Supporters say pesticide is the best tool for recovering native species
Debate rages over fish poisoning
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Drought drains the West
Dry skies spell trouble for farmers, fish and forests
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Can Mr. Nice Guy lead the Forest Service?
Agency lifer Dale Bosworth lands in the hot seat
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Dear Friends
A community of readers We like to say that High Country News is driven as much by its readers as it is by the ever-changing news. Our letters to the editor are often more entertaining and informative than anything else in the paper. And many a time we have answered the office phone and listened […]
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Back into the woods
The West goes to work cleaning up its forests
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Timber towns search for a new economy
NORTH FORK, Calif. – Hidden away in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills, this town of 3,500 lies 16 miles from the nearest major road. Occupying, as the sign on the roadside says, “the exact center of California,” it’s a nice place to live: The air is crisp, everyone knows everyone else and the oak- and fir-covered […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Career bureaucrat blazes a new trail
By nature and by training, Brad Powell, regional forester for all of California, could never be called a “bunny-lover.” Yet the forest plan he signed on Jan. 12 has most environmentalists cheering. Activists were happy because the Sierra Nevada Framework is more concerned with critters such as owls than with timber volumes. It sets fires […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Ranchers not necessarily the enemy
Dear HCN, As a Sierra Club member and former resident of New Mexico, I was very impressed with the “zero cow” initiative article, for it highlights the complexity of how to both use and protect public lands (HCN, 2/26/01: ‘Zero-Cow’ initiative splits Sierra Club). In the past, when the proverbial pendulum supported loggers, miners, ranchers […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Bush-Cheney bunch are the new eco-terrorists
Dear HCN, Out of Edward Abbey’s novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, came the term, “eco-terrorist,” defined as an extremist who so radically loved the ecosystems that sustain the earth, that he tried to protect them by “monkeywrenching” the tools of big extractive industry — dozers, dams and draglines — thus destroying the industrial juggernaut that […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Snowmobiles have no business in Yellowstone
Dear HCN, Reading Ben Long’s story in your March 12 issue, “Yellowstone’s last stampede,” was like getting a kick in the stomach. Who are these pea-brains on their disgusting machines that they can treat the park as though it’s their own personal Disneyland? They obviously care nothing for the land or the animals who must […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Cloudrock is a cave-in to corporate control
Dear HCN, Although I appreciated Lisa Church’s article on “Cloudrock,” the proposed luxury resort development in Moab (HCN, 3/26/01: Luxury looms over Moab), two important pieces of the story were missed. When Church describes the developer of the proposed Cloudrock lodge as “the Salt Lake-based Moab Mesa Land Company (MMLC),” she gets both her geography […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Billboards blast bomb industries
Tourists driving I-25 between Albuquerque and Santa Fe expect to see billboards extolling ski resorts, restaurants and casinos, but may be surprised by a series of evocative ads that question the nuclear-weapons industry in New Mexico. The Los Alamos Study Group, a nonprofit, research-oriented, nuclear disarmament organization in Santa Fe, has placed five billboards with […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Fool’s Gold: Telluride’s ‘magical realism’
Rob Schultheis moved to Colorado in 1973, when pop stars began singing about the Rocky Mountains and asking whether you’d ever been “mellow.” His newest book, Fool’s Gold, zooms in on his home turf of Telluride, where “summer is briefer than a butterfly’s dream … autumn an afterthought, and winter rules.” When Schultheis arrived, Telluride […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Benigna’s Chimayo: Cuentos from the Old Plaza
And then Grandma sits down on an old wooden wheel, leans on her knees, tucks her skirt between her legs, and begins her favorite of the old stories. I listen, watching the dust motes float in shafts of sunlight … To a young Don Usner, summers in the New Mexican hamlet of Chimayo meant chili […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Islands hung out to dry
IDAHO Idaho irrigators gave a sigh of relief when, on Feb. 23, the Idaho Supreme Court denied the federal government’s attempt to secure water rights for a wildlife refuge composed of 94 islands in the Snake River. The federal government had hoped to reserve a steady flow of water for the Deer Flats National Wildlife […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Slapping back at SLAPPs
COLORADO A bill designed to protect citizen activists from the cost and intimidation of frivolous lawsuits is lying wounded in Colorado’s State Senate. House Bill 1150, the so-called anti-SLAPP suit bill, was defeated on final reading in the state House last month after receiving an inadequate 32-32 tie vote. Still, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Bill […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Debate roars over quiet canyon
ARIZONA, NEVADA New rules for sightseeing flights will help restore some tranquility for boaters in the Grand Canyon, but the rancorous debate over where airplanes and helicopters are allowed shows no signs of quieting down (HCN, 1/20/97: It will be noise as usual in Grand Canyon). Last year, after 13 years of deliberation, the Federal […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Microwaveable wilderness
CALIFORNIA The infrastructure of the information age is still firmly rooted on the ground – and when that ground is designated wilderness, things can get a little complicated. In Death Valley National Park, a microwave repeater tower, used to relay telephone calls across the rugged terrain, is under scrutiny by environmental groups. The 35-foot high […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
The latest bounce
A federal judge in Idaho has ordered the state to stop killing badgers, ravens and coyotes. Last February, in an attempt to increase numbers of declining sage grouse, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission authorized Wildlife Services to kill the bird’s predators (HCN, 2/26/01: Idaho predators are under the gun). The court ruling is the […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Roadless rule hits the skids
The mood was unusually agreeable at a recent federal court hearing on the Clinton administration’s roadless area conservation rule for national forest lands. In Boise, Idaho, on March 30, Judge Edward Lodge heard arguments against the rule from the State of Idaho, timber company Boise Cascade, and other plaintiffs. Then he turned to the government […]