In early December, Hovenweep National Monument, in the remote southeast corner of Utah, narrowly escaped an attempt to lease nearby land for oil and gas drilling. The monument’s 400-acre Square Tower unit was created in 1923 to protect the remains of an almost 800-year-old Anasazi settlement, where as many as 500 people once lived. From […]
National Park Service
Posted inSeptember 27, 2004: Life After Old Growth
What’s wrong with user fees?
Sen. Larry Craig’s article about “Fees and our forests don’t always fit” makes a few good points, although I think that it misses some others. What I do not understand is the reluctance of Sen. Craig to support these user fees, since according to him, activities like hunting, fishing and hiking are done on “unimproved […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
National parks pinching pennies
Former Park Service employees say headquarters is hiding budget woes
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Park police chief canned for candidness
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “National parks pinching pennies.” U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers didn’t know what to expect when she reported to the Washington, D.C., office of U.S. Park Service Deputy Director Don Murphy, on Dec. 5, 2003. “I had […]
Posted inWotr
When does our garbage become archaeology?
A rusted cooking pot, an old stove top, bits of china and pottery. Exploring in the woods around a backcountry chalet in Montana’s Glacier National Park, we poked through the remains of garbage–everything from glass chips to bed springs. We prodded these remnants of the past: Historic rubbish. Knowing the National Park Service classifies these […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
One national park could tell the truth about the West
The Black Canyon in western Colorado is one of the world’s most splendid examples of the depths to which erosion and uplift can go. A steep gash in ancient granite, nearly 3,000 feet deep — only 40 feet wide at its narrowest, and not a whole lot wider at its rim — the Black Canyon […]
Posted inWotr
One national park could tell the truth about the West
The Black Canyon in western Colorado is one of the world’s most splendid examples of the depths to which erosion and uplift can go. A steep gash in ancient granite, nearly 3,000 feet deep and not much wider at its rim, the Black Canyon is the kind of geological anomaly we like to single out […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Park Service wilderness in disarray
Departing wilderness boss blasts the agency
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Getting under the desert’s skin: Biologist Jayne Belnap
The scenery of southeastern Utah is hard to miss. Steep redrock canyons plunge into long and lazy riverbends; wind-sculpted stone arches glow pinkly at sunset. But when biologist Jayne Belnap hikes through this famous landscape, it’s not the show-stopping rocks that draw her attention. It’s the algae. “This is not a rocky landscape, this is […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Park expansion threatened
A ranch that promised to be an important addition to Wind Cave National Park in the Black Hills is now for sale on the open market. The 5,555-acre Casey Ranch would increase the park’s land base by 20 percent, and add an 85-year-old homestead and a “buffalo jump” — a cliff from which American Indian […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2003: Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play
More helicopters to buzz Glacier Park
The skies over Glacier National Park will be noisier this summer, and helicopters lugging seat-belted tourists don’t deserve all the blame. Park managers are increasing their own helicopter and airplane traffic to do backcountry chores, adding 52 flights to their recent average of 50 per summer. According to an environmental assessment, the park’s air force […]
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
Park Service guts budget to fight terrorism
The National Park Service plans to cut millions of dollars in trail and building repairs to cover its share of the “war on terror.” Since 2001, the Park Service has moved more of its rangers to parks with international borders and high-profile icon parks such as the Statue of Liberty. As rangers are reassigned, their […]
Posted inWotr
Like it or not, Utah’s controversial monument is here to stay
I visited the spectacular Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, when it was still a raw wound in the body politic of southern Utah. As I talked to people in the scattered towns around the 1.7 million acre-monument, I found deep-seated anger and mistrust. One county commissioner told me President Clinton cynically designated the monument […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Peer pressure
Violence against National Park Service law enforcement employees – including shootings and assaults – increased 940 percent in 2001. And just this past August, Mexican fugitives killed a park ranger in Organ Pipe National Monument in Arizona. These alarming statistics are included in a report released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a private nonprofit […]
Posted inJune 10, 2002: Hatching reform
Permanent user fees in the pipeline
Agencies struggle toward a unified public-lands pass
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
Does desert cross cross the line?
CALIFORNIA A white cross cemented atop a rock outcropping in Mojave National Preserve has become the center of a fight over religious freedom on public land. The six-foot cross, made of metal pipes, was erected in 1934 by the Veterans of Foreign Wars and has served as a local gathering point for Easter sunrise services. […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Zion’s geriatric cottonwoods
UTAH Steep river canyons lined with cottonwood trees are the signature landscape in Utah’s Zion National Park. But a new report issued jointly by the park and the Grand Canyon Trust finds that without intervention, the giant trees will likely vanish in the next few decades. That’s because the trees in the lush forests that […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Paul Fritz left a unique legacy for the Park Service
We have reached a time when many conservation legends of the 20th century are disappearing. David Brower, the environmental giant, is a recent example. Now we’ve lost a lesser-known but very influential conservationist. Paul Fritz died quite suddenly on Christmas Eve from an undiagnosed brain tumor. He was 71. Fritz’s generation possesses a pure conviction […]
Posted inOctober 9, 2000: The hunters and the hunted
Wilder Grand Canyon proves too contentious
Lawsuit replaces talk about the fate of 94 percent of the park
Posted inOctober 9, 2000: The hunters and the hunted
Migrants leave trail of trash
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Visitors to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument along the Arizona/Mexican border experience one of the most untrammeled pieces of Sonoran Desert in the American Southwest. Nourished by two rainy seasons a year, it teems with hundreds of plant species, including towering saguaro, ocotillos and […]