WEST COAST Protection for the Northwest’s salmon just took a major leap forward. In a landmark ruling, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour banned the use of 38 pesticides near streams that host threatened and endangered runs of salmon and steelhead in Washington, Oregon and California. The ruling follows a July 2002 decision, in which Judge […]
Salmon get a break from pesticides
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Owens River will finally get its water back
CALIFORNIA A 33-year legal saga that has delayed one of the most ambitious river restorations ever attempted in California is over, thanks to a last-minute lawsuit by the state’s attorney general. Inyo County’s Lower Owens River has been dry since 1913, when it was diverted to supply water to Los Angeles, 250 miles to the […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Follow-up
President Bush is ready to “meet the environmental challenges of the future”: If approved by Congress, his $2.4 trillion proposed budget will cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 7.2 percent. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which administers the National Marine Fisheries Service, will receive $300 million less than it did in 2004. The […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Heard around the West
UTAH Some people in rural subdivisions worship the wandering moose on their doorstep; others go for their guns. Jack Fenton, a worshipper in Summit County, says he was thrilled when a yearling moose moseyed up to his front door to nibble on a wreath. But his neighbor shot and killed the moose — and also […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Why I’m running: Immigration is the environmental issue
Because I believe that environmental organizations have ducked the immigration-population issue too long, I am running for the board of directors of the Sierra Club. I am not part of a slate; I represent only myself and the issues I care deeply about. One of the most important challenges of public policy is to recognize […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Nation’s premier environmental group is target of a takeover
Last year, over 750,000 people joined or renewed their membership in the Sierra Club, presumably because they believe in its historic mission to protect America’s public lands and wilderness for future generations. John Muir and a small band of conservationists founded the Club in 1892, and it’s been working for more than a century to […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Congress overrules the courts
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Tipping the scales.” Even when environmentalists do emerge victorious from court, their celebrations are often short-lived: Congress can overturn a court’s interpretation of an existing law by passing a new one. It’s not a new tactic, but it’s one that is especially favored by […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Jurisdiction shopping made simple
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Tipping the scales.” Dee Benson U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, Utah A former staffer for Sen. Orrin Hatch; appointed in 1991 by Republican George H.W. Bush Quick take Off-road drivers love his courtroom Anti-green cases 1995 — rejected a challenge to ORV […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Solving the puzzle of chronic wasting disease: Veterinarian Beth Williams
LARAMIE, WYOMING — Stacks of histopathologies — gray folders filled with the tissue of dead animals — litter the floor of Dr. Beth Williams’ office at the University of Wyoming’s State Veterinary Lab in Laramie. Crowded into the office with a computer and a microscope table, they leave little room for Williams herself. The morbid […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Ethanol takes off in the West
But is it a wonder fuel — or an energy-losing proposition?
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Mining may no longer be king of the mountain
Court ruling gives land managers power to say ‘no’ to mining companies
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Park Service wilderness in disarray
Departing wilderness boss blasts the agency
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Dear friends
Give and Take Inside this issue of High Country News, you’ll find a flier for our newest book, called Give and Take: How the Clinton Administration’s Public Lands Offensive Transformed the American West. It pulls together our best coverage of the national monument spree engineered by Clinton and his Interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, along with […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
In conservation contests, there are no slam dunks
I remember the first big story I covered for High Country News. It was back in the spring of 1994, and my headline shouted, “The salmon win one: Judge tells agencies to obey the law.” The story focused on federal Judge Malcolm Marsh’s landmark ruling, in which he told the National Marine Fisheries Service that […]
Posted inWotr
Death in the backcountry comes with the territory
Search-and-rescue teams have been busy the past few weeks in the mountains of Southern California, looking for lost hikers, and instead finding corpses. Six times since Jan. 1, men described by friends and family as “experienced” outdoor travelers have slipped from icy trails and suffered injuries that, if not fatal outright, proved to be so […]
Posted inWotr
Looking for the curve on the Great Plains
I grew up in South Dakota, but spent my summers in Portland, Ore., with my mom. As an adolescent, I enjoyed how my city experience pushed me ahead of the curve when I got back home for school. I had my classmates beat by at least a year on the overalls-with-one-strap thing. It wasn’t all […]
Posted inWotr
It’s time for a radical change on the range
At a recent get-together of 435 members of the Quivira Coalition in Albuquerque, N.M., I visited the future of the grasslands. In a dark bar, I even met the rancher’s worst nightmare — a Buddhist vegetarian. Yet my glimpse onwards filled me with hope. In fact, I’m surprised at how closely the time-to-come resembles the […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2004: Mending the Nets
Would quotas save the seas, or just big business?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Mending the Nets.” Far from the high seas, a storm of controversy is raging over a tool that some say is the solution to a chaotic, ecologically damaging system of fisheries management — but that others say could send small-boat owners under. Currently, fishermen […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2004: Mending the Nets
Renewable energy made simple
For most people, living with the energy supplied by Mother Nature is more noble aspiration than practical reality. But thanks to Rex Ewing’s new book, Power With Nature: Solar and Wind Energy Demystified, everyone who embraces renewable energy in theory but not in practice, is now officially out of excuses. Ewing tackles a complex, technical […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2004: Mending the Nets
Restoration evolution
“Ecological restoration” has a good ring to it. So good, in fact, that the two words are used by everyone from the environmentalists at The Nature Conservancy to the heads of America’s biggest corporations. While conservation groups look to restoration as a way to hasten the recovery of native ecosystems harmed by agriculture or industry, […]