Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Conscientious Objectors.” People who worry about the Pacific Coast’s endangered salmon runs are likely to recognize James Lecky’s name. In 2002, Lecky, an assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Region in Long Beach, Calif., reworked his agency’s flow recommendations for the Klamath River. The […]
Fisheries agency rewards a loyal bureaucrat
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Nevada BLM cleans out cleanup project manager
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Conscientious Objectors.” Earle Dixon was in for a surprise this fall, when he showed up for a meeting at his office in the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Carson City Field Office. Over the previous year, Dixon had overseen the cleanup of the Yerington […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Protecting the people’s right of way: Public-access advocate Bill Calvert
The Yuba Goldfields in California’s Central Valley is one of the more bizarre and intriguing landscapes in the state — a swath of moonscape, wetlands, and sagebrush that stretches along both sides of the Yuba River. Huge piles of rock tailings, left by gold dredgers in the early part of the last century, loom over […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Rulings keep the West open for business
Decisions not to protect sage grouse and prairie dogs could mean more development in sagebrush and grasslands
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
The road to nowhere
Utah’s backcountry road takeover comes apart at the seams
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Riding high on political inappropriations
Appropriations bill is stuffed with pork — and some horse meat, too
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Dear friends
HAPPY HOLIDAYS This will be the last issue of High Country News that you receive for a month. The staff will take an issue off to spend time with family and friends, and to frolic in the white stuff that’s been falling consistently for a week now. The next issue should hit your mailbox Jan. […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Buy them some body armor
During a recent visit with troops in Kuwait, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a rare, unchoreographed moment, opened the floor to questions. He got a zinger. Why, asked one serviceman, are troops forced to scrounge through dumps in search of scrap metal, so they can outfit their vehicles with makeshift armor? The question, and Rumsfeld’s […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Conscientious Objectors
Public employees and their allies on the outside fight against Bush’s war on science
Posted inWotr
Western governors take aim at wounded species
Judging by their comments last week at a meeting in La Jolla, Calif., Western governors have thought a lot about the Endangered Species Act and its consequences for ranching, farming and real-estate development in their states. It became equally clear during the meeting that many governors have not thought clearly about this most far-reaching of […]
Posted inWotr
Bewitched and bewildered near Moab, Utah
If there’s a doubt in anyone’s mind about the rapidly changing rural West, look no further than the latest controversy to grip Moab, Utah. It doesn’t get much stranger than this. A few months ago, Robbie Levin, owner of Sorrel River Ranch, a luxury lodge north of Moab, applied for a cabaret license from the […]
Posted inWotr
How to write a Christmas card — or not
There has to be something in between the kind of Christmas card that is merely signed “Happy Holidays, Carol and Frank and The Whole Funk Family,” and the five-page Christmas monograph from Jane and Bob, who express so many detailed success and so much pride in their family accomplishments that you want to stab yourself […]
Posted inWotr
Sneak fees stalk our public lands
Would you still call your town library “public” if a private corporation managed the books your taxes paid for, then charged you a fee to borrow them? Thanks to a provision sneaked into the recently passed federal spending bill, we may face that question about our public lands. Just hours before senators were expected to […]
Posted inWotr
A sleeping green giant may yet awake
Consider the matter of Row v. Wade, and no, that’s not a misspelling. We’re talking fishing here, and the never-ending debate over whether the best way to catch fish is from a boat or while walking through the water. What does this have to do with the re-election of President George W. Bush? As any […]
Posted inWotr
Whatever happened to the environmental movement?
It can no longer be denied: The national environmental movement has stalled. It became glaringly obvious as the movement campaigned against George W. Bush for three years with no noticeable influence on his re-election. It’s proven more subtly by the fact that Congress has passed almost no significant environmental laws since 1980, and by now, […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
Grand plan for Grand Canyon
Every year, more than 22,000 people run the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Amazingly, there is still a list of 8,000 private, non-commercial boaters who have waited up to 15 years to get on the ultimate whitewater run in the country. That waiting list is among several reasons the National Park Service has released […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
Calendar
The 8th annual Saving Places Conference will be held in Denver on Feb. 2-4. Sponsored by Colorado Preservation Inc., the 2005 conference is entitled “Bringing Preservation Home.” www.coloradopreservation.org 303-893-4260 Colorado State University has just released “Bio-Pharming in Colorado: A Guide to Issues for Making Informed Choices,” a policy report geared toward Colorado’s decision-makers and interested […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
Toxic waste, tainted justice
Between 1952 and 1989, Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant — just 16 miles outside Denver — was the country’s headquarters for weapons of mass destruction. Workers there produced more than 700 plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs in the Cold War arsenal. But in 1989, following allegations of radioactive groundwater contamination and illegally burned and lost […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
Lessons from the Netherlands
In response to Geneen Marie Haugen’s essay (HCN, 11/8/04: American — and proud of it): I’m sorry those Dutch were rude. As a Dutch-American woman, I know that being confronted with the Dutch sense of righteousness can be disconcerting. The population is well known for its ever-wagging “Little Dutch finger.” However, Holland — in fact […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
Living poor and voting rich
Your two-part series on the plight of the ski bum inspired this letter (HCN, 10/25/04: As the town hollows out, one Aspen neighborhood thrives) (HCN,.11/8/04: A new breed of ‘ski bums’ is anything but). Aspen is what it is today because young bohemians who supposedly believed in equality among the classes, wanted to shut the […]