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 […]
Heard around the West
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
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
New mining regs slip into rulebooks
Revised BLM regulations punch a hole in the 1872 Mining Law
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Don Ewy is no timber beast
HCN subscriber Don Ewy is not your typical logger. A self-described environmentalist who has fought to limit development on public lands, Ewy has selectively logged small trees in North Park, Colorado’s only state forest, for the past 31 years. During that time his only employees have been his three children, and he says his daughter […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Dear Friends
Winter kicks in The snow gods have smiled on Colorado’s Western Slope. Falling steadily for a week, snow has blanketed apple trees, compost heaps and coal trucks. Farmers and ranchers have reason to hope their water rights won’t be called this spring, and boaters are dreaming of a river season that lasts longer than two […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Mr. Babbitt’s wild ride
Note: this front-page editor’s note introduces this issue’s feature story, “Interior view,” an interview with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. In the rough-and-tumble world of American politics, you can be a hero one day, a bum the next. Few know this better than Bruce Babbitt. Eight years ago, when the U.S. Senate confirmed Babbitt as secretary […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Let’s ban second homes
Dear HCN, Not long ago, I was eating pancakes in a small diner/grocery in Clark, Colo., just 25 miles north of Steamboat Springs. My waitress was 60-something, and I soon found that she and her husband owned a farm outside of Clark. “It’s been part of the family since the Homestead Act,” she explained. By […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
‘Burma Shave’ rhymes inspire
Dear HCN, I just received your latest edition of HCN and couldn’t get the Burma Shave lines out of my head. I think bringing information like this up about our checkered history is important (HCN, 10/23/00: Dear Friends). A quick, easy-to-read sign is an innovative way to get the information across. The hard-hitting reporting that […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
More than advertising
Dear HCN, The “Analysis” by Tony Davis regarding the failure of Arizona’s anti-growth Proposition 202 in the last election misses an important part of the situation in southern Arizona and, I suspect, elsewhere as well (HCN, 11/20/00: In Arizona’s growth fight, advertising defined reality). Davis attributes the failure to an advertising blitz by the pro-growth […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Salmon for barbecue hardly the issue
Dear HCN, Logger Kirkmire’s letter in your Dec. 4 edition requires several responses. 1) The people he claims are outraged about the killing of excess hatchery salmon need to study up on their biology and ecology. Any watershed has a limited capacity for spawning and rearing of salmon. To introduce more spawning adults into a […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Dobb’s argument is troubling
Dear HCN, Edwin Dobb (HCN, 12/18/00: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?) argues that we must accept our alienation from nature and, out of humane compassion, take endangered species into our adopting hands. His philosophy of “natural representation,” while perhaps inspiring some individuals to protect wildlife, would be disastrous for the conservation […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Greens failed grassroots miserably
Dear HCN, I’m sure environmentalists are ready to declare the Sagebrush Rebellion over now that People for the USA is closing its doors (HCN, 12/18/00: People for the USA! disbands). Sierra Clubber Bruce Hamilton couldn’t resist one last distortion, telling HCN readers that PFUSA went about “buying rural representatives.” Hamilton also pointed out that “Corporate […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Tagging a protest
Opponents of a new pass to visit the Red Rock area of Coconino National Forest near Sedona, Ariz., are using a rearview mirror tag to claim exemption from fees. The Forest Service says its fee demonstration program is needed to restore and enhance a scenic treasure, but members of the AZ NoFee Coalition fear “the […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Beyond the white noise
The environment doesn’t begin as you leave the city – workplaces and neighborhoods are part of it, too. But battles to protect these places, especially those belonging to minority groups, have not often been visible to the public. The 2000 Directory of People of Color Environmental Groups brings these community fights to life, listing the […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
X-rated on the rocks
“I am glad I have seen yournakedness;it is beautiful;it will rain from now on.” — Talashimtiwa Hopi Indian from Oraibi, 1920from The Serpent and the Sacred Fire: Fertility Images in Southwest Rock Art The record on rock left by the Southwest’s early people is mostly mystifying. What do those galaxy-like clusters really represent? What are […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Agency will try to track trails
The Bureau of Land Management has a new nationwide strategy for off-highway vehicle management. The plan, released Jan. 19, calls for local environmental analyses of vehicle impacts, saying that some endangered species habitat may need further protection from OHV use. It also broadens BLM’s definition of off-highway vehicles, which will now include snowmobiles, personal watercraft, […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
A slow comeback for Mexican wolves
Mexican gray wolves continue to die along the Arizona-New Mexico line. In December, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials found a dead wolf outside of Reserve, N.M. It was the 21st Mexican gray wolf to die or disappear since the agency first released captive animals into the Apache National Forest in 1998 (HCN, 12/21/98: Wolf killers […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Swift fox may lose the race
The last days of the Clinton administration haven’t all been rosy for environmentalists. In early January, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dropped the swift fox as a candidate for endangered species listing. Environmentalists petitioned the federal government eight years ago to protect the housecat-sized canine under the Endangered Species Act. But the Swift Fox […]