemical Agent Disposal Facility at […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Environmentalists mostly skunked by Congress
California Democrat Dianne Feinstein paced the chamber of the U.S. Senate, Saturday morning, Oct. 8, just minutes before the adjournment of the 103rd Congress. The number 59 glowed on the electronic scoreboard. Feinstein and a huddle of grim-faced Democrats knew they needed one more vote to end a month-long Republican filibuster frenzy that had prevented […]