For the first time in recorded history, Yellowstone National Park trumpeter swans added no young to their flock last summer. The decline in cygnets parallels a decrease in the adult population from almost 500 last year to 277 this year. Ruth Shea, of the Idaho Fish and Game Department, believes a major cause is competition […]
Wildlife
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Clearcut
We can only wonder how Thoreau would have reacted, beyond suffering simultaneously from apoplexy and a coronary, to the trashing of nature that Clearcut reveals. Not just leaves and grand passages, but entire chapters have been ripped out. *David Brower In Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry, disturbing aerial views bear witness to the elimination […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Trees are more than logs
An “idea fair” sponsored by the Forest Service and a coalition of private and public organizations will show how to extract higher value from forest products before they leave timber-dependent communities. “Growing Sustainable Forest Enterprises, An Intermountain Idea Fair” examines how timber can be made into specialty products such as toys or furniture rather than […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
An open letter to Andy Kerr in rural Oregon
ENTERPRISE, Ore. – I don’t know you, Andy, although we’ve met a couple of times. You came into my bookstore 12 or 15 years ago, then we met again the evening of Allan Savory’s grazing talk. I’ve heard your voice on TV and seen your face in the newspapers over the years. I remember one […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
North Dakota may get a wilderness
In a surprise move in late February, North Dakota Gov. Ed Schafer endorsed portions of a Sierra Club plan to establish the state’s first ever federal wilderness areas. Although all of North Dakota’s major newspapers and many citizen’s groups have backed the wilderness plan, Schafer, a Republican, is the state’s first politician to sign on. […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Tree poaching on the rise
Timber prices are now so high that renegade loggers in northern Idaho have been stealing trees from national forests. Recently, 15 people were arrested for 35 timber thefts that occurred last year on the Priest Lake District of the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. Don Hacker, 42, of Priest River, Idaho, was fined $600 and ordered […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Noisy wildlife refuges
Arizona’s endangered bobwhite quail and New Mexico’s antelope may be running away from national wildlife refuges instead of toward them. According to a recent study by the non-profit Defenders of Wildlife, military overflights continue to disrupt at least 35 refuges. The group’s report, Unfriendly Skies, says that while bombers and fighter-planes practice overhead, startled birds […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Timber companies export logs – and jobs – to Asia
SUPERIOR, Mont. – An unusual alliance of environmentalists and millworkers has asked the government to close loopholes that let timber companies export logs from private ground in Washington and Oregon, then buy timber on national forests in Montana and Idaho. The exemption, allowed under a 1990 law that banned exports from state forests, costs Montana […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Will timber plan fly?
The Clinton administration’s final plan for Northwest forests was delayed for release until March 31, but a Feb. 23 summary reveals it hasn’t much changed since last July when it was first proposed. The plan calls for annual federal timber sales of 1.05 billion board feet across the range of the northern spotted owl. That’s […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Reclaiming high places
Alpine forget-me-not, a miniature, bright blue flower, grows above timberline through constant winds, glaring sun and only two months of summer. Now, in addition, it faces the added stresses of mines, ski areas and increased radiation through a thinning ozone layer. At the 11th annual High Altitude Revegetation Workshop, scientists and managers will discuss how […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Ex-logger Andrus says our forests are overcut
FAIRMONT HOT SPRINGS, Mont. – Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus used his time at the podium during a rare meeting of Forest Service district rangers Feb. 16 to complain that timber-sale goals in national forest management plans were boosted by politicians eager to please big timber companies. “Your ASQs (allowable sale quantities) are not accurate. They […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Orphaned cubs returned to wild
Columbia Falls, Mont. – Two orphaned black bears got a late jump on hibernation but a new lease on life when they were placed in a man-made den last month. Biologists hauled the tranquilized twin cubs by snowmobile, then tucked them into the 20 below zero snow cave. If all goes well, they will slip […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Campbell sides with Telluride
Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (D, Colo.) says he will introduce legislation to condemn a developer’s dream house built in Colorado’s West Elk Wilderness – if the Forest Service rejects a proposed land exchange with the developer. A Campbell spokeswoman said the senator wants to give the Forest Service another tool to deal with Tom Chapman, […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Will plan save or destroy the grizzly?
A two-month battle between environmentalists and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials over the newly released Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan may end up in court. On Jan. 26, three environmental groups, the Fund for Animals, the Colorado-based Biodiversity Legal Foundation, and the Montana-based Swan View Coalition, gave 60-days’ notice to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Wyoming lawsuit would privatize wildlife
No one owns the sky. At least not yet. But ownership of the land, the water and now the wildlife is continually sought by people with too much money and a lot of greed. This country was founded by people running from kings who only let land-owning aristocrats hunt. Even if they were starving, the […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Timber industry mounts an offense
The timber industry this winter launched a $1.5 million campaign in the Pacific Northwest to derail President Clinton’s Option 9 forest plan and lift court injunctions on timber sales. In addition to radio and television ads, the industry created three citizen committees in Washington, Oregon and northern California that have sent mailings to 1.5 million […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Can she save ecosystems?
Mollie Beattie got an uncomfortable preview of the realpolitik that still pervades the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last summer while she waited for Senate confirmation as the agency’s director. One Republican senator after another anonymously exercised the right to place a “hold” on her confirmation. Some, no doubt, were simply curious about this 46-year-old […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Wyoming county tries to put itself on the map
By the time you read this, 200 avid sportsmen will have enjoyed a festive three-day “coyote shoot” in which the killers of the most and biggest animals take home $500 prizes. Sponsored by the Campbell County Chamber of Commerce in northeastern Wyoming, the Feb. 3-5 shoot is not unique. Similar events go on throughout the […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Why care about a snail the size of pinhead?
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Can she save ecosystems? MOLLIE BEATTIE: Even if not a single job were created, wildlife must be conserved. Why? Because we are linked to it, and it is in our immediate self-interest to care about it. When we see the snails and […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: A chronology
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Can she save ecosystems? 1885: Congress creates the Section of Economic Ornithology within the U.S. Department of Agriculture and appoints prominent naturalist C. Hart Merriam to head it. Merriam begins an exhaustive survey of the geographic distribution of the nation’s birds and […]