In Park County, Colo., ranchers who want to maintain their traditional land uses are saying “no, thank you” to housing developers. Instead, they’re welcoming tourists. Seven years ago, several ranchers and county officials formed the South Park Heritage Area Board. The board, along with six partner organizations, aims to protect ranchers with conservation easements, and […]
Ranchers offer hospitality
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Elk and deer disease could waste Western Slope
COLORADO Chronic wasting disease, the fatal brain malady found in elk and deer, has jumped west across the Continental Divide despite efforts by Colorado wildlife and agriculture agencies to contain it (HCN, 11/5/01: Wasting disease spreads in Colorado). In late March, wildlife officials determined that two wild deer illegally penned on the Motherwell elk ranch […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Land exchange could short-change monuments
ARIZONA A land-exchange referendum slated for the November ballot could set the stage for shifting the borders of the Sonoran Desert and Ironwoods national monuments, two of President Clinton’s 11th-hour designations (HCN, 1/29/01: Monumental changes). Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Arizona Gov. Jane Hull have conferred several times in the past year about how to […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
City gets in the zone for fish
OREGON Portland is one of a few urban areas where endangered fish swim in the shadows of high-rises. In an effort to prevent eroding stream banks and rising water temperatures that harm fish, the city’s planning bureau designated zones along its streams that impose building and landscape regulations on 19,000 acres of residential property. That […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Fashion faux-pas in the forest
COLORADO Designer Ralph Lauren’s proposal for a land swap with the U.S. Forest Service has been sent back to the drawing board after encountering fierce local opposition. The swap called for the Forest Service to give Lauren 525 acres, including part of a public-access road that runs through his Double RL ranch near Ridgway, Colo. […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Silver Valley residents sue for damages
IDAHO Residents of Idaho’s Silver Valley want five former mining companies to pay for a medical monitoring program that would detect health effects from lead and arsenic contamination for up to 100,000 people in the Coeur d’Alene Basin. Filed in January in state court, the residents’ class action suit alleges that five mining companies in […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
The Latest Bounce
The U.S. Forest Service revoked its approval of the Rock Creek Mine in Montana’s Cabinet Mountains Wilderness – at least temporarily (HCN, 2/18/02: Battle brews over a wilderness mother lode). The agency’s decision came a day after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, facing a lawsuit and intense criticism from local activists, withdrew a biological […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Evicted terns get new habitat
OREGON Caspian terns, much maligned for feasting on declining salmon runs on the Columbia River, just got a wing up. Displaced by development along the Pacific Coast, the world’s largest tern colony settled several years ago on an island composed of dredging material disposed of by the Army Corps of Engineers. There, near the mouth […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
The oldest living thing is a quiet survivor
The oldest living thing in the world is hard to find, and soon I’m lost. I drive out a rutted dirt road south of Barstow, Calif., in search of “King Clone,” a creosote bush identified as the oldest living thing on Earth. Said to be 11,700 years old, that makes it centuries older than the […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Heard around the West
Here’s some good news: So many people turned out to work for free at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City that the Games will turn a profit. That’s a rare event, reports the Wall Street Journal, and it’s all due to the “kindness and good cheer” of 20,000 volunteers. They took on jobs as […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
‘Big for the sake of big is not good’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bill Stoltzfus owns a small registered Holstein dairy in Buhl, Idaho. He moved to the Magic Valley from Pennsylvania in 1992. Bill Stoltzfus: “(We have) about 85 milk cows. Everybody has a name and they are all individuals. A few of them are actually […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
‘The odors were beyond description’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Until recently, Sena McKnight lived in the middle of several dairy farms outside Twin Falls, Idaho. Sena McKnight: “We moved here six years ago, and at the time there was not much development. Two years ago, Hank Hafliger’s dairy started up, a mile to […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
‘You start over new’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Dean Swager moved his dairy farm from Southern California’s Chino Valley to Idaho’s Magic Valley in October of 2000. Dean Swager: “My father started in the dairy business in 1943 in the Bellflower area (in Southern California). He moved several times in that area […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Developers push revisionist history
In March 2000, the people of Flagstaff, Ariz., won a big one. Development of a treasured crater and wetland known as Dry Lake into a gated, high-end golf-course subdivision was stopped dead. This is especially significant because the property was private and already zoned for a planned community. The four-year battle was complicated, including a […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Habitat protection takes a critical hit
Developers’ lawsuits force government to revise critical-habitat designations
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Water threat inspires a rare alliance
Proposed power plants could draw down aWashington/Idaho aquifer
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Dear Friends
Mixing our media Centuries from now, when historians dig through HCN’s fossil record, they may discover that this week’s cover story was a metamorphic moment in the paper’s evolution into a multimedia endeavor. The genesis for the story was a recent board meeting, where board member, rancher and Idaho state senator Brad Little told staff […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Evans a liberal Republican
Dear HCN, Andy Stahl writes that William Dwyer was nominated for the federal bench “by liberal Democrat Dan Evans and conservative Republican Slade Gorton” (HCN, 3/4/02: ‘His courtroom was a classroom’). Actually, Evans is also a Republican. Stahl is probably confused because, in 1985, a liberal Republican like Evans would be more liberal than most […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
NRA: Get the lead out, and lead
Dear HCN, There is no need for condors to be dying of lead poisoning (HCN, 2/18/02: Condor program laden with lead). There are already several alternatives to lead bullets on the market. For more than a decade, solid copper bullets have proven effective on all game. Though currently expensive for shooters who do a lot […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Emery County’s late-lamented heritage
Dear HCN, The issues of tourism and formal designation of special status for the San Rafael Swell have once again surfaced. As I remember, the last time the people of Emery County had this much debate about development issues was in the early 1970s. At that time there was a very tiny minority who spoke […]