The non-factual letter by Undersecretary of Interior Rebecca Watson was typical BushCO arrogance (HCN, 2/21/05: HCN has it wrong on Bush). The HCN rebuttal was excellent. Here are five concrete examples of the Bush assault on public lands: This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Bush, Cheney, and the […]
Bush, Cheney, and the Three Stooges
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Watson is selling lies
Regarding the letter “HCN has it wrong on Bush:” I retired from the Bureau of Land Management after 31 years in resource management (HCN, 2/21/05: HCN has it wrong on Bush). The Bush administration’s policies toward the environment and resource management agencies are best described by an old joke, “The difference between rape and ecstasy […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Developer under fire for destroying desert
A developer who was grading the desert for one of the largest developments in Arizona history now faces a lawsuit alleging major violations of state environmental laws. In February, the state attorney general’s office accused developer George Johnson and the five companies he owns of illegally destroying 40,203 native desert plants, bulldozing seven archaeological sites, […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Heard around the West
THE GREAT PLAINS The Week magazine celebrated Elsie Eiler, 71, of Monowi, Neb., as the most powerful person in her town. She’s also the only person in her town. When her husband died last year, the population halved. But Eiler said she’s not leaving: “I like it here.” Too bad many others don’t appreciate freedom […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
The Far East yearns for the wild West
When my friend Kevin passed through my home state of South Dakota on a cross-country road trip a few years back, I did the decent thing as a host and took him to see Mount Rushmore. Why pass the ninth or tenth wonder of the world and not at least stop by? Still, it’s one […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Do you want fries with that mustang?
I’ve threatened to turn Vinnie Barbarino, my horse, into mustang burgers. After a long day struggling with the stubborn creature, my stomped-upon toes swelling in my boots, I have promised to ship him off to France to be served with a side of pommes frites and a nice red wine. Of course, I would never […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Public-lands ranchers: Should you trust this man?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Big Buyout.” Andy Kerr, who has been an environmental activist for more than 20 years, was a key figure in the struggle to curtail logging in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, he is the director of the National Public […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
One BLM district grabs the bull by the horns
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Big Buyout.” One hot spot for grazing retirements is the Upper Deschutes area of south-central Oregon, where ranchers have been butting heads with a burgeoning population of newcomers, prodding the Bureau of Land Management to move cows off the land. Private development is […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Buyouts by the numbers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Big Buyout.” The legislation proposed by the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign would offer a “golden saddle” to public-land ranchers, ponying up $175 per animal unit month — the amount of forage needed to support a cow and her calf for a month. […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Saving Maidu culture, one seedling at a time
It was just a family jaunt, Lorena Gorbet says — a day trip to Soda Rock, where mineral water fizzes out of limestone clefts into a tributary of northeastern California’s Feather River. Gorbet, a Mountain Maidu Indian, gathered her children at the base of the rock, a Maidu cultural landmark. She told them about the […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Who owns Klamath water — farmers or the public?
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “The public pays to keep water in a river.” For four years, farmers on the California-Oregon border have battled the U.S. government in the courts for $100 million in damages, after the Bureau of Reclamation withheld irrigation […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
The public pays to keep water in a river
A new wave of ‘takings’ lawsuits could bust the environmental protection budget
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Rock jocks fight a mining company
Land swap would undo a presidential order for land protection
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Ski areas’ ‘green’ image not backed by action
Researchers call ‘Sustainable Slopes’ program ‘greenwashing’
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
The last happy agency biologist — and other April Foolery
Public servant decides it’s time to put his feet up and relax
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Dear friends
TRAGEDY IN PAONIA HCN’s home town, Paonia, Colo., population 1,500, is grieving for three children killed in an explosion at a mountain lodge outside of town. At least 16 others were injured in the March 19 blast, which was probably caused by a propane leak. Delta County Sheriff Fred McKee identified the children as 2-year-old […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Grazing buyouts help land and ranchers
It’s springtime in the Rockies, which means blizzards, blooming fruit orchards, and lots of baby bovines in the valley-bottom pastures. A month ago, the calves were small, dark lumps deposited on dun-colored fields; today, they are energetic youngsters, chasing each other across green grass in free-for-all games of tag. In a matter of weeks, most […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
The Big Buyout
Tough economics, drought and increasing clashes with recreational users have pushed some public-lands ranchers to the edge. Now, check-wielding conservationists want to give them an easy way out.
Posted inWotr
How not to fix conservation easements
One of the most useful, cost-effective methods of conserving land in America is in serious crisis. A series of scandals has revealed major abuses of conservation easements — a legal tool increasingly used to protect private land from development by compensating landowners for development rights. It is true that some landowners who donate easements to […]
Posted inWotr
Death Valley wakes up with a bang
I stood among the multi-colored stones of Death Valley, gazing at the greatest wildflower bloom I’ve ever seen — the greatest bloom of a generation. I had driven from my home in Oregon through the night to see this spectacle, and now that I’d arrived, I found I was unprepared for the power of its […]