Wilderness advocates in Utah have long butted heads with rural county commissioners and the state’s conservative congressional delegation. Last May, in an attempt to resolve the impasse, then-Utah Gov. Olene Walker announced county-by-county discussions on land use, including potential new wilderness areas (HCN, 6/21/04: Lame-duck governor moves deadlocked wilderness debate). Now, the state may see […]
Beehive state may get new wilderness — and more
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Former refuge manager takes heat for saving frogs
A federal biologist who was trying to save an Arizona frog from extinction recently found himself facing criminal charges. The Chiricahua leopard frog once hopped from central Arizona to western New Mexico. But habitat loss, predation by exotic bullfrogs and fishes, and drought had reduced the population to a few small ponds in the Altar […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Gold mining proposed in historic South Passarea
Four historic routes — the Oregon, California, Pony Express and Mormon Pioneer trails — converge southeast of the Wind River Range in Wyoming, at an area called South Pass. In the 1800s, large wagon trains crossed the Continental Divide here. Now preserved as the South Pass National Historic Landmark, the landscape still looks much as […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Follow-up
Speaking to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in mid-April, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns suggested his agency may relax its ban against “downer” cows being slaughtered for human consumption. The agency adopted the ban in December 2003, after a Washington cow was diagnosed with BSE, or mad cow disease (HCN, 1/19/04: Have another […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Heard around the West
COLORADO Headline writers are having a field day in western Colorado with the upbeat story of a “plucky chicken” saved from drowning in a tub, thanks to a man employing “mouth to beak” resuscitation, reports The Associated Press. Chicken-owner Uegene Safken says he first yelled at the lifeless-looking bird: “You’re too young to die!” and […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
The allure of the gnarled
The lover of nature, whose perceptions have been trained in the Alps, in Italy, Germany, or New England, in the Appalachians or Cordilleras, in Scotland or Colorado, would enter this strange region with a shock, and dwell there for a time with a sense of oppression, and perhaps with horror. Whatsoever things he had learned […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Why should the Arctic Refuge matter to the ski industry?
Why should the 19 million acres of wilderness that make up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the potential oil beneath it, and its resident herd of caribou, matter at all to the ski industry? Sure, the refuge in Alaska is wild and beautiful, it’s pristine, it’s a crown jewel of wilderness. We in the ski […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
In-house wisdom, or White House meddling?
Forest Service insiders say the President’s Council on Environmental Quality added new corporate rules to the agency’s planning program
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Protecting the treaty, saving the fish
NAME Kat Brigham VOCATION Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Board of Trustees member HOME BASE Umatilla Reservation, near Pendleton, Oregon CLAIM TO FAME Fighting for tribal fishing rights on the Columbia River, as well as for the health of the river’s fish. SHE SAYS “I like fish any way — baked, smoked, fried, dried or […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
In the Washington woods, managers face a catch-22
Critics say that by trying to please everyone, new rules could fail fish and wildlife
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
On the Colorado River, a tug-of-war on a tight rope
A wet winter could jeopardize Colorado’s drought-protection water stash
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Congress touts ‘green energy,’ but bill is black and blue
Lawmakers are even more industry-friendly than the administration
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Dear friends
WELCOME, JASON HCN has a new development associate to help with raising money, planning events and board meetings, and producing a newsletter for former interns. Jason Nicholoff, the eldest son of Circulation Manager Gretchen Nicholoff, grew up in Paonia. After graduating from Ohio’s Oberlin College with an English degree, he did environmental work and grant-writing […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
The wisdom of the ground troops
The U.S. Forest Service has come a long way. No longer does the agency view the 190 million acres of national forests it oversees simply in terms of board-feet and dollars, as it did even as recently as 15 years ago. These days, most of its scientists and managers understand that forests are complex living […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Unsalvageable
With environmentalists fuming, logging companies grousing, and timber rotting, the Bush administration tries to save face — and a sliver of its grand plans to log the Northwest’s forest sanctuaries
Posted inWotr
Trees can be just another sacred cow
Only God can make a tree, but anyone can ruin a prairie. Consider the celebrated 19th century journalist Julius Sterling Morton. On moving to Nebraska from Michigan in 1854, he found he didn’t like the way nature had designed the Great Plains. Accordingly, he summoned forth “a great army of husbandmen… to battle against the […]
Posted inWotr
My kind of river flows fast and gritty brown
My kind of river, the White. Near twilight, we camp at the put-in, a two-track rut into a brush-ringed clearing on the outskirts of Rangely, Colo. No ramp, no parking, no fire grates, no tables, no signs — a wide spot on the river bank just out of town, where we lean our canoes against […]
Posted inWotr
The brief but wonderful return of Cathedral in the Desert
It looked almost exactly like Phil Hyde’s photograph taken in 1964, a year after Glen Canyon Dam began backing up the Colorado River — a seven-year event. Hyde’s photo revealed a stunning waterfall in a giant amphitheater with a narrow, almost slot opening at top, perfectly named “Cathedral in the Desert.” Eventually it disappeared, drowned […]
Posted inWotr
The devil made us do it
A recent proposal to change the name of Devils Tower National Monument has fallen through, but even if it had succeeded, Old Nick would have kept a prominent place in the landscape of the West. In Wyoming, monument supervisor Lisa Eckert had suggested adding the name “Bear Lodge” to the site. That came at the […]
Posted inWotr
Why should the Arctic Refuge matter to the ski industry?
Why would the 19 million acres of wilderness that make up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the potential oil beneath it, plus its resident herd of caribou, matter at all to the ski industry? Sure, the refuge in Alaska is wild and beautiful, it’s pristine, it’s a crown jewel of wilderness. We in the ski […]