Our hearts go out to that beloved icon of the Forest Service, Smokey Bear. Anxiously, perhaps, the big bear awaits his new makeover. Sure, he’ll still be pot-bellied, furry and sport a forest ranger hat. But it’s a safe bet he will no longer deliver the message: “Only you can prevent forest fires.” The spokesbear […]
Communities
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Fruita draws the line against sprawl
Rural town takes a page from ritzy mountain enclaves
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Heard around the West
Somewhat of a ham when it comes to boosting Idaho’s agriculture or timber industry, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig has obligingly posed for photos standing next to a large person peering out from a bulging potato costume. But his Web site, www.senate.gov/~craig/frontpage.htm, recently featured the beaming Republican senator showing off his perky six-month-old West Highland terrier. […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Benigna’s Chimayo: Cuentos from the Old Plaza
And then Grandma sits down on an old wooden wheel, leans on her knees, tucks her skirt between her legs, and begins her favorite of the old stories. I listen, watching the dust motes float in shafts of sunlight … To a young Don Usner, summers in the New Mexican hamlet of Chimayo meant chili […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Fool’s Gold: Telluride’s ‘magical realism’
Rob Schultheis moved to Colorado in 1973, when pop stars began singing about the Rocky Mountains and asking whether you’d ever been “mellow.” His newest book, Fool’s Gold, zooms in on his home turf of Telluride, where “summer is briefer than a butterfly’s dream … autumn an afterthought, and winter rules.” When Schultheis arrived, Telluride […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Monument status could wreck ruins
BLM officials need money to manage masses
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Heard around the West
“WOW! Did I miss something?” asks Patrice Mason in her letter to the Moab, Utah, Times-Independent. Then she jumped into the fray: “I have a vagina. Half of the people in Moab have vaginas. And let us not forget that each and every one of us passed through one on the way into the world. […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
An environmentalist in the heart of cowboy culture
ELKO, Nev. — It’s not often that the prospect of a humanities lecture stirs protest. But that’s what happened when former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall was invited to give the annual lecture at the 17th annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering. The Elko gathering has become the state’s premier folklore event, and it brings about 8,000 people […]
Posted inApril 9, 2001: The water empress of Vegas
Wild in the city
Too often when we speak of wildness in the West, we only envision vast untracked settings like the Bob Marshall Wilderness, High Unitas or the Owyhee Canyonlands. It is easy to forget that wildness can still be found within our ever-growing urban landscapes. Now, editors Michael Houck and M.J. Cody have released a new book, […]
Posted inApril 9, 2001: The water empress of Vegas
How green is this growth?
Opposition builds against a ‘model’ development in Southern California
Posted inApril 9, 2001: The water empress of Vegas
Heard around the West
How low-flow can you go? In Redmond, Wash., the developer of a “Green Built” resort community touts its toilets as so advanced, they adapt to individual behavior, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Australian-made Caroma toilets require their users to decide how much water to flush with: one button for No. 1 and another for No. […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Time Warp
Shoot, the enviros haven’t won the battle for the West’s public lands after all Back in the 1980s, the West was cut and dried. Ronald Reagan and James Watt were there to protect us from soft-on-Communism redwoods, while environmentalists climbed tripods and lay down on the statehouse steps in protest. There were good guys and […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Teach the children well
Corporations, conservationists vie for students’ minds in the unregulated world of environmental education
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Luxury looms over Moab
A planned upscale resort has activists fearing “Aspenization”
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
How green is this Tree?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. What better way to learn about ecology than to study trees? That’s what the founders of Project Learning Tree thought more than two decades ago, when they began one of the most successful environmental education programs in the nation. Today, more than 25 million […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Science teachers go local
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Though every second-grader knows the word “environment,” many will never get any training in environmental studies until they go to college. But they would be assured of it if they got into Jeff Mitchell’s high school biology class in the logging town of Philomath, […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
A quick resource guide for teachers of the wild
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. If teachers take the initiative, they can search the Internet and find instant access to a host of environmental education materials from a wide variety of pro-environment and government sources. Here is a partial list: Teachers new to the field might want to visit […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Heard around the West
Boing, boing, boing … Ridgway, Colo., sculptor Clifton Barr looked up from work in his metal and wood studio and saw a large, antlered deer “jumping like a bucking horse” in the neighbor’s yard, reports the Ouray County Plaindealer. Barr did a double take and took off his glasses just to make sure, but when […]
Posted inMarch 12, 2001: Divided Waters
The other Mexico
Certainly the press, other governments and tourists are most aware of the official, elite, corrupt Mexico; the Mexico that won’t allow a poor man a chance; the Mexico behind the sunglasses. I’ve even been told by people, including Mexicans, that this is Mexican culture. But I know that’s not true. There is another Mexico. — […]
Posted inMarch 12, 2001: Divided Waters
Last stand for a roadside attraction
Proposed development near Cody’s Old Trail Town sparks outrage