The Gunnison National Forest in western Colorado is involved in another hot access question. The last access dispute – with developer Tom Chapman – resulted in a land trade that thus far has given Chapman a $2 million profit (HCN, 1/23/95). That trade was made over strenuous objections from residents of the ski town of […]
Wildlife
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Counties may shrink Utah wilderness
On a frozen night in mid-February, about 300 people crammed into an art gallery in Salt Lake City for an old-fashioned rally. While writer Terry Tempest Williams spoke about the need for wild places, a jar was passed among the crowd until it was stuffed with bills; sign-up sheets were filled with names of people […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
No more free lunch
Sea lions that gorge on steelhead trout trying to swim around the locks in Seattle, Wash., may have to worry about getting eaten themselves. The Muckleshoot Indian tribe has asked the National Marine Fisheries Service for permission to harvest the meat, hides and teeth from sea lions if the agency targets them for execution, reports […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Hunter-harassment law stands
The Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to Montana’s “hunter harassment” law which prohibits intentional interference with lawful hunting. A Gallatin County, Mont., court convicted animal rights activist John Lilburn of a misdemeanor under the law in 1990 for stepping in front of a buffalo hunter’s rifle and shouting, “Don’t shoot!” The conviction was […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
‘Indifference’ caused deaths
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. “I didn’t like going down in there. I talked to Mackey about it. Not burning too active. I was going by his judgment; his best judgment was to go direct. I thought that was the […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Multiple firefighter fatalities in the United States in wildland fires, 1900-present
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. No. of fatalities – Year – Location 78 1910 Forest fire, Idaho 25 1933 Griffith Park, Calif. 15 1953 Rattlesnake fire, Mendocino National Forest, Calif. 15 1937 Blackwater, Wyo.,Shoshone National Forest 14 1994 South Canyon […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Excerpts from South Canyon Fire Accident InvestigationTeam report
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. “The fire spotted on the west side directly below the line at the bottom of the drainage. The spot grew quickly and I could see hardhats above it. The spot moved fast. I did not […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Bill would fight fire with chain saws
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. Like a hotshot smokejumper, Congress has leaped into the debate over forest health and fire. All too predictably, say critics, it is wielding a chain saw. Proclaiming that he wants to “break the cycle of […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Pride and Glory of firefighting is hard to resist
The southwest winds brought waves of red smoke streaming into the valley from the fires near Boise and McCall every day last summer. A helicopter would come in overhead, and I’d hear the almost subsonic whump-whump-whump that meant a big craft. The smoke and the morning air and the noise took me back to a […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Logging protesters say they won’t give up
High in Idaho’s snow-clad Nez Perce National Forest, chain saws whine and logging trucks thunder down frozen roads through the night in a frantic effort to fell 8 million board-feet of timber. Downed trees – in stacks higher than ever before seen on the forest, protesters say – tower above the logging trucks. “They’re cutting […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes
BOISE, Idaho – Sluggish all morning, the Rabbit Creek fire swept up the North Fork of the Boise River with a fury Kevin Brown will not soon forget. “It is very difficult to put into words,” said Brown, who was monitoring air traffic from a helicopter over the wildfire last September. “Awesome seems understated,” he […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Excerpts from Hellroaring: The Life and Times of a Fire Bum
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. I keep an empty turtle shell on the window sill. It’s discolored and peeling, but not from decay. The shell was burned over by a wildfire in Minnesota during the crackling-dry season of 1988. Its […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
After the fire comes the real devastation
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. BOISE – John Thornton, a hydrologist for the Boise National Forest, remembers staring out of the helicopter in disbelief. Below him, a major wildfire was raging, devouring trees and brush. But what caught his eye […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Excerpts from Flame and Fortune; Quote from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. The fire-as-war metaphor fails, as all metaphors must. It fails first because, without a human antagonist, the moral drama centers within people, not between them. Firefighters get killed but don’t kill. The metaphor fails more […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Salmon plan attacked
The federal government is shopping around its latest plan for saving endangered Snake River salmon, and environmentalists aren’t buying it. Like its predecessors, the 1995 draft biological opinion for the operation of the federal hydropower dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers relies heavily on flushing juvenile salmon downstream with water from upstream reservoirs in […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Utah wilderness bill under way
Utah’s congressional delegation has once again promised a Utah BLM wilderness bill, and this time – to the dismay of environmentalists – it may be able to deliver. Gov. Mike Leavitt, representatives Enid Greene Waldholtz, Jim Hansen, and Bill Orton (the lone Democrat), and senators Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch are all working on a […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Grass-roots strategy for salmon
Hoping to sway the outcome of a pending federal recovery plan for Snake River salmon, 45 environmental and fishing groups have come up with a plan of their own. The groups, all members of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition, recently presented their 45-page recommendation, Wild Salmon Forever, to the National Marine Fisheries Service. It […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Want to sponsor a wolf?
The nonprofit Wolf Education and Research Center, in Ketchum, Idaho, has begun a new program encouraging people to contribute directly to the annual costs of returning wolves to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. It supports logistical expenses, estimated at over $500,000, which include radio collars and tracking equipment as well as field operations. The […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Trumpeter swans play through
Trumpeter swans have set up housekeeping in Utah for the first time in recorded history, with three of the swans settling in at a golf course near St. George. State wildlife officials discovered the swans after golfers complained that the birds, which can grow to six feet from tail to beak, interfered with their game. […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Called on the carpet
Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt was called before the House Resources Committee Jan. 26 to defend the government’s $6.7 million wolf restoration program. Republicans, who now dominate the committee, charged that state and individual rights have been subordinated to the federally protected wolves. “I strongly believe, Mr. Secretary, that not only have your wolves […]