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 […]
A call to heed the wild
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 […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Of bison, the French and our faux wild
There’s an inside joke in these parts that Yellowstone bison have a thing for French photographers. It’s a weird twist on dwarf tossing, this propensity of theirs to spear and fling men with names like Jacques and Pierre. Now, this is not a hard and fast rule. The most recent casualty was an elderly Australian […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
The hope of a freshly planted field
Growing up, I often despised the cornfields surrounding my parents’ house outside of Bozeman, Mont. By the end of July, the plants rose to the sky, blocking our view and trapping their own musty sweat. When I pulled on patched jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, my eyes heavy at 6 a.m., the fields meant hard […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Clean fuel, dirty neighbors
We should be a little grateful this time around. The West’s last energy boom threatened the region with mountains of spent oil shale, huge pits from which the rock had been taken, air pollution from coal gasification plants, and large ditches carrying Columbia River water into the Colorado River Basin. This latest energy boom is […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Under pressure, Montana opts for a slower approach
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Open for business.” MILES CITY, Mont. – After it drains the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming, the Tongue River flows north to join the Yellowstone near this eastern Montana city. The Tongue doesn’t carry a lot of water, but it’s a lifeline for […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
‘There is a light at the end of the tunnel’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Open for business.” Byron and Marge Oedekoven, who own a ranch 12 miles north of Gillette, Wyo., have had a more positive experience with coalbed methane development on their property. Buteven though the company doing the development, Redstone Resources, worked with the […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
‘The industry’s philosophy has been to fragment the community’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Open for business.” Mike Foate, who ranches north of Arvada, Wyo., has developed a Web site – powderriverbasin.org. – for landowners concerned about coalbed methane development in the area. He says he decided to go online to try to get information out […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
‘We became Michiwest’s sewer’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Open for business.” Earl and Sue Boardman’s ranch on the banks of the Powder River is dotted with gas wells owned by the Michigan-based company Michiwest. In 1999, Earl Boardman shot a video of the dry water wells, eroded arroyos, and quagmires […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Open for business
Wyoming throws away its water to get out the gas