When the Endangered Species Act was signed 25 years ago, one of the first species to gain protection was the humpback chub. The chub, a warm-water fish native to the Colorado River system, has been headed downhill since 1967, when the construction of Glen Canyon Dam near the Arizona-Utah border cooled the downstream section of […]
Not such a cold fish
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Beetle wars
The Idaho Panhandle national forests want to log 153 million board-feet of timber this summer – doubling the cut of the past two years – to stop a bark beetle explosion in north Idaho and eastern Washington. Chainsaws are set to roar by July, and plans call for 5,000 acres of clear-cuts and 35 miles […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Fishers fail trout test
That fat trout sizzling in an Idaho skillet last summer might have been a species on the edge of extinction. Even though the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed bull trout as threatened under the Endangered Species Act last June, that doesn’t mean anglers know what the fish looks like. Almost 70 percent of those […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Private dam planned on public land
A private company’s plans to dam a river on Wyoming’s Bighorn National Forest has not found many fans – even among government agencies. Sheridan-based Little Horn Energy Wyoming wants to build two reservoirs: a 140-acre impoundment on the Dry Fork of the Little Bighorn River, and a 73-acre pond on a ridge about 2,400 feet […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
The long road to wilderness begins here
When U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D, introduced a new wilderness bill for western Colorado last month, there were loud cheers from the state’s wilderness movement. The bill seeks to protect more than a dozen tracts of mostly redrock canyon country managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Now begins the uphill battle to get it […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
The Wayward West
A Missoula, Mont., pulp mill says it won’t pump chlorine-related pollutants through its smokestacks or into the Clark Fork River anymore (HCN, 3/30/98). Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. says it’s pulling out of the paper-bleaching business because it can’t afford $40 million in EPA-mandated plant upgrades. Local activists cheered. “It’s just sinking in,” says Darrell Geist of […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Timber takes a hit
Timber targets on Northwestern national forests fell again in the latest attempt to fine-tune the Northwest Forest Plan (HCN, 11/23/98). “Now we have four years’ experience in implementing the Forest Plan,” says Forest Service spokeswoman Patty Burel. “We’re finding some things need adjusting.” The reductions, announced in December, drop the timber targets on eight national […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Heard around the West
We’re supposed to be getting fitter in America, but could it be we’re just getting fatter? In Seattle, Wash., the answer seems to be yes. Officials running the Puget Sound ferry recently reduced the seating capacity from 250 to 230 after finding that the bottoms of passengers had sprawled. The average width of a rear […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Giving voice to a Lakota history
It is hard to convey just how good this book is; it’s possibly the best book yet about the famous battle of the Little Bighorn. In Lakota Noon, Gregory F. Michno has gathered approximately 60 Indian narratives and produced a detailed reconstruction of the fighting. Individual warriors tell their stories through a chronological timeline of […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Beware Alaskans bearing gifts
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Oh, impressed, are you, that Bill Clinton wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy more land for the public domain? Well, consider this: So does Don Young. No, the crotchety, conservative chairman of the House Resources Committee has not turned green, or at least not very green. The bill […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Affluent effluent stinks, too
BIG SKY, Mont. – For years, this posh resort community of 2,500 people leaked partially treated sewage into the pristine waters of the Gallatin River, the blue-ribbon trout stream in Robert Redford’s movie, A River Runs Through It. In 1991 alone, an estimated 47 million gallons of effluent seeped illegally into the groundwater that feeds […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
A question of photography ethics
It’s been said that a fed bear is a dead bear. So it was ironic when National Wildlife, the glossy, bimonthly publication of the National Wildlife Federation, illustrated portions of an article on efforts to save grizzlies with three photos of grizzly bears that allegedly had been lured into the photographer’s backyard with birdseed. The […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Dear friends
Goodbye, Linda For a decade, Associate Publisher Linda Bacigalupi – often called Linda B, for obvious reasons – has been the administrative heart of High Country News, ensuring that we operated in ways that were orderly, efficient and, most of all, humane. Nonprofits tend to chew up their staffs, and Linda did her best to […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
‘The concept is simple’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Earl McKinney, a retired BLM range conservationist, was an early participant in the Trout Creek Mountain Working Group. He is based in Carson City, Nev. “Riparian areas are super simple to recover. All you have to do is let them regrow a little bit. […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
‘I will try anything’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Rose Strickland is a member of the Public Lands Committee of the Sierra Club and co-author of How Not to be Cowed – Livestock Grazing on the Public Lands: An Owner’s Manual. She is not an official member of the Trout Creek Mountain Working […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
‘I was mocked and set up’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Kathleen (Kathi) Simpson Myron, an artist from Canby, Ore., joined the Trout Creek Mountain Working Group members in 1988 as a representative of Oregon Trout. She left the group in 1994. “I got along fine until I became what they called a pushy broad […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
The ranch restored: An overworked land comes back to life
Note: in three sidebar articles accompanying this feature story, environmentalist Kathleen Simpson Myron, environmentalist Rose Strickland, and retired BLM range conservationist Earl McKinney give their perspectives in their own words. McDERMITT, Nev. – The Trout Creek Mountains of southeastern Oregon will never rank among America’s most magnificent peaks. Although beautiful in their way, the Trout […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Is there a market for tiny trees?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Flagstaff isn’t the first place to try its hand at manipulating forests. One southwestern Colorado county has already learned some hard lessons about restoration’s bottom line. Like the forests around Flagstaff, the ponderosa pine forests in Montezuma County, Colo., show the effects of fire […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
‘We need to get this stuff on the table’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Brett KenCairn is the coordinator of the Grand Canyon Forests Partnership. Before joining the Grand Canyon Trust this fall, he was the executive director of the Rogue Institute for Ecology and Economy in Ashland, Ore., and a board member of the Applegate Partnership, a […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
‘It’s really a sales program’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Henry Carey is the executive director of the Forest Trust, a nonprofit community forestry group based in Santa Fe, N.M.“The Forest Service is trying to get political support for a thinning program, but the fire problem is no more huge than it was 10 […]