JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – When hunting guide Nate Vance left his tent in the early morning darkness he quickly realized that the figure moving heavy logs off the food cooler was not the cook. “I heard a “woof” and I smelled that awful breath,” Vance says. “I knew I had stepped into a bad situation. […]
Wildlife
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Utah vandalism includes spiked trees
In late September a nervous-sounding caller warned a secretary in the Fish Lake National Forest office in Richfield, Utah, that the Deep Creek timber sale had been spiked. The 66-acre sale northwest of Capitol Reef National Park hadn’t generated much controversy, but loggers who inspected after the phone call said they found many metal spikes. […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Organizing citizens for the next 20 years
-Where do citizen activists go from here?” asks the 20th anniversary issue of The Workbook, published by the Albuquerque-based Southwest Research and Information Center. Varying answers come from 19 veteran activists whose essays appear in this special 47-page issue. In New Mexico, Maria Varela says empowering land-based communities to develop their economies is the answer […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Timber industry takes a stand
Stung by the Sierra’s Club’s book, Clearcut, the timber industry has struck back with a glossy 28-page rebuttal. Closer Look: An On-the-Ground Investigation of the Sierra Club’s Book, Clearcut, makes the case that clearcutting can improve forest health. The Sierra Club’s 1993 book presented aerial photographs of nearly 100 denuded sites to represent the industry’s […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Wilderness Act at 30
Is there a difference between a wilderness in a national park and a wilderness in a national forest? Why are cows and sheep allowed to graze in wilderness? Are airports permitted? The Wilderness Act Handbook, reissued by The Wilderness Society, aims to answer these and other questions about this country’s 96 million acre National Wilderness […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Uncontrollable coyote
For Wayne Grady, it was on a cold, clear night in eastern Ontario, Canada, when he heard coyotes howling: “The sounds seemed to tremble on the verge of language, to be, almost literally, the voice of the wilderness.” This recollection introduces The World of the Coyote, a glossy book about the canine’s habits and history. […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Come into the forest
-Nature is not only more complex than we think; it is even more complex than we can think,” said biologist Frank Egler, whose observation is one of dozens of quotations gracing a new, permanent exhibit at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Ore. Called The Changing Forest, the exhibit features ceiling-high trees and indoor and […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Witness
-Each species is a masterpiece,” says biologist and writer E.O. Wilson in his introduction to Witness: Endangered Species of North America, a large-format book of 200 stunning black-and-white and color portraits. Photographers Susan Middleton and David Littschwager collaborated with the California Academy of Sciences and Chronicle Books to produce this collection, to try to focus […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Bambi takes a hunter safety course
Hey kids, remember when Bambi’s mother got blown away by the hunter? Tom Storm does, and because movies like Bambi have given hunters a bad name, he wants to teach people who don’t hunt all about the role hunters play caring for wildlife. In his book Stormy and The New West, Storm shows Stormy the […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
A wilderness rates one official boss
A wilderness once run by six national forests will get its own supervisor, budget and district managers – just like a national forest. By centralizing management of Idaho’s 2.3 million acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the Forest Service hopes to save on costs and improve services, says John Twiss, the agency’s national leader […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
When are trapped wolves “taken’?
The Bozeman-based Predator Project has asked the federal Animal Damage Control agency to stop trapping coyotes after a gray wolf was found dead in a trap on a Montana ranch. The wolf, which had wandered from a pack in Glacier National Park, died from overheating in late August. Wolves in Montana are protected under the […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Salmon win again (in court)
Although endangered Snake River salmon appear to be losing their battle with extinction, they continue to win in court. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Sept. 9 that the Northwest Power Planning Council’s plan for restoring Snake River salmon gives too much to industrial interests and too little to tribal and state biologists, reports […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
A creeping plague of crickets is hitched to everything in the world
There have been a few times when my love of nature has been put to the test: a July 4 snowstorm that trapped me in a tent for three days, a two-month bout with poison oak, a gnat attack in Utah. The Mormon cricket plague was no exception. The outbreak began in 1981 in Dinosaur […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
The progress of freewheeling consensus jeopardized as feds pull back
Early in 1993, some Oregon folks who shared little but a fierce love for their valley met to talk things over on Jack Shipley’s deck high above the Applegate River. Dwain Cross, owner of an Ashland logging company, wondered if there was a way the federal government could resume selling timber despite court injunctions blocking […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Yellowstone fires produce new trees, not meadows
Crouched over a metal screen like a gold rush prospector and peering through its grid at the forest floor, Cindi Persichetty calls out what she sees through each square-inch opening: “Line four: moss, moss, litter, seedling, seedling, seedling.” Another Idaho State University graduate student, Mike O’Hara, sits on a log recording the findings on a […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
As salmon die, a traveler plants seeds of rage
McCALL, Idaho – Another 1,000 miles, another month gone by. As relentless as the wild salmon he hopes to save, Charles Ray climbs into his weathered brown truck and each month travels about the same distance the fish must navigate between the Pacific Ocean and their spawning grounds in central Idaho. Many of his work […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
Yellowstone makes bragging hazardous …
Poachers may want to avoid Yellowstone National Park this fall. Rangers have begun photographing the park’s most spectacular wildlife so that pictures are available if the animals are killed and their heads mounted as trophies. “This way, if we find that poachers have gotten one of these animals, we know exactly what to look for […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
… As park poacher holds on to trophies
A professional bowhunter who admitted poaching protected elk in Yellowstone National Park for nine years may get to keep his spoils. Federal prosecutors say they will not press Donald E. Lewis to hand over his illegal animal trophies to the government, as mandated by a plea bargain Lewis and his hunting partner, Arthur Sims, agreed […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
Hikers can bear grizzlies
Restoring grizzly bears to Washington’s North Cascades and Idaho’s Selway-Bitterroot ecosystems won’t interfere with hunters, hikers or horseback riders, says a conservation group in Bellingham, Wash. The group, Greater Ecosystem Alliance, examined closures of trails and campgrounds caused by grizzlies in 11 national forests and two national parks. All had little effect on recreation. Blocked […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
One down, three to go
Following the belief that conservation, like charity, begins at home, Ecotrust was founded three years ago in Oregon to save temperate rain forests in North America. The organization chose four rain forests to concentrate on. Now, thanks to a Canadian timber company, it can devote its resources to the three rain forests still at risk. […]