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 […]
Around the West, the hot races to watch
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 […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
A crossed heritage in the modern West
Imagine picking up your paper some morning and reading a story like this: “President George W. Bush called on Americans to support the administration in protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil exploration. The president also called for designating more wilderness areas, since ‘the destructive fires of last summer all began in areas that […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Heard Around the West
Utah has been making financial news, though the news is dismal. According to a report from the American Bankruptcy Institute, a resident of Utah is more likely to go bankrupt than a resident of any other state. About one out of every 35 Utah households filed for bankruptcy last year, says The Associated Press, while […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
State’s big nuke waste fight takes a hit
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Utahns could kill radioactive dump.” Like Nevada in its fight to stop the nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain (HCN, 8/5/02), Utah has adopted a by-any-means-necessary approach to block storage of high-level nuclear waste within […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
New Mexico Greens lose steam
Democrats seem united behind Richardson for Governor
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Montanans may take back their dams
Initiative would undo some of the damage done by electricity deregulation
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Conversation with a cowboy conservationist
Kick a sagebrush and you’ll find one jackrabbit and two cowboy poets, or so the saying goes nowadays. In the last 20 years, the rhymes that were once shared around a campfire under a lonesome moon have attracted a national spotlight. There are anthologies of cowboy poetry, coffeehouse performances, and an annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
What’s in a name? Just ask Dwayne or Trucklene
I was at a country-and-western dance bar. I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Y’all wanna dance?” My suitor was a short man whose eyes failed to focus. His aftershave was a heady mixture of Jack Daniels and Old Spice. He wore his cowboy hat absurdly high, as if he were smuggling eggs under it. […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Dead fish clog the low-flowing Klamath
Interior Department denies responsibility for dead salmon and steelhead
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Albuquerque is dragged into Rio Grande fight
Mayor says judge stole water from the silvery minnow
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Forest protection under the knife
Industry pushed Bush administration to revise Northwest Forest Plan
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
He sees the society behind the scenery
I first met Ed Marston when I was a wet-behind-the-ears, wannabe journalist starting an internship at the funky little newspaper called High Country News. It was January 1984, less than a year after the paper had moved to Paonia, Colo., from its birthplace in Lander, Wyo. I arrived fresh from the nation’s capital, where I […]