Spawning chinook salmon would be better off if they didn’t have to swim the gantlet of four dams on Idaho’s Snake River, says a panel of independent scientists. By testing that hypothesis with a computer model, the scientists found threatened spring and summer chinook salmon would have a greater than 80 percent chance of restoration […]
Damning report on dams
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Ski the Butte?
Since the 1960s, some locals in Klamath Falls, Ore., have eyed Pelican Butte and dreamed of outfitting its snowy, timbered slopes with chairlifts and challenging ski runs. Past attempts fell flat when financiers ran out of money. Now, a Klamath Falls-based company with deep pockets is leading the effort to build a ski resort in […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Conservation can pay
Skip Newman, who runs a family ranch about 50 miles west of Great Falls, Mont., recently fenced off the banks of Muddy Creek, drilled a well and set up water troughs away from the stream for his cows. “There is an erosion and water quality problem, and I just wanted to do my part,” Newman […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Where will the waste wind up?
In December, the burial of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada was given a go-ahead by the release of a Department of Energy “viability assessment.” Project opponents, including the state of Nevada, say health and safety problems still aren’t addressed. “The assessment is a tool designed and dreamed up by the nuclear industry […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Oregon Caves park to grow
Oregon Caves National Monument is known for its crystal pools and delicate mineral deposits, yet at 480 acres, it’s tiny. The final version of a new management plan, however, calls for expanding the monument by seven times – to 3,400 acres – a notion first discussed in the 1930s. “It’s difficult to manage a natural […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
To trap or not?
When the red fox expanded its range and moved into coastal California in the 1980s, wildlife managers relied on leghold traps to stop the clever predators from killing endangered marsh birds such as the California clapper rail and California least tern. Without the traps, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said, the red fox could […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Wolves worry outfitters
Gray wolves transplanted to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho wilderness areas three and a half years ago are multiplying fast – but so are the concerns of Idaho hunting guides, who say the wolves are killing too many elk. “If the wolf recovery program goes on unchecked, it will put us out of business,” said […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
The Wayward West
Three men accused of slaughtering more than 30 wild horses in the Nevada desert have been arrested (HCN, 1/18/99). Two of the suspects, Scott Brendle and Darien Brock, are stationed at Marine Corps bases in California. Grisly details about the other suspect’s life have surfaced in Nevada newspapers. Anthony Merlino of Reno is described as […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
ELF strikes again
The Earth Liberation Front is keeping busy. On Jan. 16, it claimed responsibility for an arson fire in southern Oregon – its seventh attack in just over two years. On Dec. 27, a fire destroyed the corporate headquarters of U.S. Forest Industries in Medford, Ore. Less than a month later, the Associated Press office in […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Heard around the West
Small towns are different – sometimes because they’re the friendly places they’re cracked up to be. In the mountain town of Nederland, Colo., the owner of the local music store told writer Karuna Eberl that, although he’d be closed for vacation, she could still pick up from the local propane dealer a compact disc she’d […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Plant pays hefty fine for polluting the air
POCATELLO, Idaho – At the foot of the bare-faced Portneuf Mountains, plumes of white smoke issue from a cluster of smokestacks at FMC Corp.” s phosphorous plant, often obscuring the view of motorists passing by on Interstate 84. And charcoal-colored slag flanks the factory’s sides. The 1,400-acre Pocatello plant, first opened in 1949, is North […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Fun-hogs to replace cows in a Utah monument
As tourists flock to southern Utah’s new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, ranchers are breaking camp and moving out. In December, the nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust announced it had brokered a deal between five ranching families and the Bureau of Land Management to retire or relocate grazing allotments on about 120,000 acres inside the monument. “There […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
South Dakota tells a mine to stay put
DEADWOOD, S.D. – South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow, R, has a reputation for getting tough with Canadian companies. The popular four-term governor made news last fall when he stopped Canadian farm exports at his state’s borders, but environmentalists say his attempt to salvage a bad mining situation is wrongheaded and could only make things worse. […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Ranchers don’t want refugee prairie dogs
SPRINGFIELD, Colo. – Prairie dog relocator Susan Miller climbed the steps of the 70-year-old Baca County courthouse on New Year’s Eve day, thinking she was headed to a private meeting with three county commissioners. Instead, she stepped inside to face dozens of angry cattle ranchers. The ranchers had gotten wind of the meeting and were […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Dear friends
Congratulations Congratulations to Ed and Martha Quillen, who will mark the fifth anniversary of their monthly magazine, Colorado Central, on Feb. 13, at Daylight Donuts, at Third and F in downtown Salida. Everyone who has written for the magazine in the last year or so, the Quillens say, is invited. They also say that less […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
From river to river
Note: This front-page editor’s note is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. From river to river around the West, details vary, but the bigger picture is the same: The federal government brandishes the stick of the Endangered Species Act because it’s almost the only tool the government has to restore river ecosystems. Yet in […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Saving the Platte
On one of the most spoken-for rivers in the West, environmentalists, irrigators and state and federal governments thread their way through a tenuous agreement
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Who’s really the Neanderthal?
Dear HCN, I resent Stephen Gies’ repeated references to manhood and the male ego, since I happen to be female and an avid hunter (HCN, 10/26/98). While condemning hunters as barbaric Neanderthals, Gies implies that hunting his way (with a self-fashioned stone knife or spear and wearing animal hides) would be OK. Who’s the Neanderthal […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Don’t blame Freud
Dear HCN, I am unaware of any science that can demonstrate hunters are “subconsciously killing other male humans because of competition for females.” In my reading of the literature, killing and bringing in high-level protein packages in the shape of fish and game gets you more access to females, not less. More access means greater […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Radical is a relative concept
Dear HCN, About 15 years ago, I heard poet and anti-war activist Father Daniel Berrigan speak in Portland. Berrigan was a leader in the Plowshares movement, whose participants entered factories and government installations to physically damage nuclear weapons. After his speech, which was both passionate and supremely logical, Berrigan took questions from the audience. One […]