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, […]
Final roadless plan drives Clinton’s legacy
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 […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Don’t go away mad, just go away
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 […]
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