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 […]
Dr. Jane Goodall
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 […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
The new voice at BLM
Dallas lawyer Thomas A. Fry III talks and acts like a guy who’s in charge, but in reality, he’s “acting” director of the Bureau of Land Management. The 54-year-old Fry is the second acting director of the BLM in five years. Mike Dombeck supervised the BLM for three years as acting director before becoming chief […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Web hosts faux greens
The practice of “green-scamming’ – stealing an environmental group’s name to further an opposing cause – may be acquiring a whole new meaning on the Internet. Members of the Pulp and Paper Workers Resource Council at the Potlatch Inc. mill in Lewiston, Idaho, got so mad at the Idaho Conservation League for opposing timber sales […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Montana won’t bend for bison
The Montana Department of Livestock continues to play hardball with bison leaving Yellowstone National Park despite urging from federal agencies to let the animals roam. In mid-March, state workers removed protesters blocking a Forest Service road near West Yellowstone, Mont., and arrested six members of the group, Buffalo Field Campaign. That cleared the way for […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Now, salmon in the backyard
Where roads cross the flowing waters of Kelsey Creek, a six-mile-long stream contained entirely within the city of Bellevue, Wash., signs inform motorists: “This is a salmon stream.” Some residents are surprised. Kit Paulsen, who leads the city’s salmon education program, says, “A number of people have called to say they didn’t know there was […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
The Wayward West
Black-tailed prairie dogs may have no place to go as bulldozers threaten their colonies on Colorado’s sprawling Front Range. The South Plains Land Trust tried to create a preserve in Baca County for refugee prairie dogs last year, but ranchers there succeeded in getting a law on the books that outlaws the altruistic gesture (HCN, […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
No go for a gold mine
Despite its reputation, the 1872 Mining Law may no longer be a friend of the mining industry. On March 26, the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture denied the plan of operations for a proposed open-pit gold mine in north-central Washington (HCN, 8/31/98), saying it failed to meet the requirements of the century-old […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Charting the course of the San Pedro
In the hot, dry grasslands of southeastern Arizona, the San Pedro River is an oasis. Unlike many other desert rivers, the shallow San Pedro is free-flowing, and its banks are soil – not concrete. Cottonwood and willow forests line the northward-flowing river, from its origins in Sonora, Mexico, to its confluence with the Gila River, […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Saint Contrary: John Wesley Powell
If the American West were to adopt a secular, flawed, feet-of-clay patron saint, John Wesley Powell, whose March 24th birthday just passed, would be the man. Powell, who was born in 1834 and died in 1902, epitomized grit and courage, qualities the West likes to honor. He lost an arm at Shiloh commanding a battery […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Heard around the West
The fun of fast and fearless driving is fizzling out in Montana. On May 28, the state’s dubious distinction as the only state in the nation without a daytime speed limit will come to an end. Montana Gov. Marc Racicot signed legislation making the daytime limit 75 mph on interstate highways and 70 mph on […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
A history of how a grassroots rebellion won a water war
I made the mistake of reading Peter Carrels’ Uphill Against Water not long after I’d read David Remnick’s Lenin’s Tomb, his account of the fall of the Soviet Union, and at times had trouble remembering whether I was in South Dakota or in the old U.S.S.R. Of course, in South Dakota, political opponents were not […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Strangling the Last Best River
Montana statesman Mike Mansfield, summing up the highlights of his career in the U.S. Senate, claimed to be most proud that he “had saved the Yellowstone River from the Corps of Engineers.” But while the Yellowstone is still the longest undammed river in the Lower 48, it is now a long way from “saved.” A […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Gold mine capsizes in Westwater Canyon
Kayakers and rafters are planning celebratory boat trips down Westwater Canyon on the Colorado River this spring. As they float past the redrock walls, they can look around and see, well … othing. Their joy stems from the recent removal of mine claims situated on 960 acres in the canyon, within a wilderness study area. […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Dear Friends
Report from the trash patrol A Saturday morning spent cleaning up two miles of State Highway 133 created a variety of reactions among the participants. Some of us came away satisfied. All of us came away hot and dirty. But Betsy Offermann came away determined: “The next time I see someone litter, I’m going to […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
In the ’90s, trapping still has a role
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The heyday of the mountain man lasted only a few decades, ending in the 1830s, when both the market and the supply of beaver fizzled out. But the tradition lives on. In towns around the West, and even in the Midwest, “mountain men” celebrate […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
A Wyoming trapper seeks pelts, and beauty
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. You can hear the pleasure in his voice. “Look at those beauties. Hello, ladies, hello, you beautiful things,” says Tom Lucas. Five bighorn ewes wander away from us, only slightly alarmed at two humans in their territory. “I just love seeing wildlife.” Tom Lucas […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Trapping in the United States
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Long before Europeans came to the North American continent, natives were using traps to catch animals and fish. Eskimos used whalebone nooses to snare waterfowl, the Hopis used dead-fall rock slabs to kill fox and Aleutian Indians used barbed spikes to catch bears. According […]