Around the West this winter, citizens flocked to Forest Service “listening sessions,” part of an initial scoping process to collect comments on President Clinton’s October directive to protect roadless forests (HCN, 11/8/99). Conservationists dominated regional meetings held in 10 cities, including Portland, Missoula, Salt Lake City and Albuquerque. Many supported the Oregon-based Heritage Forest Campaign: […]
Westerners take sides on road ban
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
All you can eat at Pueblito del Paiz
Ted Medina slams down a pan of, oh God, what is it? A pig’s head. Snout, eyes and yellowish toasted ears bubbling like Picasso’s own dinner. “You name it, it’s all good!” says Ted, stocky, aproned and grinning from under a cap emblazoned Denver Fire Department. “Here, you nibble on this bit here. It’s good!” […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Heard around the West
After the “battle in Seattle” over world trade simmered down, marketing opportunities began to boil: The streets seemed paved with gold, or at least souvenirs. Budding entrepreneurs scoured downtown and came up with rubber bullets, broken police billies and the occasional tear-gas canister; then they put the booty up for auction on the Internet. One […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Bulldozers roll in Tucson
TUCSON, Ariz. – As a bulldozer rolled across a patch of desert, Esther Underwood smiled. It was a brisk, windy December day at the edge of one of Tucson’s rapidly growing suburbs as the dozer scooped up desert scrub and knocked over prickly pear and cholla cacti. “Isn’t that pretty?” Underwood said of the bulldozer. […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Hanford leaves a surprising Cold War legacy
Wahluke means “walking uphill a long way” in the Wanapum Indian language. That’s an apt metaphor for the more than three-decade battle for the Wahluke Slope – a significant part of the last untouched sagebrush desert in the Columbia Basin. For 30 years, farmers and conservationists have fought over what would happen to this land […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
An upscale development divides a town
DONNELLY, Idaho – Dave Dewey used to lead a peaceful life in this bucolic town. The 28-year-old Valley County resident lived a typical Joe Citizen existence, working as a concrete contractor, raising a family, and serving on the county planning and zoning commission. Then came WestRock. Touted as a world-class resort plan, the sleek “WestRock […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Counties grab for control of national forests
Last month, the House of Representatives struck a blow for local control of the national forests. For decades, counties have received 25 percent of the revenue from Forest Service timber harvested within their borders to fund county schools and roads. But in this decade, as federal logging has declined by 70 percent, so have timber […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
WTO limps home from Seattle
SEATTLE, Wash. – After the tear gas cleared from Seattle’s streets, environmentalists and labor unions emerged as the only clear winners from last week’s tumultuous World Trade Organization ministerial meeting. Trade officials hoped that the meeting, the first major WTO event held in the U.S., would be a smooth North American debut for the international […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
GASP! Some greens are grinning
Most environmentalists would agree they have a hard time throwing a party. They are not a group prone to wild optimism and loud hoorays; development pressures in the West usually make the future look too bleak. Yet some say there’s much to celebrate as 1999 comes to a close. At the top of most lists […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Dear Friends
On to the millennium As is our wont, we will skip an issue this winter, both to give readers a chance to plow through that accumulating stack and to give us time to regroup for the next 1,000 years, give or take a few centuries. The next issue will be dated Jan. 17, 2000. Good […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Salmon crisis is a kaleidoscope of complexity
My mother was fascinated by the Columbia River and the fate of the salmon. This was partly because I work with these issues, but also because they have the kaleidoscopic complexity and human idiocy that all really hard problems have. She thought those were the only problems worth our time. From her home in Salt […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
‘People are important’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Frank Carroll works for the Potlatch Corporation in Lewiston, Idaho, which uses the Snake River waterway to barge some of its paper and wood products to Portland and beyond. Before working for Potlatch, he worked on Idaho’s Boise National Forest. “I don’t like simple […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
‘Dams made the modern Northwest’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Keith Petersen is a historian and the author of River of Life, Channel of Death: Fish and Dams on the Lower Snake. He is currently Idaho’s statewide coordinator for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. “I grew up in western Washington. My dad worked on […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
A 700th generation fisherman
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Donald Sampson, 38, an Umatilla Indian, is a fish biologist and executive director of the Columbia River Intertribal Fisheries Commisssion, based in Portland, Ore. The commission represents the four tribes with treaty rights to Columbia River fish – the Warm Springs, Umatilla, Nez Perce […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Tribes cast for tradition, catch controversy
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. ARLINGTON, Ore. – Elaine Hoptowit has barely thrown the last salmon from her boat into a cooler in her pickup truck when customers show up. Wearing yellow rubber overalls, the Pocatello, Idaho, grandmother lifts from the truck a 17-pound chinook salmon she has pulled […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
‘The science pushed me’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Jim Baker lives in the rolling wheat country outside Pullman, Wash. For the past seven years, he has been the Sierra Club’s point man on Columbia River salmon. “I was one of those conservationists who had to be dragged kicking and to be dragged […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Unleashing the Snake
As salmon runs dwindle, the Pacific Northwest ponders a once-unthinkable option: dismantle the dams
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Check your facts on ORVs
Dear HCN, I think Todd Wilkinson should check his facts a bit more thoroughly next time he writes an article such as “Forest Service sets off into uncharted territory” (HCN, 11/8/99). He states that the BlueRibbon Coalition “receives significant funding from OHV manufacturers and timber companies.” I suppose this depends on your definition of “significant.” […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Give the Border Patrol credit
Dear HCN, The author of “Battered Borderlands’ (HCN, 9/27/99) went to extra lengths to unfairly portray the Border Patrol as being totally oblivious of, and uncaring toward, the environmental impact of our activities in the desert. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have been working diligently to comply with NEPA, and at the […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
The prairie dog deserves its day
Dear HCN, I was astounded to read Bob Hartley’s letter, which seems to declare that the issue of prairie dogs is not “of true significance to citizens of the U.S. West” (HCN, 9/13/99). Where has he been living? I greatly appreciated your article, as many communities which I have lived in over the past couple […]