Oregon’s 30-year-old land-use rules may need a face-lift
Planning’s poster child grows up
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 […]
Posted inWotr
Mexican workers in our towns want to legitimize their presence
The hour was early, the high desert air was fall-frosty, and the coffee was, well, truly horrible. I’d arrived for my volunteer shift at a Catholic church in the western Colorado town of Delta, and I had a very bad feeling. Five hundred people were already waiting on the sidewalk outside, sipping the acrid coffee, […]
Posted inWotr
Ranchers band together to break a monopoly on marketing
Step onto almost any ranch in the West nowadays and you’re likely to hear someone cussin’ the meatpackers. The next thing you might hear is a phone call from that same rancher to his or her congressman asking support for a ban on packer ownership of cattle. Packers are the people at the end of […]
Posted inWotr
Wild times in the human weed patch
I never knew how wild my corner of the West was until my daughter started playing volleyball. It had nothing to do with volleyball or the way it transforms giggling adolescent girls into snarling competitive animals. It had to do with early morning practices. “Builds character,” my daughter’s coach said. The kids’ or the parents’, […]
Posted inWotr
Gardening old-style with my great-uncle Alfred in Seattle
The other day my great-uncle Alfred gave me a handful of the year’s green beans, dried and ready for planting next summer. “Give them something high up to grow on,” he told me. “They’ll grow seven feet tall.” Alfred knows. He’s planted this variety in his garden for seven years now, every year saving a […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Pity the ranchers – and the public
Dear HCN, I was dismayed to learn of the plight of cattle growers who are forced to pay “checkoff” fees of a dollar a head. In the simple interest of fairness to cattle farmers and the American public, we should call for the immediate elimination of both checkoff fees and subsidized grazing privileges on public […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Idaho isn’t hate-free yet
Dear HCN, I just finished reading Rocky Barker’s swell piece on the transformation of Idaho into a hate-free zone (HCN, 9/30/02: Idaho seeks a reputation – and a reality – free of hate). Before any comments … time for a pop quiz: Two months ago I was thrown out of a motel (the only one […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
HCN supports bigotry
Dear HCN, The rationale presented by Ray Ring that a proposed BLM to LDS Church land exchange should not take place (HCN, 9/30/02: This land holds a story the church won’t tell) is based almost entirely on bigotry rather than on any real merit. The primary reason Mr. Ring gives for not supporting the land […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Golden State gets a green power surge
California’s famous sunshine is about to be put to work. Under a new law signed by Gov. Gray Davis, D, in mid-September, California’s three investor-owned utilities must buy 20 percent of their power from alternative energy sources such as solar and wind. State environmental officials say the move will help California reduce pollution, and also […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Land swap too hot to handle
WYOMING Taxpayers may have a fire on their hands if a land-swap proposal goes through. In the trade, the Bureau of Land Management would give the Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Co. 2,045 acres in Sheridan County, Wyo., believed to hold about 107 million tons of coal. In exchange, the BLM would receive 5,923 acres […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Golden trout swimming in troubled waters
CALIFORNIA Though it appears on the state flag, the California grizzly bear was annihilated from the state decades ago. Now, the state fish, the California golden trout, could disappear. The historical range of the trout is limited to two drainages in the southern Sierra Nevada: the South Fork of the Kern River and Golden Trout […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Corps stands behind status quo
Endangered shorebirds and fish will just have to wait for habitat-enhancing spring floods and summer ebbs on the Missouri River. Because of prolonged drought, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided in early October to postpone changes in how the river and its many dams are managed. The changes were recommended by the U.S. Fish […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Navajos can’t Dine at local diner
ARIZONA Nineteen of the 21 employees at RD’s Drive-In in Page, Ariz., are Navajo Indians – but none of them can speak their native Dine language at work. In early October, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit against the locally owned burger joint for its English-only policy. Four former Navajo employees, […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Wild horses could go to Mexico
The Bureau of Land Management has more wild horses and burros than it knows what to do with. Officials estimate that over 45,000 live on Western range with a carrying capacity of only 27,000 (HCN, 03/02/98: Colorado BLM going wild?). This year, with rangelands battered by severe drought, the question of where to put the […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
The Latest Bounce
National Marine Fisheries Service biologist Michael Kelly blew the whistle in late October on the agency’s failure to protect salmon in the Klamath River (HCN, 10/28/02: The message of 30,000 dead salmon). According to Kelly, in April 2002, the Fisheries Service repeatedly changed its biological opinion – ultimately lowering river-flow recommendations by nearly one-half – […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
It’s more than a house, it’s a fantasy life
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The sales pitch weighs 12 pounds, arriving in a field bag made of beautiful distressed leather that looks well broken-in. Open the bag and there are maps that appear wrinkled and old, a pretend Montana newspaper clipping that looks historic, and four overdesigned books […]