Earl Butz, Richard Nixon’s controversial secretary of Agriculture, was a profane man known for his hair-trigger temper and rough handling of subordinates. So when the chief of the Forest Service stood him up for a meeting, Butz unloaded in response: “There are four branches of government,” he reportedly snarled, “the executive, legislative, judicial and the […]
Don’t mess with the Forest Service
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Emily Guerin on ranchers’ and BLM’s collaborative approach to fighting wildfire
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, KDNK’s Nelson Harvey talk with High Country News assistant online editor Emily Guerin about why this unusual collaboration is working in Idaho. Wildfire sound courtesy of dynamicell, freesound.org Shovel […]
Posted inGoat
Living on borrowed water
Last June, poor runoff from an abysmal snowpack was turning Colorado’s Yampa River into a hot cesspool, pushing trout and mountain whitefish to the margins of survival. Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the city of Steamboat asked anglers and flotillas of tubing tourists to stay away, to avoid stressing the Yampa’s overheating and oxygen-deprived fish. […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
You, too, can be a BLM groupie
Craig Childs’ March 18 article about the Bureau of Land Management’s “shadow national park system” highlighted the remarkable discoveries — personal and scientific — available on the millions of acres within the National Landscape Conservation System (“Secret Getaways of a BLM Groupie,” HCN). On the hundreds of unique and irreplaceable conservation sites managed by the […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Trappers catch a lot more than wolves
As the feds handed management of gray wolves to Idaho, Montana and Wyoming over the last few years, reactions were mixed. Conservationists worried that wolf numbers would plummet, while hunters and trappers were thrilled they’d get to legally pursue the predators. All three states have hunting seasons now. Idaho started allowing wolf trapping last year; […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
The latest: Mixed messages about nuclear power safety
BackstoryIn January 2012, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in Orange County, Calif., started leaking radioactive water and was shut down. When Southern California Edison announced that the plant could be back online within six months, then-chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Gregory Jaczko publicly chastised the company. Jaczko, who helped kill plans to store […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
The latest: A cautious cave re-opening
BackstorySince 2006, a powdery white fungus has killed nearly 6 million bats in the Eastern and Southern U.S. In 2010, when white-nose syndrome spread into Missouri, the Forest Service at first kept Western caves open, but asked spelunkers to disinfect their equipment. Then, that summer, the agency closed all caves and abandoned mines in its […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Spread the word and get an exclusive HCN poster
High Country News launched its first “friends” referral subscription campaign on April 11. And, so far, several of you have stepped up to spread the word about HCN to your friends, family and colleagues. Participating subscribers who recruit two people to subscribe (or give gift subscriptions) will get a top-notch poster of a graphic that […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Northwest Forest Plan timeline
1990 Under court order, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists the northern spotted owl as threatened. 1991 U.S. District Court Judge William Dwyer halts Forest Service timber sales in spotted owl habitat across the Northwest. 1994 Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) enacted under Clinton. Timber harvest resumes, but at much-reduced levels; safety net of “spotted owl […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Lawmakers scramble to fix the funding problem in Oregon’s timber counties
State and federal lawmakers are scrambling for solutions to the funding crisis in the southwest Oregon timber counties that have been hard hit by cuts in federal aid. A few of the proposals: The O&C Trust, Conservation and Jobs ActThis controversial proposal would move 1.5 million acres of federal forestland into a timber trust to […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Bigger fires and evolving threats force changes in the Northwest Forest Plan
The summer of 1994 was a nasty one for fires in Washington’s Chelan County, cradled in the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle. Dozens of blazes, including a disastrous one in Icicle Canyon, tore through the drought-stricken forests in late July. Almost a million gallons of fire retardant were dropped on that county, and some of […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Parched lives in a parched land: A review of the Ordinary Truth
The Ordinary TruthJana Richman375 pages, softcover: $16.95.Torrey House Press, 2012. Traditionally, springs and wells are centers of life around which people gather and sometimes form communities. In Utah author Jana Richman’s second novel, The Ordinary Truth, metropolitan claims to desert waters unsettle a small town and pit one family’s members against each other. Shifting between […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Necessary evil: a review of Boom, Bust, Boom
Boom, Bust, Boom: A Story About Copper, The Metal That Runs The WorldBill Carter274 pages, hardcover: $26.Scribner, 2012. Arizona is known for the five C’s — cattle, cotton, climate, citrus and the king of them all, copper. Bill Carter’s book Boom, Bust, Boom: A Story About Copper, the Metal that Runs the World is more […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Just the facts, ma’am
I was very disappointed with your travel issue (HCN, 3/18/13). The trees of Bernal Heights, a kayaking adventure to Alaska, gambling on the rez, volunteer tourism, secret getaways of the BLM groupie — it read more like a tourist tabloid for the West rather than the newspaper that I expect to inform me of the big […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Historic Northwest Forest Plan needs a careful overhaul
It’s hard to imagine anything like it happening today: An American president and members of his Cabinet fly into a Western city to broker a deal over the use of public lands. With a small group of stakeholders, they quickly craft a scientifically defensible plan that serves as the regional decision-making framework for another generation. […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Hispanic leaders spearheaded the Río Grande del Norte National Monument
In early April, Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, R, began pushing a bill that would limit presidential authority to designate new national monuments by forcing proposals to undergo environmental review first. The draft law is among a slew of similar measures House Republicans are working on in response to Obama’s March 25 creation of five new […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Contemplating the future
In the last few months, I think that you have increased the quality and timeliness of your articles. This latest cover story is proof in the pudding (“Sacrificial Land,” HCN, 4/15/13). Not only did Judith Lewis Mernit cover what is going on in the Mojave Desert — a complicated subject — but she also included […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
A review of Passage to Wonderland
Passage to Wonderland. Michael A. Amundson, 208 pages, hardcover: $35. University Press of Colorado, 2012. In 1903, photographer Joseph Stimson rode in a horse-drawn buggy along a new 50-mile route leading from Cody, Wyo., to the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park. He stopped periodically to take pictures for a display at the 1904 World’s […]
Posted inGoat
Mapping your way to better health
There’s a new tool in California that can tell you how dirty your neighborhood is compared to the rest of the state. It’s called Cal EnviroScreen, and zip codes with the worst ozone, particulate matter, diesel exhaust and other contamination are shaded a deep indigo on a state map, where as the cleanest are white […]
Posted inGoat
Could California lead the West on regulating fracking?
Until relatively recently, California didn’t often come up in discussions about booming oil and gas development. Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado have been much more at the forefront of the media fray, joined by New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Dakota in the last decade. But ever since a pair of unsuccessful gold prospectors first […]