IDAHO For years, Jon Marvel of the Idaho Watershed Project has demanded that the Bureau of Land Management remove livestock from nearly all the state’s public lands (HCN, 8/2/99: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man). His relationship with agency staffers has sometimes been tense, but in early October, things got worse. State director Martha Hahn […]
Don’t go away mad, just go away
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Fish fight fowl for water
CALIFORNIA Each fall, about 20 million migrating waterfowl rest and feed in the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, a remnant of once expansive wetlands and lakes in Northern California. This year, they almost got a rude shock: no water. In September, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation stopped delivery of Klamath River water to the refuge, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Are the stars out tonight?
UTAH In this time of booming Western tourism, the star-filled night sky has become a valuable natural resource. That’s why Moab, Utah, is trying to regulate commercial light pollution. City planner Janet Lowe says people come to Moab, a town enviably placed between Arches and Canyonlands national parks, to experience the area’s natural beauty. Now, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Animas-La Plata staggers on
COLORADO Thirty-two years after Congress first authorized it, Colorado’s controversial Animas-La Plata water project still awaits federal funding. But recent events indicate its latest incarnation is alive and kicking (HCN, 11/11/96: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front). In late October, the Animas- La Plata bill, sponsored by Sen. Ben Campbell, R-Colo., passed the Senate; […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Ranchers take law into their own hands
UTAH What began as the Bureau of Land Management’s attempt to salvage rangeland from a dry summer has become a miniature Sagebrush Rebellion. This summer, the BLM repeatedly ordered ranchers Quinn Griffin and Mary Bulloch to remove their cattle from remote grazing allotments in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Finally, the agency did the deed itself, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
The latest bounce
In a strange election, Western political contests had their share of unusual moments … More than two weeks after the election, Washington finished counting votes in its tight U.S. Senate race (HCN, 10/23/00: Stalking Slade). Although Democratic challenger Maria Cantwell beat incumbent Republican Slade Gorton by 1,953 votes, the race is far from over: The […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Heard around the West
Think about writing an almost minute-by-minute record of your life: documenting the shoes you’re wearing, rating brands of snack food and occasionally taping to your notes samples of recently harvested toenail clippings. Would anyone bother reading or even handling this intimate minutia? Sure they would, said octogenarian Robert Shields in Dayton, Wash., who obsessively noted […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘No one is at the steering wheel’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Lora Lucero is vice president of the New Mexico chapter of the American Planning Association: “Who’s guiding growth right now is no one. No one is at the steering wheel. It’s occurring very haphazardly, it’s occurring incrementally, project by project, application by application, and […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘The bridge is only part of the puzzle’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Alicia Aguilar is a real estate agent and Valencia County commissioner: “When I first came into office, we were one of the fastest growing counties in the state and I didn’t see any planning going on. Bernalillo County had tightened its regulations on mobile […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘It’s a clash of visions’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Ray Garcia is president of the Historic Tome Adelino Neighborhood Association: “This place is different. It’s special. This is the second oldest community in Valencia County. We’re pretty tough, like those old cottonwoods, no? “We formed a neighborhood association two years ago to fight […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘Start letting mom pack that trunk’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bob Davey is the president of the Valley Improvement Association: “Horizon’s plan was not a shabby idea. On paper it looked very good. The problem was that they were working in an agricultural area, and the county was not equipped to handle it. This […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Last chance for the whitebark pine
A remarkable tree, spread by birds andeaten by bears, finally gets someattention
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Grizzlies invited back to the Bitterroot
The feds give locals control of bearreintroduction
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Dear friends
Stop the presses! Sometimes the forces of sprawl get beaten by determined community opposition. That rare story about a small town’s successful campaign to stay small is reported in this issue by associate editor Greg Hanscom. What was almost as startling was the timing: This issue was 99 percent finished, and as far as we […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Road Block
A pack of ‘Chicanos, Marines and hippies’ steps into the path of New Mexico’s sprawl machine
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
A wilderness bill with a little something for everyone
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “A New Dialogue for Idaho.” For wilderness advocates: If passed, the Central Idaho Economic Development Act would create two new wilderness areas in the Boulder-White Cloud mountains, separated only by a narrow dirt-bike trail. The Ernest Hemingway/Jerry Peak Wilderness, above the famous writer’s old home […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
Life was never fair
Dear HCN, I just read the article “The West has a bad hand” by Jon Margolis (HCN, 10/23/00: In presidential politics, the West has a bad hand), where he stated that “Life is not fair …” is generally attributed to John F. Kennedy. Not exactly. No doubt it was said at some earlier time (perhaps […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
‘Honest markers’ still miss the mark
Dear HCN, I appreciate your essay about the need for historically accurate monuments and markers across the West (HCN, 9/25/00: Truth-telling needs a home in the West). Someone who is very eloquent on this issue is James Loewen, who wrote Lies Across America: What Our Historic Markers and Monuments Get Wrong. Unfortunately, the marker which […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
Get your gun right
Dear HCN, The firearm Don Barnett holds in your photo on page 8 in the Oct. 9 issue of HCN, on the Mexican-U.S. border, is not a machine gun. Such an error does us all a disservice by needlessly inflaming the already emotional issues of Second Amendment rights and illegal immigration. The latter you have […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
Enough is enough
Dear HCN, Early in the 1990s, I was among a chartered busload of residents who traveled to Denver to attend a Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission meeting. It was an enlightening experience to learn that residents had no standing to speak or participate in any way at this meeting. But the volume of people […]