SEATTLE, Wash. – It doesn’t seem too difficult to trap a crow. Especially if you’re armed with a remote-controlled, rifle-powered, 25-foot-square net and a heap of stale white bread. Especially if you’ve seen the crow in question almost every day for the past six years. Especially if it lives just a couple of wingflaps from […]
Shadow creatures
Posted inWotr
Peace of mind is a social contract
When it came time for me to buy a house, I purposely chose the Old Town neighborhood in Pocatello, Idaho, where I live and work. The neighborhood can be described as low-to-moderate income housing with many homes built as long as a century ago. I love the eclectic atmosphere of lived-in houses, each one individually […]
Posted inWotr
Retiring to work
Every day I’d leave high school about noon, take the subway to 23rd Street, run down to the basement cafeteria for a nutritious company meal, and then sort and deliver mail. My favorite route was the 40th to 30th floors, up there with the higher-flying Manhattan pigeons. The job was my transition to the adult […]
Posted inWotr
A river, a bird and a flock of untruths
Geez, all those punches must sting. In Nebraska and its neighboring Plains states, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists and other employees are again taking shots right and left from critics. It would be one thing if those blows were legitimate – almost all of them, however, hit below the belt. A recent Fish and […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Bishop Love: Based on a true story
Greetings, HCN, Readers of Scott Bridges’s letter (HCN, 9/30/02: This land holds a story the church won’t tell) may be interested in knowing that Ed Abbey most likely artistically pilfered and altered Bishop Love’s carnotite-eating from a true red, white and blue American specimen of idiotic boosterism. In 1984, Edgemont, S.D., former Mayor Matt Brown […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
The politics of growth
Note: this is one of several feature stories in this issue about the 2002 election. You think you have a lot to decide this November? Slip into the ballot booth with Arizona’s voters. Then you can vote for a ballot initiative that would require the state police to hand out marijuana for free. You can […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Save water, drain Lake Powell
Dear HCN, The article on water problems in the Imperial Valley (HCN, 9/16/02: The Royal Squeeze) was interesting, informative, and in my view, a good example of HCN‘s dedication to balanced reporting, which is especially difficult with hot-button issues like water, salmon and prairie dogs. I was struck by one of the figures stated in […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Indians are more than “special interest” group
Dear HCN, In “This land holds a story the church won’t tell,” (HCN, 9/30/02: The Royal Squeeze) your editor, Ray Ring, writes that “historic preservation advocates and environmental groups … fear the giveaway (that is, the sale of 940 publicly owned acres of the Mormon Trail to the Mormon Church) would set a precedent for […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Don’t beat up Bush, get personal
Dear HCN, Jeff Golden’s “Modest forest proposal for President Bush” (HCN, 9/16/02: A modest forest proposal), while sound in its reasoning, has one fatal flaw: People like George Bush could care less about common sense in regard to public-lands management, Forest Service fire suppression, and forest health policies and practices. The only thing people like […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
What were the governors thinking?
Dear HCN, Thank you for your open and honest article by Ray Ring regarding Montana’s governor as a poor choice to lead the West (HCN, 8/5/02). Whatever could the Western Governors’ Association be thinking of to select Gov. Martz as their leader? Ray has written a timely, straightforward commentary that should be a wake-up call […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Utahns could kill radioactive dump
Note: this is one of several feature stories in this issue about the 2002 election. Writer Chip Ward once called Tooele County, Utah, “the most extensive environmental sacrifice zone in the nation.” Covering a swath of the surreal West Desert nearly the size of Massachusetts, the county is home to a bombing range, chemical-weapons incinerator, […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Around the West, the hot races to watch
Note: this is one of several feature stories in this issue about the 2002 election. ARIZONA Hispanics could stage a Democratic comeback Hispanics, who now make up one-fourth of Arizona’s population, may take half of the state’s eight seats in the U.S. House of Representatives for the Democrats. Raœl Grijalva is virtually guaranteed the seat […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Have you ever seen the cranes?
The Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge straddles the Rio Grande south of Socorro, N.M., and serves as the wintering grounds for thousands of sandhill cranes and snow geese. Witness this rare spectacle at the 15th annual Festival of the Cranes, a six-day event organized by the Friends of the Bosque del Apache that coincides […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Native Waters
The era of the Indian land treaty ended more than a century ago, but now the West is in the midst of another treaty era – this time focused on water. So writes Daniel McCool, a longtime scholar of federal Indian policy and the head of the University of Utah’s American West Center, in his […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Research, Lake Mead style
It’s a research laboratory, it’s an environmental education center, it’s É another houseboat on Lake Mead in Nevada. “Forever Earth” was dedicated at the lake in early October. The floating laboratory is a specially designed, 70-foot luxury houseboat, furnished with water and air quality monitoring equipment and a myriad of other scientific instruments. A research […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
The coalbed methane super-prime
Coalbed methane wells are quickly spreading across the West, with the BLM projecting 80,000 to be developed by 2010 (HCN, 9/16/02: Backlash). So the Rocky Mountain Mineral Foundation, a cooperative project of law schools, bar associations and industry associations, is holding a two-day conference in Denver entitled “Regulation and Development of Coalbed Methane.” The program […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Peer pressure
Violence against National Park Service law enforcement employees – including shootings and assaults – increased 940 percent in 2001. And just this past August, Mexican fugitives killed a park ranger in Organ Pipe National Monument in Arizona. These alarming statistics are included in a report released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a private nonprofit […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
The Latest Bounce
Proving that open space isn’t only for white suburbanites, Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., has pushed her San Gabriel River Watersheds Study Act through the House (HCN, 8/5/02: L.A.’s rivers get some respect). Solis’ bill, which would study the creation of an urban National Park in her North Los Angeles district, could make it to the […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Wildlife Service bows to home builders
The California red-legged frog, star of Mark Twain’s, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, is bouncing between good news and bad. Once the most abundant frog in California, the species declined in the mid-1800s, when Gold Rush miners devoured it for protein. By 1996, the frog had disappeared from over 70 percent of its […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Democrats kick back
Note: this front-page editor’s note introduces five related articles: “Around the West, the hot races to watch,” “Montanans may take back their dams,” “New Mexico Green lose steam,” “Utahns could kill radioactive dump,” and “State’s big nuke waste fight takes a hit.” This November will be an “off-year” election, but reject the implication that nothing […]