Cows as we know them seem to be on the way out in the West. The Arizona Republic reports that in the “once stolid cattle country” of southeastern Arizona, a hydroponic tomato greenhouse near Willcox, Ariz., employs more than 500 people, while ranchers now raise “all kinds of weirdness from ostriches to rabbits and chinchillas.” […]
Heard around the West
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Protesters raised the right questions
WASHINGTON, D.C. – So here I was last year, in this Washington, the one with the big domed building, and all the way across the country in the other Washington, the one with the big domed mountain, there was real political action – smashing Starbucks. Well, explained one of the peaceful protesters via my hotel […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Political war continues over bison herd
All is quiet on the western front of Yellowstone National Park. As 50 bison graze within a few miles of the park border near West Yellowstone. So far this winter the animals have had no reason to cross the park line; mild weather has made foraging easy. Outside that boundary, in what has become an […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Mountain of mine waste may move after all
MOAB, Utah – A decade-long battle over a 10.5 million-ton uranium mill tailings site near the Colorado River (HCN, 4/13/98) may finally be coming to an end. Here, on Jan. 14, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced his support for a plan to transfer control of the abandoned Atlas Corp. mill site to […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Yellowstone wolves are here to stay
Almost 300 wolves that are part of a transplant program in Yellowstone National Park and Idaho can remain in their new homes, thanks to a new ruling. On Jan. 13, a three-judge panel from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver reversed a two-year-old decision by Federal Judge William Downes that a federal […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Montana burns game farm elk
On a cold and windy morning last Dec. 7, livestock officials began killing the elk on the Kesler Game Farm near Philipsburg, Mont. The herd had been under quarantine for chronic wasting disease for over a year when an elk that had just died on the ranch was found to be infected. Local game wardens […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Dear Friends
It’s not easy It’s not easy to move a pile of radioactive rock that sprawls across the equivalent of 118 football fields in the floodplain of the Colorado River (HCN, 5/26/97). Not easy, but possible, as Bill Hedden of Castle Valley, Utah, has just shown (see page 4). Hedden, who is Utah Conservation Director for […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Not your average beauty queen
Note: This article appeared as a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Rachel Benally, recent runner-up in the Southwest Regional Miss Navajo Pageant, Internet surfer, and unflinching slaughterer of her grandmother’s goats, lies in a reclining chair in her Aunt Sharon’s living room. She is recovering from last night’s TV-watching marathon. Wrapped in a comforter, […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Searching for pasture
Note: this feature article is accompanied by this issue’s Uncommon Westerner profile: “Not your average beauty queen.” At the college of agriculture at Utah State University, a controversy has erupted over a flock of sheep. It doesn’t look like much at first; it concerns the politics of academic funding and the logistics of breeding livestock. […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
How the Indians were set up to fail at bison management
I wasn’t born soon enough to be a cowboy on the West’s old open range. But for the last 10 years, I’ve been lucky enough to help gather a herd of up to 500 bison every fall on 30 square miles of Montana prairie. I live on the reservation, though I’m not a Native American, […]
Posted inJune 19, 2000: Accidental refuge: Should we save the Salton Sea?
‘They wasted a lot of money’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Mary Belardo is chairwoman of the Torres-Martinez Band of Desert Cahuilla Indians. The Torres-Martinez still own land under the sea, but a bill now in Congress would allow the band to purchase 11,800 high-and-dry acres closer to the towns of Indio and Palm Springs. […]
Posted inJune 19, 2000: Accidental refuge: Should we save the Salton Sea?
‘It’s no horror story to me’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Norm Niver has lived in Salton City with his wife, Connie, for nearly 30 years. A retired professional musician and TV repairman, he now publishes The Pelican Post, a newsletter about the Salton Sea. He’s been known to test the purity of the sea’s […]
Posted inJune 19, 2000: Accidental refuge: Should we save the Salton Sea?
‘Something has got to give’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Steve Horvitz is the superintendent of the Salton Sea State Recreation Area. Steve Horvitz: “A lot of people may argue and say, “Why is the sea so important?” Because it supports the millions of birds that use it. They ask, “Isn’t there another resource […]
Posted inJanuary 17, 2000: STOP
Why not brake for kittens?
Dear HCN, As one who lives on a dirt road, drives a lot of them, and was a volunteer emergency medical tech for 12 years, I can testify that driving 75 on the road driven by Peggy Godfrey, however straight, even in daytime, endangers the driver, wildlife, cattle, and anyone or anything else in the […]
Posted inJanuary 17, 2000: STOP
Locals do it better
Dear HCN, Your article on Washington County’s Habitat Conservation Plan in southern Utah (HCN, 8/30/99) failed to make it clear that the plan is already successfully protecting tortoises inside the 61,000-acre Red Cliffs Desert Reserve and that the county is working further to reduce impacts to tortoises. With the help of federal, state and local […]
Posted inJanuary 17, 2000: STOP
The bulldozer wins
Dear HCN, “Bulldozers Roll in Tucson” described the tragedy one can expect when wildlife gets in the way of children – and their parents. I learned this lesson at a middle school built in a piûon-juniper forest near Cedar City, Utah. The spring after the school opened, roaming students spotted a nearby great horned owl […]
Posted inJanuary 17, 2000: STOP
Dam corrections
Dear HCN, We immediately found two errors on the front page of your article “Unleashing the Snake” (HCN, 12/20/99). Lower Granite Dam is not in Idaho – it is in Washington (see your map on page 11). And coho salmon are not also called king – they are called silver (the king is also called […]
Posted inJanuary 17, 2000: STOP
No new vision needed
Dear HCN, I was interested in the views of William Cronon, and his defender, William R. Dickinson, that we need a new vision of wilderness that takes into account the effects humans had on the North American environment in the pre-Columbian period (HCN, 12/6/99). These views are also similar to those of Prof. Charles Kay […]
Posted inJanuary 17, 2000: STOP
Why fee me?
Dear HCN, I applaud Annie Conner and the Clearwater National Forest in their efforts to erase roads and recreate some semblance of an ecologically viable system in north-central Idaho (HCN, 11/8/99). Although I, too, have used many a Forest Service road, I will gladly curtail my off-road driving time for the good of the system, […]
Posted inJanuary 17, 2000: STOP
Does Web site turn ranchers into targets?
Publicly funded predator control in the West is raising more than coyote hackles. The newest scuffle was sparked by an Internet Web page, not by poisons and traps. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Albuquerque-based animal rights group, New West Research, obtained files from Wildlife Services, the federal agency formerly known as Animal Damage […]