Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Saving the ranch. John Fetcher started his working life as an engineer in Philadelphia before buying a ranch with his brother in the Elk River Valley in 1949. In the 1950s he and three partners began developing the Steamboat Ski Area, which they sold […]
Communities
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Rancher’s new cash crop will be scenery
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Saving the ranch. Private conservation efforts in places such as the Elk River Valley may be able to preserve the look of the land. But if ranchers become tenants on property owned by wealthy people from somewhere else, what happens to the culture? “There’s […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Trust in the Land
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Saving the ranch. In the scramble to preserve Western open space, land trusts have taken the lead. “I see a lot of people looking at land trusts as a real bridge between environmentalists and landowners,” says Jean Hocker, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Land […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Local land-use plan sabotaged by state
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – At night the lights of Steamboat Springs rise up from the Yampa River Valley by the thousands, advancing east toward Mount Werner like a small army laying siege to the ski lifts. At the eastern edge of town they end abruptly, running up against the dark mass of Emerald Mountain. The […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Traffic flow 1, trees 0
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – When the bulldozer smacked a 40-foot-tall cottonwood tree, the tree first wavered and wobbled. Then, a loud crack rang out, and the tree toppled, its bright green leaves crushed as they glistened in the sunlight. This scene was repeated more than a dozen times in mid-October, as the Albuquerque city government started […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Rural reality check
RURAL REALITY CHECK Four years ago, economist Ray Rasker began touring towns in the Greater Yellowstone region with a slideshow. His message: New growth in local economies comes mostly from high tech and service industries, not resource extraction like mining or grazing. Rasker, with The Wilderness Society in Bozeman, Mont., says, “Most people told me, […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Yearning for balance
YEARNING FOR BALANCE Americans find simplicity complicated. According to a recent survey conducted for the Merck Family Fund, a foundation that promotes environmental sustainability, the majority of people questioned said they want to simplify their lives, spend more time with loved ones and consume less. But they have found it’s easier said than done. Although […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
The ax falls at the University of Washington
Environmental institute is chopped; other programs cut
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Silencing science at UW: one researcher’s story
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The ax falls at the University of Washington, in a special issue about the West’s forestry schools. When the University of Washington offered aquatic biologist Steve Ralph a job in 1989 directing a major new stream-research program, he jumped at the chance. His […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
A new breed of academic at Colorado State
Note: this story is one of several feature articles in a special issue about the West’s forestry schools. Fort Collins, Colo.- At 6:38 a.m., Rick Knight is happily installed in his campus office, propelling himself about at high velocity on a chair with well-greased rollers. He drums out memos on his computer, organizes slides for […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
The end of certainty
Western universities learn there is more to forestry than chainsaws
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Environmental paradigm spurs collaborative research
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The end of certainty, in a special issue about the West’s forestry schools. For many years, the federal government spent more money studying the breeding and production of corn than it did studying forests. Yale Forestry Professor John Gordon speculates this was related to […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Two views of forest health at the University of Idaho
Are the forests sick or well?
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
‘Anything you say about a whole forest is wrong’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Two views of forest health at the University of Idaho, in a special issue about the West’s forestry schools. Art Partridge is walking through the tall firs of the Coeur d’Alene National Forest in northern Idaho. Pausing occasionally to keep tabs on his […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Critics say an Idaho think tank could be more scholarly
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Two views of forest health at the University of Idaho, in a special issue about the West’s forestry schools. Controversy comes with the territory in Jay O’Laughlin’s job. He directs the University of Idaho’s Policy Analysis Group, which is charged with explaining natural […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Northern Arizona U. looks back, moves forward
Presettlement forests provide map for management
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Reformation in the Vatican of sawlog forestry
History takes Oregon State for a ride
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Sleepy St. George wakes up to hate crimes
Dave Hamilton and Claude Schneider were asleep on Sept. 23 when Utah’s St. George Fire Department called to say their bookstore was on fire. Somebody had doused the building with gasoline and lit a match, say St. George police. “This was a hate crime,” says Schneider. “Hamilton and I are gay, and there is no […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
That waving wheat is nothing but a clearcut
Virtually all of agriculture is an attempt to artificially prolong the first stage of succession. The grasses we have domesticated … grow quickly and concentrate energy on producing seed. They store carbohydrates in these seeds, precisely why we value them as food. From an ecological sense, then, agriculture is a sustained catastrophe. It is the […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
‘All of us feel we don’t have …’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Nevada’s ugly tug-of war. “All of us feel we don’t have the impact, the ability to make changes we had 20 years ago.” – Bonnie Whalen Bonnie Whalen is a computer supervisor who grew up on a ranch north of town and has worked […]