For sale: low mileage bomb factory Without much effort, a used-car and scrap dealer in Pocatello, Idaho, got his hands on $10 million worth of equipment needed to build nuclear bombs. In June 1993, a Department of Energy lab sold dealer Tom Johansen most of the major components to make bomb-grade uranium from spent nuclear […]
For sale: low mileage bomb factory
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Reality intrudes on Big Rock Candy Mountain
The bluebirds no longer sing by the lemonade springs: The Big Rock Candy Mountain Resort on the Sevier River near Marysvale, Utah, is bankrupt. The sulphur- and chocolate-colored mountain, celebrated in a song written by Harry McClintock and sung by Burl Ives, attracted visitors from around the world who during the 1950s drank its mineral-rich […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Babbitt helps a river
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has declared an 11-mile stretch of southern Oregon’s Klamath River a National Scenic River. Babbitt’s decision deals a death blow to the city of Klamath Falls’ proposed Salt Caves hydroelectric project, reports The Oregonian. Oregon citizens voted six years ago to include the free-flowing portion of the river in the state’s […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
When are trapped wolves “taken’?
The Bozeman-based Predator Project has asked the federal Animal Damage Control agency to stop trapping coyotes after a gray wolf was found dead in a trap on a Montana ranch. The wolf, which had wandered from a pack in Glacier National Park, died from overheating in late August. Wolves in Montana are protected under the […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Open sesame, grazing boards
The public must now be allowed, if not welcomed, to sit in on Utah’s grazing advisory board meetings. In late June, the state attorney general’s office issued a decision that forces all five of Utah’s BLM advisory boards to open their doors, even to activists such as grazing watchdog Scott Groene of the Southern Utah […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
A sunny future for nuclear test site?
The Nevada Test Site, home to nuclear weapons testing for more than 40 years, may have a brighter future. Clear skies and high insolation – the amount of solar radiation available at ground level – make the test site one of the best places in North America for capturing solar energy, according to a feasibility […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Parks give free rides
While the Clinton administration proposes charging people more to visit national parks, the National Park Service continues to lose more than $100 million a year in fees it fails to collect. According to an Interior Department audit, the agency took in $68 million in gate and campground fees at the nation’s 367 parks, monuments and […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
A wilderness rates one official boss
A wilderness once run by six national forests will get its own supervisor, budget and district managers – just like a national forest. By centralizing management of Idaho’s 2.3 million acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the Forest Service hopes to save on costs and improve services, says John Twiss, the agency’s national leader […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Bambi takes a hunter safety course
Hey kids, remember when Bambi’s mother got blown away by the hunter? Tom Storm does, and because movies like Bambi have given hunters a bad name, he wants to teach people who don’t hunt all about the role hunters play caring for wildlife. In his book Stormy and The New West, Storm shows Stormy the […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
A creeping plague of crickets is hitched to everything in the world
There have been a few times when my love of nature has been put to the test: a July 4 snowstorm that trapped me in a tent for three days, a two-month bout with poison oak, a gnat attack in Utah. The Mormon cricket plague was no exception. The outbreak began in 1981 in Dinosaur […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
As salmon die, a traveler plants seeds of rage
McCALL, Idaho – Another 1,000 miles, another month gone by. As relentless as the wild salmon he hopes to save, Charles Ray climbs into his weathered brown truck and each month travels about the same distance the fish must navigate between the Pacific Ocean and their spawning grounds in central Idaho. Many of his work […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Yellowstone fires produce new trees, not meadows
Crouched over a metal screen like a gold rush prospector and peering through its grid at the forest floor, Cindi Persichetty calls out what she sees through each square-inch opening: “Line four: moss, moss, litter, seedling, seedling, seedling.” Another Idaho State University graduate student, Mike O’Hara, sits on a log recording the findings on a […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
The progress of freewheeling consensus jeopardized as feds pull back
Early in 1993, some Oregon folks who shared little but a fierce love for their valley met to talk things over on Jack Shipley’s deck high above the Applegate River. Dwain Cross, owner of an Ashland logging company, wondered if there was a way the federal government could resume selling timber despite court injunctions blocking […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Missing: another tribal environmentalist
In a case reminiscent of the mysterious death of Navajo activist Leroy Jackson, violence is suspected in the disappearance of an outspoken environmental activist on Arizona’s Gila River Indian Reservation. Fred Walking Badger, who had rallied opposition to pesticide use on the Gila River Reservation, set out to run a brief errand May 21 near […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Dear friends
On the green beat When journalists who cover the environment get together as 450 did Oct. 6-9 in Provo and Sundance, Utah, they tend to talk like underdogs. They tell how frustrating it is to sell complex green-beat stories to editors who ask for 12 inches of copy, or how tough it is to compete […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Native Americans move ahead politically
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, As elections near, green hopes wilt. Four years ago, Navajos living in the southeast corner of Utah set out to capture county government. A Democratic slate of five Navajos and one Cherokee campaigned for sheriff, county clerk, county assessor, county treasurer, county recorder and […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
As elections near, green hopes wilt
Two years ago environmentalists were flying high following the election of President Bill Clinton, Al Gore and a cadre of Democrats in Congress. Surely this was the time to reform grazing and mining on public lands, designate millions of acres of new wilderness, toughen laws protecting water and wildlife. But the brief window of opportunity […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
No bust yet
Dear HCN: Congratulations on your “Grappling with Growth” issue (HCN, 9/5/94). It will circulate around these quarters and be referenced for some time to come. I read Ed Marston’s essay on a possible bust and wanted to respond with some different interpretations. My counterparts in southern Utah see the ups and downs of the California […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
The clueless West
Dear HCN, The “Grappling With Growth” issue of Sept. 5 was the best yet, albeit downright despairing. I’ve been traveling around the West, up and down, back and forth, for almost 20 years and have yet to find a community that really had a clue as to what was happening to it. Quite frankly, the […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
No rush to log
Dear HCN: Your coverage of the push for salvage logging in the wake of an intense fire season was both timely and insightful (HCN, 9/19/94). Kathie Durbin’s interview with Tom Graham, a rehabilitation worker on the Tyee Creek Fire, exposed one of the central fallacies of public forestry. Mr. Graham suggested that the fire had […]