A flurry of bulldozing in three southern Utah counties has led to one arrest, federal lawsuits and miles of newly improved roadways through wilderness study areas and the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The bulldozing, ordered by county commissioners in San Juan, Garfield and Kane counties, is the most serious challenge yet to federal land […]
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Two reports set the stage for Sierra Nevada’s future
The Sierra Nevada is a patchwork of dwindling old growth, imperiled species and degraded lakes, streams and rivers. But the seedbeds of its salvation are still intact, according to two reports released this summer, one by a group of scientists, the other by a regional business council. Both conclude there are many reasons for hope […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Marvel wins a round
Anti-ranching activist Jon Marvel has won a favorable decision from the Idaho Supreme Court on the first state grazing lease that he challenged three years ago. On June 20, Idaho’s highest court ruled that the state Land Board violated the state constitution by awarding a 640-acre grazing lease to a Challis rancher, even though the […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
State lands: money isn’t everything
Pockets of land exist all over Colorado where locals hunt, hike, farm and ranch. They look like public land. But these 3 million acres of trust lands, established by the federal government in 1876, usually have one purpose – to make money for public schools. And increasingly, in these boom times, the state land board […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Arizona state land opens for conservation
Arizona environmentalists now have a chance to lease state lands for conservation purposes. As signed by Gov. Fife Symington, the Arizona Preserve Initiative allows conservation groups to lease state lands, estimated at 30,000 acres, within a three-mile radius of all major cities. An earlier bill from Symington proposed to open up over 700,000 acres of […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Phoenix will try to save desert wash
Arizona has told the city of Phoenix that if it wants to save a state-owned desert wash teeming with wildlife, it must buy the land for $25 million. A citizens’ group hopes to persuade state officials that the historic, biological and recreational value of Cave Creek Wash makes it worth the money. But state staffers […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Rebels without a case
Rebels without a case Nineteen months after Nye County, Nev., County Commissioner Dick Carver challenged federal authority by bulldozing a road into the Toiyabe National Forest, the government has pushed back. On March 14, a U.S. District Court in Las Vegas struck down a controversial Nye County ordinance claiming ownership and management authority over Forest […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
They did it themselves
They did it themselves Some 200 federal employees and outside experts have developed a sweeping management plan for public lands in the six states of the Columbia River Basin. And it didn’t cost taxpayers a dime. It was done under the auspices of the nonprofit AFSEEE, the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Land Board bias questioned
Idaho environmentalists secured their first court victory in the ongoing struggle over who gets to lease the state’s school endowment lands. Judge Duff McKee of the Ada County District Court ruled in December that the State Land Board broke its rules when it combined two grazing leases into one parcel, then awarded the package to […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Ranchers win again
Ranchers win again Environmentalists in New Mexico plan to follow a trend set in Idaho and Oregon: taking the state to court after having bids for state grazing permits rejected. They charge that the land office is discriminating against them and violating state law by not managing state land for maximum profit. Forest Guardians and […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
The disagreement is total
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, To save a Utah canyon, a BLM ranger quits and turns activist. When it comes to his Westwater mining claims, Ron Pene and the BLM disagree on nearly everything. To begin with, Pene believes BLM staffers overlooked man-made disturbances when they surveyed the […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Is another senator backpedaling?
New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, R, reluctantly conceded last month that his bill on public-land grazing needed at least clarification. Hunters and other recreational users of the public lands apparently made their opposition clear: They cannot live with legislation that puts ranchers above everyone else (HCN, 8/21/95). Now another Western Republican, Sen. Craig Thomas of […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
Report blasts land giveaways
Report blasts land giveaways Following recent congressional proposals that would divvy up millions of acres of federal land among states and private interests, the Natural Resources Defense Council released a report charging that such measures would “impoverish the nation.” NRDC outlines what it calls an assault on public lands: budget resolutions allowing the sale of […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Right-of-way or give-away?
When Congress reconvenes after Labor Day, the House is expected to mark up a new bill that could allow states and counties to bulldoze roads across national parks and wilderness areas. The legislation, introduced July 20 by Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, attempts to preserve rural rights-of-way that might not be recognized under recently proposed Interior […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
How the BLM killed a cow to save a canyon and stop the paperwork
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook. For 10 or more years she was an orphan trapped in a wilderness prison with no means of escape. Finally, she was spotted and a rescue launched. Within sight of freedom, she was killed. One bullet […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
BLM land: outstanding opportunities for crowding
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook. A year ago, Bureau of Land Management rangers in southern Utah stumbled upon a remote, never-looted Anasazi ruin. To protect the site, they decided not to publicize its existence, but agency staffers’ jaws dropped recently when […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Can BLM save the grass, and itself?
Backed into a corner by legislation that threatens its existence, the Bureau of Land Management has started punching back. The agency began an aggressive Department of Interior campaign in late June, when acting BLM director Mike Dombeck delivered hard-hitting testimony against the Livestock Grazing Act before Senate and House subcommittees. Dombeck, who has already made […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Irony piles on irony in Wyoming
JACKSON, Wyo. – Backers of a proposed private-federal land swap want to prevent development of the last huge chunk of ranchland in Wyoming’s Teton County. And they’re counting on the highest officials in the federal Interior Department to keep their plan alive. That’s an ironic twist in a state where Clinton administration officials are regularly […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Desert skin
The canyon country of southern Utah and northern Arizona – the Colorado Plateau – is something special. Something strange, marvelous, full of wonders. As far as I know there is no other region on earth much like it, or even remotely like it. Nowhere else have we had this lucky combination of vast sedimentary rock […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Will an illegal BLM study seal southern Utah’s fate?
I’m writing a book on the Colorado Plateau and it has been one of the joys of my life. The library work has been fascinating but the best research has been with a backpack and a boy. Philip, then 13, and I headed out from Boulder, Colo., for southern Utah just after his classes ended, […]