Bush administration touts state control, but Washington, D.C., will make the final call
Western governors wary of roadless forest mess
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
New grazing rules ride on doctored science
Veteran scientists leave the BLM in frustration
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Dear friends
VISITORS We’ve had a steady stream of summer visitors. Christopher Peterson, executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute, stopped in while stumping for the effort to drain Lake Powell. Dan Stonington, nephew of HCN board member Emily Stonington, came by on a trip to check out the sights that have recently emerged from the drought-stricken […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
D.C. and the West: Worlds apart
Out here in the West, under the blazing blue sky and hulking mountains, Washington, D.C., can seem like a different planet. Taken as a whole, the stories in this issue of High Country News suggest that’s not far from the truth. The cover story is about Richard Pombo, a California Republican who is charging into […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Will the real Mr. Pombo please stand up?
Rep. Richard Pombo, known as the Jerry Falwell of the property-rights movement, has threatened to dynamite the nation’s bedrock environmental laws. Now, he says, he’s learning to compromise.
Posted inWotr
Why we need the ranch
I recently attended a benefit for an organic farm in Missoula, Mont., a town known for its leftist politics, environmental activism and outdoors culture. Missoula can be described as part Portland, part Telluride, a “New West” city by any measure. So I found it strange that both the performers that evening kept referring to their […]
Posted inWotr
Seattle’s mayor leads the nation on global warming
Early this year, while the Pacific Northwest endured one of the driest winters on record, 141 countries ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement to help curb global warming. The United States was not among them. To Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle, the national no-show provided an opportunity for action on a smaller scale. “Local […]
Posted inWotr
A most unusual sanctuary, where the Yeti roams free
I keep hearing that the Kingdom of Bhutan, a tiny Buddhist country nestled in the Himalayas between India and Tibet, is an enchanting place. People who’ve traveled there describe snow-capped peaks, lush valleys and ancient monasteries. The country is especially known for its progressive environmental laws, and is sometimes even called “the last Shangri-la” for […]
Posted inWotr
Lewis and Clark trout at 200
One June evening exactly 200 years ago, a young private in the U.S. Army baited a hook tied to a willow stick and tossed it into one of the largest waterfalls on earth. The line went taut under the strength of a 2-pound flash of living silver. The soldier took in the line, hand over […]
Posted inWotr
How Delicate Arch was saved by bureaucratic stonewalling
“There have been some, even in the Park Service, who advocate spraying Delicate Arch with a fixative of some sort — Elmer’s glue perhaps or Lady Clairol Spray Net.” Believe it or not, that’s what Edward Abbey wrote in Desert Solitaire, and when I first read that, I thought he was kidding. The idea of […]
Posted inWotr
The last I looked, national parks weren’t zoos
“Yellowstone is a better park than Glacier because you can see more animals,” so announced one hiking client as I guided us through dense old-growth cedars. I didn’t know how to respond. Was I puzzled by the implication that our national parks should be rated on the same scale, even though each was set aside […]
Posted inWotr
The race for president is already on
Washington, D.C. — It’s not too early to start thinking about the 2008 presidential elections. It’s too late. At least as far as the Democratic nomination goes. At least according to the Democratic insiders here in that fabled land known as Inside-the-Beltway. “It’s going to be Hillary-Bayh, Hillary-Warner, maybe even Hillary-Obama,” said one of them, […]
Posted inWotr
The American Dream, sans gasoline
I’ve had it with gasoline. Not only is it helping melt the glaciers in Glacier National Park, thaw the Alaskan permafrost, and drown low-lying Pacific islands, but it’s also emptying my wallet. So when my husband and I decided to buy a new car recently, we both wanted it to use as little gas as […]
Posted inWotr
Rooting for the underdog
The hailstones came down like meteorites. They crashed against the house and whistled through the trees, ripping and shredding as if their icy edges were honed razor-sharp. I stood behind the screen door and watched as the clear fiberglass roofing on the front porch was torn, twisted and obliterated, bits and pieces of fiberglass flying […]
Posted inWotr
Salmon find a judge who listens
For more than 20 years, the fate of 13 threatened and endangered salmon stocks in the Pacific Northwest has been a contest between the status quo agenda of politicians and power producers and a legacy of the Nixon era, the Endangered Species Act. A few months ago, many of us in the press who have […]
Posted inWotr
Los Angeles in your future
Los Angeles is nearly built out. The last empty bits of the metropolis are already being fitted into a titanic grid of neighborhoods that extends, except for mountains and coastline, 60 miles from south to north and from the Pacific Ocean deep into the desert. The closing of the suburban frontier in Los Angeles ends […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
Sometimes it’s hard to tell who the turkeys are
So you think wildlife biology is a science? Sure it is, if estimating wild turkey populations by counting the birds that run across the road in front of your truck is “science.” In Stalking the Big Bird, an often-amusing tale of his 27 years with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, biologist Harley Shaw reveals […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
The more the West changes, the more it stays the same
Bernard DeVoto, a man with few sacred cows, wrote a monthly column on the West for Harper’s magazine from 1946 until 1955. From “The Easy Chair,” he expounded on everything from how cattlemen destroyed Western watersheds to why the West is “systematically looted and has always been bankrupt.” Now, history professor Edward K. Muller has […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
Peering into the life of the prairie
In Prairie: A Natural History, Candace Savage celebrates the beauty and diversity of the great grasslands of North America, a land she describes as “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.” The lavishly illustrated book features colorful photographs by James R. Page and charming pen-and-ink drawings by Joan A. Williams. 300 pages, hardcover, […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
A tasty history of the Southwest
If you think fusion food was something California chefs cooked up in the 1980s, you’re off by a couple of centuries. Gardens of New Spain opens in 1492, the year Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand kicked the Moors out of Spain. The Moors fled, but they had already left an indelible mark on Iberian cuisine: […]