I’ve grown up and moved away. I live in a city now instead of a little town. My grammar is better, my table manners hardly offend at all and I’ve been seen at art galleries and concerts. Yet still there are people who patronize me when they find out where I grew up. That was […]
Essays
Posted inMay 30, 1994: Can mining come clean?
Scientist says Yellowstone Park is being destroyed
The Yellowstone northern elk herd, allowed to persist at high densities by the national park’s “natural-regulation” policy, is destroying the biodiversity and ecological integrity of the northern-range ecosystem. Park publicity denies this and misleads the public by proclaiming that all is well in Yellowstone. There are only two possible interpretations of this behavior. One is […]
Posted inMay 30, 1994: Can mining come clean?
Why one advocacy group steers clear of consensus efforts
The Southern Utah Wilderness Association often receives invitations from government entities or other groups to participate on various types of advisory committees. It is usually our policy to decline these offers. The rationale behind this policy goes like this: 1. Advisory committees include interests which benefit from the status quo, and therefore have little or […]
Posted inMay 16, 1994: Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
We need a regional wilderness law
Montana roadless lands have been under siege for nearly two decades. Although Montana congressmen brought forth 15 wilderness bills, they were more accurately commodity bills that strongly favored timber and mining. All failed. In June 1993, Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mont.) tried again. Although #16 is better in some respects than its predecessors, it is no […]
Posted inMay 16, 1994: Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
Endless pressure, endlessly applied
Never have a president and secretary of the Interior so disappointed conservationists as have Bill Clinton and Bruce Babbitt. The firing of Jim Baca as Bureau of Land Management director is simply the icing on a multi-layered cake of betrayal. We shouldn’t be surprised, though. Between nomination and taking office as secretary of the Interior, […]
Posted inMay 16, 1994: Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
A forest supervisor says ‘thank you’
I received a provocative and compelling book the other day called Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry, published by Sierra Club (HCN, 4/4/94). If you prefer looking backward instead of forward, the impact of the images and ideas in this book can only be described as deeply disturbing. The images have an emotional power, and […]
Posted inMay 2, 1994: A struggle for the last grass
The Forest Service sells out
As the West’s economy shifts from traditional extractive industries to real estate and recreation, the region’s largest landowner is proving to be a big-time sucker. For decades the Forest Service has lost money on timber sales, and has leased valuable oil and gas reserves virtually for free. So it’s no surprise that the agency is […]
Posted inMay 2, 1994: A struggle for the last grass
Lycra is as ‘authentic’ as denim
It has become commonplace to attack and ridicule the socio-economic changes that are taking place in the Rocky Mountain West. With disgust and caustic humor residents lash out at the new “cappuccino cowboys,” the brightly colored, lycra-clad mountain bikers, the 20-acre ranchettes, the trophy homes of newcomers, and the network surfers on the information highway. […]
Posted inMay 2, 1994: A struggle for the last grass
Justice for owls, and for communities
A recent newspaper story on the revised Clinton forest plan was illustrated with a picture of Larry Mason standing by his abandoned lumber mill in Forks, Wash. I met Larry when I went to talk with Peter Yu, the administration official responsible for the jobs portion of the Clinton plan. Yu, by mistake, or perhaps […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
Salmon: the Clinton-Babbitt train wreck
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The salmon win one. In 1991, at the Citizens’ Salmon Congress in Hood River, Ore., Michelle DeHart of the Fish Passage Center spoke eloquently – again – about the death of salmon. The center is the tribal and Northwest states’ office that monitors the […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
A forester thrives in the belly of the beast
Wildfire is burning in the Wet Mountain Valley near Colorado Springs, Colo. I smell the smoke before I see it. I might be glad for a stirring burn: we’re a century or so overdue. But three generations of us are here for a family reunion. Just a few steps west of our cabin, the San […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Clifton, Arizona: A town no one knows
CLIFTON, Ariz. – We must have stuck out as an exotic bunch of dudes driving through this remote mining town of a couple of thousand people in southeastern Arizona: One student from South Korea, one from Japan and one from Germany. It was Christmas break at Arizona State University, and we had ventured out to […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
An open letter to Andy Kerr in rural Oregon
ENTERPRISE, Ore. – I don’t know you, Andy, although we’ve met a couple of times. You came into my bookstore 12 or 15 years ago, then we met again the evening of Allan Savory’s grazing talk. I’ve heard your voice on TV and seen your face in the newspapers over the years. I remember one […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
RS 2477: A loophole for vandals
For years, Utah’s Arch Canyon was closed to motorized vehicles to protect sensitive riparian and natural values. But when off-road vehicle users began promoting the canyon as a travel route for their annual jeep safari, the Bureau of Land Management opened the canyon to vehicle use. Now, vehicles crush streamside vegetation, send fragile soils downstream […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Bruce Babbitt as Captain Consensus
What do the following personages have in common: Albert Schweitzer, Linus Pauling, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Bruce Babbitt? Type O blood? A secret fondness for fondue, perhaps? Nope. According to Ed Marston, the normally skeptical publisher of High Country News, they all should be recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
How to turn lemonade into lemons
The environmental movement seems intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. With a perverse political sense that values bad news and dismal foreboding over progress and natural evolution, environmentalists are putting a tragic, apocalyptic spin on every event. Take the firing of former Bureau of Land Management head Jim Baca. It was unfortunate. […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Can San Luis resist ‘regional chaos’?
It was a Colorado state helicopter that turned Maria Mondragon-Valdez around on the subject of the 77,000-acre Taylor Ranch. Originally, she supported a proposal for a split purchase of the mountain tract she and other San Luis Valley residents call La Sierra, and which they believe was stolen from their community in 1960. The proposal […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Let’s not heap injustice upon injustice
SAN LUIS, Colo. – The ownership of the Taylor Ranch in Colorado’s San Luis Valley has been a bone of contention for the past 34 years. However, the story of the land has a longer history and the feelings about it run deeper because the Taylor Ranch is not just another piece of mountain real […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Owyhee: On the eve of destruction
The next time you’re looking at a map of the United States, locate what appears to be the largest area without roads in the lower 48. Surprisingly, few people have ever seen or heard of it. Centered around the point common to Idaho, Nevada and Oregon, it is known as the “Owyhee” high desert region: […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Wyoming lawsuit would privatize wildlife
No one owns the sky. At least not yet. But ownership of the land, the water and now the wildlife is continually sought by people with too much money and a lot of greed. This country was founded by people running from kings who only let land-owning aristocrats hunt. Even if they were starving, the […]