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 […]
GASP! Some greens are grinning
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 […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
‘Appropriate balance’ not pertinent at Petroglyph
Dear HCN, I was glad to see your coverage of the crisis at Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque (HCN, 10/25/99). While in New Mexico three years ago, I spent a day exploring that monument. With its eloquent, ageless images, it impressed me as a treasure of transcendent value, affording civilization a new and better way […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
We need a new vision for the wild
Dear HCN, In his interesting piece on disputes about creating new wilderness areas, Jon Margolis dubs the William Cronon critique of the wilderness ethic post-modernist, meaning that it’s mostly about an impressionistic appraisal of wildlands (HCN, 9/27/99). Margolis misses the point here; Cronon’s analysis is more substantive than that. The modern wilderness movement believes that […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Save land now
In 1948, the state of Montana bought a 67,000-acre ranch near the southern flank of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area in order to protect land for wintering elk and deer. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks manages the tract, known as the Blackfoot-Clearwater Wildlife Management Area, but private inholdings are increasingly susceptible to […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Rivers among us
Even in the arid West, water wars aren’t inevitable, according to a new study by Reason Public Policy Institute in Los Angeles. Collaborative local planning efforts are an effective method of balancing water needs while protecting the environment, according to the 35-page study Rivers Among Us: Local Watershed Preservation and Resource Management in the Western […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Hard times in rural Idaho
Some portions of rural Idaho that suffered economically 15 years ago are doing well today. Formerly sleepy spots like the Teton Valley are faced with exploding populations, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Spokane, Wash., are growing together along a corridor of development. But not all of Idaho is booming. The state’s third Profile of Rural […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
A trickle of hope
A thirsty system of dams, growing desert cities and irrigators may never allow the Colorado River delta to be the mecca of animal and plant diversity it once was. But Mexican and U.S. researchers working with the Environmental Defense Fund say the brackish and often polluted flow that does reach the delta could help revive […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Water crusader wants allies
Perry R. Wilkes Jr. has been quietly working to change Albuquerque’s water policies for 25 years. An aeronautical engineer, Wilkes may lack formal training in water, but he reads, goes to meetings and in the last year, he’s gotten organized. He and his wife, Bette, founded the nonprofit Citizens for a Rational Water Policy. What […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Pumice mine is a test case
The U.S. Forest Service is suing an Arizona mining company for taking pumice from the San Francisco Peaks. If Tufflite Inc. loses, it could owe the government up to $300,000 for illegally mining on the Coconino National Forest northeast of Flagstaff. The mining company insists it owes nothing because pumice is considered unique and therefore […]