Miners have many ways of turning rock into metal – brute force, corrosive chemicals, high heat and extreme pressure. Likewise, environmentalists are discovering there is more than one way to transform the West’s most refractory industry. Mining has fiercely resisted change since it was first given free license to pillage the mineral riches of a […]
Essays
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
You say you want to cut government spending? Kick off cows
Dear Congress: Since you say you want to stop wasteful federal spending, I am writing to alert you to what’s going on at the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, where, in 1990, they spent $52 million more managing livestock than they collected in fees. Part of the problem is that the current […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Slash and burn
Many good, green guys and gals were blown away Nov. 8, and bills now in Congress would block environmental regulation through “takings” analyses that elevate property rights above the public good. But legitimate fears should not blind the environmental community to new opportunities for positive change. Voters also blew out deadwood and shook the foundations […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Democrats resort to banana bread
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The scene was vintage Washington power breakfast: a private room at the Old Ebbitt Grill across from the Treasury Department. The table held plates of bagels and banana bread. The burgundy napkins complemented the Oriental rug and the velvet chairs. Those are the lures reporters expect from a deposed potentate or a […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
The word according to a weighty Republican
Alaska Republican Don Young, the new chairman of the House Resources Committee, (he removed “Natural” from the committee’s name) recently talked at length with reporter Angela Bouwsma: A congressional committee stumbles on the diversity of life: I’m, by the way, the only member of that (House Resources) committee that ever voted for the Endangered Species […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Pride and Glory of firefighting is hard to resist
The southwest winds brought waves of red smoke streaming into the valley from the fires near Boise and McCall every day last summer. A helicopter would come in overhead, and I’d hear the almost subsonic whump-whump-whump that meant a big craft. The smoke and the morning air and the noise took me back to a […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
1995: Cecil Andrus knew how to take a stand
Cecil Andrus tells the story about how, as a young logger in Orofino, Idaho, he would skid logs down streambeds because it was the easiest way to move them. Skidding, for those who don’t know the rough-and-ready truths about logging, rips up the land and streams. “Those of us in logging in those good old […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Waaaaaaaaaaaahh! The West refuses to be weaned
RESERVE, N.M. – Ah, the West, where the spaces are wide open and the skies are big, where they know when to hold “em and when to fold “em, where the handclasp is a little stronger and the smile dwells a little longer and where, above all, men are men. Not really. In fact, the […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
In surprising ways, wolves will restore natural balance
When wolves arrived in Yellowstone last month, it was as though a boulder were tossed into a lake: the ripples began to spread, and eventually they will touch everything. As trucks carrying the predators entered the park, coyotes nearby began to howl; now they yip and sing almost every hour near the wolf pens. “I […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Ranchers forced into numbers game
Imagine the Western range as a half-billion acre game board. It’s not hard; section lines, pasture lines, power lines, irrigation lines, and roads straight as lines subdivide it into as many playing squares as there are players. But it is not chess or checkers. It’s a deadly serious game, where the stakes are the health […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
An ersatz democracy gets what it deserves
In the late 1980s, the city and county of Denver chose to look away from a deteriorating public school system, dirty air, traffic jams and inadequate public transportation, to pour $10 billion into 53 square miles of prairie out toward Kansas. As this special issue shows, the decision to build Denver International Airport was made […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Easy does it: A sport to make your blood run slow
Even a pudgy mammal like myself knows better than to hibernate all winter, but choosing a winter sport is tricky. Downhill skiing is out; standing at the top of a steep hill with slippery little boards strapped to my feet gives me the fantods. This spell-checker doesn’t know that word, but I do. Cross-country skiing […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
We can’t save the land without first saving the West
Once a month I spend several hours with what I affectionately call my “wise-use” group. It’s not really a wise-use group but at first glance it resembles one. Members include the six county commissioners from Delta and Montrose counties here in western Colorado, a rancher, a timber mill employee, a coal miner, a banker, and […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
He felt the earth move when scientists nuked western Colorado
Twenty-five years ago Americans walked on the moon for the first time, and a federal agency set off an atomic bomb 8,426 feet underground in rural western Colorado. I was there at 3 p.m. on Sept. 10, 1969, a stowaway on the surface, you might say, when our government detonated the 43-kiloton bomb. It released […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Victory in Idaho: Canyon lovers defeat the military
The Air Force’s decision Oct. 6 to back off on building a new bombing range in the Owyhee canyonlands is a victory – and therefore shocking. Who would have thought that a coalition of local and national environmentalists, hunting groups and a few members of Congress could stop the military and Idaho’s forceful Gov. Cecil […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Three agricultural fallacies
The poet laureate of cultivated land challenges the ‘experts’
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
If you hear the alarm, stop breathing
That doesn’t mean take a deep breath and hold it, says the man at the front of the room. It means STOP BREATHING. Pull on your gas mask, clear it of air to get a tight seal, and breathe through it until further notice. No one gets into the new Chemical Agent Disposal Facility at […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Wise-use power is overblown; the real threat is apathy
The 103rd Congress, which just wrapped up most of its business, was the worst environmental Congress since the first Earth Day 25 years ago. The conventional wisdom in the mainstream press is that this poor record comes from the diminished clout of the environmental movement and the rise of the wise-use movement. But is the […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Ripples grow when a dam dies
Four years after the defeat of Denver’s proposed Two Forks Dam, water development in Colorado has changed drastically. No longer is Denver the imperialistic leader of Front Range urban development. And no longer are environmentalists a fringe influence, forever fighting the good fight against dams and forever losing. The change is visible at three major […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Llamas: They expect YOU to know what you’re doing
DURANGO, Colo. – Juan stares at me with soulful brown eyes. We have spent six hours on high trails without seeing anyone else, descending finally to a timberline camp. Above us looms a cirque of tundra painted with the muted, water-color palette of high country autumn. Heavy trout rise just beyond casting range in this […]