UTAH The Utah Farm Bureau Federation has a bone to pick with Robert Schmidt’s wildlife management class at Utah State University. The class recently studied the biological and economic effects of a hypothetical wolf population in Utah. But when the class took its findings public, the Bureau accused the students of being “pro-wolf” and said […]
University wolf study raises hackles
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
The Latest Bounce
President George Bush has nominated Fran Mainella to be the first woman chief of the National Park Service. Mainella, currently the director of the Division of Recreation and Parks for Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection, has funded new cabins and other park infrastructure with thousands of dollars from the private sector. If confirmed, she will […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
A bird from the past, a warning for the future
My first California condor sighting was at the Grand Canyon. Imagine those huge birds aloft over that incomparable chasm – living gliders on wings that span 9 feet and 40,000 years. Imagine their oversized shadows passing over talus slopes and mesas, clouding the once blood-red, but now blue-green waters of the Colorado. Eclipsing the sun […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Heard around the West
Redi Kilowatt has seen the light – and it’s a green one. Once the hyper-kinetic spokesbolt for the electric utility industry, Redi recently preached to the Los Angeles Times. Though still flashing a happy-face grin, these days Redi is decidedly cranky. The power mascot says he was forced to come out of retirement at age […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
An energy boom hits Northwest towns
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. SUMAS, Wash. – Driving past the empty storefronts and abundant “For Sale” signs downtown, it’s easy to understand why Sumas City Council members initially rolled out the welcome mat for a power company that wants to build a new gas-fired power plant. Sumas, a […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
A seminal sprawl fight ends in compromise
A historic Arizona ranch will become a retirement community
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Arizona waffles on wolves
The state may pull its support for reintroduction
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Jeffords proves the West is part of the USA
The new score in the Senate throws policy decisions a-tumble
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Montana shock jock stokes the fires of fear
Environmentalists face ‘hate propaganda’
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Surprise! Boise votes for open space
Support for tax levy breaks an Idaho tradition
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Dear Friends
The board comes to Paonia Meetings of the board of the High Country Foundation are always interesting. But the June 3 meeting in Paonia was almost too interesting. It opened with longtime board member Andy Wiessner objecting to a column High Country News distributed through its Writers on the Range syndication service in early May. […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Transforming powers
Drought, salmon and the deregulated electricity market could end the Northwest’s love affair with public power
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Anatomy of the West
Dear HCN, Ah! Political correctness … and all its ironies. When I was younger, I’d get outraged at some of this nonsense. In my grandmother’s day, to have an outlaw or American Indian blood in the family was a shame and kept secret. But attitudes change, as well as word usage. Gay. Totally different word, […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
‘Squaw’ and mindless parroting of bad science
Dear HCN, I have been amused for the past 30 years each time someone takes umbrage at the use of the word squaw while making the assertion that it is a vulgar term invented by white man to demean Native American women. We did encourage and abet the destruction of the early inhabitants by means […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Fiery anthropocentrism
Dear HCN, Steve Pyne’s fine article on Ed Pulaski, and the Forest Service’s corporate culture about forest fires, is a great read (HCN, 4/23/01: The Big Blowup). But Steve, like so many others, fails to see the main point about humans vs. fires. Fires happen. It’s not our fault. The idea that finding “a Pulaski” […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Cooperation and other shibboleths
Dear HCN, I don’t know how many times I’ve read or heard that the solution to the differences between environmentalists and ranchers is “cooperation.” Lovely word, cooperation. Unfortunately, it seems to mean different things to different people. To the rancher, it’s “leave us alone to do our thing.” To most environmentalists, it means reducing the […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Erring on waste
Dear HCN, As a Christmas subscriber, I have both praise and criticism for three recent articles about nuclear waste in the West. In the Dec. 18, 2000, issue, Oakley Brooks authored a short but commendable piece called “Agency gets rebuked,” in which he unearthed a rather obscure report critical of the Department of Energy’s long-term […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Battling for the Bear River
When newspaper photographer Dan Miller covered a protest against a highway project near Logan, Utah, he saw a demonstrator brandishing a sign with the timeworn slogan “Think Globally, Act Locally.” The sentiment hit home. “I realized I needed to be thinking backyard, neighborhood, community,” he says. That meant turning his attention toward the Bear River […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
A sand-brown world
… and the tourists in the curio shop not knowing what to say for once in their lives, but feeling the ground rolling beneath them, experience something most of them won’t see in a lifetime, up on the shelf the kachina dolls, those little gods of beneficence who’ve stood there so long they’re mad about […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Intrepid explorer with a cause
Many recent college graduates shoulder their backpacks for a genteel trip to Europe. Not Soren Jespersen. The Northern Arizona University alum hoisted his for a five-month 2,200-mile solo trek around the Four Corners region to raise money for the Center for Humanitarian Outreach and Intercultural Exchange or CHOICE. The Utah-based group, directed by Soren’s dad, […]