Cochise Stronghold rises abruptly from the desert outside Tombstone, Ariz., a craggy nest of pink granite spires and domes. Rock climbers like me flock to the area for its tall, coarse slabs, weird rock formations, epic sunsets and remote backcountry feel. Although it’s never happened to me, many climbers I know have encountered tattered backpacks, […]
Politics
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Of Muir and Pinchot
In “A New Forest Paradigm,” Nathan Rice refers to “John Muir’s preservationist ideals” and “Gifford Pinchot’s utilitarian forestry” (HCN, 4/29/13). Muir certainly fit the mold of a preservationist, believing nature should be preserved for its own sake. But many would argue that Pinchot was more of a traditional conservationist rather than a utilitarian. The latter […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Saving the real old growth
I read with interest Nathan Rice’s excellent article “A New Forest Paradigm” (HCN, 4/29/13). I was around in the 1970s, when the last of the old-growth giants were being felled in Oregon and Washington. I deplored what was happening then and cheered any means of saving those venerable trees, some of which were over 500 […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Word watch
The new buzzword in the woods is “ecological forestry,” to replace “new forestry,” which academics advocated and promoted in the 1990s. I applaud the desire to provide ecosystem management that somewhat mimics nature, but I often question motives (i.e., “to get the cut out”). What “A New Forest Paradigm” fails to acknowledge is that every […]
Posted inWotr
Once there was an effective governor and a middle ground
It’s sobering to recall that, not that long ago, the West wasn’t labeled Blue or Red, but rather a shade of beige. Just a generation ago, centrists like Mike Mansfield, Cecil Andrus, Frank Church, Scoop Jackson, John Melcher and progressives like the cousins Morris and Stewart Udall represented Westerners in Washington. Today, if a Western […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
How right-wing emigrants conquered North Idaho
If anyone in Kootenai County could have predicted the Democrats’ downfall, it was Dan English. He had spent most of his life in the Idaho Panhandle and monitored more than 100 local elections in his 15 years as county clerk. The first ballots he counted, in 1996, revealed tight contests between Republicans and Democrats, but […]
Posted inGoat
Save our gauges
In the spring of 2011, a big, fast-melting snowpack, along with ice-jammed rivers and persistent rain brought intense flooding to Montana. Miles City, in the southeastern part of the state, declared a flood disaster after part of its levee system eroded away, and the town’s stream gauge on the Yellowstone River measured the third highest […]
Posted inGoat
The other Cannabis legalization story
There were obvious ways to avoid being drafted into combat during World War II: Be a woman. Or a man younger than 18. Or a man of prime age who was somehow “physically, mentally or morally” unfit. And then there were less apparent avenues. For instance: grow hemp. The government would not only allow you […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
The trouble with original claims
I am excited about the Río Grande del Norte National Monument. However, I work for one of the tribes in New Mexico, and given my familiarity with Native issues, I always find the position of the Hispanic community in New Mexico to be rather hypocritical. When they state that they have a claim to the […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
Token protection?
It’s wonderful that people from many cultures in northern New Mexico recognized the economic benefits from heightened federal recognition of the Río Grande Gorge near Taos. National monuments are powerful economic drivers, and we welcome President Obama’s action. Yet the language of the Río Grande del Norte proclamation offers little additional environmental protection beyond status […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Seeking balance in Oregon’s timber country
“Now, that is an old-growth tree!” shouts Jerry Franklin on a September day in the hills above Roseburg, Ore. A mammoth Douglas fir towers 10 stories above, dwarfing everything around it. Sunlight filters down through the thick canopy to a group of about 20 University of Washington students. “You can really see who the veterans […]
Posted inWotr
The public-land legacy of Max Baucus
When Montana Sen. Max Baucus announced last week that he would not seek a seventh term in 2014, Montanans instantly began debating his legacy. After nearly 35 years in the Senate and four in the House, Baucus’ reputation as a conservative Democrat who straddled party lines is well established, and his mediocre lifetime score of […]
Posted inRange
Congress quickly fixes the wrong problem
Last week was a perfect illustration of the broken structure that is the United States government. Congress cannot pass a budget. It can barely pass a law to pay bills already incurred and owed. And its best “deficit” cutting attempt is the decade-long sequester, across-the-board cuts that hit the wrong programs, at the wrong times, […]
Posted inWotr
Don’t mess with the Forest Service
Earl Butz, Richard Nixon’s controversial secretary of Agriculture, was a profane man known for his hair-trigger temper and rough handling of subordinates. So when the chief of the Forest Service stood him up for a meeting, Butz unloaded in response: “There are four branches of government,” he reportedly snarled, “the executive, legislative, judicial and the […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Emily Guerin on ranchers’ and BLM’s collaborative approach to fighting wildfire
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, KDNK’s Nelson Harvey talk with High Country News assistant online editor Emily Guerin about why this unusual collaboration is working in Idaho. Wildfire sound courtesy of dynamicell, freesound.org Shovel […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Hispanic leaders spearheaded the Río Grande del Norte National Monument
In early April, Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, R, began pushing a bill that would limit presidential authority to designate new national monuments by forcing proposals to undergo environmental review first. The draft law is among a slew of similar measures House Republicans are working on in response to Obama’s March 25 creation of five new […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Bigger fires and evolving threats force changes in the Northwest Forest Plan
The summer of 1994 was a nasty one for fires in Washington’s Chelan County, cradled in the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle. Dozens of blazes, including a disastrous one in Icicle Canyon, tore through the drought-stricken forests in late July. Almost a million gallons of fire retardant were dropped on that county, and some of […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Lawmakers scramble to fix the funding problem in Oregon’s timber counties
State and federal lawmakers are scrambling for solutions to the funding crisis in the southwest Oregon timber counties that have been hard hit by cuts in federal aid. A few of the proposals: The O&C Trust, Conservation and Jobs ActThis controversial proposal would move 1.5 million acres of federal forestland into a timber trust to […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Northwest Forest Plan timeline
1990 Under court order, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists the northern spotted owl as threatened. 1991 U.S. District Court Judge William Dwyer halts Forest Service timber sales in spotted owl habitat across the Northwest. 1994 Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) enacted under Clinton. Timber harvest resumes, but at much-reduced levels; safety net of “spotted owl […]
Posted inGoat
The companies behind the curtain
Ever since the Bureau of Land Management announced more than a year ago that some 30,000 acres surrounding the towns of Colorado’s North Fork Valley like a necklace had been nominated for oil and gas development, wild rumors have flown about who did the nominating. (Nominating leases prompts the BLM to review whether the parcels are […]