A skipped issue This is both the last issue of the year and the last issue for a month. In July and in early January, High Country News lets readers catch up on their reading and the staff catch up on their breathing. The next issue will be dated Jan. 15. A new printer and […]
Dear Friends
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Still here
Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Petersen intolerant of different ethics
Dear HCN, David Petersen claims to be a hunter, but writes like an Animal Rights Fanatic (ARF). He follows the pattern of the typical activist, changing the names of things to disguise their true nature. Thus ranch hunts become the evil canned hunts. Reading his opinion piece, “When hunting becomes staggeringly stupid” (HCN, 10/23/00: When […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
A fish is a fish is a fish
Dear HCN, Contrary to the subtle assertions made by Mike Stark in his article titled “Killing salmon to save the species” (HCN, 10/9/00: Killing salmon to save the species), many people, from state to federal officials throughout the Northwest, were and are still angry, indeed outraged, at the salmon-clubbing episode that occurred in Oregon and […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Pastoral letter resonates
Dear HCN, Thank you for the copy of your story about the Catholic Church’s pastoral letter to help people appreciate the sacred and divine nature of the Columbia River watershed (HCN, 9/11/00: Holy water: The Catholic Church seeks to restore the Columbia River and the church’s relevance to the natural world). I fell in love […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
One half-vast dam
Dear HCN, Ed Marston’s visit to the Teton Dam disaster, described in his “Truth telling” essay (HCN, 9/25/00: Truth-telling needs a home in the West), reminded me of my involvement with that dam. In 1971, Gov. Cecil Andrus appointed me as the token environmentalist to the Idaho Water Resource Board. We soon thereafter visited the […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Great Backyard Bird Count
Hundreds of thousands of people nationwide will take to the field Feb. 16-19, 2001, for the Great Backyard Bird Count. The National Audubon Society and Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology sponsor the event. Find out about it at www.birdsource.org or call 800/843-2473. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Saving Places 2001
Colorado Preservation Inc. invites anyone interested in preserving historic and diverse cultural sites to Saving Places 2001. The event will take place Feb. 2-3, 2001, at the Denver Athletic Club and will feature tours, workshops, social events and speakers. For more information, call 303/893-4260 or write: 910 16th St. #1100, Denver, CO 80202. This article […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Cattle grazing hurts
Cattle grazing hurts arid ecosystems in North America, says the Western North American Naturalist journal in a recent review of research. Allison Jones of the Wild Utah Project says grazing is a significant source of soil erosion. The WNAN journal Web site is at www.lib.byu.edu/~nms/. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Alliance for Justice
A new handbook published by the nonprofit Alliance for Justice explains how nonprofit organizations can use their funds to influence legislation, walking readers through filing a tax form that allows more money to be used for lobbying. To order a free copy of Worry-Free Lobbying for Nonprofits: How to Use the 501(h) Election to Maximize […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Ferrets are back in town
Black-footed ferrets once roamed the prairies of South Dakota. But the destruction of prairie dog towns vastly reduced the ferret’s habitat and pushed it onto the endangered species list. Now, the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe is restoring ferrets to the reservation, where the predators fill an important niche in the fast-disappearing shortgrass prairie ecosystem. So […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Backtracking
“Western road maps are full of old trails: the Lewis and Clark Trail, the Oregon Trail, the Sante Fe Trail, the Outlaw Trail, and the Nez Perce Trail. Their vague lines connect the West that was to the West that is. They may even stretch to the West we imagine will be. But underneath them, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Yosemite shuffles into a new era
Many of the 4 million visitors to Yosemite each year remember the national park for its towering granite cliffs, magnificent glacial valleys – and for its congestion. On Nov. 14, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt unveiled a new management plan that he says will reduce traffic and help restore the park’s natural habitat. Though park officials […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Final roadless plan drives Clinton’s legacy
After holding 600 public meetings and reading 1.6 million citizen comments, the U.S. Forest Service released its final version of a plan to limit road-building on nearly one-third of America’s national forests (HCN, 11/8/99: A new road for the public lands). The preferred alternative now includes protecting 9.3 million acres in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
A botanical El Dorado
A new quarterly journal from the Siskiyou Field Institute in Cave Junction, Ore., devotes itself to “trees, rocks, critters, creeks, humans, snakes” – the list goes on to include little-known but wonderfully named species like “chalcedon checkerspots” and “hooded ladies tresses.” All inhabit a landscape that ecologists call the Klamath-Siskiyou Ecoregion. It includes the Pacific […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Tickling the green funny bone
In the increasingly crowded world of Web magazines focused on the environment, it’s getting hard for the green at heart to decide what to bookmark. Which is why the founders of Grist magazine have injected something rare into their coverage of the often depressing retreat of the natural world: humor. “We’ve tried to cut through […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Toxic bird feed
Environmental toxins can move through the food chain with surprising speed, James Larison, an Oregon State University biologist, found after studying white-tailed ptarmigans in a 10,000-acre area in central Colorado. Forty-six percent of the birds had accumulated toxic levels of the trace metal cadmium in their kidneys. The sequence, Larison found, begins with willows, an […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Some Puget Sounders bet on the farm
In western Washington, two counties have begun a program called FarmLink to save family farms. FarmLink connects prospective farmers with current farmers in King and Snohomish counties who would like to sell all or part of their lands. It also provides workshops on marketing and other subjects for both would-be and current farmers. Over the […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
A bird? A plane? It’s the environmental air force
Soaring above oil and gas wells in a six-person Cessna 210 is a far cry from flying in a crowded commercial plane. LightHawk, a nonprofit airline, uses the view to protect the environment. Based in San Francisco, Calif.; Aspen, Colo; and Seattle, Wash., LightHawk flies nearly 1,300 politicos, conservationists and journalists over degraded landscapes every […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Rivers without water
Rain pelts cities in western Oregon at up to 10 inches a month in the winter wet season. Yet each summer, 10 major rivers and streams, including the often-visited Deschutes, dwindle to trickles or dry out completely. “The average person isn’t even aware this problem exists,” says Reed Benson, executive director of Portland-based WaterWatch, a […]