Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The New Water Czars.“ Unlike the Pima Indians of the Gila River Indian Community, the Yavapai were not traditionally farmers. Instead, they migrated up and down the Verde River, hunting, fishing and gathering. But in 1903, the government settled them on Fort McDowell, a […]
Tribe defeated a dam and won back its water
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Persistence frees the Mokelumne: River advocate Pete Bell
California’s Mokelumne River flows from a high mountain lake in the Sierra Nevada, plunging down in a series of cascading waterfalls through a steep forest canyon in the foothills. Dams and diversions have reduced the once free-flowing river to a relative trickle. But that is changing, thanks in large part to the efforts of a […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
The de-icer that tames Western roads
Dumping magnesium chloride on winter roads keeps the traffic moving — but how safe is the stuff?
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Ranching’s worst enemy? It’s not greens
Jury finds a meatpacker has taken ranchers to the cleaner
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Dear friends
Gunning for the big screen Adam Jackaway is a man who likes to make big statements with small tools. Last winter, with war looming in Iraq, he shouldered his snow shovel and tromped out into a Boulder, Colo., park. There, he sculpted a massive peace sign in a blank field, recruiting others to help, and […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
A tempered victory
For once, it seems that the West’s Indian tribes stand to win big. Armed with a century-old legal doctrine which holds that Indians’ water rights supersede those of practically everyone else, tribes are claiming their place at the top of the Western water rights hierarchy. In this issue’s feature story, Daniel Kraker writes about the […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
The New Water Czars
A historic water deal could give an impoverished Indian community a path back to its roots — and turn it into one of the West’s next big power brokers
Posted inWotr
The Passion of the Christ in Butte, Montana
I won’t be going to see Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of The Christ.” Not because of any religious controversy, it’s just that I’m not sado-masochistic by nature. Besides, nothing can match my imagination when it comes to terror. The most violent scene I’ve seen in any film is when Marlon Brando gets beaten to […]
Posted inWotr
Straight talk about Mad Cow from a mad rancher
Let’s get this straight. The cows aren’t mad. But you should be. “Mad cow disease” (BSE) develops in animals — or humans — when they eat parts of infected animals. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy can occur when cattle are forced to become cannibals. Cows in their natural habitat may butt heads, but they don’t eat each […]
Posted inWotr
I can’t figure out what gays have to do with my marriage
I gave up fish for Lent. But then, I give up fish for Lent every year, and every year my good Christian wife rolls her eyes at me. Apparently there are no points to be made by foregoing something I had absolutely no intention of doing in the first place. I never eat fish. I’m […]
Posted inWotr
The high cost of low prices
“We Sell for Less.” Every few miles of a long drive down the length of California, I passed another Wal-Mart big-rig with those words across the back. The hypnotic monotony of the interstate made the slogan a mantra for the open road, for the featureless landscape that was the only America I could see through […]
Posted inWotr
For Western myths, see newcomers on horseback
If you’ve heard about the man who kicked off his campaign for governor by swinging a medieval battle sword on horseback in the middle of downtown Billings, you probably thought, “Only in Montana.” Glenn Schaffer posed at the offices of the local paper in February on a stallion named Big Dog Thunder Horse, and said […]
Posted inWotr
A monumental shift for public lands
I flew into the sprawling city of Phoenix the other day not expecting a nature experience or a political revelation. My colleague and I rented a car and, after an appointment in the city, fought through an hour of bumper-to-bumper afternoon traffic on our way north to Flagstaff. What a relief it was to finally […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Ski areas get greener
Western ski areas got their best grades yet in the 2003-2004 Ski Area Environmental Scorecard — but they weren’t spectacular. The median score for the 76 ski areas, graded by the Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition, was a C+. Tops were Colorado’s Aspen (93.9) and Buttermilk (93.3), which earned high marks for being environmentally conscious. Vail […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Reading for — and about — a rainy day
Here in the Northwest, you can accumulate large quantities of the following: rainwater, unemployment and local literature. The folks at Oregon Quarterly (the University of Oregon’s magazine) collect the third. Last year, they ransacked their archives and created a new literary record of the region, Best Essays NW. Most of the 27 essays read like […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Calendar
San Diego will be hosting the Annual West Coast Conference on Soils, Sediments and Water on March 15-18. The conference is sponsored by the Association for Environmental Health and Sciences; hot topics include bioremediation, brownfields, military base cleanup and pesticides. www.aehs.com . 413-549-5170 Find out whose money your lawmaker is spending: Check out the Center […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Resurrected memories of a prison camp
If we haven’t already forgotten our nation’s World War II-era internment camps, we speak of them only in hushed tones. Even in the eight Western communities where the camps once stood, their memory is lost, rolled up and stowed away like old chain-link fence. A new exhibit touring North Dakota, “Snow Country Prison: Interned in […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
It’s a winter recreation crisis
I would like to commend Rachel Odell for her recent story about snowmobiler and skier conflict on public lands (HCN, 1/19/04: A moment of truth for user fees). The national forests, like the national parks, should take a stand on this issue sooner, rather than later, if they wish to head off serious resource degradation […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Everybody get together
Segregating skiers from snowmobilers may not be the most appropriate answer to the increased popularity of the backcountry in winter (HCN, 1/19/04: A moment of truth for user fees). That more and more people are enthusiastically enjoying these wonderful backcountry locations should be celebrated, not feared. Public lands are one of the things in which […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Whiplash? Hardly
The article noting the seesawing plans for snowmobile use in Yellowstone Park repeats a common refrain that I have seen in many news articles about this issue: the suggestion that we should feel sorry for the buyers and users of snowmobiles because the rules changed (HCN, 1/19/04: Yellowstone snowmobilers suffer whiplash). I wish news writers […]