Growing up in Canyonlands National Park in the 1940s and ’50s, Alan Wilson often took camping trips into remote areas of Utah with his father, Bates Wilson, Canyonlands’ first superintendent. “The sky was absolutely brilliant at night,” Alan Wilson recalls. Last summer, Wilson returned to Canyonlands. Instead of finding a stark, black sky filled with […]
Star light, star bright, where are you tonight?
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Quincy Library Group bars outsiders
The Quincy Library Group, nationally acclaimed for its open and politically diverse membership, will be holding some of its meetings behind closed doors. The restriction, adopted March 30 in a unanimous voice vote, is to prevent disruptions the group fears from longtime opponents of its controversial forest management plan for three national forests in the […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Western weather: feast or famine
In February, Washington’s Mount Baker Ski Area was forced to turn skiers away for two days – a storm had buried even the chairlifts in snow. Boasting 90 feet of snow, the mountain is very close to setting a world record for yearly snowfall. Neighboring Mount Rainier isn’t far behind with 77 feet. Getting much […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Dear Friends
Out of the courts Robert Amon, the grandfather of the Earth First! forest protests at Idaho’s Cove-Mallard (HCN, 9/2/96), wrote us recently to share his good news. For the first time in more than five years, he tells us, he is legally untangled. The last lawsuit against him was dropped by Highland Enterprises, an Idaho […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
‘It’s like the Manhattan Project…’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Michael Soulé: “We live in an extraordinarily bleak period for nature. Things are going to get worse before they get better. We’ll lose, I would guess, half of the world’s species in the next 50 years. It’s quite tragic – and preventable. The degree […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
‘This is not a radical notion…’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Dave Foreman: “Earth First!, as far as I’m concerned, died in 1988. All the urban anarchist children – the monkey-wrenching types – started the modern Earth First! (after I left). It is not even a descendent of the original. All they wanted was stories […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Can science heal the land?
From the air, west-central New Mexico is a sea of brown, lined here and there with a dry riverbed or peppered with juniper and mesquite. In places, the vegetation is so sparse that from 3,000 feet up, you can make out the pockmarks of kangaroo rat colonies. “They look like smallpox vaccinations,” says Merry Schroeder, […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Extra photos to Visionaries or Dreamers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Extra photos to Visionaries or Dreamers.
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Visionaries or dreamers?
“Our vision is simple. We live for the day when grizzlies in Chihuahua have an unbroken connection to grizzlies in Alaska; when gray wolf populations are continuous from New Mexico to Greenland; when vast unbroken forests and flowing plains again thrive and support pre-Columbian populations of plants and animals; when humans dwell with respect, harmony, […]
Posted inAugust 16, 1999: Standing up for the underdog
Standing up for the underdog
On a sunny fall day about a year ago, Jonathan Proctor arrived in the prairie community of Chadron, Neb., for an evening of proselytizing. Though groomed to become a Lutheran minister like his father, the boyish-looking 31-year-old had not come to town to save souls. His was a more difficult task. He would try to […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Nothing is everything
THE SPACE CLOSEST TO OUR BODIES Imagine some tan grass and sage, monoliths and blow outs, flatness the feet cannot believe, distance the eye laughs at as it fumbles blindly with the ends of all time. Imagine everything here moves (even the cactus will come close to a sleeping man and the beetle will tunnel […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Draining Lake Powell
Colorado College hosts a debate about one of the more contentious proposals today in the West – draining Lake Powell. Floyd Dominy, former Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, and Dave Wegner, who directed environmental studies in Glen Canyon, take up the question April 21 at 7 p.m. at the college’s Packard Hall in Colorado Springs. Contact […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Wyoming Wildlife Federation
The Wyoming Wildlife Federation’s 53rd annual meeting in Story, Wyo., May 15-16, features an awards banquet, guided tours, a Raffle Extravaganza and dancing to Cajun/Latin music. Call 800/786-5434 or write the federation at P.O. Box 106, Cheyenne, WY 82003. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Wyoming Wildlife Federation.
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Earle A. Chiles Award
The High Desert Museum is calling for nominations for the 1999 Earle A. Chiles Award, given to honor thoughtful management of natural and cultural resources of the High Desert. Nominations are due May 31. For details, contact Binnie Rowe, 59800 S. Highway 97, Bend, OR 97702-7963, (541/382-4754), browe@highdesert.org This article appeared in the print edition […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Desert Conference
Desert wildlands activists discuss grazing reform in the Great Basin April 29-May 2 at the 21st annual Desert Conference in southeastern Oregon. Todd Wilkinson, author of Science Under Siege, is a speaker and lots of field trips are available. Write the Oregon Natural Desert Association, 16 NW Kansas, Bend, OR 97701, or call 503/525-0193. This […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
A River of Dreams and Realities
At the Arkansas River Basin Water Forum, A River of Dreams and Realities, in Caûon City, Colo., April 23-24, ranchers, Bureau of Reclamation managers, members of the U.S. Geological Survey and locals will try to find solutions for a resource too much in demand. For registration, contact Pat Clifford at CSU Cooperative Extension, 411 N. […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Dr. Jane Goodall
Primate expert and author Dr. Jane Goodall will speak on “Chimpanzees: So like us’ at the Snow King Resort in Jackson Hole, Wyo., on April 27 at 7 p.m. Goodall, brought to Jackson by the nonprofit Murie Center, has researched primate behavior for decades and has made a series of discoveries that have changed the […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Preserving Our Rural Landscape
Montanans worried about the effects of development and population growth on wildlife and its habitat have a reason to attend the Montana Audubon Annual Meeting: Held in Hamilton on April 23-25, the conference will focus on “Preserving Our Rural Landscape.” To learn more, contact the state office at P.O. Box 595, Helena, MT 59624 (406/443-3949). […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Hot Topics in Natural Resources
Grab a box lunch at the University of Colorado Law School this spring and hear about natural resource controversies in Colorado. Coalbed methane in the San Juan Basin is the subject April 16, and the legacy of acid mine drainage in the San Juan Mountains will be discussed on May 4. To register for “Hot […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Nuclear waste dump opens
Twenty-five years after it was first proposed, and a decade after its construction, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad, N.M., received its first truckload of nuclear debris. The world’s first geologically engineered nuclear waste dump opened early on March 26, right after a federal judge lifted a seven-year-old injunction that had kept the facility […]