BLM accepts Eco-Challenge While being videotaped from a helicopter, 50 teams of five competitors each will race through the heart of southern Utah’s canyon country this April. Although 85 percent to 90 percent of the 700 comments received opposed the scheme, the Bureau of Land Management recently gave its approval, with conditions, to the Eco-Challenge […]
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Are the feds land-grabbers?
Are the feds land-grabbers? According to a federal report, agencies such as the Forest Service, BLM and National Park Service manage 34 million acres more today than than they did in 1964. But that’s only if you exclude Alaska, where 112 million acres left federal control due to statehood land promises and treaties with native […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue about the Great Basin. The landscape casts a rhythmic spell in the Great Basin. You feel it driving Highway 50 across Nevada. Grinding up a steep grade to the summit. Seeing a broad valley, and more mountains, one range after another, like waves […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
R.S. 2477 detoured again
The Department of the Interior has delayed for a third time its deadline for resolving a dispute over an outdated law known as R.S. 2477. In 1866, it granted rights-of-way to rural counties for roadbuilding across public lands in the West. When it was repealed in 1976, pre-existing claims were grandfathered in, creating a flurry […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Race alarms public; methane project doesn’t
A much-hyped race through Utah’s canyon country has attracted record public comment – and exposed how difficult it is to get the public involved in managing public lands. “It’s frustrating,” says Dennis Willis, a recreation staffer in the Price, Utah, office of the Bureau of Land Management, which is doing an environmental assessment of the […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Bidding war shakes up Idaho grazing leases
Jonathan Marvel, the feisty head of the Idaho Watersheds Project, kicked off a flurry of conflicting bids for Idaho state grazing leases in December. Marvel forked out $1,430 to prevail as the high bidder in three auctions involving a total of 1,320 acres of state land. But the largest sums were bid in auctions that […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Delay again for R.S. 2477
In a surprise move, the Interior Department extended its comment period a third time on R.S. 2477, a law adopted in 1866 to spur colonizing of the West. R.S. 2477 granted a right-of-way to rural counties for the construction of highways on public lands (HCN, 3/21/94). When Congress repealed the law in 1976, pre-existing claims […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Especially expensive agents
For the fourth time in five years, the BLM’s law enforcement division has been blasted for shenanigans that were at best imprudent. An audit prepared by the Department of the Interior found that during 1991-92 the division’s 69 special agents misrepresented their case loads and misused their $27 million two-year budget. According to the report: […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
BLM: The Next Generation
Note: this is a sidebar to the news article titled “The BLM: New faces and new attitudes“ BLM: The Next Generation * Nina Hatfield, Assistant Director, Business and Fiscal Services * Maitland Sharpe, Assistant Director, Resource Assessment and Planning * Hord Tipton, Assistant Director, Resource Use and Protection ALASKA Tom Allen, state director Sally Wisely, […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
The BLM: New faces and new attitudes
A new generation has ascended to top leadership posts at the Bureau of Land Management. In the last eight months, acting BLM Director Mike Dombeck has filled 17 key positions, appointing three assistant directors, eight state directors and six associate state directors. Six appointees are women, two are minorities, and two have never before worked […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Enviros sue state land board
Better – but not good enough – says a coalition of Oregon environmentalists that is suing the state land board to institute “truly competitive bidding” for leases on state-owned land. In a break from tradition across the West, the board in July opened the bidding process so that conservationists could compete with ranchers for leases […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Ranchers blamed for transfer of BLM veteran
A 31-year Bureau of Land Management veteran says the agency is transferring him from Wyoming to Utah because of his by-the-book stand on grazing. Darrel Short, area manager for Wyoming’s Kemmerer Resource Area, says the agency kowtowed to rancher pressure in issuing the transfer, and he is challenging the move under the federal law protecting […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
No new roads
New rules proposed by the Interior Department limit the ability of states and counties to build highways across public lands. The rules clarify Revised Statute 2477, an 1866 law that granted rights-of-way on federal lands (HCN, 3/21/94). The law was repealed 18 years ago but it did not nullify any earlier rights-of-way. Since then, some […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
City Slickers should leave wilderness rough
MOAB, Utah – A Hollywood production company has been slow to restore land damaged during the filming of a stampede scene in City Slickers II. Federal land manager Brad Palmer said the movie crews trampled about 30 percent more acreage than they were supposed to in an area above the Colorado River, just off the […]
Posted inJuly 25, 1994: 'Unranchers' reach for West's state lands
‘Unranchers’ reach for West’s state lands
Well aware of the irony, conservationists in the West are gearing up for a land grab they can call their own. They’re reaching for what have been the most obscure public – or at least semipublic – lands of all. The definition itself is up for grabs. There are about 40 million such acres, or […]
Posted inJuly 25, 1994: 'Unranchers' reach for West's state lands
Utah kids benefit from state land reform
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, ‘Unranchers’ reach for West’s state lands. Inevitably, any disagreement over state-owned lands raises the spectre of schoolchildren in need. In Utah, where spending per pupil ranks lowest in the nation, that dismal statistic has spurred reform. State lands have never generated fat revenues for […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Millions for furniture
Between 1990 and 1992, the Bureau of Land Management in Oregon spent $5.4 million intended for reforestation on staff salaries, new furniture and remodeling buildings, a federal audit reports. Eventually, this misallocation could cost taxpayers up to $200 million from lost timber harvests. The 21-page report also found that since 1990 the Oregon BLM has […]
Posted inMay 16, 1994: Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
A spinning door
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Dan Beard isn’t happy with former agency colleague Joe Hall. Eight months after resigning as the number two official at the bureau, Hall was hired as a $95-per-hour consultant by the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, reports The Denver Post. According to federal ethics law, former top officials must abstain from […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
South Pass reconsidered
A Wyoming environmental group has been successful in getting the Bureau of Land Management to reconsider the route of a natural gas pipeline over historic South Pass. Following a tour of the area last year, the Wyoming Outdoor Council convinced former BLM chief Jim Baca to reconsider the route. Council founder Tom Bell and other […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
A leaking public lands fund
The Clinton administration recently proposed spending $254 million of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The amount – less than anything proposed by the Bush administration – shocked some environmentalists. They hoped Clinton would tap more of the $900 million that flows each year into the fund, primarily from offshore oil drilling royalties. Environmentalists calculate […]