Dear HCN, I read Tom Knudson’s article on Bernard DeVoto with great pleasure (HCN, 8/8/94). Among those who are familiar with his life and writings, DeVoto’s acerbic wit, lifetime commitment to the twin arts of writing and history and passionate defense of both individual liberties and the American West are still inspirational. Yet, his own […]
DeVoto was a treasure
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Trendy and wrong
Dear HCN, Blaming federal fire-suppression policy on the conditions leading up to the South Canyon (not Canyon Creek) fire that killed 14 near Glenwood Springs, Colo., is very trendy but bullshit (HCN, 7/25/94). Fuels don’t accumulate in the piûon-juniper vegetative types; typical stands are open-spaced canopies with little understory to carry a fire. In addition, […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Will Navajos take a gamble?
Navajo President Peterson Zah recently vetoed a tribal ordinance that would have laid the groundwork for legalized gambling on the tribe’s reservation. But his rejection doesn’t mean gambling is dead for the Four Corners tribe. In July, the Navajo Nation Council passed the gaming ordinance spelling out procedures for acquiring licenses, deterrents to criminal activity […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Catron County readies for battle
Catron County, N.M., which pioneered local land-use planning against federal control of public land, has passed a resolution urging every household to own a gun. It’s a protest against gun-control laws and a tool in Catron’s war of nerves over cattle grazing. Originally, the county commission considered an ordinance requiring gun ownership. That got watered […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Love, hunger, money
I’ve just returned from the Spokane Tribe’s casino-and-gambling mecca at the western edge of our reservation, and I may have to enter the federal Witness Relocation Program because I have seen and know too much. I couldn’t believe it. I had gone there expecting to see a few slot machines and some sweaty small-town gamblers. […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Bit by bit, government’s power is being eroded by wave of takings lawsuits
Takings in its newest formulation has taken the West by surprise. It shouldn’t have. Many reservoirs sit on taken ranches. Highways and railroads run across formerly private lands. Missile silos are embedded in once-private farms. These lands were taken by government or corporations through the power of eminent domain. The only question was how much […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
The Park Service didn’t put my son in a coma
The lead story in High Country News Aug. 22 concerned a hiking trip gone tragically awry near Zion National Park in Utah. Two men died, and the survivors filed a $23 million lawsuit against the Park Service. This essay responds to the question the story raised: “Whose fault?” My 24-year-old son’s accident in Yosemite National […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
First offering of Westside plan is ‘worst’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Ambitious ecosystem management advances east. Bucking strong opposition that includes the governor of Oregon, the Clinton administration has picked a controversial old-growth timber sale in the heart of a roadless area as its first major offering under the President’s Northwest Forest Plan. The […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Eastside activists feel scarce and don’t back down
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Ambitious ecosystem management advances east. They know their turf. Often they’re all alone in their attempts to rescue public lands from overcutting, overgrazing and overappropriation of scarce water essential to native fish. In the Northwest, inland from the Cascade Mountains, environmental activists can’t […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Non-Indians try to hold onto private property
Note: this article is a sidebar to a news story, Washington tribes vigorously claim their rights. In the struggle for Indian sovereignty, Washington state tribes have led the charge on every major front – in the courts, in Congress and around conference tables. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that other Washington residents have led […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Washington tribes vigorously claim their rights
TACOMA, Wash. – Is “Indian Power” becoming more than just words on a bumper sticker in the Northwest? Consider: In March, the Spokane Tribe opened a casino with more than 100 slot machines, flagrantly defying state law. In April, western Washington tribes hauled the state into federal court, demanding the right to harvest shellfish on […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Eco-vandalism: Alien trout play havoc in Yellowstone
The ecological balance of the continent’s largest high-elevation lake – the pristine jewel of Yellowstone National Park – is threatened by an invasion of alien trout. And it seems to be no accident – the alien trout were likely slipped into Yellowstone Lake by anglers seeking to start a stock of catchable trophy fish. “An […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
A clash of cultures: tribal versus nuclear
BLANDING, Utah – They came together to build a Native American cultural center seven miles south of here, near a small hill known as Avikan. In Ute that means a “place where I can lie down.” The members of a small nonprofit foundation bought 640 acres encompassing a kiva and a short rock-wall structure believed […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Around Glacier Park, it’s every predator for itself
On the edge of Glacier National Park, the North Fork of the Flathead River flows through the wildest ecosystem in the continental United States. It’s the only place in the continental U.S. where mountain lions, gray wolves and grizzly bears share habitat – along with black bears, coyotes, lynx, wolverines, whitetail and mule deer, elk, […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Lawsuits may prey on wolf plans
Bringing wolves back to the West could hit a snag as both ranchers and environmentalists say they will sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Wilderness Society, Idaho Conservation League, Sierra Club and four other environmental groups notified Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt Sept. 7 that they will sue the agency within 60 days unless […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Wolf provokes inadvertent howlers
Never before have so many citizens had so much to say about a federal project: bringing wolves back to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho later this fall. By the time comment-taking ended this year on an environmental impact statement about the plan, 160,264 people had put their opinions on paper. Reactions were generally strident, […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Dear friends
‘Assault on the Male’ Paonia residents got a sneak preview in the town hall of “Assault on the Male,” a BBC documentary that showed on the Discovery Channel Sept. 4. The preview and talk were courtesy of Theo Colborn, a Paonia resident and former local pharmacist who spends most of her time in Washington, D.C., […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Shame and threats impel Eastside plan
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Ambitious ecosystem management advances east. A range of pressures – political scientific, and legal – shifted inland, over the crest of the Cascade Mountains, during the past year and a half, bringing leviathan ecosystem management with them. The two regions on opposite sides […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Ambitious ecosystem management advances east
WALLA WALLA, Wash. – The ground rules are posted in prominent view of everybody in the room: Be courteous. No verbal or personal attacks. It might sound like seventh grade, but this meeting is for grown-ups. The leaders of the nation’s most ambitious experiment in ecosystem management are taking questions from an audience of timber […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Flame and blame in the Northwest
Loggers urge fire sales