The Inspector General’s office of the Department of Interior says costs have soared so high on the $635 million Animas-La Plata water project that it is “economically infeasible.” That pronouncement was made in a draft report addressed March 14 to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Dan Beard on the controversial dam-and-irrigation project proposed for southwestern […]
Animas-La Plata a financial boondoggle
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
Now you see them …
Indian ruins in the Southwest are disappearing, but it’s for their own good. Cartographers are wiping famous Anasazi sites off their maps. Due to a hot black market for sacred Indian objects and increased numbers of tourists, ancient cities such as Keet Seel, Awatovi, Hawikuh and Cutthroat Castle will no longer appear on many road […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
Where have all the tourists gone?
After all the worry and publicity about overcrowding at the Grand Canyon, the Park Service reported that visitation this summer has dropped by nearly 12 percent from last year. Not everyone is relieved; local businesses banking on a record-breaking flood of tourists are hurting. Theories about the decline range from the hot weather to foreign […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
A seed business blooms in Nevada
After Nevada enacted a mining reclamation law in 1989, a 10-year-old native seed company began to blossom. Comstock Seed, based in Reno, Nev., found requests poured in for seeds for native shrubs, wildflowers and wild grass as mining reclamation work became “our biggest and most booming market,” says owner Ed Kleiner Jr. To meet the […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
No room for “pseudo-Indian charlatans”
New-age religion and Native American tradition clashed at Bear Butte State Park in western South Dakota earlier this summer. The Lakota and other tribes say the 4,422-foot landmark is being desecrated by non-Indians who use it for male-bonding weekends and crystal worship. More than 100 people, mostly Lakota, protested at the butte in June. “Sometimes […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
As witness for prosecution, chief aids defense
Although Jack Ward Thomas testified against him in his Great Falls, Mont., trial, former forest supervisor Ernie Nunn believes the Forest Service chief was also partially responsible for his acquittal. “I think he signaled the judge that those were not significant charges.” The signal came twice. First, as the top appeals officer within the Forest […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
Why did 14 more have to die?
Jim Carrier wrote this column for the Denver Post after 14 firefighters died in a blowup in the Canyon Creek, Colorado, wildfire, July 6. The image that endures is that hillside, marked by charred trees and bristle-like brush stuck in rusty-blue, nearly rose soil, scarred in the center by a boot-scuffed line that became a […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
FBI was out to get freethinking DeVoto
Nearly 40 years after his death, Bernard DeVoto is remembered as a brilliant historian, pungent social critic and one of the West’s earliest and most outspoken conservationists. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, however, knew him differently. To the FBI, DeVoto was an “intellectual revolutionary,” “the son of a fallen away priest of the Roman Catholic […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
… and invoked for salmon, against grazing
In the battle to save the northern spotted owl, environmental groups have brandished the Endangered Species Act as a sword to halt logging. Now they are using the controversial law against grazing, for the sake of another threatened species – Snake River chinook salmon. In July, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
Endangered Species Act dissed on street …
Protesters sporting bright yellow “Stop the War on the West” T-shirts swarmed the blistering streets of Ronan, Mont., July 23. Their target: the Endangered Species Act reauthorization bill introduced in Congress by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. Baucus brought the only Western hearing on the bill to the isolated town, pop. 1,500, where an estimated 400 […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
Eagles fly off the endangered species list
In a rare environmental success story, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Mollie Beattie says her agency will soon reclassify bald eagles from endangered status to threatened, in most of the lower 48 states. Beattie’s proposal, which becomes effective Sept. 28, marks only the 14th time that a species has been rescued from near-extinction under […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
City Slickers should leave wilderness rough
MOAB, Utah – A Hollywood production company has been slow to restore land damaged during the filming of a stampede scene in City Slickers II. Federal land manager Brad Palmer said the movie crews trampled about 30 percent more acreage than they were supposed to in an area above the Colorado River, just off the […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
Forest Service dunked by its own ‘witch hunt’
HELENA, Mont. – A federal judge has sided with an ex-forest supervisor who was forced out of his job in 1993. Judge Joseph H. Hartman ruled July 15 that former Helena National Forest Supervisor Ernie Nunn should be offered reinstatement as a forest supervisor in Region One as well as back pay with interest amounting […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
Dear friends
Ray Ring and company High Country News now has an Editor Emeritus, an Editor, an Associate Editor and, as of July 6, a Senior Editor. This last is Ray Ring, who has spent the past 10 years or so writing novels and free-lance newspaper and magazine articles in Tucson, Arizona. Altogether, Ray has lived and […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
Santa Fe Mayor Debbie Jaramillo, fresh from the populist coup in March that swept her and a progressive city council into office, still has that I-just-won-the-lottery euphoria about her this morning. She’s waving hello to diners at a downtown restaurant, shaking hands (“We did it, didn’t we!”) and getting needled a bit by husband Mike. […]
Posted inJuly 25, 1994: 'Unranchers' reach for West's state lands
A calm book on diet, health and the environment
A CALM BOOK ON DIET, HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT In the Impacts of Livestock Production, Peter R. Cheeke writes about the animal rights movement, antibiotics in livestock, competition between people and domestic animals for grains, and the environmental aspects of livestock production. He does it in a calm way, without demonizing those who criticize the […]
Posted inJuly 25, 1994: 'Unranchers' reach for West's state lands
Prairie potholes
Prairie potholes When the glaciers retreated from North America, huge chunks of ice left behind made permanent divots in the Northern Plains. These glacial potholes – now prairie wetlands – provide vital habitat for migrating geese. Strategies to protect the rapidly decreasing prairie potholes from increased development and agriculture will be the topic of a […]
Posted inJuly 25, 1994: 'Unranchers' reach for West's state lands
Big bad bear
Big bad bear An environmental-art group in Portland, Ore., is putting on a special birthday “roast” for Smokey Bear. On July 15, the creative group called Orlo began presenting Smoke Screen: Smokey Bear at 50, a multimedia exhibit featuring artwork and presentations by three dozen artists. The exhibit seeks to debunk 50 years of Forest […]
Posted inJuly 25, 1994: 'Unranchers' reach for West's state lands
House of straw
House of Straw Straw-bale housing construction, known for its flimsy role in the children’s tale The Three Little Pigs, is making a comeback. After a brief period of popularity in the early 1900s, straw bale buildings lost favor in the 1940s. But tastes change, lumber is increasingly expensive and structures built of straw are springing […]
Posted inJuly 25, 1994: 'Unranchers' reach for West's state lands
House of Garbage
HOUSE OF GARBAGE Call it the house that Goodwill built. A recently completed home in Missoula, Mont., carries the concept of second-hand construction materials to new levels. Built by the Center for Resourceful Building Technology, the 2,400-square-foot house showcases dozens of innovative products. Recycled newspaper went into its wall panels, shelving and insulation; light bulbs […]