What do the following personages have in common: Albert Schweitzer, Linus Pauling, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Bruce Babbitt? Type O blood? A secret fondness for fondue, perhaps? Nope. According to Ed Marston, the normally skeptical publisher of High Country News, they all should be recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. […]
Bruce Babbitt as Captain Consensus
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
RS 2477: A loophole for vandals
For years, Utah’s Arch Canyon was closed to motorized vehicles to protect sensitive riparian and natural values. But when off-road vehicle users began promoting the canyon as a travel route for their annual jeep safari, the Bureau of Land Management opened the canyon to vehicle use. Now, vehicles crush streamside vegetation, send fragile soils downstream […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Border doesn’t block dirty air and water
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, On the borderline. Because much of the U.S.-Mexico border is already considered a “free trade” zone, additional impacts due to the North American Free Trade Agreement are hard to gauge. U.S. and Mexican environmentalists had hoped NAFTA would help their communities by strengthening regulations […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
There’s gold, and no controls, in Mexico’s hills
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, On the borderline. QUITOVAC, Sonora – On a warm winter day, Esther Velasco Ortega greets visitors from a chair in the front yard of her cinderblock house. One of her visitors is Gary Nabhan, an ethnobotanist who buys saguaro fruit jelly from her every […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Dial 1/800-CANYON for reservations
The Grand Canyon can’t wait for long-term planning to deal with crowding problems, says Boyd Evison, interim superintendent at the park. He has proposed a reservation system for park visitors. It could be set up by 1995 and doesn’t require authorization from Congress. “The only way to maintain a positive experience without trampling the park […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Timber companies export logs – and jobs – to Asia
SUPERIOR, Mont. – An unusual alliance of environmentalists and millworkers has asked the government to close loopholes that let timber companies export logs from private ground in Washington and Oregon, then buy timber on national forests in Montana and Idaho. The exemption, allowed under a 1990 law that banned exports from state forests, costs Montana […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Three mountain lions killed at Glacier
Three bold mountain lions were treed by hounds and shot Feb. 10 after they took up residence beneath a vacant home in Montana’s Glacier National Park. Park rangers said they had to shoot the animals, whose under-the-front-porch den was near two occupied houses and within 25 yards of a sledding hill popular with local children. […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Canyonlands, Arches are invaded from above
The slickrock canyons near Moab, Utah, have already been discovered by four-wheel-drivers and mountain bikers, but now tourists are discovering mesas and redrock bluffs from the air, primarily by helicopter. Last year, two helicopter companies hung out their shingles in Moab and began giving expensive bird’s-eye-view tours of Arches and Canyonlands national parks, as well […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Dear friends
Locals win awards Two women from Paonia travelled to Austin, Texas, on March 5 to receive awards from the National Wildlife Federation at its annual banquet. Betsy Marston, the editor of High Country News, accepted the communications award – a statue of a whooping crane – on behalf of the paper. Theo Colborn, who was […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
On the borderline
A bleak, flat, grim, hot, gritty and wondrous desert
Posted inMay 16, 1994: Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
Lake Tahoe, Nevada – Fifteen months after taking over at Interior, and a few months after suffering demoralizing defeats in the U.S. Senate and among his environmental supporters, a confident, energetic Bruce Babbitt came to Lake Tahoe to put his stamp on the Bureau of Land Management. The occasion was the first-ever BLM Summit: a […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Green scientists get-together
A March 12-13 conference at the University of Oregon looks at how scientists can participate in environmental politics and policy-making. “The 1994 Public Interest Science Conference” includes panels on science in the courtroom, scientists and the Endangered Species Act, and the use or misuse of science by politicians. More than two dozen panelists will speak […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Missile chaos
In a 4-inch-thick draft environmental impact statement, the U.S. Army recently concluded that its missile test flights to the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico could have significant land-use impacts. Launched from either Green River, Utah, or Fort Wingate, N.M., the missiles would fly over Canyonlands National Park, Dead Horse Point State Park […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
For green writers
Environmental issues are particularly difficult for journalists from small newspapers and broadcast stations who do not have the benefit of large libraries, colleges or conferences. “Charting the Environmental Journalism Frontier,” an April 14-16 workshop at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will help such journalists develop a better understanding of environmental issues in the West. […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
A natural vacation
National forests in the Northwest have opened unused fire lookouts, stock stations and maintenance cabins to the public. All can be rented for overnight camping with up to a two-week stay allowed in some places. Because each facility is rented by the national forest in which it is located, two brochures, available at most Forest […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Fast food at fault
That humble staple of the fast-food industry – the french fry – is more dangerous than it looks. A recent study by the non-profit Columbia Basin Institute found that fry-makers in the Columbia River Basin waste cheap water and poison residential wells. The 100-page report, Value Added and Subtracted, says fry-makers use only half of […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
New plans for Yellowstone
Managers in Yellowstone National Park just released a plan that could leave the park’s 2.2 million acres of backcountry a little more organized. The draft backcountry management plan suggests classifying the park into three management zones. Most people would visit the threshold zone, which surrounds roads and developed areas in the park. It would have […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Roxborough friends fight for park
Local residents who enjoy the relative wildness and beauty of Roxborough State Park near Denver, Colo., are fighting a developer’s plans to build 850 houses along the park’s entire eastern boundary. The development, known as Southdowns at Roxborough, could begin as soon as this March and would destroy wildlife habitat for deer, elk and golden […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Wet and wild symposium
With memories of drought still fresh in the West, the Montana Environmental Education Association is sponsoring “Water, Wet & Wild: Flowing into the 21st Century” from March 25-27 in Billings, Mont. Designed for elementary and high school teachers, the meeting offers workshops on water pollution and water rights and exhibits by film makers and publishers. […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Workers need protection
The health and safety of workers cleaning up the nation’s nuclear weapons complex have been badly neglected, according to a study by the Office of Technology Assessment, a research arm of the U.S. Congress. Because of the historic autonomy and secrecy of its atomic mission, the Department of Energy is the only federal agency exempt […]