Look out, you water scofflaws – it’s “water-efficiency month,” and enforcement agencies across the West will not look lightly upon water-wasting infractions. Water cops are tossing out tickets that range from a slap on the wrist (and a free how-to-conserve-water brochure) for leaky faucets, to a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail […]
The sod squad wants to soak you
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
Shrinking water supply makes room for birds
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Attack of the bark beetles.” This year’s drought is bad news for most wildlife, but not for the endangered southwestern willow flycatchers at Roosevelt Lake in Arizona. During the six years of drought since […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
Attack of the bark beetles
ISLAND PARK, Idaho – Oblivious to the dry summer heat, Forest Service silviculturist John Councilman hikes through a stand of trees looking for signs of violent struggle. It doesn’t take long. “There’s a beetle hit,” he says, pointing out a Douglas fir drizzled with thick threads of dull yellow pitch. “That tree is already dead. […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
New Mexico ranchers push to graze preserve
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Corruption and tragic history paralyze range reform on the Navajo reservation.” Northern New Mexico is known for more than fiery red chilis and smoldering mountain sunsets; it’s also notorious for skirmishes between its mostly […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
Corruption and tragic history paralyze range reform on the Navajo reservation
This year, conditions on the 17 million-acre Navajo reservation in the Four Corners have followed a bleak timeline. A winter with lower than average snowfall was trailed by a dry, windy spring. In March, Navajo Nation President Kelsey Begaye declared a “drought emergency” and cattle owners – most of whom run 20 head, each of […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
New desert town no home to the fringe-toed lizard
Massive development could doom the dunes
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
Blame game sheds little light on fires
It was boring, made-for-C-SPAN stuff, a round of congressional testimony on June 12 by Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth on what his agency has named “The Process Predicament.” The Forest Service has been hobbled, he said, by excessive environmental analysis requirements, management inefficiencies and a breakdown in “collaborative” public involvement. That, said Bosworth, had put […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
Happy 100, Mardy Murie
Happy 100, Mardy Murie On August 18, conservation legend Mardy Murie will turn 100 years old. Mardy was the first woman to graduate from the University of Alaska in 1924. She would later write Two in the Far North, chronicling her romance with renowned biologist Olaus Murie, and in 1998 win a Presidential Medal of […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
Dear Friends
A high country jinx We probably should have seen it coming. After a positively wilting June and July and reports from around the West of drought, heat and wildfire, we decided to run a special issue about the Great Drought of 2002. The moment we started work on the stories in this paper, however, we […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
The Great Western Apocalypse
The drought of 2002 has left the West blistered and burnt, and scientists predict worse to come. Have we learned anything yet?
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
Nature is never the enemy
Dear HCN, I read with interest and growing dismay your recent article by Ed Marston, “Restoring the West, goat by goat” (HCN, 6/24/02: Restoring the West, goat by goat). The foreign invader that is actually sucking our landscape dry is Western civilization. Tamarisk is a rugged survivor, living on land where the native species have […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
Norton undermines religious freedom
Dear HCN, The recent decision by the Department of the Interior to approve the Fence Lake coal mine is at the very least a travesty (HCN, 6/24/02: The Latest Bounce). To put a place of such spiritual importance on the chopping block in order to meet the selfish, short-term needs of Phoenix stands as yet […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
Don’t ignore climate change
Dear HCN, I read the issue on fire with great interest (HCN, 7/8/02: The anatomy of fire). As have so many in the West, I have mourned all that we have lost and all that we are likely to lose in the coming months and years. But I have not seen in HCN, or elsewhere, […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
Take a lesson on methane
Dear HCN, Keep up the battle against the methane drillers (HCN, 5/27/02: Dear Friends). We in Las Animas County, Colo., have seen the impact of this industry on our environment and it is not pleasant. Our mountain water wells have gone dry, our local county and state roads are falling apart due to the heavy […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
She left the ranch to save her soul
Picturesque and nostalgic as the pioneer era might seem in hindsight, to be a prairie woman must have been, on most days, pure hell. But that story is sometimes absent from the pioneer literary history, a genre written largely by white men, about white men. Until now. If you continue west from the stage for […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
When good tax-evaders go bad
Back in the halcyon days of the Northwest militia movement in the mid-’90s, a curious breed of man emerged from the moist backwoods and unemployment lines of the disenfranchised West: the wannabe Patriot. In Whatcom County, Wash., the commander in chief of the Washington State Militia, John Pitner, was experiencing New World Order visions. The […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
Utah gases up
Major oil and gas development is one step closer to fruition on 2 million acres of public land in northeastern Utah. Geophysical surveying company Veritas DGC Inc. recently submitted a draft environmental assessment, proposing two-dimensional seismic exploration in the Book Cliffs area. Instead of using behemoth thumper trucks, Veritas plans to detonate 7,500 underground explosives […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
A kick in the grass for restoration
Looking back on the disastrous wildfires of 1999 and facing a devastating future in the Great Basin, the Bureau of Land Management saw an opportunity to try a holistic restoration effort that would break the cheatgrass-induced fire cycle (HCN, 5/22/00: Save Our Sagebrush). This landscape-sized idea spawned the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition, a nonprofit partnership […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
Lewis and Clark revisited
Ever wanted to hear the unauthorized version of the Lewis and Clark expedition? Listen to stories that have been passed down through generations of Indian tribes at the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition’s commemoration of the Lewis and Clark bicentennial. The Aug. 15-16 gathering will examine the link between salmon, tribes and the expedition, and […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
It’s the dog days for prairie dogs
The West’s prairie dog populations are in bad shape. Of the five species in the West, two are already on the endangered species list, while a third is a candidate for listing (HCN, 2/1/99: Ranchers don’t want refugee prairie dogs). No one has been looking out for the white-tailed prairie dog – until now. In […]