Every decade or so, people start pushing the idea of selling off big chunks of public land or transferring that land to state ownership and management. Outside of small parcels, it has never happened, probably because most of us support leaving public lands in federal hands. With the recent pronouncements of Idaho’s own Dirk Kempthorne, […]
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inWotr
Rainbow Gathering lacks one color — green
When we tell folks that we have become the unwitting hosts for the Rainbow Family’s annual gathering, the first response is “the who?” As it turns out, some 20,000 Rainbows have gathered in Big Red Park, north of Steamboat Springs, Colo., in the Routt National Forest. Their Web site, welcomehome.org, styles them “the largest non-organization […]
Posted inWotr
Fencing off Mexico is an ecological blunder
Medical doctors have their Hippocratic oath in which they pledge to heal the sick to the best of their ability and do no harm. We ecologists have our own guiding principle: Call it the Leopold oath. The late Aldo Leopold, who worked for the U.S. Forest Service and is considered to be one of the […]
Posted inWotr
A silent victim of illegal immigration is our public lands
Just three miles north of Arizona’s border with Mexico, the Coronado National Forest is littered with the leavings of people on the run: empty plastic water bottles, opened tuna fish cans, sweatshirts, jars of foot powder. Near a scattered pack of playing cards, some turquoise underwear lies in an undignified tangle. A pair of small […]
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Finding hope in a new land
Mexican-born author Rose Castillo Guilbault first saw America from the window of a Greyhound bus. The 5-year-old sat next to her divorced mother, Maria Luisa, who had taken a distant cousin’s advice to heart: Head to El Norte. “Get out of this cesspool. It will pull you down and drown you. You’re still young. Start […]
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
The Immigrant’s Trail
Note: this essay introduces several feature articles in a special issue about the West’s immigration landscape. Last month, as immigrants and their supporters geared up for the May 1 “Day Without Immigrants,” and the Senate considered another comprehensive immigration bill, an 18-year-old Mexican woman gave birth amid the cactus and mesquite trees of the Arizona […]
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Abandonment
Plenty of jobs, not enough pay: Economic forces push Mexican workers north
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Perseverance
An immigrant’s journey: Dust, flies, and the long walk
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Apprehension
On an 860,000-acre refuge, wildlife officers face a human torrent
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Hope
After 16 years in the shadows, two sisters win legal residency
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Norton eases road claims
In a parting gesture last month, outgoing Interior Secretary Gale Norton opened the door for counties and states to claim control of roads crossing federal lands managed by her department. Revised Statute 2477, enacted in 1866, allowed states and counties to construct highways across public land (HCN, 12/20/04: The road to nowhere). Although the act was […]
Posted inWotr
This land is my land — really
President Bush wants to sell my land to fund rural schools. I mean my land — not the vast tracts of federal forests and grasslands I co-own with the proverbial New York cabbie, the Seattle widow and all other American citizens. My private land — the 12 acres I own with my husband. We bought […]
Posted inApril 3, 2006: Land of Disenchantment
Norton Departs
A look at Interior’s counterrevolution — and its unintended consequences
Posted inWotr
Selling forestland won’t solve the real problem
Selling federal forest land to subsidize rural schools and road projects is a bad idea for many reasons. But a proposal to do just that, incorporated into the Bush administration’s 2007 budget, has one powerful virtue: It has focused welcome public attention on a century-old welfare program that has yet to achieve its goals. Bush […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
BLM rolls back environmental review
The Bureau of Land Management is punching holes in the National Environmental Policy Act big enough to drive a 30-ton thumper truck through. In January, the BLM proposed adding 11 new categorical exclusions to the 73 already existing. The designation, used for projects routinely found to have no significant environmental impact, allows the agency to […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2006: The Killing Fields
Public-lands freedom fighter
NAME Stephen Maurer AGE 68 HOME BASE Albuquerque, New Mexico KNOWN FOR Fighting the Soviet-backed regime in Hungary, his native country; working to protect public lands in his adopted country. HE SAYS “Don’t use (the phrase) ‘federal lands.’ They are ‘public lands.’ If it’s the government’s land, it belongs to them, and it’s not ours.” […]
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For Sale: The West
It’s disconcerting to look at the ads in the local newspaper these days. I’m bound to recognize someone I know who has just cast in his or her lot with Re/Max, Coldwell Banker or another of the multitude of agencies now playing the West’s biggest gambling game: Real Estate Roulette. He or she will be […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Quick Stats
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Timberlands up for grabs.” BUT WHO’S COUNTING… 2 Acres of timberland lost per minute. 1 million Acres of timberland lost per year. 23 million Acres of timberland projected to be lost by 2050. 340 Number of species threatend by timberland loss. 300 million Acres […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2005: A New Green Revolution
Bipartisan uprising sinks public-lands selloff
A proposal to sell public lands landed in the trash can on Dec. 13, thanks to objections from Western senators — both Democrat and Republican. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., had tried to overturn an 11-year moratorium on selling federal land to mining companies by attaching a proposal to House budget […]