On Sept. 14, Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff used a new anti-terrorism and immigration-control bill to waive environmental laws along the U.S.-Mexico border. The Real ID Act, passed by Congress in May, permits Chertoff to bypass any federal or state law — including environmental, safety and labor laws — that might hinder the construction of […]
Homeland Security gets to bypass environmental laws
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
Toothy nuisance moves north
Global warming may be one of the reasons behind the recent appearance of football-sized, orange-toothed aquatic rodents in the Skagit River Valley of northwestern Washington. Nutria, beaver-like creatures native to South America, are notorious for destroying flood-control levees and chewing through wetlands in the Southeastern United States. Fur entrepreneurs brought them to this country in […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
The Latest Bounce
The Department of Labor has denied a whistleblower’s complaint that the BLM fired him in retaliation for exposing violations of federal law in a mine-cleanup project in Yerington, Nev. (HCN, 12/20/04: Conscientious Objectors). Earle Dixon supervised the cleanup of the abandoned copper mine for the BLM, and repeatedly complained publicly about inadequate efforts to deal […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
Heard around the West
THE WEST If you like nothing better than a good pun, check out the “Endangered Feces” T-shirt that’s advertised on several Web sites for environmentally oriented companies. Twenty scats from wild animals are pictured on the front of the shirt, including the substantial contribution of a grizzly bear, the dainty deposits of a New Mexican […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
The end of something really big
As soon as we read about the dead whale, it was clear we were about to take a field trip. “Let’s go,” said my friend Nathan, peering at a newspaper photo of a giant beached vertebrae. He’s a sculptor, so he has an artist’s appreciation for bones. Besides, his mother had recently cracked one of […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
In Bush’s Supreme Court, who’s on first?
He may or may not be the next Bill Klem, but at least John Roberts is no Janice Rogers Brown. OK, these names are not household words, save perhaps in selected households of the political left, the political right, and the baseball-obsessed. So let’s explain. William J. Klem was the first of the great umpires, […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
For this English chef, home is the Colorado Plateau
On Sunday mornings, all summer long, you can find chef John Sharpe at the Flagstaff Community Market, moving among the outdoor produce stalls with the practiced intensity of a hardcore bargain hunter at an outlet mall. He tests the white peaches Rob Lautze has grown at Garland’s Orchard near Sedona: nice, but not enough of […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
Oil and gas drilling clouds the West’s air
Energy industry’s air pollution increasing
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
A move to make land trusts more accountable
Land Trust Alliance unveils accreditation program to weed out ‘bad actors’
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
Forest Service tries to teach greens a lesson
Agency attempts to bend court order to halt minor projects, but is knocked back
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
Dear friends
WELCOME, LUTHER! HCN welcomes new board member Luther Propst, the executive director of the Sonoran Institute. The nonprofit institute works with Western communities to promote stewardship, conservation and local economies. VISITORS University of Denver associate geography professor Don Sullivan dropped in with a pack of students after being snowed off nearby Grand Mesa, where the […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
The vast, unpatrolled public lands
It was supposed to be “the fishing trip of a lifetime.” Three brothers in their 50s and their teenaged sons hauled their rods and tackle to the Sierra National Forest last summer, in search of a quiet spot where they could spend a few days pulling trout from a mountain stream. It didn’t turn out […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
The Public Lands’ Big Cash Crop
SHINGLETOWN, California — On a cool, late-September morning on the outskirts of this Northern California town, two men board a helicopter in a cow pasture. Each of them holds the title of “special agent,” but the agencies they represent are as different from one another as any two agencies could be. Dave Burns sports a […]
Posted inWotr
How I turned into a time-share sucker
My family and I just got back from Sedona, Ariz., land of pinon-juniper forest, redrock spires and vortexes said to be spiritual. The only vortex we found, though, was the one our credit card number went into. We headed down to the self-proclaimed “New Age” capital of the West, thanks to a friend who gave […]
Posted inWotr
Idaho wilderness bill is another Teapot Dome giveaway
It sounds like a paradox, but a congressional designation of wilderness can actually harm what is wild. I believe that will come true if Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson’s bill, the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act, becomes law. Whether we like it or not, once that law is passed, the law of unintended […]
Posted inWotr
Wilderness bill is a test for common-sense conservation in Idaho
For solitude and inspiration, we seek out wilderness on our public lands, where the road ends and the trail begins, where, by law, we leave our mechanized contrivances and walk, float or ride in on horseback. Wilderness, a gift of nature, remains today because of laws, and where protective laws don’t yet exist, the values […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
‘Water bank’ drags river basin deeper into debt
‘Win-win’ water solution only worsens tension over scarce resource
Posted inWotr
Is how we’re living gross?
I lapse into smugness when someone visits me early in the summer. The mountains around Bozeman, Mont., are dazzling white, the fields emerald, the rivers boisterous, the air clear. I first came here in the spring. I remember how staggering it was. It happened again recently. A friend who had never visited passed through and […]
Posted inWotr
Why I Cherish the Road to Nowhere
When I was a kid, I hated roads that went to nowhere. Lonely and, to a first-grader’s eyes, completely featureless, the high desert of my childhood had plenty of them. Roads to nowhere meant frustratingly long rides in a station wagon without air-conditioning, whizzing along flat open spaces with tumbleweeds blowing across the highway, the […]
Posted inWotr
The day they close the pass
Old-timers still remember when winters in mountain towns meant something more than just catering to hordes of skiers. Sure, those winters were tough; the days were short and cold, and drifting snow restricted outdoor activities and even closed some businesses and high mountain roads. But mountain winters had a positive side, too, for they were […]