Dear HCN, As a longtime environmental activist living in Montana and involved in a number of collaborative efforts, I question Mr. Ring’s assumption that it is environmentalists alone who have failed to compromise or work towards shared solutions.After all, it takes two to tango. Looking at the environmental scorecard of Montana Conservation Voters, we see […]
Tango took rural reps, too
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Active Green Party left out of Montana analysis
Dear HCN, I appreciated Ray Ring’s analysis of Montana’s political landscape. However, I was surprised that he neglected to mention the latest wave of progressive politics in Montana, the Green Party. Montana hosts a statewide Green Party and active groups in Missoula, Bozeman and Billings * that hotbed of radical environmentalism. The Green Party is […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Montana Greens need local roots
Dear HCN, Ray Ring got it mostly right with his dissertation on the relationship of Montana environmentalists with “other” Montanans (HCN, 12/17/01: Bad moon rising). He really nailed it when he got past the “easy” answers and into “rural-thinking, rooted to an immense landscape, and every once in a while rebelling against domination by external […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Wishful thinking about a corrupt institution
Dear HCN, I am writing in response to the letter from Courtney White (HCN, 12/3/01: Grazing story ignored radical center), wherein he chastised your paper’s failure to focus on the “radical center” in the public-lands grazing debate. He claimed, “There is a progressive ranching movement afoot, and there are plenty of good stories out there.” […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Time to broaden the earth-protecting coalition
Dear HCN, I’d like to jump into the ongoing debate over which viewpoints are legitimate for HCN to publish. I understand that this publication was founded with passion for environmental preservation. Very important still, but surely the time is ripe to welcome ranchers and timber companies as potential allies instead of designated villains. I was […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Shaking out some salt solutions
Dear HCN, Jim Downing’s article about the problem of salt in the San Joaquin Valley (HCN, 11/19/01: Will salt sink an agricultural empire?) suggests that, at the present time, the only solution is to complete the aqueduct to the delta. Considering the cost of what is happening now, perhaps one other solution, other than a […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Wheeling and dealing
UTAH Roads are again at the center of the long debate over Utah wilderness. Two environmental groups say they fear the Bureau of Land Management and the governor’s office have a secret deal in the works that would settle a dispute over Utah counties’ claims to thousands of dirt roads and trails on federal lands. […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Boy Scouts want new digs
COLORADO The Boy Scouts, with their image as resourceful, courteous, “leave no trace” outdoorsmen, seem an unlikely focal point for an environmental controversy over public land use. But that is where the Western Colorado Council of the Boy Scouts of America has found itself since proposing a new Boy Scout camp in the White River […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Greens bail on ‘bilers
WYOMING Last summer, a group of snowmobilers, wildlife advocates, cross-country skiers and business owners embarked on an ambitious adventure: to work out a collaborative plan for managing winter use in the Medicine Bow National Forest’s Snowy Range. By early September, two environmentalists had defected. Eric Bonds of Biodiversity Associates and the other green, University of […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Cat trouble dogs Flagstaff
ARIZONA Ever since the Arizona Game and Fish Department killed two mountain lions on the edge of Flagstaff last fall, residents have been grappling with the hard facts of life on the edge of the forest. Game and Fish contracted with the federal Wildlife Services agency to kill the two lions, one Sept. 16 and […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
The Steens Riviera?
OREGON One year after Congress approved groundbreaking legislation to protect Steens Mountain in eastern Oregon, environmentalists worry that the essential parts of the plan are going nowhere (HCN, 11/6/00: Congress moves on local proposals). Although the Cooperative Management Act authorizes federal legislators to appropriate as much as $25 million from the Land and Water Conservation […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Recreation-fee foes catch an agency fumble
Does the U.S. Forest Service need to relearn basic math? In 1996, Congress allowed the agency to charge recreation fees at no more than 100 sites nationally (HCN, 2/14/00: Land of the fee). Now, it turns out the agency forced visitors to pay at 1,349 trailheads, picnic areas and other sites in the Northwest region […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Biologists caught in the crosshairs
WASHINGTON In December, headline writers were delighted by the metastasizing controversy over samples of lynx fur, purportedly collected from two national forests in Washington state. “Fur furor,” one paper called it. “Fur flies,” wrote another. Government agencies, though, found the fracas far from funny. Seven wildlife biologists, both federal and state, submitted hair samples to […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
The Latest Bounce
Two influential Utahns are on the move. On Jan. 8, Rep. Jim Hansen, R, announced that he will retire at the end of this year, closing out 22 years in the House (HCN, 6/4/01: Will the Grand Staircase suffer shrinkage?). The chairman of the House Resources Committee and much-reviled opponent of environmentalists cited family and […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Unranchers gain ground
ARIZONA The Arizona Supreme Court has cleared another hurdle from the path of conservation groups that want to lease state grazing land and return it to pre-grazing conditions. On Nov. 21, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled 4-1 that the state land department can’t deny conservation groups the right to bid on state grazing leases. The […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
A sense of wonder needs no name
Once, I canoed around an Idaho river bend and surprised two enormous, white birds in the shallows. As they lifted off, showing black-tipped wings, I shaped my mouth around the unfamiliar words, “whooping cranes.” Another long-legged bird, farther downstream, joined the whoopers in flight. Yet when I told a knowledgeable birder that I’d seen three […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
The American West is an island besieged
I saw the future of the American West. It stared at me with an unblinking black eye through a narrow metal window in the wall of an aviary on the island of Maui. “That’s the female,” said our guide, Mary Schwartz. “She’s the social one.” The facility manager for the Maui Bird Conservation Center opened […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Will listing hurt the Colorado lynx?
Broad federal plan may leave Southern Rockies population out in the cold
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
A neighborhood for Aspen’s ‘middle’ class
Developer tries to revive his community
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Judge puts kibosh on logging plan
The Forest Service’s rush to cut Montana’s burned Bitterroot forest