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. […]
Critics rail against expansion project
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 New regulations which have not yet appeared in the Federal Register have been withdrawn for review; those already published but not yet in […]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
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 […]