Over the years, the work of numerous artists has focused the eye of the public on national parks. Thomas Moran’s paintings helped swing the debate for protecting Yellowstone National Park. Ansel Adams’ photographs continue to introduce new generations of Americans to the beauty of Yosemite and Sequoia national parks. And Ann Zwinger’s writings and sketches […]
Get artsy in the parks
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Lifting the veil of secrecy
Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West, by Len Ackland, The University of New Mexico press. Hardback: $34.95. 308 pages. Most people know that the Cold War spawned a number of nuclear bomb manufacturing facilities in the spacious American West – places like Hanford in eastern Washington state and Rocky Flats just […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Republicans rebuff snowmobile plan
WYOMING Just days after a Dec. 12 U.S. Supreme Court ruling handed the presidency to George W. Bush, Republicans were trying to undo a piece of President Clinton’s land protection legacy. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., attached a last-minute rider to an omnibus appropriations bill prohibiting the National Park Service from spending any money to enforce […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Salmon plan grows a few teeth
NORTHWEST The Clinton administration’s final rendition of a Northwest salmon plan is tougher than the last one, but it still doesn’t call for the dismantling of four federal dams on the Snake River in eastern Washington. Instead, the federal government will try other measures, including restoring rivers and streams where salmon spawn, and giving added […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
The latest bounce
The preliminary results of the 2000 census confirm that the West’s population is booming. Nevada topped the national list with a 66 percent increase in population since 1990. Rounding out the five fastest-growing states in the nation were Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. The results translate into political power: Nevada and Colorado will each gain […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Plains sense
Frank and Deborah Popper’s ‘Buffalo Commons’ is creeping toward reality
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Bush administration faces a reborn Interior
Now that the former attorney general of Colorado, Gale Norton, has been nominated as secretary of Interior (see story page 3), the cast of main characters is complete, and the four-year run of what is certain to be an interesting play can begin. The details of the script will be written on the fly, but […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Heard around the West
Cattle have always enjoyed right of way in the West. If the road is suddenly filled with mooing and manuring animals, it’s up to a motorist to slow down and enjoy the passing herd. If you’re unlucky enough to crest a hill and crash into a 2,000-pound cow, the animal is legally innocent; it’s the […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
A Buffalo Commons bibliography
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bergman, Roger, “Theocentric or Anthropocentric? Catholic Teaching on the Environment: A View from the Great Plains,” pp. 204-228 in Practical Theology: Perspectives from the Plains, Omaha: Creighton University Press, 2000, edited by Michael G. Lawler and Gail S. Risch. Callenbach, Ernest, Bring Back the […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Making buffalo pay
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Anyone looking at the buffalo ranching industry over the past decade would see signs of both promise and disappointment. In the early to mid ’90s, so many ranchers wanted in that the price of “herd stock” – or a starter herd – quadrupled. Ranchers […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Hot Property: A former nuclear bomb factory gets caught in suburban turf wars
ROCKY FLATS, Colo. – When Charlie McKay’s uncle, Marcus Church, was forced to sell 1,250 acres of ranchland to the U.S. government for a top-secret military facility, the deal was sweetened only by the promise of a development boom. The year was 1951, and Denver, which sat 17 miles away, had a population of a […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Coalition finds harmony in the backcountry
Skiers, snowmobilers agree to give each other elbow room in Idaho
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Land trade threatens trails and trees
Oregon plans to trade away an intact ecosystem
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Coloradan tapped for Interior
Gale Norton is conservative, bright andrelativelyunknown
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Dear Friends
Calling all party animals The year’s first meeting of the board of the nonprofit High Country Foundation, which governs High Country News, will be held in Phoenix, Ariz., Feb. 2-4. As is the custom with board meetings, we’ll be hosting a potluck dinner for readers from the Phoenix area. These events, held around the West […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Mormonism 101: A primer for gentiles
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Being Green in the Land of the Saints.” The Mormon faith began in 1820, when Joseph Smith, then 14 years old, had a vision of God and Jesus Christ in a grove of trees near his home in Palmyra, N.Y. Three years later, the […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Of raptors, rats and roadkill
At the Northern Rockies Raptor Center in northwestern Montana, Ken Wolff has been nursing injured birds back to health for 12 years. But this August his nonprofit operation hit a small snag. Five hundred pounds of frozen rodents, which Wolff uses to feed birds of prey, failed to arrive at the Missoula airport. He spent […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Bovine weedeaters
Leigh Frederickson, a natural resources professor at the University of Missouri, has been testing whether cattle can hold down the spread of noxious weeds, particularly white top. Last summer, the 14,186-acre Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado worked with five neighboring ranchers, who rented pasture with mixed results. “Depending on the moisture and the […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Bring back towns
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream makes the buzzwords “new urbanism” come alive. The authors, who are community planners, have written and designed an easily accessible and smartly illustrated book, which is not surprising, since Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck believe that what works to build […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Agency gets rebuked
Since the late 1980s, scientists have known that more than 100 federal nuclear sites, over half of which lie in the West, will remain toxic forever. The problem is how to manage these former bomb sites for thousands of years. Though the Department of Energy commissioned a National Academy of Sciences study over two years […]