The Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts is sponsoring its 10th Annual Spring Conference in Golden, Colo., April 6-8, opening with a talk by High Country News publisher Ed Marston. Topics include water rights, public policy updates, monitoring and enforcing conservation easements, and finding and using volunteers. Early registration deadline is March 15. Write Colorado Coalition […]
10th Annual Spring Conference
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Northwest Wilderness Conference
Author David Brower and veteran Northwest environmentalist Polly Dyer will speak at the Northwest Wilderness Conference in Seattle, March 31-April 2, where everything from Lewis and Clark’s legacy to the economic value of wilderness will be discussed. Sponsored by the Wilderness Society and the Northwest Wilderness and Parks Conference, the groups want to increase wilderness […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
High Altitude Revegetation Workshop
Colorado State University’s High Altitude Revegetation Workshop in Fort Collins, Colo., March 8-10, features William Perry Pendley, director of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, as keynote speaker, and a tour of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. Call 970/491-7501 for registration information, and Gary Thor for workshop information, 970/491-7296. This article appeared in the print edition of […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Impressions of Nature, an Internet photography exhibit and auction
American Land Conservancy is presenting Impressions of Nature, an Internet photography exhibit and auction. From March 3-31, visit their on-line gallery at www.impressionsofnature.org and view 71 works (see illustration at right) by renowned nature photographers such as Art Wolfe, Thomas Mangelson and David Muench. Then link to www.ebay.com to bid on the photos. For more […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
The Murie Center
The Murie Center in Moose, Wyo., in Grand Teton National Park, will host a gathering July 20-23 to celebrate the legacy of the Muries: Mardy and Olaus and Adolph and Louise Murie. The program includes speakers, conversations about wilderness, conservation biology, history, and personal reflections on the contributions the Muries have made to American conservation. […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Porta-potties to Posters: Planning Community Events
Community planners and historic site interpreters can prepare for tourism along Lewis and Clark’s historical route by attending a variety of courses at Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Training Academy in Great Falls, Mont. One session offered this summer, Porta-potties to Posters: Planning Community Events, even tells how to prepare for the unexpected. Contact Lewis and […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Saving the environment saves money
A coalition of 27 environmental, taxpayer and budget-watchdog groups has produced its sixth annual report, Green Scissors 2000, which cites 77 wasteful government programs that harm the environment and cost taxpayers $50 billion. The 26-page report targets programs such as timber and irrigation subsidies and predator control projects, detailing their cost to the taxpayer and […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Fed-bashing investigated
Gloria Flora got the ball rolling. After she resigned as supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in November (HCN, 11/22/99: Nevadans drive out forest supervisor), the Forest Service sent a team to investigate her charges of “anti-federal fervor” and “fed-bashing” in Nevada. Although the team’s report says that working conditions for Forest Service employees throughout […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Goose eggs in Congress
According to the League of Conservation Voters’ 1999 National Environmental Scorecard, over one-third of senators received a zero percent score. Western delegates cast their votes against the environment more often than their counterparts from other regions. Eleven Western senators earned a big zilch, including the entire delegations of Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. Of those, […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Bovine boondoggle
Cows eat up more than just grass in the West, says a special investigative report by the San Jose Mercury News. According to “Cash Cows: The Giveaway of the West,” federal-lands grazing consumes tax dollars without giving much back. Published in November and now available in eight-page color reprints, the report was compiled by 10 […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Drain it now, says organization
Glen Canyon Action Network, an advocacy group that wants to drain Lake Powell, will hold its Restoration Celebration and Rendezvous at Glen Canyon Dam on March 14. The event, which coincides with the International Day of Action Against Dams and the anniversary of author Edward Abbey’s death, “will be a celebration, not a protest,” says […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
A test case on access
MONTANA A federal judge says a family living inside Montana’s Glacier National Park can no longer use a snowmobile to access their property. Former Denver residents Jack and Stephanie McFarland sued Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in Missoula’s U.S. District Court on Feb. 2. The McFarlands said park officials had acted improperly when they refused to […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Tribe calls dam a trout trap
MONTANA The Blackfeet Tribe’s Fish and Game Department wants to remove a 95-year-old dam on its reservation that backs water up three miles into Glacier National Park. Getting rid of aging Sherburne Dam, says Blackfeet biologist Ira New Breast, would eliminate the biggest threat to the St. Mary River’s bull trout, a population recently added […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
The Wayward West
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has a new name for his proposed protected areas: National Landscape Monuments (HCN, 12/20/99: The Wayward West). Landscape monuments run by the Bureau of Land Management would lack the tourist amenities of national monuments, and mining would be prohibited. But not everyone is convinced that the BLM is the right agency […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Montana loses an environmental leader
WHITEFISH, Mont. – The works of great men last long beyond their passing, so it was fitting that the memorial service for Ben Cohen was in the community theater he helped found, at the base of the mountain he loved to ski. Friends, family, former and sitting Supreme Court justices, legislative colleagues, ski buddies, and […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
‘We still have a ways to go’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Jefferson Land Trust, based in Port Townsend, Wash., is a 10-year-old land trust on the Olympic Peninsula with 1,140 acres in conservation easements. In 1996, the trust also acquired the 130-acre Janis Bulis Forest Preserve, donated by Bulis’ widow, Erika Bulis, who continues […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
HCN at 30: The saga begins
On the cover of the Oct. 22, 1970, issue of High Country News, there’s a photograph of a hunter packing out what later would become the paper’s mascot, the Rocky Mountain goat. The man – Charlie Farmer of Cheyenne, Wyo. – was the first person to bag a mountain goat in Wyoming’s first official hunt. […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Heard around the West
The U.S. Forest Service is thinking about changing the color of its 15,000 vehicles, now mint green. A new color would help create a more modern image, says an agency spokesperson, according to the Portland Oregonian. Some employees say they’d also welcome some anonymity on the job. Needling the federal agency, the Northwest Forestry Association […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
The West ‘ain’t no cow country’
Whatever might be said of the arid West, it “ain’t no cow country.” That’s what Henry Fonda, playing Wyatt Earp, said of Arizona in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946). That’s also the bottom line of a book I wrote, The Western Range Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity. In it, […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
In Wyoming, academic freedom is an endangered species
Mention the term academic freedom, and some people picture professors sitting in ivory towers, writing arcane articles and books for each other. They’re wrong. Academic research and higher education may be specialized, but they are not arcane or irrelevant. Ask the students who flock to this nation’s major universities, or visit the industries that have […]