I’m following the debate about bicycles vs. horsepackers vs. hikers with the same bemusement that I do the debate of wilderness vs. protected vs. multiple use. The real essence of the debate is that some fat guy in a quad runner with a case of Bud Lite, a carton of Marlboros, and an AR15 is […]
It’s time to pay in proportion to our impacts
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Climbers are a sign of bigger problems
Examining the attitudes, rhetoric and actions of the new generation of rock climbers is illustrative of an ethic that places personal “freedom” above conservation (HCN, 7/7/03: Invasion of the rock jocks). Repeatedly, The Access Fund has, as the executive director proudly proclaims, “played hardball with land managers,” by associating with the very worst stewards of […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Climbers need to police themselves
Thanks for showing both sides of the climbing-impact issue (HCN, 7/7/03: Invasion of the rock jocks). I am a 41-year-old who has been climbing for over 25 years. I’ve done both bolt-free traditional and bolted sport-route first ascents. As much as I would like to deny it, climbers do impact the environment in many adverse […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Bison range fight is not about Indian rights
Your story about the hand-over of three national wildlife refuges to a Montana tribe oversimplified a very complex issue (HCN, 7/7/03: Back on the range?). Despite your portrayal of talks between the Department of the Interior and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes as a unique attempt to reunite the tribes with bison and lands […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Judge says Klamath plan needs revisions
A federal judge has sent the Bureau of Reclamation back to the drawing board with the management plan for the Klamath River Basin. In Oakland, Calif., Judge Saundra Brown Armstong called parts of the plan “arbitrary and capricious” and demanded that the National Marine Fisheries Service revise its biological opinion, on which the management plan […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
The Latest Bounce
A federal judge has kicked President Clinton’s Roadless Rule to the curb: In mid-July, U.S. District Judge Clarence A. Brimmer ruled that the U.S. Forest Service violated the Wilderness Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by declaring 58.5 million acres off-limits to road building, mining and logging (HCN, 7/30/01: Bush fails to defend roadless […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Heard Around the West
COLORADO Your poinsettia isn’t wilting, it’s trying to warn you. June Medford, a Colorado State University biologist, came up with the idea to genetically engineer plants to tattle on terrorists. How would the plants accomplish this? By changing color in the presence of a biological or chemical agent. The potential is huge, claims USA Today: […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Journey to the bottom of Navajo Lake
José “Ed” Marquez, 67, squints into the late afternoon sunlight, scanning what remains of Navajo Reservoir. “When they started filling the lake in 1961, I couldn’t imagine that this town I’d grown up in would soon be under water,” he says, waving his hand over the miles of dried and cracked mud now taking the […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
When did we become such gear-toting wimps?
When I read that the Outdoor Industry Association threatened to move its biannual gear show out of Salt Lake City as a protest against Utah’s wilderness policies, I was taken aback. Not by the announcement, but by the reported magnitude of the show: 15,000 visitors spending $24 million in the region to pore over high-tech […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
County’s hopes rest on a roller-coaster power market
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Pipe Dreams.” The 2001 energy crisis, and the sky-high power prices that came with it, touched off a stampede of new power plant proposals throughout the West. North Carolina-based Cogentrix Energy arrived in Nevada with a plan to build an 1,100 megawatt gas-fired power […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Rural ‘Water Warriors’ take on a water wrangler
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Pipe Dreams.” Thirty-five miles southwest of Las Vegas, on the California/Nevada border, Sandy Valley is a desert haven for free-living refugees from the urban rat race. The valley’s institutions range from Dust Devil Pizza to the Sky Ranch Airport — “A Flying Family Community” […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Want to protect a river? Get out and swim it
On the whole, professional conservationists are an office-bound bunch. They spend their days toiling to protect wild rivers and clean air, but don’t get outside often enough; the habitat these folks frequent is behind a desk, near a pile of papers. Enter Christopher Swain. A former acupuncturist and Iron Man competitor, Swain moved to Portland, […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Plains tribe harnesses the wind
Some tribes try their hands at renewable energy, but traditional energy sources hold more allure than ever
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Is the Southwest’s ‘last real stinker’on its last legs?
Closing down the Mohave power plant would be good for the air, but bad for tribal economies
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Truce remains elusive in Rio Grande water fight
New Mexico’s biggest river dries up as battle rages in courts and Congress
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Dear friends
We’re back! Following a two-week hiatus, the High Country News staff is back on the job, looking a little sunnier, and feeling refreshed. Temperatures on Colorado’s Western Slope have been rocketing over the 100-degree mark every afternoon, so it’s good to be back under the swamp cooler. Visitors Truckloads of HCN subscribers have ducked in […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
A brave new world of water
Talk about turning over public resources — timber, minerals, land — to the cold hand of capitalism, and environmentalists get pretty uncomfortable. If nothing else, California’s electricity crisis has taught us to be wary of corporations with the power to manipulate the supply of essential resources. So it’s not surprising that when a private company […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Pipe Dreams
LINCOLN COUNTY, NEVADA — Out here in a rock-strewn, desolate sweep of creosote bush and blackbrush called the Tule Desert, there’s a patch of land bulldozed clear of vegetation. Standing in the middle of it is a well called PW-1. It doesn’t look like much; just a 32-inch-diameter steel pipe, painted black and sticking out […]
Posted inWotr
Everyone needs a place apart
Some years back, Marypat and I bought 20 acres of land in central Montana, two hours from our home in Bozeman. An unremarkable spot–a sandstone bluff, an intermittent creek, ponderosa pines, views of distant peaks. Beyond an outhouse and a campfire ring, we have done nothing to develop the place. We go there as often […]
Posted inWotr
Wartime does not always bring out our best
It is quiet here at midweek, the silence of Owens Valley in California broken occasionally by the croak of ravens and the throb of a car or truck passing on Highway 395. Infrequently, one of those vehicles slows and follows the dirt driveway leading into this place of sorrow and remembrance. There is little here […]