Californians drink a quarter of the nation’s bottled water, but they recycle only 16 percent of the bottles. The rest — 1 billion water bottles a year — are tossed into the state’s landfills. “We have developed the very healthy habit of drinking more water, but we have not developed a healthy habit of recycling […]
Water bottles flood landfills
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Bikers want back in to national park
Tucson’s fat-tire fanatics are pushing Saguaro National Park to reopen its Cactus Forest Trail to mountain bikes. In 1991, under pressure from the local biking community, the National Park Service opened the 2.5-mile route to mountain bikers. The trail — the first in a national park to allow mountain bikes — was jointly maintained by […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Back on the range?
A century ago, the federal government took the Salish and Kootenai tribes’ land and bison for a wildlife refuge. Now, the tribes want to take back control. MOIESE, montana — Here on the National Bison Range, 350 to 500 bison roam a lush, mountain-hemmed prairie, part of a rich community of wildlife that includes bighorn […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Follow-up
In the game of tug-of-war on the Klamath River, farmers just lost a little bit of ground (HCN, 6/23/03: ‘Sound science’ goes sour). In order to keep water in Upper Klamath Lake for two species of endangered suckers, and in the Klamath River for threatened coho salmon, the Bureau of Reclamation has told farmers to […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Heard Around the West
CALIFORNIA It had to happen: Orange County is running out of rural land for gigantic housing developments. “We don’t have any dirt left,” a real estate analyst told the Los Angeles Times. There are still plans for up to 42,000 homes and condos on about 54 square miles. But the easy paving-over is over, and […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Once touched by drought, you never forget
From the mothers of my family, I learned about poverty and drought, experiences so profound they became proper nouns: the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl. When I was a boy verging on gangly teenager, a thunderstorm of unusual menace advanced one day from Nebraska toward my grandparents’ farm. She had not, she announced later, seen […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Fire in the West: It’s no simple story
As scientists who have long grappled with the complexities of fire history in the West, we take issue with Ray Ring’s overreaching storyline that the recent spate of stand-replacing forest fires reflects wholly natural processes operating across all Western landscapes (HCN, 5/26/03: A losing battle). Ring further asserts that the main driver of recent crown […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Climbers: More than just fun-hogs?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Invasion of the rock jocks.” If the climbing community has a unified public voice, it’s the Boulder, Colo.-based Access Fund, a group that fights to keep crags open to climbers. The group isn’t just about “all access all the time,” says Access Fund board […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
One park clamps down on climbers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Invasion of the rock jocks.” In November 1992, managers at Hueco Tanks State Historic Site were gearing up for another busy climbing season, when vandals scrawled what staffers suspected was gang-related graffiti across one of the park’s most visited rock art sites. Known as […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Who’s managing climbers?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Invasion of the rock jocks.” Devils Tower National Monument, Wyo. Twenty-three Indian tribes claim cultural ties to this 1,200-foot volcanic butte, which, on busy summer days, crawls with upward of 120 climbers. To ease conflicts between climbers and Native Americans using the site for […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Trees help clean the West’s dumps
Phytoremediation tackles everything from dry-cleaning solvents to formaldehyde
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
A ravaged river gets a new life
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Reinstating the heir to the Truckee River.” Twenty miles east of Reno on the McCarran Ranch, downstream from the famed Mustang Ranch brothel, there’s a 75-foot wide, meandering — and bone-dry — riverbed. Less than 200 feet […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Reinstating the heir to the Truckee River
A mammoth trout, thought to be extinct, could live again in a Nevada river
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
‘New Homestead Act’ would boost dwindling towns
Law aims to attract young entrepreneurs to the West’s depopulating fringes
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
As fires rage, governors counsel discretion
The Bush administration’s Healthy Forests Initiative gets little support from the Western Governors’ Association
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Dear Friends
We need a vacation! Don’t be surprised that High Country News isn’t in your mailbox two weeks from now. Each summer, we skip an issue, to give staffers a chance to crawl out of their cubicles and frolic in the hills. Your next issue should arrive August 4. The board comes to Paonia The High […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Speak up, ‘quiet recreationists’
At long last, the good people who make our beloved backpacking tents and climbing ropes and kayaks have taken some responsibility for helping us trample freely about the Western wilds. In May, Peter Metcalf, co-founder of the climbing-gear company, Black Diamond, gave Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt an ultimatum. Leavitt had just signed deals stripping 2.6 […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Invasion of the rock jocks
Have rock climbers turned from environmental crusaders into an environmental menace?
Posted inWotr
Risk important in outdoor adventures
We watched the steady stream of tourists snake its way toward Spruce Tree House, the only Anasazi cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde in southern Colorado where the federal agency allows visitors to guide themselves. It had been single file since leaving the museum, so we heaved a collective sigh. Petroglyph Trail, which runs one and […]
Posted inWotr
We can still do right by the Yellowstone
Last summer, my wife, Katie Gibson, and I travelled the length of the Yellowstone River, 678 miles from its source on Yount’s Peak in Wyoming’s Teton Wilderness, to its confluence with the Missouri River, just inside North Dakota. We walked through the wild headwaters country and Yellowstone Park, then paddled over 500 miles from the […]