Dear HCN, I had to chuckle at California BLM official Gail O’Neill’s lamentation that her staff is spending weeks away from normal duties to ensure that cattle stay out of Mojave desert tortoise habitat (HCN, 11/5/01: Cattle make way for tortoises in the Mojave). What possible duties could the BLM, the nation’s largest public-land and […]
Time to take cattle off public land
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Catch and release no good for wild ones
Dear HCN, After a brief look at a picture of Steve Stuebner (HCN, 9/24/01: Nature hits a home run for salmon), I had to feel a pang of disbelief that an old adversary of mine would do such an unnatural act. All adiposed salmon and steelhead caught in Idaho waters must be immediately released. Smolts […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Oryx a predictable disaster
Dear HCN, Even as a wildlife student in the early 1970s, I was appalled when I learned that a 400-pound animal that can survive without free water (the oryx) had been introduced into the White Sands Missile Range (HCN, 10/22/01: A graceful gazelle becomes a pest). The potential for an ecological disaster seemed all too […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Oil field essay’s errors and delights
Dear HCN, As someone with a great interest in energy issues I greatly enjoyed Randy Udall’s article, “We Are the Oil Tribe” (HCN, 11/19/01: We are the Oil Tribe). One fact that was presented is definitely incorrect; the number of rigs drilling in the U.S. According to the Baker Hughes monthly rig count (the industry’s […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Anti-grazing fallacies
Dear HCN, In his rush to support environmental activists and ignorance of ecological processes, Tony Davis unwittingly reveals two major fallacies of the anti-grazing movement (HCN, 10/22/01: Healing the Gila). The first involves ecological site potential and the misconception that all you have to do is take the cows off and stand back. “It will […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Grazing story ignored radical center
Dear HCN, I would like to register a firm objection to the recent cover story, “Healing the Gila” (HCN, 10/22/01: Healing the Gila). I was distressed by its old-fashioned, polemical, “Good Guy vs. Bad Guy” tone, which seems out of character with recent cover stories in HCN. You’ve done a very good job recently covering […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Go west, fruit picker
WASHINGTON For years, migrant workers have flocked to eastern Washington to pick apples in the fall (HCN, 12/18/00: Troubled harvest). But with a jump in global competition, apple orchards have streamlined their operations to save costs, eliminating jobs in the process. This season, a late hailstorm wiped out nearly 30 percent of the apple crop […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Church aims to purchase public land
WYOMING A national historic site along the Oregon Trail could end up in the hands of private owners. At the request of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, congressional delegates from Wyoming and Utah are drafting legislation permitting the sale of a several-hundred-acre parcel of land in central Wyoming to the […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
The Latest Bounce
Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth announced that he will uphold the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan, which has been called one of the agency’s most heavily appealed decisions ever (HCN, 8/27/01: Restoring the Range of Light). Bosworth did, however, call for further review of sections that set fire policy and overlapped with the Quincy Library Group’s […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Rocky Mountain Front saved again – but…
MONTANA In 1997, Forest Service Supervisor Gloria Flora banned oil and gas exploration in Lewis and Clark National Forest for up to 15 years. She cited overwhelming citizen opposition to drilling on the Rocky Mountain Front, and said that exploration would harm the public’s psychological and spiritual connection with the land (HCN, 10/13/97: Forest Service […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Las Vegas: Images in light, images in stone
My brother, Karl, tells me the Las Vegas Strip is the only road in the United States that’s a National Scenic Byway after dark. It is scenic, though people tend to snicker when informed of this designation. We’re outside my brother’s apartment on the west side of the city. Karl points downtown, toward the Strip […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Heard around the West
He had nothing but the best intentions, says a Stanford University surgeon. Then the publicity got out of hand. So Dr. Simon Stertzer reluctantly sold the three Nevada strip clubs he’d bought to finance his medical research. Stertzer tried to explain to the North Las Vegas City Council that owning the all-nude Palomino as well […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
‘You can’t say no to mining’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. John D. Leshy, who served as the Department of Interior’s top attorney during the Clinton administration, played a key role in the attempt to reform federal mining regulations. On Oct. 25, the Bush administration announced that many of those reforms will be abandoned (HCN, […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
The fractured states of mining reclamation
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When Jim Kuipers started accumulating information for his guide to Hardrock Reclamation Bonding Practices in the Western United States, he found a regulatory landscape as diverse as the region itself. Though every state in the West requires mining companies to plan ahead for reclamation […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Reclamation’s mixed bag
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Take a chocolate chip cookie and extract most of the chips and maybe a few nuts, as carefully as you can. Then reassemble the cookie without its “ore” and see what you have. That gives you some idea of the challenge mine owners face […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Powell’s enduring teachings
What remains so astonishing about John Wesley Powell is that someone whose policy recommendations were almost totally ignored while he was alive should continue to command the attention of so many Western observers and decision makers a century after his death. Powell’s career studying the West included expeditions into the Rocky Mountains and, most notably, […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
A struggling mountain town looks for a lift
Silverton, Colo., hopes a backcountry chairlift will boost its fortunes
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Cooperating on the Valles Caldera
A public preserve in New Mexico puts its trust in trustees
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Stargazers defend darkness in Arizona
Flagstaff becomes the first “International Dark-Sky City”
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Ruling ripples through salmon country
Fisheries Service must rethink hatchery policy