After 16 years in the shadows, two sisters win legal residency
Growth & Sustainability
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 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 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.” […]
Posted inWotr
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 […]
Posted inWotr
Pombo’s plan to privatize the West must be stopped
What is it, exactly, that makes the West special? There are certainly many answers to that question, but perhaps the one that Westerners would give more than any other is our “wide open spaces.” Despite much development, there is still open space in the West: space to hike, to hunt, to breathe free, to escape […]
Posted inWotr
We need to store fat from the gas-feeding frenzy
Every fall, black bears enter a ravenous state in which they will do almost anything for food. Biologists call it hyperphagia — the time of super-eating. Bears in hyperphagia can get into trouble if their search for calories leads them to our backyards or to garbage cans behind the local diner. We Westerners have also […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
Trouble on the Valles Caldera
Push to keep cows on preserve clashes with mandate to make money
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
Public-lands agenda turns more radical, urgent
As political winds start to turn against him, Pombo pushes to sell off forests, parks, wilderness areas
Posted inWotr
A Western railvolution begins
In 1981, when I got my first car — a used Toyota Corolla — the first thing I did was take a trip out West. For a prisoner of the sprawling suburbs of St. Louis, Mo., nothing could have been sweeter than to put that sea of homes in the rearview mirror, and to fill […]
Posted inWotr
Friends don’t let friends drive gas-guzzlers
Judging from TV, Americans seem to think the only thing needed to sell a product or solve a problem is a catchy slogan. You’ve probably got the tinkly music from some jingle running through your head right now — even if you’ve tried to remove it with an ice pick. So I’m starting my crusade […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
Will the BLM Web site shutdown ever end?
During the past six months, most Bureau of Land Management Web sites have been unavailable to the public: The agency has disconnected them for the fourth time in five years while officials attend to security concerns. The most recent shutdown resulted from an ongoing class-action lawsuit brought by Elouise Cobell on behalf of 500,000 Indians. […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
The Public Lands’ Big Cash Crop
SHINGLETOWN, California — On a cool, late-September morning on the outskirts of this Northern California town, two men board a helicopter in a cow pasture. Each of them holds the title of “special agent,” but the agencies they represent are as different from one another as any two agencies could be. Dave Burns sports a […]
Posted inWotr
Nature works better with us
You’ve seen the ads: Some eco-celebrity urges you to make a donation to save one of the earth’s last special places. Your generous gift will help protect this place so it remains healthy and pristine forever. Few of us bother to think that this pitch contains a huge assumption — that protecting a piece of […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Strange bedfellows make a grazing deal in Idaho
And influential Sen. Larry Craig is odd man out