Summer monsoons could wash laboratory waste into the San Ildefonso Pueblo and the Rio Grande
Los Alamos races against time
Dear Friends
Summer break To give everyone a chance to catch up on their reading, hit the trail, ride a bike, paddle a river or – you get the general idea – High Country News will skip the next issue. We’ll return July 31, 2000. New to the board Last issue’s Dear Friends column on the Albuquerque […]
A river resurrected
The Colorado River Delta gets a second chance
Watershed moment
A former California timber town becomes ground zero in the battle over bottled water
Cows can help
Dear HCN, Although Jon Christensen’s story on weeds, fire, and the Great Basin was informative, he left out an important ingredient to the story (HCN, 5/22/00: Save Our Sagebrush). The same tools that he attributes to the ecological collapse of the region – fire and grazing – can be used to restore the region. Spring […]
Why wolf recovery is a failure
Dear HCN, The recent article by Steve Stuebner about wolves in Idaho demonstrates why wolf recovery is an ongoing failure (HCN, 5/22/00: Activist calls for cease-fire on wolves). If it were not for a few livestock-free safe havens like Yellowstone Park and the core of central Idaho wilderness, there would be no wolf recovery whatsoever. […]
Weeds don’t need cows to spread
Dear HCN, Thank you for the thoughtful coverage dealing with weeds across the West, and especially the discussion of the cheatgrass/fire cycle problem. A quick point of clarification, though. Your articles seemed to return to a theme of grazing as a central cause. In my experience, grazing may not be necessary for land to experience […]
In defense of ‘enviros’
Dear HCN, I am responding to several letters in the May 8 edition. One letter said that “enviros are mostly intruders funded by wealthy foundations.” Those foundations are set up by nonprofit corporations supported by the donations of many environmentally conscious citizens and companies. An individual cannot make any impact on the money-obsessed power structure […]
Writer has an ATV agenda
Dear HCN, Jim Gerber, president of Citizens for a User Friendly Forest, has written several letters to the editor of High Country News in which he has neglected to identify his affiliation. CUFF supports motorized access to national forests. The vice president of CUFF, Adina Cook, is also the public-lands director of the Blue Ribbon […]
Heard around the West
Could a man juggle 20 drinks sliding around a tray while walking in spike heels and looking sexy? Some cocktail waitresses in Reno, Nev., do that for eight hours at a time. They also say they’re sick and tired of it – the blisters, bunions and hammer toes caused by wearing high heels on the […]
The Wayward West
A bill that would have promoted tourism and allowed off-road vehicles to wheel across specified areas in Utah’s San Rafael Swell is on “life support” in the House after green-friendly amendments passed. Conservationists, who pushed for even more wilderness protection, describe this as a victory (HCN, 5/22/00: Stirrings in the San Rafael Swell). “We called […]
Colorado considers a mining ban
In the wake of Summitville, Colorado could follow Montana’s lead and outlaw cyanide mining
The end of a water mine?
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article,”The Great Sand Dunes: the next new national park?“ A federal buyout of the Baca Ranch would erase the threat of a sale, by a private developer, of San Luis Valley water to the Front Range. But pressure […]
The Great Sand Dunes: the next new national park?
A park proposal aims to protect water as well as land
Babbitt’s monument tour blazes on
Al Gore announces four new national monuments, while Republicans fight back
Crawdads colonize the West’s waterways
Down South, they call them ‘Cajun popcorn.’ In the West, they’re a menace.
Dear Friends
Welcome, Beth Not wanting to admit that her hometown, Staten Island, N.Y., is known best for its garbage, new intern Beth Wohlberg would rather refer to the most recent city she has lived in – Missoula, Mont. But Staten Island, home to the largest landfill in the world, Fresh Kills, gave her an urge for […]
Trickle of hope
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. An international border slices through the final stretch of the Colorado River, and for decades the region has been pushed to the political margins by both the United States and Mexico. The river only occasionally reaches the Gulf of California, and the once-lush wetlands […]
Accidental refuge: Should we save the Salton Sea?
BOMBAY BEACH, Calif. – Steve Horvitz, the superintendent of the Salton Sea State Recreation Area, keeps a copy of the movie Chinatown on his office bookshelf. He’s seen the tale of ruthless Los Angeles water barons many times, and it still makes him angry, but he doesn’t watch it as often as he used to. […]
Heard around the West
In the West, people sometimes find bears scrounging for food in the kitchen or cougars pacing the deck. In the East, a chubby house cat can spook the neighbors. Residents of Bensalem, Penn., became alarmed when they saw what they thought was a 50-pound wildcat or worse, a “mysterious monster,” reports The Denver Post. Seven […]
