Dear HCN, I had the good fortune to visit with Lynn Dickey more than a decade ago, while researching the nuclear weapons train through the West (HCN, 6/5/00: Dear Friends). Lynn was a critical link in the chain of activists along the train route, and organized protests whenever weapons were shipped through her district. I […]
A critical link
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Response to ‘squishy-soft’
Dear HCN, Few historians make Westerners more uncomfortable than Bernard DeVoto. Ed Marston’s Aug. 25, “Squishy-soft processes – hard results” article brings to mind one of DeVoto’s stinging bromides: “The West does not really want to be liberated from the system of exploitation that it has always violently resented. It only wants to buy into […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Earth First!
Oregon-based Earth First! celebrates 20 years of the Earth First! Journal with a commemorative issue in late October. The special issue will highlight eco-radicals and their doings. Contact the EF! Journal at P.O. Box 1415, Eugene, OR 97440 (541/344-8004) or at www.earthfirstjournal.org. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Indian Land Consolidation Symposium
Reclaiming tribal lands is the topic of the 10th annual Indian Land Consolidation Symposium, Oct. 16-20 in Pendleton, Ore. The symposium, hosted by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, offers workshops, including “Public Lands: Impacting Changes and Transfers,” and “Land Use Planning.” Call the Indian Land Working Group at 541/276-3873. This article appeared in the […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Taos Art Association
The Taos Art Association is raffling off 40 acres of piûon and juniper-studded meadows. Tickets cost $50, and the winner of the Jan. 1, 2001, drawing will have the choice of either the land, located in Lindrith, N.M., or $10,000. The event raises money to reopen the association’s community auditorium. Call 505/758-2052 or visit www.taosnet.com/taa/raffle. […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Society for Ecological Restoration
The Society for Ecological Restoration’s Northwest Chapter is calling for paper abstracts before Sept. 29 for its spring conference, “Restoration and Recovery: Beyond Good Intentions.” Go to www.halcyon.com/sernw for more information about the conference, scheduled for April 2-6 in Bellevue, Wash. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Society […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
From cumbersome to collaborative
The National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal government to assess the environmental impacts of its actions, has become synonymous with contentious public hearings and cumbersome environmental impact statements. But it shouldn’t be, argues Daniel Kemmis, director of the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Missoula, Mont. “(NEPA) represents a national recognition […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Yellowstone’s bison get a time limit
Yellowstone National Park’s long-awaited plan for managing its wandering bison herds hasn’t made everyone happy. The park’s final environmental impact statement, released in early September, tries to satisfy both bison advocates and the Montana Department of Livestock, which kills bison it fears could spread brucellosis to cattle. The park’s preferred alternative would allow a bigger […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
A call to heed the wild
Environmentalists have long depended on photos of endangered landscapes to spur us into protecting wild places. The photographers hope that if they show us the wonder of these places, we will fight like mad to save them. Tupper Ansel Blake and Madeleine Graham Blake, the photographers of Balancing Water: Restoring the Klamath Basin, want their […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
‘Snooty’ garages banned
In keeping with Portland’s pedestrian-friendly building codes, city council commissioners have been waging a war on oversized garages. The Portland City Council unanimously concluded that “snout houses’ – the tract homes dominated by garages thrusting toward the street – lack community spirit and make pedestrians feel less safe. “These houses don’t (just) turn their backs […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
A highway hits a speed bump
Only one highway moves commuters south to Salt Lake City, squeezing cars between the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake. The Utah Department of Transportation wants to change that with its proposed $370 million Legacy Highway, a controversial 125-mile freeway that just hit a speed bump. On Sept. 5, the Environmental Protection Agency announced […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Red-legged frog habitat slated for protection
The red-legged frog was once common throughout California, but development has devastated its habitat and reduced the species to three viable breeding populations. Now, the amphibian may get the protection it needs to survive. On Sept. 8, under pressure from a federal court order, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated 5.4 million acres in […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Something is polluting the water
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe says it has always farmed oysters on western Washington’s Dungeness Bay. But not any more. The state health department banned the harvest of shellfish in certain areas of the bay last May, because water-quality tests showed excess levels of fecal coliform bacteria. While fecal coliform isn’t a health hazard by itself, […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Bush camp backpedals on toppling monuments
Vice presidential candidate Richard Cheney may have spoken too soon in August, when he said George W. Bush might rescind national monuments created by President Clinton (HCN, 9/11/00). U.S. presidents have created 114 monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act, and undoing them is unlikely, according to University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson. In 1996, […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Ranchers test an agency’s image
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt boasts that the BLM is moving away from its early reputation as the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining” to a more conservation-minded agency overseeing national monuments around the West (HCN, 11/22/99). This summer, when managers ordered cows off Utah’s drought-stricken Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, that new reputation was put to the […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
On the trail
Congressional races in Montana are heating up. Brian Schweitzer, the Democrats’ maverick Senate candidate, is still well behind two-term Republican incumbent Conrad Burns, but he’s made some small gains in recent polls. Schweitzer, a mint farmer from Whitefish, defends small-scale agriculture and criticizes rising health-care costs. Over the last year, he has shepherded busloads of […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Does the “death tax’ protect open space?
The federal estate tax affects only the wealthiest 2 percent of the U.S. population. So why should most Westerners care about the current Republican push to repeal it? One reason is that part of that wealth isn’t cash. It’s undeveloped land. And in some cases, the threat of estate taxes keeps it permanently undeveloped. Here’s […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
The latest bounce
A Fourth of July party landed Nevada’s Jarbidge Shovel Brigade in hot water (HCN, 7/31/00). The Justice Department has sued the group for clearing rocks and debris from a national forest road, closed to protect endangered bull trout. l For the first time, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has formally apologized for mistreating Native Americans. […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Truth-telling needs a home in the West
Brothers is a store and a highway rest stop 43 miles east of the New West boomtown of Bend in central Oregon. It is also home to some of the most shocking roadside markers we saw in 3,600 miles of Western travel this summer. After days of reading highway signs that painted the surrounding area […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Heard around the West
Las Vegas, Nev., detective John Zidzik was patrolling his city’s airport when he noticed something peculiar about a traveler, a man in his early 30s. There were “unusual bulges in his groin area not consistent with male anatomy,” said the police officer, who conducted a delicate search. The bulges, moving oddly, turned out to be […]