Dear HCN, Your article on the Sierra Club’s zero-cow initiative (HCN, 2/26/01: ‘Zero-Cow’ initiative splits Sierra Club), as with so many pieces that HCN does related to grazing issues, once again misrepresents the issues by trying to create a black and white – either/or – situation. The article portrays the Sierra Club’s zero-grazing initiative as […]
A poverty of imagination
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Club supports flexible grazing policy
Dear HCN, “Zero-Cow initiative splits Sierra Club” (HCN, 2/26/01: ‘Zero-Cow’ initiative splits Sierra Club) fails to recognize that the Club is neither “zero-cut” nor “zero-cud.” In its attempt to simplify it misses the real story. While the Club has a position that advocates an end to all commercial logging on public lands, private use and […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Not your average Paul Bunyan
Not all forest workers wield axes and chainsaws. In the oral history compilation Voices from the Woods: Lives and Experiences of Non-timber Forest Workers, 32 mushroom harvesters, tree planters, medicinal herb gatherers, and wild huckleberry harvesters articulate their lives and work in the forests of the Pacific Northwest (HCN, 2/15/99: An entrepreneurial spirit). Antonio Perez […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Columbia Champion
In the early ’80s, when construction started on the massive Glen Jackson bridge across the Columbia River, opening up the Washington side of the river to Portland commuter sprawl, Nancy Russell took action. She founded the 3,200-member Friends of the Columbia Gorge, parlayed hard-won media backing for protection of the Gorge into support from local […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Idaho wants to help manage federal lands
Idahoans may soon have more say about how federal forestlands are managed. In 1998, the Idaho State Land Board appointed a group of eight recreationists, teachers, lawyers and timber company executives to devise ways that locals could work with the federal government to manage public lands. In late February, the committee released Breaking the Gridlock. […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Watershed Wars
“Rather than follow a time line, I’ve followed the river, pursuing an upstream journey that began in Wind River Canyon and will end at the headwaters near the Continental Divide.” With these words, former High Country News editor Geoffrey O’Gara embarks on a meandering course through Indian dispossession, legal wrangling, floundering farm communities, and reservation […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Demonstrating for the delta
UTAH With the simple rallying cry “1 percent for the delta,” environmentalists hope to overcome the complexities of Colorado River politics and send some water to the river’s dying delta in Mexico (HCN, 7/3/00: A river resurrected: The Colorado River Delta gets a second chance). On March 5, 120 groups led by the Glen Canyon […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Salmon feel the heat
NORTHWEST Salmon in the Snake River are in hot water, and so is the Army Corps of Engineers. On Feb. 16, a federal judge gave the Corps 60 days to come up with a plan to reduce temperatures and dissolve gas content along the river. The court ruled that the Corps violated the Clean Water […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Two laws collide in the Northwest woods
IDAHO, WASHINGTON Federal legislation designed to protect Alaska’s wild areas may enable a timber company to build at least 21 miles of new road through endangered species habitat on public and private lands in the Selkirk Range of Idaho and Washington. Stimson Lumber Company says it is guaranteed access to its checkerboard of national forest […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Farmworkers reap a minimum wage
IDAHO Idaho farmworkers now are entitled to the same right laborers across the nation have had for decades: a minimum wage (HCN, 12/18/00: Troubled harvest). Until recently, Idaho farmworkers were paid by the amount of apples they picked or the number of trees they pruned. But now, if that rate isn’t equal to at least […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
The Latest Bounce
President George W. Bush has nominated J. Steven Griles to serve as deputy secretary of the Interior. If confirmed by the Senate as second in command, Griles would help Secretary Gale Norton create policy and manage Interior’s eight bureaus (HCN, 1/15/01: Coloradan tapped for Interior). Currently a lobbyist who represents the National Mining Association, Griles […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Heard around the West
Boing, boing, boing … Ridgway, Colo., sculptor Clifton Barr looked up from work in his metal and wood studio and saw a large, antlered deer “jumping like a bucking horse” in the neighbor’s yard, reports the Ouray County Plaindealer. Barr did a double take and took off his glasses just to make sure, but when […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
A quick resource guide for teachers of the wild
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. If teachers take the initiative, they can search the Internet and find instant access to a host of environmental education materials from a wide variety of pro-environment and government sources. Here is a partial list: Teachers new to the field might want to visit […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Science teachers go local
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Though every second-grader knows the word “environment,” many will never get any training in environmental studies until they go to college. But they would be assured of it if they got into Jeff Mitchell’s high school biology class in the logging town of Philomath, […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
How green is this Tree?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. What better way to learn about ecology than to study trees? That’s what the founders of Project Learning Tree thought more than two decades ago, when they began one of the most successful environmental education programs in the nation. Today, more than 25 million […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
The tale of a salmon slinger
NEHALEM RIVER, Ore. – My throwing arm always left something to be desired. A decent hitter, I was always a disaster on the softball field. Even when I could catch the ball, I couldn’t throw it to save my life. I didn’t think about that, though, when I signed on with Oregon’s Department of Fish […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
The environmental movement is a-muddle
Green groups try to find a few friends in high places
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Luxury looms over Moab
A planned upscale resort has activists fearing “Aspenization”
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Forest supervisor faces down oil drilling
The public lands aren’t open for business – yet
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Parks test skiers’ green resolve
Backcountry recreators asked to give bighorn sheep some elbow-room