Conservation easements usually protect open space on private land (HCN, 2/28/00: Acre by acre: Can land trusts save the West’s disappearing open space?), but a new easement in southwestern Colorado also protects what’s underneath the land. In December, an agreement between landowner Don Dove and the Montezuma Land Conservancy preserved 110 acres of ancestral Puebloan […]
Easement saves artifacts
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
It’s not that simple
Dear HCN, As one of the designated bad guys in Greg Hanscom’s reprise of Milagro Beanfield War (HCN, 12/4/00: Road block), I guess I should be thankful that the Valley Improvement Association came out looking no worse than it did … and stay quietly holed up in my “airy offices” (in a 30-year-old converted shopping […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Unwise welcome?
Dear HCN, “Troubled harvest,” your Dec. 18 lament over an immigration policy that doesn’t encourage immigration, reads like a plea for “wise use.” A population that grew more than 13 percent in the 1990s – the fastest growth rate among the industrial nations – exacerbates virtually all of the environmental problems covered so well by […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
The power of love, and its opposite
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Money isn’t everything, you know. There’s also love. And its opposite. In politics, we know that money corrupts, but so does love. And its opposite. Consider the rules. No, not the rules of love, but the rules of government – specifically those rules of the previous administration suspended for 60 days on […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Park photo contest comes with corporate baggage
NATION Amateur photographers are now submitting their sharpest national park photos to the National Park Service in hopes of appearing on the 2002 Parks Pass, which allows entry to the nation’s 383 parks. Kodak has agreed to organize and fund the entire contest, including flying the winner and family to any park in the country. […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Legal woes for Legacy Parkway
UTAH After the federal government signed off on the construction of a 14-mile highway along Utah’s Wasatch Front in early January, a coalition of environmentalists and smart-growth advocates, including Salt Lake City’s controversial Democratic mayor, filed two separate lawsuits. Utahns for Better Transportation contends that the Federal Highway Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Owl things considered
SOUTHWEST After eight years of legal wrangling, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has settled one of the Southwest’s most embittered endangered species debates – or has it? On Jan. 18, the Fish and Wildlife Service designated 4.6 million acres in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah as critical habitat for the Mexican spotted owl. […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Chinook tribe recognized
WASHINGTON In 1805, the Chinook Indians met Lewis and Clark at the mouth of the Columbia River. Historians say that without the tribe’s help the explorers would have perished over the long, wet winter. The tribe’s name is now attached to landmarks throughout the Northwest, but for decades the federal government has acted as though […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Silence of the clams
ARIZONA Environmentalists have long charged that dams and water diversions are killing the Colorado River and its delta (HCN, 7/3/00: A river resurrected: The Colorado River Delta gets a second chance). Now, scientists have quantified those accusations by counting clams. Their conclusion: The delta has lost 95 percent of its biological richness since Hoover Dam […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Anglers fish for solutions
IDAHO The South Fork of the Snake River is running at a trickle. In order to save water for next summer’s irrigation season and to flush salmon smolts this spring, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is holding back water behind dams that leaves the river flowing at a rate well below the Idaho Department of […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Coyote killing continues
COLORADO On Jan. 11, the Colorado Wildlife Commission approved a nine-year, $2.6 million coyote-killing experiment in western Colorado. Some deer hunters, outfitters and sheep ranchers in the state have lobbied long and hard for coyote control, blaming the predators for a plummeting deer population. Deer have declined in Colorado for 40 years, and biologists say […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Critics rail against expansion project
SOUTH DAKOTA Nearly three years ago, Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad (DM&E), based in Brookings, S.D., proposed the largest railroad expansion plan in a century. The $1.4 billion plan would upgrade 600 miles of existing track in Minnesota and South Dakota, and construct almost 300 miles of new track out of Wyoming into South Dakota. […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
The latest bounce
Pay your user fees or pay the price, says the Forest Service (HCN, 2/14/00: Land of the fee). The agency is prosecuting Terry Dahl, 58, of Southern California for failing to buy a $5 Adventure Pass and ignoring 11 warnings left on his car while he recreated in the Los Padres National Forest. The Adventure […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Bush hits the brakes
Almost immediately after taking office, President George W. Bush slapped a freeze on Bill Clinton’s last batch of new regulations, giving the new president time to review and possibly overturn those rules. New regulations which have not yet appeared in the Federal Register have been withdrawn for review; those already published but not yet in […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
No matter what they say, Westerners don’t fit the stereotype
As good Americans, we not only endure a presidential election, but we also tolerate the analysis that emerges afterward. This time around, the right-thinking pundits couldn’t accept the simple fact that the 2000 presidential election was one of the closest in history. Instead, they looked for a mandate for the winner, and found one in […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
I am an Inuit warrior
“Let’s walk downtown and get a video,” said my husband on a starry January evening. “Are you out of your mind?” I asked, peeking at the thermometer outside the kitchen window. The red line hovered near zero. “That would mean we’d have to go outside.” “Honey,” he said, as gently as he could. “We live […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Heard around the West
California’s rolling blackouts have marooned people in elevators and left hundreds of cows bellowing for their milking machines. Yet high prices and scarce supply won’t affect everyone in the state: not, for instance, residents of the 1970s-era “Eco-House” in Arcata, north of San Francisco. For 21 years, three students at a time from Humboldt State […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Interior view
Bruce Babbitt took the Real West to Washington: A High Country News interview
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
A new plan frames the Sierra Nevada
Opponents have criticized everything from the science to the sentence structure
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Bombs make way for ‘burbs
A booming city eyes a silent bombing range