Note: this article is a sidebar to a news story titled “Yellowstone snowmobile crowd may hit limit.” YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – At 18 degrees below zero, the bison we meet on the road near Fishing Bridge are crusted and draped with frost. We pull our rented snowmobile over to one side and wait for […]
Recreation
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
A delicate question: When is an arch crowded?
MOAB, Utah – Two’s company, 30 is a crowd, visitors to Delicate Arch have told researchers trying to figure out how to protect the experience of viewing one of Utah’s most famous natural attractions. Using a pilot program that will likely be adopted at other national parks, Arches National Park has developed a method for […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Enjoyment enough to kill
My first view of the High Sierra, first view looking down into Yosemite, the death song of Yosemite Creek, and its flight over the vast cliff, each one of these is of itself enough for a great life-long landscape fortune – a most memorable of days – enjoyment enough to kill if that were possible […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Are bears de-fenceless?
Roads closed in some national forests in Idaho to protect grizzly bears are really wide open to anyone driving a motorcycle or all-terrain vehicle, says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency conducted an unannounced inspection of about 80 gates in the state’s Panhandle National Forest this fall and found nearly 90 percent of […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Easy does it: A sport to make your blood run slow
Even a pudgy mammal like myself knows better than to hibernate all winter, but choosing a winter sport is tricky. Downhill skiing is out; standing at the top of a steep hill with slippery little boards strapped to my feet gives me the fantods. This spell-checker doesn’t know that word, but I do. Cross-country skiing […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Mount Usher-in-More
While the National Park Service may be talking about minimizing vehicle gridlock at Grand Canyon and Yosemite, Mount Rushmore in South Dakota is planning a $16 million parking lot to handle the memorial’s annual 3 million visitors. Superintendent Dan Wenk proposes charging drivers $4 to $5 to park to help fund the parking lot. Mount […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
War on wheels
Jeeps, dirt bikes and four-wheelers roar off designated roads in the wildlands of Utah and rip up desert wildlife, says the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management stands by and lets the damage happen, the group charges. SUWA wants President Clinton to issue an Executive Order closing all public lands to […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Rocky Mountain Naturalist
-Go out into the wilderness and meet yourself,” advised Enos Mills, called the father of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. “If any normal person under 50 cannot enjoy being in a storm in the wilds, he ought to reform at once.” Radiant Days: Writings by Enos Mills contains the work of this naturalist and activist […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Shrink to fit
National Park Service may be downsized and reorganized
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Parks as cash cows
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. National parks bring in lots of money but they don’t get to control how it’s spent. Private companies are the main beneficiaries of tourist traffic, and for the most part they have free rein over how to spend the tourist gold. […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
For the white and well-to-do
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. If Karl Hess has his way, the nation’s parks will become less commercial, less crowded and pricier, as visitors are asked to pay the true costs of operating the parks. But raising entrance fees could run directly into another priority: the […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
A trial run at Glacier
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. In the late 1980s, Republican Rep. Ron Marlenee came over from his eastern Montana district to make speeches in the Flathead Basin. In those speeches, he demanded that Gil Lusk get back inside Glacier National Park. At the time, Lusk had […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Who will run the new Park Service?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. When and if the National Park Service is allowed by the Congress to reorganize itself, it will still have 366 Park Service units and close to 300 million visitors a year. But the management of those parks and visitors and how […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
An urban park is surrounded by controversy
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The words from the park superintendent seemed to jump off the page at Ike Eastvold, an environmentalist who leads groups through Petroglyph National Monument. “Tour content must not include political or inflammatory information directed at either the National […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Say what?
The NPS wants help ASAP in de-jargonizing its PR under NEPA. Translated, that means for the first time in 12 years the National Park Service is considering changes in procedure under the National Environmental Policy Act, the mother of all environmental protection. Passed in 1969, the act describes which environmental impacts the federal government must […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Llamas: They expect YOU to know what you’re doing
DURANGO, Colo. – Juan stares at me with soulful brown eyes. We have spent six hours on high trails without seeing anyone else, descending finally to a timberline camp. Above us looms a cirque of tundra painted with the muted, water-color palette of high country autumn. Heavy trout rise just beyond casting range in this […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Parks give free rides
While the Clinton administration proposes charging people more to visit national parks, the National Park Service continues to lose more than $100 million a year in fees it fails to collect. According to an Interior Department audit, the agency took in $68 million in gate and campground fees at the nation’s 367 parks, monuments and […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Pay to play
The Southwest Idaho Mountain Biking Association believes mountain bikers should pay to use trails on public lands. The group wants Idaho to enact a $10 annual fee to maintain trails, create new ones and develop trail-etiquette education. Cyclists, who would register any bike that they ride off-road, could influence how funds are spent through advisory […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
A climbing plan for Devils Tower
One hundred and one years ago, when William Rogers and Willard Ripley were the first climbers to top Wyoming’s Devils Tower, they also started a controversy. In the following decades the tower became a climbing mecca. Yet to some Native Americans it has always been a sacred place. To try to satisfy both interests, the […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
No room at the top
Climbing one of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks used to be a solitary joy. These days 50,000 people top the state’s famous “fourteeners’ each year, and in one weekend on Mt. Harvard near Buena Vista, 133 signatures filled the summit register. Marketed in myriad guidebooks, the climbing craze is shattering solitude and trashing ecosystems, reports the American […]