WYOMING Residents of a golf course community near Grand Teton National Park are distressed about a hunter killing a bull moose in their midst. The animal, which sported a huge set of antlers, had been a regular visitor to the Teton Pines neighborhood, wandering from one backyard to another. This time it was accompanied by […]
Heard around the West
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
American — and proud of it
Until I traveled to Holland recently, I didn’t know how irreversibly American I am. Perhaps I’m not precisely a patriot — the word comes from the Latin for father — but I’m certainly one deeply identified with my native land. In Amsterdam, people eyed me with pity, suspicion or loathing as soon as I opened […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Who took the ‘farm’ out of the Farm Bureau?
It’s an organization “preying upon the very people it claimed to help,” said Frances Ohmstede, 40 years ago, about the American Farm Bureau Federation. “Its policies lead rural America further and further into debt and poverty,” said her husband, Bryce. “It’s a financial empire built for their own benefit,” added Alfred Schutte, the Ohmstedes’ friend […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Saving wildlife, one animal at a time: Veterinarian Kathleen Ramsay
ESPAÑOLA, New Mexico — Kathleen Ramsay found her calling in a veterinary school lab, when a man brought in a golden eagle caught in a foothold trap. “He threw the trap and chain at me, with the eagle flapping in the trap,” she says. “(That’s when) I decided … to help animals that could no […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
A new breed of ‘ski bums’ is anything but
Young people have to get creative if they’re going to survive in mountain towns
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
River turns against a salmon tribe
Clear-cutting and riverbank armoring have helped erode a reservation
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
The Sierra gets ‘a pocket’ for conservation funding
An idea born on the coast moves inland— but can it work in other states?
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Judge vaporizes Yellowstone snowmobile ban
A second judge will likely demand some limits on winter traffic
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Dear friends
YOU KNOW MORE THAN WE DO If you’re flipping through this paper in search of election results, stop. Due to a fluke in our print schedule, we’re sending the issue to press on Oct. 29 — four days before election day — but it won’t hit your mailbox until Nov. 8, almost a week after […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
New ways to work in the woods
In mid-October, an extraordinary group of people gathered in Ouray, Colo., below the already snow-corniced ridges of the San Juan Mountains. It was the annual meeting of the National Network of Forest Practitioners, a group that was founded in 1990 as an alternative to professional foresters’ groups, whose emphasis was mainly on making money for […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Keepers of the Flame
GILA NATIONAL FOREST, New Mexico — In April 2003, a thunderstorm built over southwestern New Mexico’s Black Range. Clouds darkened the skies above soft-shouldered hills and steep canyons covered by dense thickets of juniper and piñon pine and galleries of tall ponderosa pine. Sometime around 2:00 in the afternoon, lightning struck on Boiler Peak, northwest […]
Posted inWotr
The political science of salmon non-recovery, 101
If the 13 endangered salmon runs on the Columbia and Snake rivers go the way of the dodo on our watch, the responsibility for this denouement cannot be laid at the feet of the five Columbia River Indian tribes or their allies in the biological and aquatic sciences. For two decades, in courtrooms and at […]
Posted inWotr
If dogs could talk, what would we learn?
It was all over the papers recently that a border collie named Rico recognized 200 human words. That prompted owners of other breeds to write letters to the editor in defense of their breeds. One trainer said motivation is critical. Another observed that border collies are “acutely sensitive to motion.” I think they all got […]
Posted inWotr
Cheering on Mount St. Helens is a spectator sport
On a recent Saturday, with a heart heavy as concrete, I headed north, leaving my house in Portland as rain pounded the windshield. The remnants of a recent breakup cast the world in dull hues. Mount St. Helens was busy spitting ash into the sky, and what else cheers the soul like a good case […]
Posted inWotr
Spaceboys: The manly myth strikes again
On Oct. 4, SpaceShipOne blasted to the edge of space from a Mojave Desert Airport for the second time in five days, winning its design team a $10 million prize. The ship is the only privately funded manned vehicle ever to leave the atmosphere, and has already inspired the owner of Virgin Atlantic Airways to […]
Posted inWotr
Why the West gets mostly ignored in an election year
The other night we were channel-surfing and hit upon the Miss America pageant. “What year did women get the vote in the United States?” a contestant was asked. The answer, according to the pageant judges, was 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The correct answer is a little more complicated. […]
Posted inWotr
We’ve seen enough destruction from mining
On Nov.2, Montanans will vote on Initiative 147, which would repeal the state’s ban on cyanide heap-leach gold and silver mining. The ban was passed by voters for a good reason: Montana, and Indian Country in particular, will suffer for many decades from the pollution caused by mining operations. Zortman-Landusky Gold Mines, for instance, has […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Despair not one more day
“… My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” — Adrienne Rich History shows that the proverbial rock can be rolled, if not to the top of the mountain, […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Calendar
Visit Boise, Idaho, for the U.S. Forest Service?s conference on fire and forest health. Entitled “The Next 100 Years,” the conference, from Nov. 18-19, will feature Stephen Pyne, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, former Idaho governor Cecil D. Andrus, D, and Forest Chief Dale Bosworth.Andrus Center for Public Policy: www.andruscenter.org 208-426-4218 The American Geophysical Union?s meeting […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
How to deal with oil and gas development
As America’s thirst for petroleum and natural gas grows, energy companies are scouring the West for new sites to drill. Now, there’s a new guidebook and Web site, Oil and Gas at Your Door, that gives landowners a preparedness primer for the day that an oil and gas company man comes knocking. Produced by the […]