I was recently invited to a seminar at a university whose thesis might be considered insulting. The American West, said the invitation, “lacks an intellectual, cultural or social presence within either the country or the continent. Eastern publishers, Eastern intellectual centers and agencies, public and private, based in Washington, D.C., still provide the authoritative voices […]
It’s the West’s turn to call the shots
Posted inWotr
It takes a community to save the sage grouse
Way out on the sagebrush sea of the American West, people are embarking on an uncharted new journey called community-based conservation. Their flagship is the greater sage grouse, a bird that has narrowly avoided being added to the endangered species list because of the cooperative efforts of people around the region. The decision not to […]
Posted inWotr
Give a child the gift of a strenuous life
It was late fall, and my 8-year-old daughter and I stood at the bottom of a brushy, 300-foot cliff and talus slope overlooking Blue Lake in southern Oregon’s Sky Lakes Wilderness. For me, it was a short climb. For a little girl much smaller than me, the hill looked downright colossal. But I knew something […]
Posted inWotr
Growing up is hard to do
While teaching a class in Gardiner, Mont., I asked the teenagers for adjectives to describe their lives. “Boring,” one called out, because I sensed the kid knew that teenagers were supposed to be jaded. It was a cloak he could easily don, and by pretending to be bored he wouldn’t have to work very hard. […]
Posted inWotr
My jeans grow on trees
My family owns a timber company in Washington state, and for us, money grows on trees. Every time we buy something, we see the physical signs of our consumption in our backyard. Paying for my recent college education, for example, took about 300 log truckloads of second-growth Douglas fir, cedar and hemlock trees. A $60 […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Crimes against workers
Environmental crimes are among the hardest to prosecute. That’s the message authors Joseph Hilldorfer and Robert Dugoni dramatically deliver in The Cyanide Canary, the true story of chemical contamination in southeastern Idaho. In the summer of 1996, 20-year-old Scott Dominguez, an employee at Evergreen Resources — a company that produced fertilizer from mining waste — […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Calendar
Do you care about Colorado’s Roan Plateau? The BLM has released its amended draft management plan for the area — which would allow gas drilling on the edge of the plateau but delay drilling on top for approximately 20 years — and is collecting public comment until March 4. www.roanplateau.ene.com 970-947-2800 The Wilderness Medical Institute […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Moab uranium tailings: should they stay or should they go?
The U.S. Department of Energy is calling for public comment on its plans to clean up a 130-acre pile of uranium tailings and contaminated soils currently leaching ammonia and radioactive materials into groundwater — and the Colorado River — just three miles upstream from Moab, Utah. The Atlas Minerals Corporation had operated the Moab uranium […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
‘Paying for wilderness’ undermines environmental goals
In covering wilderness campaigns, HCN has invited us to party with Nevada “wilderness warriors” (HCN, 3/3/03: Wild Card); watch a rancher in Owyhee County, Idaho, kill a rattlesnake (HCN, 12/8/03: Riding the middle path); and learn the personal philosophies of the central players in Idaho’s Boulder-White Clouds proposal (HCN, 11/22/04: Conservationist in a Conservative Land). […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Take back the wilderness movement
The exchange between SUWA Director Scott Groene and HCN Associate Editor Matt Jenkins is a fine example of the strategic dialogue which should be taking place within all Western wilderness campaigns (HCN, 9/27/04: Utah’s wilderness warriors reply). Those campaigns increasingly favor what is best described as a “Let’s make a deal” wilderness strategy. The price […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Oregon votes for fairness
Oregonians still have a reverence for Oregon’s features and future. What they signaled by passing Measure 37 is that they demand a government that is fair (HCN, 11/22/04: In Oregon, a lesson learned the hard way). Part of the problem is that land planners and environmental activists are never satisfied. The result is incrementally increasing […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Oregonians didn’t know what they were voting for
Measure 37 was not a referendum on Oregon’s land-use laws (HCN, 11/22/04: In Oregon, a lesson learned the hard way). The ballot measure was designed to make it impossible to have those regulations in place. However, that is not the question that was asked. The measure asked voters whether they would approve compensation to private […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Anasazi outpost dodges the drill
In early December, Hovenweep National Monument, in the remote southeast corner of Utah, narrowly escaped an attempt to lease nearby land for oil and gas drilling. The monument’s 400-acre Square Tower unit was created in 1923 to protect the remains of an almost 800-year-old Anasazi settlement, where as many as 500 people once lived. From […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Lawsuits swarm around Yellowstone snowmobiles
As predicted, after seven years of lawsuits, contradictory plans and court rulings, the National Park Service announced on Nov. 4 that it will continue to allow hundreds of snowmobiles per day into Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks for the next three winters (HCN, 11/8/04: Judge vaporizes Yellowstone snowmobile ban). The new rules will allow […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
The little bill that… can’t
For 13 years, the Ojito Wilderness Study Area — a 24,000-acre patch of semi-arid land just 40 miles from Albuquerque — has awaited full-fledged protection under the Wilderness Act. But despite the support of Democrats, Republicans, environmentalists, ranchers, miners, city folk and local American Indian tribes, the land has not been designated wilderness — because […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
City slaps back at property-rights measure
Residents of Bend, Ore., might want to think twice about where they put that new pig farm or high-rise condo. A provision in a recently approved ordinance in the central Oregon city of 62,900 allows people to sue their neighbors if nearby development reduces property values. Adopted on Dec. 1, the new rule is a […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Follow-up
So much for Homeland Security. In November, voters in Washington state voted by a 2-to-1 margin to prohibit the federal government from sending any more nuclear waste to Hanford Nuclear Reservation (HCN, 11/22/04: Election Day surprises in the schizophrenic West). On Dec. 2, in response to a request from the U.S. Department of Justice, a […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Heard around the West
NEVADA AND THE WEST Some call it pork, the 11,000 or so local projects stuffed into the $388 billion spending bill just passed by Congress. Others, such as the Democrats’ new minority leader, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, call it money well spent and brag about it. Thanks to Reid’s clout, Nevada was awarded nearly $200 […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
An artist’s residency, unplugged
The Aspen Guard Station is a log cabin in an aspen grove in the San Juan National Forest, 12 miles north of Mancos in southern Colorado. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, the guard station once housed fire crews. Today, the cabin is home to another kind of seasonal worker: writers and […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Go West, Democrats, in the path of Harry Reid
Can a teetotaling Mormon from a busted mining town in Nevada lead Democrats to the Promised Land of national power? This much is certain: Democrats rallied behind Harry Reid in the hope that he can take them safely through purgatory — or is it hell? — as minority leader of the 44-member Democratic caucus in […]