OREGON Six years ago, a landslide that began in a clear-cut slammed into a house in western Oregon, killing four people (HCN, 12/23/96: Rain and clearcuts make fatal brew). That tragedy prompted state officials to limit logging on steep slopes near homes and busy roads. Now, a coalition of Oregon environmental groups says salmon should […]
A landslide suit for salmon
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
White River Forest plan friend to all – and to none
COLORADO When a draft plan for how to manage Colorado’s White River National Forest was released in 1999, it was hailed as a precedent that would steer the agency toward emphasizing endangered species habitat and conservation over resource extraction and recreation (HCN, 1/17/00: STOP – A national forest tries to rein in recreation). Now, five […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
Human wildness on the range
Frank Clifford has no trouble holding two clashing ideas in mind. The first is his love of wild country, the second is his love of the wild people most of us see as the enemy of wild country. A gold miner’s son who is now an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Clifford comes […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
A sonnet to a problem river
The Pecos River begins its 900-mile run high in the Sangre de Cristo Range of the Colorado and Northern New Mexico Rocky Mountains, and descends through New Mexico’s lowlands “of Western myth and solid American values,” as Emlen Hall writes in High and Dry: The Texas-New Mexico Struggle for the Pecos River. Finally, the author […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
Heard around the West
Aren’t bees busy enough without being harnessed by the military? Apparently not. The Pentagon is training honeybees to ignore flowers and zero in on the faint molecular trails left by explosives. A downside is the high probability that bomb-sniffing bees would not go over well in crowded airports. Bees also don’t care to buzz about […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
Life amid fire – the mundane and the macabre
Life in Durango, Colo., has taken on a surreal quality. Even for those of us not directly affected by it, the fire dominates our days. Handling mundane problems, pursuing our normal jobs and hobbies, grocery shopping and gassing up the car – everything takes place against a backdrop of disaster. It’s a crisis situation, but […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
Prescribed burns tame the beast
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Ten days after the Hayman fire erupted southwest of Denver, Colo., and began spreading to the north and east, firefighters finally found a place where they could stand their ground: Polhemus Gulch. Weeks earlier, firefighters there gained the upper hand against the Schoonover Fire; […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
Re-opening Glen Canyon’s floodgates
Six years after an experimental flood, enviros want more
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
Southwest drought desiccates fish before farmers
Agencies let Rio Grande and Pecos rivers dry up despite minimum-flow agreements
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
No ranchettes for the rest of us in Jackson
Citizens of ritzy Wyoming town reject government-backed development
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
Dear Friends
“Momentous” is often used inappropriately, but when Maggie Coon used it at a meeting in Park City, Utah, on Saturday morning, June 15, it seemed perfectly scaled. The High Country Foundation board president was describing the task her fellow board members faced in choosing a new leader for the organization that publishes this newspaper; publishes […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
The anatomy of fire
I came like an investigator to a crime scene, notebook open, walking slowly, alert to changes in the perpetrator’s footprints, to oddities in the smoke-smell air. Anything could be evidence revealing the mind of fire: a blade of grass still alive in a forest of black skeletons; an unburned swing set that had parted an […]
Posted inJune 24, 2002: The buzz business
Review gives only one view
Dear HCN, While I thought Dan Flores’ thoughts in the lead article “Beyond Ecology: Restoring a Cultural Landscape” (HCN, 5/13/02: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape) were right on, I found it bothersome in Ed Marston’s review of Flores’ book, The Natural West, to see the wiping out of the large mammals from North America’s […]
Posted inJune 24, 2002: The buzz business
Cross lawsuit divisive, petty
Dear HCN, “Does desert cross cross the line?” (HCN, 5/13/02: Does desert cross cross the line?). Well, maybe, but Frank Buono and the American Civil Liberties Union should apply their energies to lawsuits of a more important nature. In an age where our public lands are being assaulted by forces much more menacing than a […]
Posted inJune 24, 2002: The buzz business
To say nothing of cruelty
Dear HCN, I’m sorry it took me so long to write you about “Raising a Stink: Factory dairies catch Idaho’s Magic Valley by surprise” (HCN, 4/15/02: Raising a stink). One important aspect of factory farming not addressed in your story is the inhumane and cruel treatment of dairy cows, who aren’t allowed any kind of […]
Posted inJune 24, 2002: The buzz business
Predation a risk ranchers must accept
Dear HCN, It is evident that most of the wolf predation of livestock occurs within national forest leases or adjacent areas which are often managed by the Bureau of Land Management. As a part owner of these lands, I think it is time that stock growers accept the fact that multiple risks exist on government-leased […]
Posted inJune 24, 2002: The buzz business
Zero sympathy for hunters
Dear HCN, If I concentrate really hard and cross my fingers behind my back, I can summon up a grain of sympathy for ranchers in Montana who lose a calf to a wolf (HCN, 5/27/02: Wolf at the door). But one group for whom my sympathy is precisely zero is hunters who go after mountain […]
Posted inJune 24, 2002: The buzz business
Wolf reintroduction balances nature
Dear HCN, Ray Ring’s article “Wolf at the door” (HCN, 5/27/02: Wolf at the door) gives one the impression that things are going so well with the wolf recovery program in the Northern Rockies that any day now wolves will be marching through southern Wyoming and into Colorado. Much as we’d like that to be […]
Posted inJune 24, 2002: The buzz business
A wide-angled wilderness
WASHINGTON Washington state could soon gain a unique new wilderness area – its first in almost 15 years. Unlike most of Washington’s 4 million acres of federally protected wilderness, the proposed Wild Sky Wilderness northeast of Seattle would encompass more than just high alpine crags of rock and ice – it would also include often-ignored […]