NEW MEXICO When federal land managers spread herbicide on rangelands 15 miles from Malaga, N.M., in mid-July, they had no idea what a mess they were making. A week later, a flash flood washed Spike 20P pellets into the Black River, contaminating a diversion ditch. “Supposedly, in moderate rain, the pellets would dissolve into the […]
Did the BLM Spike New Mexico’s ditches?
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Clinton-era monuments weather court challenge
A federal court has ruled that former President Clinton did, in fact, have the authority to create national monuments in four Western states. The Blue Ribbon Coalition, an off-road vehicle users group, and the Mountain States Legal Foundation had opposed the designation of six monuments in Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. National monument designation limits […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Report slams BLM’s land-exchange process
For years, watchdog groups have said the Bureau of Land Management underestimates the value of the land it trades away to states and private landowners, effectively giving away chunks of the public domain worth billions of dollars (HCN, 2/18/02: Groundswell for a monument?). A new report, released in mid-October, adds credence to those claims and […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Silver state gets a little wilder
NEVADA For wilderness boosters who’ve spent years trying to convince the rest of the country – and more than a few of their fellow Nevadans – that the desert around Las Vegas is not a wasteland, Nov. 5 brought some good news. President Bush signed the Clark County Public Lands and Natural Resources Act into […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Feds bail on snowmobile ban
WYOMING/MONTANA After nearly two years of pressure from the Bush administration, on Nov. 12 the National Park Service finally abandoned its plan to ban snowmobiles from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Instead, beginning in the winter of 2003-04, the number of snowmobiles will be capped, and the winter after that, all snowmobiles must have […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Election Bounce
Most green initiatives and proposals across the West failed at the ballot box Nov. 5. Oregon voters rejected a measure that would have required the labeling of genetically engineered foods; Montanans won’t be buying back any private hydroelectric dams (HCN, 10/14/02: Montanans may take back their dams); and in Utah, both the Radioactive Waste Restrictions […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Farewell, whoopers, Western skies aren’t big enough for you
BOSQUE DEL APACHE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, N.M. – It’s dusk, and a distant rainstorm has left a double rainbow in the late-October sky. I sit near the banks of the Rio Grande, waiting for the sandhill cranes to arrive from the nearby fields where they feed all day. Right now, about 1,000 of them have […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Heard Around the West
Animal rights activists just don’t get it: Not all animals are wimps. A 4-year-old dachshund called Brutus loves jumping out of planes, according to his skydiving owner, Ron Sirull, who puts the pooch in a pouch to strap him to his chest. The daring duo took part in an air show at Vandenberg Air Force […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Wherever you go, sprawl isn’t far behind
Some of my wilderness-loving friends are abandoning California. Sick of the traffic, the smog, the subdivisions creeping up and destroying beloved landscapes, they’re bailing out in search of smaller communities in the true West. But urban sprawl is everywhere east of here. Like most other man-made problems, sprawl is not something you can run away […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Across the Columbia, a game of catch-up
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Pam Vanderheiden listens to a lot of radio – she certainly has the time. Every day, she joins the throngs of people who commute from Vancouver, Wash., across the Columbia River into Portland, Ore. Every day, the traffic is bad. “Getting home is a […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
New Urbanism creates living communities
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Urban planner Jacob Brostoff lounges in a grassy common area and beams with admiration as he looks out over Orenco Station, a new development in a suburb of Portland. “This place is nothing like traditional suburbia,” he says. “I hated growing up in the […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Ed Marston to the West: Grow up!
A profile of the outgoing publisher of High Country News
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Colorado community battles a toxic shipment
Locals confront the state’s first import of radioactive waste
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Conservation vote groups optimistic
Environmentalists redouble efforts on the local level
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
The changing of the guard
Paul Larmer takes the helm of High Country News For the past five months, the High Country Foundation board has been searching for the right person to lead this institution into the future. The board received about 40 applications, from the supremely qualified to the supremely unqualified. They were screened and winnowed and weighed, and […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Planning’s poster child grows up
Oregon’s 30-year-old land-use rules may need a face-lift
Posted inWotr
Why I’m thankful this Thanksgiving
The things I am thankful for this week are still there: family, health, work, life in the rural West. But I have to scratch beneath world events to find them. I can no longer live as if my well-being depended only on me. In fairness, I never fully lived as if what was immediately around […]
Posted inWotr
Surprise: Conservation counted in the last election
To many people who care about the West’s publicly owned lands, the Nov. 5 election results fell somewhere between disastrous and catastrophic. Voters handed control of the Senate back to the Republican Party and enlarged its majority in the House of Representatives, thereby sweeping away the fragile congressional roadblock that had hampered Bush administration efforts […]
Posted inWotr
A message to environmentalists from a wildlife biologist
I should confess up-front that. although I’m an environmentalist and a wildlife biologist at a Western university, I admire ranchers. I should further confess that I live on a small piece of property near real ranches– ones big enough to be home to cattle and the shy kind of wildlife you don’t see on smaller […]
Posted inWotr
My trysts with Miss November
November out West: The spectacle of changing leaves has passed, the hills collecting snow are not yet blanketed in white, and daylight savings brings night time all too soon. It may sound innocent, but the season feels like a cruel and careless mistress to me. I first ventured West in November, four years ago; I […]