Ranchers will continue to be forced to pay $1 per cow to corporate beef marketers. In early November, U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull in Billings, Mont., ruled against Montana ranchers Steve and Jeanne Charter and upheld the constitutionality of the “beef checkoff” rule (HCN, 9/30/02: Independent ranchers fight corporate control). It’s another victory for the […]
Election Bounce
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Administration, industry stamp out clean airregs
California has long been a trendsetter. Since 1967, the smog-ridden state has set clean air standards that are stricter than federal laws require. But now, the auto industry, backed by the Bush administration, is trying to halt the California Air Resources Board’s progressive auto-emissions regulations. In 1990, the state required that 10 percent of cars […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Heard Around the West
Cabela’s of Nebraska, the consumer bible for hunters, anglers and other rugged outdoor folk, offers a novel gift for Christmas in its new catalog: Camouflage bedding. Sheets come in elusive patterns of wetlands, hardwoods and mossy oak that bring “the look and feel of the outdoors to the bedroom.” Spouses who indulge in other products, […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
What Dick Cheney might have learned in Rock Springs, Wyoming
It’s too bad that Dick Cheney didn’t stick around longer in Rock Springs back when he was growing up in the deep West. He worked in the Wyoming city decades ago, in the early 1960s, after he flunked out of Yale. For Cheney, it was a bottom-of-the-heap job, stringing electrical lines as a “groundman.” It […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Brownfields program makes cleanup profitable
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. While Congress and President Bush allow the Superfund cleanup program to bleed out, they’re pumping money into a related program called “Brownfields.” In January, President Bush approved $250 million for Brownfields, and is now asking Congress to double the program’s funding over the next […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Superfund: On the Hill… on the ground
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. ON THE HILL: 1980 President Carter signs the Superfund bill into law, funded by $1.6 billion from an excise tax on the chemical and petroleum industries. The newly created Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry assesses the health effects of more than 65,000 […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Ranching advocates lack a rural vision
In the summer of 2000, in the midst of one of the most intense droughts in the Southwest in decades, I was radicalized by fire. During an 11-day backpack across the Gila Wilderness, my companion and I came across one of the rarest events in the cow-burnt landscapes of the West – a gentle fire, […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Cow-free crowd ignores science, sprawl
The West is tiny when pitted against our imagining of it. We imagined the buffalo would never be extinguished and the beaver would never be trapped out. We imagined big trees would always stand over the next ridge. But in a short time, the mountain men and buffalo hunters and loggers rolled over this alleged […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Condit Dam removal hits snags
Sediment behind dam could trash salmon habitat downstream
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Farmers band together to stave off sprawl
In California’s Central Valley, a strategy for steering growth takes shape
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Outside the agency, it’s a cold, cruel world
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “The push is on to privatize federal jobs.” Displaced federal workers will likely enter a brave new world when they step outside their agencies. The life of a contract forest crew, for example, is a far cry […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Dear friends
Kiss a super idea goodbye The rest of the world knows the West for its wide-open spaces and its national parks. And sure, the region is home to some of the nation’s most spectacular wildlands – but it’s also home to some of its most spectacular messes. Our mountain towns are pocked with the remnants […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
Life in the wasteland
A small Utah town unearths a toxic legacy just as its only hope for rescue, the federal Superfund cleanup program, blows away
Posted inWotr
Some lessons about coyotes stick in your mind
A friend from Nevada, an environmentalist, wrote me recently to say she’s been reading the minutes of the Nevada Wildlife Commission, which is using M-4s to kill coyotes in cases of “livestock predation.” The commission is now talking about whether to allow the cyanide guns in “cases of game predation,” otherwise known as doing what […]
Posted inWotr
The view from ground zero at Oregon’s biggest fire in 100 years
This Halloween I camped in the frozen ash near ground zero of the 499,968-acre Biscuit Fire, the nation’s largest wildfire of 2002, and the biggest in Oregon for a century. My wife was not wild about the idea. The Pacific Northwest’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian, had just promoted a three-part feature on Biscuit, billing it […]
Posted inWotr
Ranchers in the West should call it quits
In the summer of 2000, in the midst of one of the most intense droughts in the Southwest in decades, I was radicalized by fire. During an 11-day backpack across the Gila Wilderness, my companion and I came across one of the rarest events in the cow-burnt landscapes of the West — a gentle fire, […]
Posted inWotr
Eco-farmers seek to grow habitat as well as crops
Northern California farmer John Anderson is on the cutting edge of a new movement that seeks ways for farmers to incorporate stewardship practices into the daily pursuit of their livelihoods. Anderson and others believe it’s a key survival strategy for small farmers, plus a way to get beyond bitter struggles with environmentalists. Ultimately, it would […]
Posted inWotr
It’s good to be impassioned!
A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with a cheery woman I love to be around. She’s an artist, still a diehard Ralph Naderite and a dedicated organic gardener. But one day, when I was ranting about some ongoing environmental disaster or another, she stood up in her broccoli patch, gave me a withering […]
Posted inWotr
Why one Nevada town is the last, smartest boomtown
It takes an hour for a commuter propjet to cover the 230 miles of desolate salt flats and sagebrush between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Elko, Nev. By the time passengers glimpse the alpine meadows and snowfields of the Ruby Mountains just east of Elko, the aircraft is already making a bumpy descent toward an […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
What were Arizona voters thinking?
Dear HCN, Until I read your October article on Arizona politics, I felt secure in the assumption that Florida had long since outdistanced Texas in having the stupidest, most corruptible voting population in the nation. I now find that I can hold onto that belief only by assuming that the entire electorate of Arizona is […]