Landowners can’t own exclusive rights to wild animals on their property, a judge has ruled in Wyoming. Texas millionaire Clayton Williams, owner of a 90,000-acre ranch in Carbon County, and three other Wyoming ranchers recently lost their challenge to a Wyoming law that says the state owns all wildlife as a trustee for its citizens […]
In Wyoming, wildlife is public
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Here come Rainbows
When some 15,000 members of the Rainbow Family meet within Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest later this month, things may be calm after all. In nearby Big Piney, population 454, townspeople are open-minded about the invasion of counterculture types from all over the country, says town clerk Susan Lison. In contrast to Pinedale, where residents are […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
BLM reversed on grazing permit transfer
The Oregon Natural Resources Council, with legal help from the National Wildlife Federation, has thrown 500,000 acres of public grazing land in south-central Oregon into legal limbo. The Department of Interior Board of Land Appeals overturned a decision by the Bureau of Land Management transferring grazing permits to the new owners of the MC Ranch, […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Lepidopterist poaching ring netted
-I plan on really cleaning house on Rocky Mountain butterflies next year. Am bringing 20,000 envelopes and I expect to fill them all up!” wrote one of three men indicted in a large butterfly poaching ring. All allegedly traded and poached butterflies between 1983 and 1992, from such places as Grand Canyon and Yosemite. An […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Mount Graham fight continues
Environmentalists and Apache traditionalists have a new legal wrench to throw into the controversial Mount Graham telescope project the University of Arizona is building. The site designated for the $200 million project is outside the area approved by Congress in 1988, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court May 25. The university pushed […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Coming up dry
The bull trout is disappearing, says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but the agency cannot protect the trout as an endangered species because it doesn’t have the money. In a ruling June 7, the Fish and Wildlife Service found that the listing of the rare fish was “warranted but precluded.” Doug Zimmer, an Olympia, […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Camping out in the Merry Widow Mine
BOULDER, Mont. – Most people hear the word radon and think of an odorless, colorless gas that seeps into homes and can cause cancer. But some, like Denise Palmer, think of radon as a miracle drug. Crippled with psoriatic arthritis, her hands had become so painful she could no longer pull her clothes on or […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
A life to fry for: hot on the trail of bighorn
Night slides down the mountainside, and the temperature in the Tule Desert sinks to 108 in the shade. A bighorn sheep 50 yards away gawks at me while I nervously work down a steep stone slope. I can see amusement in her big, dumb eyes. Suddenly, my backpack nicks a boulder. I hear a horrible […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Utah and the Ute Tribe are at war
It all began with Abraham Lincoln and a promise. In the midst of history’s greatest test of presidential mettle, Lincoln took time in 1861 to establish the Uintah Valley Reservation for the Ute Indians in Utah. Before he wrote the order, however, the federal government asked Mormon leader Brigham Young if the Uintah Valley was […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Outdoor groups fight camping limits
Faced with ever-increasing hordes of visitors, Canyonlands National Park recently issued a bold management proposal to protect its still-pristine backcountry. The plan calls for closing some jeep roads, reducing horse numbers, and restricting where and how hikers travel. Park officials say they weren’t surprised at the stack of angry comments from commercial outfitters, but they […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
The West’s grazing war grinds on
After a new round of public hearings, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s attempt at a political compromise on grazing reform appears dead. The proposal – partly developed in negotiations between Babbitt, ranchers and environmentalists in Colorado last winter – would raise fees and tighten ecological standards for ranchers who graze livestock on public lands. At the […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Elk ranchers escape from Colorado’s Division of Wildlife
Mention the Division of Wildlife to a Colorado elk rancher and criticism comes easy. “They think we’re a terrible disease threat to native wildlife,” says Steve Wolcott, president of the North American Elk Breeders Association, “and that we’re a bunch of crooks.” Mention elk ranching to a wildlife biologist and watch a grimace form. “We […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Navajo-Hopi land compromise is near
HOPI PARTITIONED LANDS, Ariz. – For more than a century, the Navajo and Hopi Indian tribes have been battling over the rights to this desert land. Since 1882, when President Chester A. Arthur set aside reservation land for the Hopis that was already inhabited by Navajos, the issue of who belongs here has soured relations […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Dear Friends
Good-bye, for a while High Country News takes its semi-annual vacation, skipping the July 11 issue. It will return with the July 25 issue. The idea is to give readers a chance to catch up on the issues that have been piling up in bathrooms and on espresso tables. Pun-ishing address change There is nothing […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Montana organizes to fight the hate groups
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Home, home on the range … where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam. BILLINGS, Mont. – When Wayne Inman left Portland, Ore., two years ago to become police chief of Billings, Mont., he thought he had put hate crimes in his rear view mirror. Only a month […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Home, home on the range … where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
John Trochman calls himself a “Christian Patriot” and defender of the American Constitution. The soft-spoken man with a Robert E. Lee beard is also a field general in the “Militia Of Montana,” a paramilitary survivalist organization formed to fight what it perceives as oppression by the federal government. The number one threat to freedom, Trochman […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 1994: Turmoil on the range
Consensus may not be the best way to reform grazing
Editor’s note: The following letter was sent to Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt by Dan Heinz, a 25-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service. Heinz is now an environmental consultant and field agent for the non-profit American Wildlands, 16575 Callahan Ranch, Reno, NV 89511 (702/884-1998). Dear Secretary Babbitt, Your willingness to listen to the grass […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Guide for green loggers
The Forest Trust, a non-profit group in Santa Fe, says logging doesn’t have to flatten forests. In a new publication, the group describes the work of more than 30 groups that both provide jobs and conserve resources in rural communities. Forest-Based Rural Development Practitioners features mainly non-profit groups in California, New Mexico and eastern states, […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Self-reliant homes
You can unplug from the electrical grid, writes home-builder and author Michael Potts in The Independent Home: Living Well with Power from the Sun, Wind and Water. Potts’ exploration of both the philosophy and technology of energy independence makes an excellent primer for people wanting to design and build a house, or to minimize power […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Trail volunteers rewarded
The Adopt-a-Trail program, a national effort to recruit volunteers to help maintain thousands of miles of public trails, has taken off in southeastern Idaho. Participation has increased by 200 percent since 1992, in large part because of Michael Bargelski, an artist who lives in Idaho Falls. Each person who “adopts’ three miles of trail in […]