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Aprl/19, 1993 VoL 25 No.7 A Paper for People who Care about tbe West One dollar and.fifty cents

..MlCON\£, MR. PRESIOEN'f, TO1\.IE OlI)'G~ TIM~RSUMM\T..."

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Reporter's Notebooks: The way it was at the summit in Portland, Oregon/14, 15

.... nvironmentiilists' euphoria over budget was not the place to rework the times the subsidy it gives the West's ranchers. ~" President Bill Clinton's Western West's approach to public land mining, "Does he have the abilityto say no?" ~ ~ policies came to an abrupt end grazing and logging. Instead, they Western Republicans were allowed by ~ in late March, when the White promised to deliver reform in a package of their constituency to preach free enterprise . .. . House pulled public land individual bills. while protecting subsidies to public land reforms from its new budget. The retreat was Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., head of the users. But Western Democrats, whose so quiet the White House wasn't the first to House Committee on Natural Resources, coalition includes city dwellers and envi- announce that grazing fee increases, mining said he has been "waiting for that indepen- ronmentalists, may have more trouble royalties and prohibitions on below-cost tim- dent legislation for 12 years." He also said keeping their base. That is especially true 'ber sales were no longer part.of the because the action was portrayed Clinton budget by the media as having seriously The honor of making that weakened Clinton's ability to announcement fell to Western Clinton flinches institute national reforms. Democratic senators, who had, Not only Westerners are pay- depending on your perspective, ing attention. The management either successfully reasoned with under Western. of the West's public lands has Clinton or threatened to vote as a become a national issue, with the bloc against his "budget unless he Clinton retreat criticized editori- gave them what they wanted. pressure ally in the New YorkTimes and The deal was apparently cut USA Today. without consulting Interior Sec- Not all Westerners will retary Bruce Babbitt, Clinton's escape increased fees. Interior congressional allies or environmentalists. he had not been warned of the deal-making Department officials announced that they The surprise and humiliation led to angry and called it "a fundamental mistake by the may replace lost revenues from higher statements, with Jay Hair, head of the administration." Miller predicted gridlock mining and grazing fees with surcharges on National Wildlife Federation, for example, would continue on Western lands. federal irrigation water and higher fees on calling the deal "date rape." During the Reagan-Bush years, ranch- recreational use o.fpublic lands. But the White House and the Western ers, miners and loggers were protected And despite campaign promises to buy Democratic senators, led by Montana's Max against legislative change by Western more parks and recreation land, the Clinton Baucus and Colorado's Ben Nighthorse Republican senators, led most recently by . budget calls for only $209 million for new Campbell, deplored what Campbell called Wyoming Senator Al Simpson. Now the land acquisition. Bush requested $366 mil- "extreme, shrill rhetoric." Other senators in torch has apparently passed to the Western lion last year. the bloc are Jeff Bingaman, N.M., Richard Democrats. Simpson said he was 'pleased - Michael Milstein, Ed Marston Bryan, Nev.,Dennis DeConcini, Ariz., Byron for the West, but worried for the nation: Dorgan, N.D. and Harry Reid, Nev. "It's a portent of a very troublesome trait," Michael Milstein reports for the 1 The White House and the senators said said the Senate minority whip, who recalled Billings Gazette; Ed Marston publishes they hadn't abandoned reforms, but that the that the government hands com producers 15 High Country News. • T LR

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~======~ Spring visitors A Calkin . Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Tom celebration Knudson dropped in during the spring More than 100 break with his wife Eileen and almost 5- admirers of Brant Calkin year-old daughter Kristen. Tom is spend- gathered in Salt Lake ing this year as a professional-in-resi- City recently to wish the dence at the University of Colorado's executive director of the Center for Environmental Journalism in Southern Utah Wilder- Boulder, Colo. Usually, Tom writes about ness Alliance well as he environmental issues for the Sacramento concludes 30 years of Bee. work in environmental HIGH COUNTRY NEWS On a Saturday night he joined some activism. Brant, with the (ISSN/0191/5657) is published 50 residents of the North Fork Valley at help of associate director biweekly, except for one issue during Paonia Town Hall to see wondrous slides Susan Tixier, took July and one issue durfngjanuar-y, by of bats and hear a compelling speaker, Dr. SUWA from 1,000 the High Country Foundation, 119 David Armstrong. who is known as the members to 10.000 in Grand Avenue, Paonia, CO 81428. Sec- "bat man:' just five years. A former ond-class postage paid at Paonia, A professor of biology who also national president for the Colorado. directs the University Museum at the Uni- Sierra Club, Brant had POSTMASTER, Send address versity of Colorado, Armstrong enthralled changes to HIGH COUNTRY NEWS, received its highest Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. his audience with bat lore. Anyone who honor, the John Muir subscrfpnons are $28per ye~ for cared to could also touch one of the Award. individuals and public libraries, $38 dozens of preserved yet still furry bats he At the retirement pel' year for institutions. Single copies brought along. Armstrong proposed a bash, the award ceremo- $1.50 plus postage and handling. Spe- "Bat Count" day in Delta County and ny quickly lurched cial Issues $3 each. . encouraged residents to construct and toward parodies and install bat houses to attract the insect-eat- skits. One, we hear, fea- Tom Bell ing mammals. Armstrong's talk in Paonia Cindy Wehling Editor emeritus tured a Green Goddess, Greg Peterson with Ook was sponsored by the Black Canyon sent to Utah just to roast Ed Marston Publisher Audubon Society. the flat-topped Calkin. Betsy Marston Mark Kramer and Lisa Moreno came His next challenge - once a replacement with some 250,000 people, and that Reno Ed~tor by to pick up a T-shirt while visiting is selected - is sailing with Susan to the has boomed recently to 134,000 people. linda Bacigalupi Associate publisher friends and family in the area. They live Sea of Cortez and Baja California. "It is no surprise that Nevada remains Steve Hinchman in Washington, D.C., where Mark works All proceeds from the event went the fastest growing state in the nation with Staff reporter for the Office of Management and Budget toward a scholarship for SUW A interns, a 50 percent growth rate and a population Paul Lar-mer- and Lisa is a legislative assistant for Col- called the Flat Intern Scholarship As:dstatft edikW' Earth around 1.2 million:' Jon points out, "what orado Rep. Pat Schroeder, Fund. For $20, contributors to the fund with the behemoth California spilling Jon Christensen Great Basift regional eduor . will receive a green T-shirt with a Brant eastward into the 'West.:"

C.L Rawlins Calkin likeness drawn by Jim Stiles, Poetry editor intrepid newspaper publisher of Canyon New intern' Marlon Stewart Country Zephyr in Moab, Utah. Prodw::tW,,;proofreading New intern Greg Peterson comes to .. SOW A is at 1471 South 1100 Easf, us most recently from Aspen just over . Cindy Wehling Des..ktop publishing Salt Lake City, UT 84105. McClure Pass. For the last three years he

Ann Ulrich has worked winters as a ski and snow- Typesetting Odds and ends board technician and summers as a busser Yvonne PeU Ray Rasker, who was mentioned in at the Woody Creek Tavern, known as the Business two stories in the last issue, wants us to haunt of writer Hunter S. Thompson. He Gretchen Nicholoff Circ:ulotkm manager. clarify his title: He works full time for the also volunteered some time at Hunter and

Phyllis Becktell Wilderness Society and is an adjunct Amory Lovins' Rocky Mountain Institute Circulation researcher in the political science depart- in Old Snowmass. Promo,,,,,,Meg O'Shaughnessy ment of Montana State University. Lured to Colorado by its abundant While illustrator-proofreader Diane snow, Greg says in college he was a frus- Greg Peterson Pet.erMall Sylvain takes a two-month break to tour trated surfer. "Then. when I moved to I...... Ireland and Scotland, Marion Stewart, a Colorado, I discovered snowboarding and Victoria Bomberr-y, Forestville, Calij. former columnist and reporter for the She- it took over my life." Maggie Coon, Seattle, Wash. boygan Press. in Sheboygan, Wisc., has Judy Donald, Washington, D.C Now the "recovering ski bum" hopes Michael Ehlers, Boulder, coto. joined High Country News as fact-checker to pursue a career in journalism, which he Tom France, Missoula, Motll. and proofreader. Lisa Cook, the wife of discovered during a college internship Karl) Frohboese, Par'" City, Utub sally Gordon, Buffalo, Wyo. assistant editor Paul Larmer, has taken a with Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. There Judith Jacobsen, Boulder, Colo. different part of Diane's job, drawing Greg also discovered an interest in envi- Dan Luecke, Boulder. Colo. some five maps for this issue. Geoffrey O'Gara, Lander, Wyo._ ronmental law, But that was just before he DlaneJosephy Peavey, OJrey, ldubo Great Basin watcher Jon Christensen graduated from the University of Califor- James B. Rueh, Flagstaff, Ariz. tells us we completely ignored Nevada in nia at Santa Barbara and went off to Farwell SUlith, McLeod, Mont. Emily SwansOn,'Bozema;,., Mcmt. our introduction to our special issue April Aspen to investigate snow. Greg hopes Lyn~S. Taylor, Albuquerque, N.M. 5 on small towns squirming under devel- his Paonia stint will point him finally - Mark Trahant, Sail LAke Oty, Vtah Amy J. O'Connor opment pressure. He points out that Las toward newspaper work. Andy Wiessner, Dt?mJero, Colo. Brant Calkin of SUW A Board of Direc:ton Vegas is one of the West's larger cities, - Betsy Marston for the staff

Ankles appearing in High Cou1ltry News are indexed in Environmental Periodicals mbliogra- pby, Environmental Studies Institute, 800 Gar- den St., Suite D, Santa Barbara, CA 93101. An rights to pubHcatlon of articles In thIs Issue are reserved. Write for permission to print any articles or illustrations. Contributions (manu- scr-ipts, pbosos; artwork) will be welcomed with the understanding that the editors cannot be held responsible for loss or damage. Enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope with all wnso- lkited submissions to ensure return. Articles and letters wUl be edited and published at the discre- tion of the editors. I Advertising Information is ,available upon request. To have a sample copy sent to a friend, send us hts or her address. Write to Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. Call High Country News in Colorado at 303/5274898.

Printed on recycled paper: 75% post-consumer, 25% wood chips.

2 -;- High. Country N~ws::- April 19, 199.3 tT lRT

Owls may protect Southwest forests HOTLINE

In a move that promises to "." iled species. The new listing stir the debate between environ- could reduce or even eliminate mentalists and the timber indus- f)orthern these sales, said Bob Yost, timber try, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife • 5 pottecj Ow 1 specialist for-the forest. Service will listthe Mexican 1;71 Cal;fornia The U.S. Fish and Wjldlife spotted owl as "threatened" under tiJJ spo-t:ted owl , Service said it will propose "critical the Endangered Species Act. • Mexic.on habitat," lands protected as essen- The April IS listing, the' ',' - spottd owl tial to the owl's survival, by agency said, was necessary .__ :' Ib c' November 1993. Potential timber ". / .... -: . because timber cutting has , sales now include about 50 percent removed much of the bird's pre- ' of the owl's remaining habitat "-. ferred habitat of old-growth - ---- The Fish and Wildlife Ser- forests throughout the Southwest vice will try to prevent a polarized ,'- To save the estimated 2,160 '" battle by including all parties in surviving Mexican spotted owls, '. drawing up protection and recov- federal agencies will tighten log- , . ery plans. A "recovery team" will ging restrictions on national r' - draw on expertise from other fed- forests in Arizona, New Mexico I' eral and state. agencies. scientists

and parts of Utah and Colorado. .' .. , from the United States and Mexi- "This should functionally end co, Native American groups and public-lands logging of large trees , special interest groups, and will in the Southwest since there're so few trees Flagstaff mill, he added. draft a recovery plan within two-and-a- left," said Phoenix physician Robin Silver. But Jim Norton, southwest regional half years, said Tom Smylie of Fish and The Audubon Society activist first petitioned director of The Wilderness Society, said Wildlife. The ..agency also emphasizes that to list the owl in 1989. automation and overcutting were the real any actions to save the owl will consider Timber industry representatives pre- culprits. "They were already packing their impacts on local economies. dict that protecting the owls wilheduce bags, and the owl and environmentalists Final logging restrictions will come timber cutting by more than two-thirds are convenient scapegoats," Norton out of negotiations between the U.S. Fish and cost thousands of jobs, reports The added. and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Arizona Republic. "I don't think the list- Observers on all sides are waiting to Service - agencies with often conflicting ing has anything to do with the biology of . see how tougher protection plans affect agendas. But Interior Secretary Bruce the owl," said Elmer Richardson, regional pending timber sales. On the Gila Nation- Babbitt has said he believes the timber manager for Stone Forest Industries in al Forest, for example, planned timber industry can continue in the Southwest Flagstaff, Ariz. "It's just somebody's cuts over the next seven' years would with a minimum of job loss if the agen- guess that populations have been drop- cover virtually all of Bearwallow Moun- cies and other parties work together. ping." The listing was the fmal straw in a tain - an ecologically unique island of - Ernie Atencio litany of federal habitat protection moves forest that is prime habitat for the Mexi- that led to the company closing its can spotted owl and several other irnper- The writer is a former HeN intern. Why Arizonans voted for leg-hold traps The effort to ban leg-hold traps and lie Lands (ASHPL) remained optimistic. Republic, opposed the initiative. similar devices in Arizona started as a tri- A poll showed that-two-thirds of the vot- Finally, both Gov. Fife Symington umph of grass-roots involvement, It ended ers supported a ban on steel-jawed traps and Attorney General Grant Woods came foractivists as a lesson in power. and the Arizona Attorney General's out against the measure, saying they sup- Along the way, the debate also Office and recently retired state Supreme ported a trap ban but worried about the demonstrated the effectiveness of a satu- Court Chief Justice Frank Gordon both effect on hunters. ration television campaign, the clout held that the initiative would have no In the end, Proposition 200 gamered ranchers wield and the broadened agenda impact on hunting and fishing. barely 40 percent of the vote. of the National Rifle Association. _ Then the Wildlife Legislative Fund Lawmakers did introduce a ban on Trap opponents spent several years sprang its big-money trap. The group traps on public lands in the current leg- trying to convince the state legislature to formed several years ago to fight a trap islative session. Symington backed the ban steel-jawed traps, snares and similar ban in Ohio. It won that fight and trans- ban, after some complicated back-scenes devices on public lands. The 200 licensed formed itself into a national lobbying maneuvering aimed at getting trap ban trappers in Arizona report about 2,000 organization, gradually building up a supporters to accept the use of padded kills annually, down from a peak of national mailing list of some 2 million traps. 29,000 in 1980. But trap bans invariably people. The Fund also forged close ties However, House Natural Resources, died in rancher-friendly legislative com- with the National Rifle Association and Agriculture and Rural Development Com- mittees, in deference to the U.S. Depart- other outposts of the "wise use" move- mittee chairman Greg Patterson refused to ment of Agriculture, whose figures put ment. The Fund made defeating Proposi- hold hearings on the bill. The state Game losses to predators statewide at about tion 200 a national cause. and Fish Commission set up a series of 4,900 calves and 11,500 sheep. Ultimately, opponents of Proposition hearings to rewrite 'trapping regulations to The struggle entered a new phase two 200 raised nearly $2 million, most of it require "padded" traps. But trap oppo- years ago when Phoenix attorney and one- from the NRA, ranchers, trappers and nents say the commission acted to under- time mayoral candidate Gil Shaw decided hunters nationwide. The money financed cut any legislative trap ban. to organize an initiative against trapping. a TV ad blitz depicting Proposition 200 as The effort to ban traps on public But Shaw made one mistake in drafting a back-door effort by animal rights lands in Arizona now appears crushed. what became Proposition 200. The initia- extremists to ban hunting and fishing. It's unlikely the measure will be assigned tive's preamble read: "We desire to man- The ad blitz overwhelmed ASHPL, to another committee by House Speaker age our wildlife and protect our property ~hich ultimately raised $150,000 - Mark Killian, the Mesa, Ariz., Republican by humane and non-lethal methods." about one third in the form of in-kind con- who last year introduced a "takings" bill That sentence became the crux of the tributions. Television stations which did that made him a hero of the wise use- multimillion-dollar struggle. Shaw says he air ASPHL' s adsrefused to show graphic groups. It also appears unlikely that BARBS inserted that phrase to make sure that trap- scenes of animals in traps, which ASHPL Symington will expend much political pers didn't corne up with a new type of hoped would galvanize public opposition. capital on a trap ban in a year fraught with trap not specifically banned in the body of The newspapers also shied away agonizing budget deficit problems and • the initiative. from showing still pictures of artimals in huge spending cuts. Opponents seized on that language, traps, although most news stories insisting it would open the door to a ban remained favorable, and editorial cartoon- - Peter Aleshire on hunting and fishing. ists savaged the opposition. On the. other Initially, Shaw and his supporters in hand, most editorial boards, including the Peter Aleshire reports from Phoenix, Arizona for Safety and Humanity on Pub- state's largest newspaper, The Arizona Arizona '.

. High Country NewS-Apr1I 19,1993-3 ./ UneR

HOTLINE Defenders magazine fires fiery writer

Michael Frome, one of the West's mental journalist who fails to expose an parks, which has sold over 500,000 mostrespected and outspoken environ- issue of controversy and to stir debate is copies. mental writers, has landed in hot water not doing his or her job," he said. A New York City native, Frome again. "There's plenty of people to write the launched his writing career as a newspa- Frome, who was axed by American company line. My attitude is to let the per reporter and travel writer for the LA. Forests magazine in 1971 and Field and company line follow me. Times. In the 1960s, he wrote a column Stream magazine in 1974 for being too "]' m not through ... ]' m writing strident and controversial, has now been books, I'm teaching, and there's new dismissed by Defenders magazine as a- magazines sprouting all the time that are regular columnist. looking for fresh viewpoints." Defenders officials say Frome's col- Even so, Frome says his dismissal is umn - a regular feature for 16 years - disturbing in that it comes on the heels of . was not canceled because of its con- several environmental writers who were tentious content, but because the maga- dismissed or moved from long-held posts zine has undergone a top-down reorgani- for being too pro-environment or contro- zation. Published by Defenders of versiaJ. They include Philip Shabecoff at Wildlife, the magazine has been trimmed The New York Times and Dick Manning from six to four issues per year, and when at the Missoulian. the editors put together an issue on '! sin- Given Frome's following as a no- gle theme, they don't want Frome writing holds-barred writer, Defenders could lose about a completely unrelated topic, said some members and subscribers. "No writ- Defenders president Rodger Schlickeisen. er in America has more persistently and "It's my understanding that Michael effectively argued for the need of national wants to write on his own 'subjects and. . ethics of environmental stewardship than that he doesn't take direction wen," Michael Frome," said former Sen. Gay- Michael Frome Schlickeisen said. "It really hit home lord Nelson of Wisconsin. when we put out a special issue on biodi- In 1974, Frome's ouster from Field and versity, except for two pages devoted to Stream made big news, sparking features in for the Times called "environmental Mike's column, which was totally unre- Time magazine, daily newspapers, High trails," but as environmental concerns sur- lated to biodiversity. Here the issue hung Country News, and Outdoor America. faced, he wrote more and more about together really well, and then we had one "Frome has raised the consciousness threats to parks and wild areas. aberration." of millions of readers from bag limits and Considered a pioneer in the contem- Frome slammed _Defenders for, such to the real questions of what's hap- porary field of environmental journalism, switching priorities from hard-hilling pening to our resources and what can be Frome says his dismissal doesn't bode environmental writing to "safe" topics. done to protect them," said Joseph Brow- well for national environmental groups. "I endeavor to foc us on specifics, der, director of the Environmental Policy "Many of these groups have gone accountability and action," he said, Center in Washington, D.C., in the Nov. from a sense of mission and passion to a "where an organization like Defenders 4, 1974, Time magazine. point where professionalism, fund-raising evidently prefers the benign, environmen- Long-time friend Paul Fritz, a Boise and institutionalism are more important tally politically correct approaches associ- environmentalist and retired National than the purpose for which they were cre- ated with biodiversity, Amazon rain for- Park Service superintendent, said Frome ated," Frome said. "That's what's fright- est, whales and wolves and, as in the cur- is in a class of his own. "1 consider ening about this," , rent issue of Defenders, 'The Leopold Michael Frome the most controversial Ted Williams, a regular columnist for Legacy.' " environmental writer in the country," Fly Rod and Reel magazine, wrote these Frome said these were "catchy issues Fritz says. "You either love him or you words recently to former Forest Service that appeal to public sentiment without hate him - there's no in-between," regional forester John Mumma and offending, certainly without offending Frome lives in Bellingham on the 'Frome: "You can fire a Frome or potential contributors." Washington coast, where he teaches envi- Mumma; but you keep hearing them. In short, Frome's singular ability to ronmental journalism at Western Wash- They get louder and touder until someone' boldly challenge threats to wildlife and the ington University and works on several gets rattled and justice is served," environment - with nary a concern about books. His books include Conscience.of a offending anyone - has gotten him in Conservationist, Promised Land - - Stephen Stuebner trouble again. But Frome, now in his early Adventwes and Encounters with Wild 70s, isn't concerned about his welfare. America, Regreening the National Parks, Steve Stuebner is a free-lance "Anyone claiming to be an environ- and a popular guide to America's national reporter in Boise, Idaho. In NM: Mining reform wins; takings bill loses

New Mexico is no longer one of only Passage of the hard-rock bill alone authority to not protect species classified cled tires in paving materials. two states that do not regulate the mining caused New Mexico environmentalists to as threatened or endangered by the federal o The Senate conservation committee of hard-rock minerals such as gold, silver rate the 1993 legislative session, which government - but not before the Senate rejected a bottle bill that has been killed and copper. The state shed that dubious ended March 20, a success. On other. passed it on a 21-11 vote. The bill died by the bottling industry several years run- distinction - leaving Arizona-as the lone issues, most gave the legislative session after an official with the U.S. Fish and ning. Lawmakers did establish a task state - when its legislature approved in mixed reviews. Wildlife Service said it would put the force made up of industry and environ- March a bill designed to prevent pollution One of their disappointments was state at odds with the Endangered Species mentalists to see if a compromise bill can and restore the land forpost-mining use. Gov. King's failure to introduce legisla- Act and lead to the cancellation of a be worked out for the next legislative ses- Hammered out oyer seven weeks of tion he promised during the 1990 cam- "cooperative agreement" which channels sion. intensive negotiations between environ- paign' including protection of whistle- $68,000 in federal funds to the state to o Environmentalists failed to pass mentalists and the New Mexico mining blowers in state government and the cre- enforce the act. legislation that would have cancelled state industry, the bill was a top priority of ation of a state environmental review pro- o Environmentalists staved off several funding of the federal Animal Damage Gov. Bruce King. But it is a classic piece cess for projects that would affect the assaults on the state Solid Waste Act. One Control program, which kills predators to of compromise legislation and not without environment. would have allowed municipalities to protect livestock. its flaws, supporters say. It does not, for King was also criticized for telling a adopt weaker regulations governing land- Environmentalists said that overall example, impose reclamation require- farming magazine that he supported a fills than are currently allowed by state the Legislature was more receptive than in ments on the state's huge, old, open-pit "takings" bill asserting the supremacy of Jaws. the past to their concerns. But they spent operations that' have been around for private property rights over some environ- o Legislators amended the state Haz- the bulk of their time fighting off anti- decades. mental and safety regulations. Labor ardous Waste Act to give the state author- environmental bills. It also does not declare some envi- unions allied with conservation groups ity to impose tougher standards than the Said Sally Rogers of the Conserva- ronmentally sensitive areas off limits to squashed that bill, called the Property federal government's on activities such as tion Voters Alliance, "I look forward to mining, as environmentalists originally Protection Act, calling it a blatant attempt the disposal ana incineration of hazardous the day when we don't measure success wanted. But, in a major concession by the to circumvent regulations that protect wastes. by our ability to kill off bad bills in order mining industry, the bill allows citizens to workers and the environment . o Lawmakers. strengthened the state's to maintain the status quo," sue mining companies that violate envi- In other action: 'ability to regulate sludge and septic -" Keith Easthouse ronmental law or terms set out in mining o The House Energy and Natural wastes, which are a major contributor to permits. A new regulatory program under Resources Committee shot down a bill groundwater pollution, and they passed a The writer free-lances in Santa Fe, the law IJlilY ~e two ye~s to set up, ," _. that would have given the state the Jaw requiring the use of rubber from recy- New Mexico. ' ~ . -- .'. ~.. - ; : ~~~ . 4 - High Country News -April 19. 1993 . I T.",.. LRT-8E4-V2

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Missile plan shoots for the West HOTLINE Missiles may fly across Utah and New Mexico under a new proposal from the U.S. Army. The Army hopes to launch missiles 'from a site near Green River, Utah, and then shoot them down 750 miles away over New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range. Army officials told the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance that each mis- sile would drop a lO-foot booster weigh- ing nearly a ton near Hatch Point, 15 miles east of Canyonlands National Park. The Army also said helicopters would evacuate backcountry visitors before fir- ing its missiles. The Army is also consideriog sites in the Gulf of Mexico, off the COast of south- ern California, and in the South Pacific. Ed Vaughn, spokesman for the Army's Space and Strategic Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala., says Congress authorized the "Theatre Missile Defense Extended Test Range" plan in the plan in 1994. the Missile Defense Act of 1991.11 autho- Scott Groene of the Southern Utah rizes the Army to test a defensive missile Wilderness Alliance says the timetable system better than the Patriot missile sys- "seems real quick: They've made it so no tem which shot down Iraqi Scud missiles one can organize." The Army has already duriog the Persian Gulf conflict. Vaughn held scoping meetings in Green River and says the Army hopes to complete a draft Salt Lake City. Additional scoping meet- - Paul Larmer environmental impact statement by ings are scheduled for 2:30 p.m. April 27 September and obtain final approval for in Albuquerque, N.M., at the Holiday 1nn- The writer is HeN assistant editor. Legislature's anti-green 'crusade is sidetracked . . . BOISE, Idaho -In mid-February, it "They don't make places like the and dedicate them for in-stream flows. state's minimum stream flow law, allow- appeared that the Idaho Legislature was Henry's Fork anymore, and it is our Harm pointed out thatlCL couldn't get a ing lawmakers to kill a minimum-flow embarking on an anti-environmental cru- responsibility to be wise enough stewards bill introduced on groundwater contami- proposal in committee or at any stage of sade. to protect its waters for future genera- nation that defines who pays for cleaning the legislation process. As it is now, law- The Idaho House of Representatives tions," Andrus said in a bill-signing cere- up fouled aquifers. makers have to draft legislation opposing had repealed several of the state's envi- mony. "This international treasure now Environmental lobbies did succeed in a minimum-flow proposal and pass it ronmental laws, created new county con- has as its protectors environmentalists. killing or amending several bills that through both chambers. Only 1 percent of trols of land-use and water policy deci- farmers, sportsmen, irrigators and the rest could have been devastating to the state's the state's streams have been designated sions, passed a far-reaching "takings" act, of the people ofldaho." environmental future. The House had with a minimum flow; all are junior to and formed new wolf and grizzly bear Melinda Harm, lobbyist for the Idaho passed a number of potentially harmful senior water rights. "oversight committees" that were stacked Conservation League, summed up the ses- measures at the urging of the Idaho Farm The Farm Bureau also went after the in favor of ranchers and miners. sion by saying, "It could have been a lot Bureau, a pcwerfullobby in that chamber. state Fisb and Game Department, drafting But by the time the Legislature a bill that would have given county com- adjourned in late March, the more moder- missioners veto power over any lands pur- ate state Senate had killed most of those chased by the department. That measure bills or softened them considerably. Gov. 'They don't make places like drew the ire of the Idaho Realtors Associ- Cecil Andrus vetoed a takings bill for the ation, which objected to county govern- third year in a row. And in the end, the ment telling private landowners to whom' Legislature's environmental accomplish- the Henry's Fork anymore.' they can sell their land. ments took on a slightly different light. "If I Wanted to sell my property, and Lawmakers: - Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus Fish and Game was a ready, able and • Protected nearly 200 miles of the willing bnyer, I'd find it appalling that world-renowned Henry's Fork basin from there's a level of government. that could new dams and diversions, and 170 miles get in the way of the land sale," said Mark of the Boise River basin. Dunham, lobbyist for the Realtors. • Doled out $500,000 to implement a Farm Bureau lobbyists, who seek to water-quality protection program for the worse. We killed or amended some really Out of 70 House members, 50 are Repub- stop Fish aod Game from buying land for Middle Snake River, a highly polluted bad bills in the senate, and we're lucky to lican, 30 percent of whom are farmers or wildlife habitat because it often takes the stream near Twin Falls that authorities have the governor's veto of the takings ranchers. land out of agricultural production, killed have called "an open sewer." legislation." Bills creating a state-run management a seemingly innocuous bill on' controlled • Objected to: endangered species Due to a Republican landslide in last program for wolves and grizzly bears hunt fees. State Treasurer Lydia lustice listings without first consideriog econom- fall's election, Andrus had just a one-vote could have stripped about $290,000 in Edwards sought to change the way Idaho ic impacts; a national park study of Hells margin in the senate to sustain a veto. But federal funding for protection of all manages controlled-hunt permit, applica- Canyon; the listing of the Bruneau Hot since lawmakers passed the takings bill so endangered species in the state, including tionsto save money and paperwork. The Springs snail as an endangered species. late in the session, they bad already peregrine 'falcons and bald eagles. That's Farm Bureau saw the legislation as rais- • Revised the state's air quality laws adjourned by the time the governor because states cannot enact laws that are ing about $250,000 for Fish and Game. so they are not any more stringent than vetoed it. The bill would have required bostile to endangered species, or the U.S. Edwards lashed out at the Farm the newly revised federal Clean Air Act. state agencies to conduct a "takings Fish and Wildlife Service has to yank fed- Bureau for allegedly lying in its testimony • Reduced bonding requirements for impact assessment" for any environmental eral funding, officials said. to kill tbe legislation. "This is the most small surface and placer mines to $1,800 regulations that were deemed to place an The wolf bill, crafted by the Indepen- dishonest way to act for a lobbying per acre instead of the amount judged undue financial burden on polluting dent Miners Association, would have' group," she said. necessary by state environmental offi- landowners. downlisted wolves from "endangered"'to Farm Bureau lobbyist Jim Yost shot cials. Wendy Wilson, executive director of "threatened" and allowed ranchers to back, "She must have woke up too early Andrus and Republican lawmakers Idaho Rivers United, said she was pleased shoot wolves seen threatening their live- this morning, put on her pantyhose too singled_out the passage of the Henry's that her group had won passage of the stock. The grizzly bear bill would have tight and cut off the blood to her brain." Fork protection plan as the "high water Henry's Fork and Boise River protection created a citizens' oversight committee Yost was reportedly reprimanded for his mark" of the legislative session from an plans, but expressed dismay about the with seniority over a biological commit- remark by Farm Bureau colleagues. environmental point of view. Although lack of progress on other fronts. tee, and it would have eliminated the Sel- the Henry's Fork bill was narrowly Wilson was disappcinted, for exam- way-Bitterroot Wilderness as a new - Steve Stuebner defeated by four votes in the Idaho House ple, that her group couldn't get a Senate recovery area for grizzlies, a threatened last year, the measure passed both cham-' committee to introduce a bill that would species. The writer free-lances in Boise, bers unartimously this year .. allow fanners to retire ·their water rights Another bill would have gutted the Idaho ... High Country News - ~pril19, i993 -'5

, J • _. "' ... _. _ < ~ ••• ~J'-""' - - .'~r.,~·. Unclassifieds

HIGH COUNIRY NEWS classified ads cost 30 FREE INFORMATION PACKET on the ASPEN CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAl. COLORADO BED AND BREAKFAST for cents per word up to 50 words. RaJes increase endangered salmon crisis in the Pacific .STUDIES needs Education Coordinator. sale: 5 acres, Estes Park, borders Rocky after that. Display ads 4 column inches or less Northwest. Get on the mailing. list for salmon Administer/teach environmental education for Mountain National Park, spectacular Conti- are SlO/col. inch if camera-ready; $15/co1. 'inch updates and learn how you can help. The fish area schools and other duties associated with nental Divide-Lang's Peak. view .. turnkey. if we make up. Larger display ads are $30 or need your voice. Friends of Wild Salmon- wildlife sanctuary. Qualifications: Educational $390,000. Call The lnnbroker, 303/586-3223. $35/001. inch. We reserve the right to reject eds. HCN, P.O. Box 427, Eagle, ID 83616. (3x7b) background in natural sciences, environmental (3x5b) Send ad with payment 10: HCN, Box I®O, Pee- education, or related field; minimum four year> Ilia, CO 81428, or ca11303/527-4898 for more SOJOURNS OF DISCOVERY: Join us for experience teaching enviromnentaI education. WILL LEASE FORESTED MOUNTAIN information. an eco-adventure EscapeAwayl Northern Salary commensurate with experience. Benefits. LAND as habitat for threatened animals. Wil- Baja, Mexico - remote desert canyons, palm Send resume, three work references, two per- son, Box 215, EI Rilo, NM 87530. (3x5-eoi) ENVIR ONMENT AL STUDIES IN. THE oases, hot springs. Fjords and rainforests of . sonal references (name/phone), and creative COLORADO ROCKIES! Unique degree coastal British Columbia - make a differ- writing sample to: ACES Ed. Coordinator, Box OUTDOOR SINGLES NETWORK .. estab- program combines Ecology. Horticulture, ence in. their conservation. Waterfalls, wild- 8777, Aspen, CO 81612-8777. (2x6b) lished bi-monthly newsletter, ages 19-90, no Anthropology and Native American Studies flowers, wildlife of the Glacier National Park. forwarding fees, $35/l-year, $7/trial issue with effective action and contemplative train- Mont., area. "The land of sleeping rainbows." SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE for tradi- and information. OSN·HCN, P.O. Box 2031, ing. The NaropaInstitute, Dept. HC, 2130 - into the labyrinth of southern Utah. Hike, tional and non-traditional teachers for a McCall, ID 83638. (3x3p) Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, CO 80302. basecamp, backpack; sail, raft. 4-11 days. course entitled "Teaching. Environmental 303/444-0202. (4x7b) . Percentage of proceeds donated to local con- Ethics," June 19·26 and July 17-24, 1993. NEED CARETAKER with own income for servation organization. 800-736-TREK. For an application and information, write remote mountain ranch. References. Wilson, THE ENDANGERED SPECIES COALI- (lx7b) Four Comers School, P.O. Box 1029, Monti- Box 215, EI Rito, NM 87530. (3x6p) TION seeks Campaign Director to work with cello; UT 84535, or call 801/587-2156. Dead- Coalition staff, steering committee and task SIERRA CLUB. ASSOCIATE REPRESEN- line: May 1, 1993. Graduate and undergradu- ''OUTDOOR PEOPLE AD-Venture"lists 60- forces to strengthen federal -endangered TATIVE, WISE USE MOVEMENT: Sierra ate college credit available. (3x6b) word descriptions of active, outdoor-oriented species program. Experience required with Club has immediate need for conservation singles and trip companions nationwide. successful political/legislative efforts, coali- professional to advocate reform of 1872 Min- UNIQUE WESTERN COLORADO PROP- $3/issue, $12/ad. Outdoor People-HCN, P.O. tions, media/grass-roots campaigns. Salary: ing Law' and block "wise use" groups. Work ERTIES .• 474 acres with Anasazi tower, Box 600, Gaston, SC 29053. (7,o-eoi) $40,000-$60.000. Send resume to: Endan- to protect wilderness lands, wildlife, reform $192,000.· Historic stone mansion, 121 acres gered Species Coalition, 666 Pennsylvania outdated policies. Position located in Reno, is on Colorado River, waterfall, lake, farm land, ALTERNATIVE ENERGY CATALOG for Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20003. (2x7b) full-time temporary for one year. Salary: red cliffs, 20 minutes to town. $560,000 .• remote homes. Solar electric, wind, hydro- $2,333/mo. + benefits. Excellent communica- Gold Medal rrout river ranch in mountains, electric generators. wood-fired hot tubs, com- THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY, a national tion, organizational and motivational skills; 1,461 acres, $1.5 million .• 300 acre ranch on posting toilets and more. $2.50, refundable conservation organization, seeks a director for knowledge of public-lands issues, especially 2 miles Dolores River, red cliffs, swinging with order. Yellow Jacket Solar, Box 60H, its Salt Lake City, Utah, office. Director will mining; extensive experience as environmen- bridge, 60 acres irrigated, orchard, petro- Lewis, CO 871327. (6x24-ooi) have major responsibility for Society's cam- tal advocate, media background, ability to glyphs, $300,000 .• 12.6 acres on Colorado paign to protect nearly 6 million acres of Col- work independently and good computer skills River, lake, borders golf course, $8"1,500 .• SILVERTON PRIME COMMERCIAL GIFT orado Plateau' wildlands. Position requires are required. Send letter, resume and refer- 1.200-acre perfect mountain ranch near SHOP space available. Just remodeled spring work with Congress, federal land management ences by April 27 to: Barbara Boyle, Sierra Steamboat, mile trout river, log lodge, elk, of 1993; 80 feet from where train stops. Ideal agencies. media and grass-roots activists. Club-WUM, 4171 Piedmont Ave., #204, .borders national forest, $2.6 million. Call location. Approximately 500 sq. feet. Won't Director will also work with TWS national Oakland, CA 94611. We are an EOE com- Jack Treece, Treece Land, 303/858-3960. last. 303/387-5579. (2x6b) . staff on fund-raising, media and analytical pro- mitted ~ workforce diversity. (1x7b) jects. B.A. required; post-graduate education in natural resources or related fields highly desir- SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE during able. Experience in public-lands management, 1993 for science teachers for courses in biol- public speaking, fund-raising and environmen- ogy, geology, archaeology and ornithology at tal policy/advocacy also desirable. Send Four Corners School in Monticello, Utah .. resume to Darrell Knuffke, TWS, 7475 Dakin Recertification credits available - graduate St.'cSuite 410, Denver, CO 80221. (2xTh) or undergraduate. For an application and information, contact FCS. P.O. Box 1029, KETCHIKAN, ALASKA, Bed and Breakfast Monticello, UT 84535, or call 801/587-2156. with stunning view. 907!225-6357. (8,op) Application deadline is June I, 1993. (3x6b)

Get your new HeN COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR T-shirt and visor Mineral Policy Center, a small national environ- Designedby HeN artist Diane Sylvain, T-shirts are We may never see a better time the present to put an end to the Animal Dam- mental organization, seeks a Communications aquamarinewlblue ink or oatmeal w/aanberry ink: than Director to build public awareness for mining visorsarewhitewlblue ink. Prices are postagepaid. age Control (ADC) Program. With Presidant Clinton's new economic strategy to cut reform issues. Meicrrasponsfbtltttes include all unnecessary federal 'spending, now -is our chance to see that the- new adminis- aggressive press outreach efforts and production of organizationalpublications. tration as well as our Congress people know exactly how we feel about the ADC. T-shlrl- $12 Wildlife Damage Review staff feels strongly that your response at this particular Qualifications: Visor - $6.50 • 5 years experiencein the field time will make a huge impact on Clinton's economic advisors. WE URGE VOll TO • strong press relationsexperience Please specifycolor and TAKE THE TIME AND WRITE To THE NEW ADMINISTRATION. • excellent writing/productionskills size (aml., med., tg.• ex. Ig.) Our suggestions for what to Include In a letter are as follows: • environmental advocacyor natural for 'l-shlrts. Visors are one resourcel1and use backgrounda plus sizefits all. • The ADC exists as a blatant subsidy to the livestock industry. taxpayers should Small, fast-paced office in D.C. Salary high 20's Enclosed is $ __ not be expected to proyjde a zero-risk business environment for anyone. We _to low 30's. demand a leaner and more efficient government in which public interests, not pri- To apply, send rover letter, resume, and writing Name _ vate interest, are served first. sample to: • The ADC predator control program is neither cost effective nor biologically sound. In Address _ CommunicationsSearch 1992 the ADC spent over 45 millen taxpayer dollars to kill wildlife on public lands Mineral PolicyCenter and to develop poisons and controltechniques for wild animals. Most of these tech- 1325 MassachusettsAve., NW, #550 City,State, Zlp· _ Washington,D.C. 20005 niques are indiscriminate and place threatened and endangered species in jeopardy. At the same time the government spends millions to kill predators, It also funds multi- Equal Opportunity Employer.No calls. Mailto High Country News. .Apply by April30, 1993 P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 million-dollar programs to protect and reintroduce endang·ered species. • In fiscal year 1992 over 109,000 predatory mammais and more than 1.5 million birds were "reported" killed by the ADC. Its killing methods - poison baits, traps, The Wyoming . snares, denoing and aerial gunnng - are indiscriminate and inhumane. Human Valuesand • Ranchers need to be responsible for protecting Ihelrown livestock and doing so Lynching ofCittle Kate. 1889 the Written Word with non-lethal techniques. A. new book on the first public land. • We demand that this outdated lax-supported federal war on wildlife come to an grazing dispute. Did Ellen Watson A Tenth Anniversary end, and that the government begin to protect our natural heritage. (Cattle Kate) barter Celebration Make'copies of your letter and send to as many of these people as possible: sex for calves or 1. Your U.S.Senators, Wa~hington,DC20510. was this about GUEST FACULTY. 2. Your U.S. Representative, Washington, DC 20515 land and water 3. Dept. of Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, USDA, 14th and Independence Ave. SW, Wash- June 13- 19 ington. DC 20250 rights? Was 'I Jim Dodge - John Haines 4. White House Office on Environmental Policy, Kathleen McGinty, Old Executive Office Bldg., Jim Averell a Eliza Jones· William Kittredge Room 358, Washington, DC 20501 5. Leon Panetta,·Director; Office of Management and Budget, 725 17th Street, N.W., Wash- rustler or a Pattiann Rogers ington. DC 20503.. .- homesteader June 20 -26 6. Bruce Babbitt. Secretary of the Interior, Mail Stop 6218, 1849 C Street N.W., Washington, who dared DC 20240 Hugh Brody- Gary Nabhan 7... Jim Baca, Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior (Director Bureau of Lang Management, challenge the James Nageak • Sheila Nickerson designee), MailStop 6218. 1849 C Street NW, Washington. DC 20240 . entrenched cat- 8. George Frampton, Assistant to the Secretary of the Intenor (Under-Secretary of the Interior Terry Tempest Williams tlemen? Never- designee), Mail Stop 6218. Rm. 4312, 1849 C Street N.W., Washington, DC 20240 before-published 9. Senate: Agriculture, Rural Development and A program of ~ photos and research, The Island Institute Related Age-neies, Chairman Dale Bumpers, SD- 140, US Senate, Washington, DC 20510 368 pp, 47 photos. Box 2420-H 10.House; Agriculture, Rural Development and Softcover $15; hardcover $25; Sitka, Alaska 99835 - Related Agencies, Chairman Richard Durbin, 10 leather $67; all postpaid. Free catalog. 907-747-3794 .- Room 2362, RHOS, US House. of Representa-' HIGH PLAINS PRESS tives, Washington, DC 20026 P.O. Box 85218 Supported in part by the Lannan Foundation, 11.USDA/Office of the Inspector General, Tucson, AZ 85754 Box 123H, Glendo, WY 82213 NEA, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, POB 33399. Washington. DC 20026 6021884-0883 Ph. (307) 735·4370 NEf:[, and the. Alaska Humanities Forum. 6- High Country News - April 19, 1993 • . I. ¥ ~ -- ~ _. ~ --"'--.>------.- ~~~.J.O- __ "''';''''O;'''~ ~L.:~;.-..,_~...... A_

EXPLORING THE GREAT BASIN Nevada has more mountain ranges changing environment. GREEN AT WORK than any other state. Islands in a sea of Sierra Club Books, 730 Polk St., Working to protect the environment sagebrush basins, most of the 300-plus San Francisco, CA 94109. 406 pages. once meant picking up trash along a river ranges are so wild a visitor can wander for Maps. Paper: $15. or writing a letter to an insensitive member days in isolation. Until recently, that meant The Hiker's Guide to Nevada by of Congress. 'Today, environmental work it helped to go with someone who had Bruce Grubbs is a quick, condensed guide has taken on an expanded meaning, says gone before. But now the uninitiat~ can to 50 backcountry hikes, with clear, simple Susan Cohen, author of Green at Work: pick through three excellent books to plan maps, trail descriptions and permit require- Finding a Business Career that Works for a Great Basin backcountry advenrure. ments. Little-known peaks and side trips the Environment, Sensitivity to environ- The best on-the-ground guide is stand out, such as a hike through relict mental issues and policies is '!S essential to John Hart's Hiking the Great Basin, a white bark and limber pines on the 9.400- the corporate executive as it is to the Sierra Club Totebook revised, updated foot Duffer Peak in the Pine Forest Range activist, she points out. Cohen describes and back in print after a long hiatus. Hart in far northwestern Nevada. the current green job market, then lets covers .the high desert Great Basin Falcon Press, P.O. Box 1718, Hele- managers, consultants, financial experts ,ecosystem proper, those parts-of northern na, MT 59624. 109 pages. Maps, photos. and non-profit workers tell their stories. 1 Nevada, western Utah, southeastern Ore- Paper: $9.95. Their 28 profiles accentuate the diversity gon, and eastern California that drain Although it does not have 'th~detailed of green jobs including a vice president of inland. A few important areas are left out directions of a true guidebook, George environmental affairs for Colgate-Palmo- (such as the Jarbidge Wilderness, which Wuerthner's Nevada Mountain Ranges live and the business manager of the non- has streams that flow to the Snake River) offers photographic enticements to get out profit Environmental Defense Fund. About and others are mentioned only in passing and explore the unique beaury of each of half of the 223-page book is dedi dated to a (Mt. Jefferson and Table Mountain). But the state's diverse ranges. The text provides corporate directory of companies that the magic and wonder of untiammeled geological, ecological and historical analy- employ people with an environmental bent. wilderness come through in this book, as sis, as well as a predictable but compelling The directory gives the name of a contact exemplified by Morey Peak in the Hot polemic against the ravages of canle-c- the as well as phone and fax numbers to assist Creek Range in central Nevada and Mt. only other intruders a visitor is likely to the job-seeker. Moriah in the Snake Range just north of find on these remote lands. Island Press, Covelo, CA. 223 pages. Great Basin National Park. Hart also American & World Geographic Pub- Paper: $16. opens the ecosystem to the visitor, crack- lishing, P.O. Box 5630, Helena, MT 59604. ling the mystery of how plants such as the 96 pages. Photos, maps. Paper: $15.95. ancient bristlecone have adapted to a - Alex Angelo WAGONS WEST The West's "great migration" of 1843 along the 2,OOO-mile Oregon Trail may pale compared to HISTORIC POWWOW events planned for a The Nonhern, Southern and Ute historic re-enactment Mountain Ute tribes get together for the this sununer. first time in 130 years in Glenwood Although 1,000 pio- Springs, Colo., April 23-24. The While neers endured the River National Forest will host the United original trek, as many Ute Powwow Celebration in conjunction as 3 million people with training sessions for agency staffers. may participate in the Native American guest speakers plan to 1993 drive, say talk about issues such as sacred burial sesquicentennial cele- grounds and how forest lands are managed. bration organizers. The public is invited to participate in-pow- Wyoming alone antic- wow dancing; storytelling and sharing gifts ipates 2 million visi- at the Glenwood Springs Middle School in tors and plans to West Glenwood Springs. Admission is $3 spend more than for adults; children enter free. For more $250,000 on advertising and trail events LOOKING OUT FOR PF;TROGLYPHS information call the White River N alianal such as museum displays and frontier out- How many visitors can l,OOO-year-old Forest, 303/945-2521. posts. The wagon train will set off from rock art endure? Should bike riding, horse- Independence, Mo., in June, hoping to back riding and dogs be allowed nearby? DUMP DECISION IN COLORADO reach the $10 million National Historic What about pooper scoopers? You can A closed uranium mill in western Col- Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Oregon help the National Park Service decide orado may soon become one of two HOW TO MANAGE THE RESOURCE City, Ore., by September. The center questions like this at PetroglyphNational licensed dumps in the U.S. to accept "Nat- Utah State University hosts an ambi- boasts a life-sized replica of a wagon train Monument near Albuquerque, N.M. The urally Occurring Radioactive Materials," tious symposiwn April 21-23 called Con- complete with ox and featuring mountain agency wants the public to help decide on or raw uranium, thorium and radium ores. flicts in Natural Resources Management: man Festus Coopman. "I've seen lots of a long-term management plan for the men- The site at Uravan, Colo., a former compa- Integrating Social and Ecological Concerns. folks come out of here with tears in their ument. A planning team has proposed three ny town, already holds 12 million cubic Speakers include Charles Wilkinson, Moses eyes," says Bud Butts, who plays the leg- alternative plans, which range from almost yards of waste from the old Union Carbide Lasky Professor, of Law at the University of endary Coopman. "They've heard all their no development with pedestrian traffic mill. In January, the Colorado Department Colorado, who will share "Lessons from the lives about what Grandma did and how she' only, to new visitor centers, a new paved of Health gave Umetco, a Union Carbide Colorado River Plateau," and-Montana forest never complained. Then they saw what it road, and horses, dogs and bikes allowed subsidiary, preliminary approval to bury supervisor Otville Daniels who will present a was really like." Pendelton, Ore., resident on trails. Native American access to sacred 600,000 additional cubic yards of radioac- case study on "Integrating Resource Man- Jerry Schubert, who has traveled parts of sites in the monument would continue tive rock and sand. Carolyn Been. mayor agement: Lolo National Forest." Other the trail in vintage wagons for the past 10 under all three alternatives. The National of nearby Naturita, population 434, says speakers include Joseph Chapman, dean of years, is wagon master for the four-month Park Service offers public workshops and most residents favor the dump expansion the College of Natural Resources at Utah drive. "I can't wait. I wish we were ready special presentations about the proposed because it would clean up several aban- State University, James B. Ruch, executive to go tomorrow," Schubert told the Casper, plans through April. Public meetings and doned mines in the area. But critics. from vice president of Grand Canyon Trust, and Wyo., Star-Tribune. Those wishing to review of the draft environmental impact --.. other, towns in the region say the dump is Ed Marston, publisher of High Country walk alongside the wagon train can do so statement will continue from May 199~ . primarily designed for radioactive waste News. For more informalion, contact Joanna for $39 a day. Riding a horse or wagon 'through January 1995. For more informa- left over from ~xperiment~( at the Colorado Endter-Wada, College of Natural Resources, costs $59. For more information, contact tion, contact the Petroglyph National Mon- School of Mines in Golden, and could Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322- the Wyoming Division of Tourism at ument, National Park Service, 123 Fourth result in as many as 25 trucks "ofradioac- 5215 (801f750-2487) or Lisa Anderson, 307n77-7777. St., S.W., Rm, 101, Albuquerque, NM tive waste per day on Montrose County Conferences and Institutes Division, 87102 (505n66-8375). roads. Critics also cite a Colorado attorney Utah State University, Logan, general ruling which says the state can't UT 84322-5005 DOllARS TRAIL TO COLORADO prevent Umetco from accepting out-of- (801f750-2302). A symposium set for Grand Junction, state waste. The Colorado Geological Sur- Colo., May 7, will examine how trails in vey has criticized the Uravan site because western Colorado might link into one it is located on an unstable hillside directly major system. Club 20, an organization of above the San Miguel River, a tributary of counties dedicated to economic develop- the Colorado River. The state Health ment of the state's Western Slope, says the Department (303/331-4510) will hold a goal is to boost tourism. The symposium public hearing at 3 p.m. April 29 at the will be held at the Two Rivers Convention Nucla Elementary School in Nucla, Colo. Center in Grand Junction, and the keynote Send written comments by April 29 to speaker is Stuart McDonald, trails coordi- Judge Richard W. Dana, Hearing Officer, nator for the state. Sponsors are Club 20 Judicial Arbiter Group, 1601 Blake St., and the Mesa County River Front Commis- Suite 400, Denver, CO 80202. For more sion. For more information contact Wade information, contact Western Colorado Haerle of Club 20 at 303/242-3264. Congiess at 363/249-1987.

High Country News - April 19, 1993 - 7 Phil Hocker An Exxon drill rig in the Bridger-Teton National Forest "on leases head for court

by Arden Trewartha tion to drill cannot be denied or signifi- and Steve Hinchman In March, thefederal government signed an cantly modified even if drilling causes environmental damage. As a result, con- battle to stop the whole- agreement to pay a New Mexico oil company servationists lost numerous battles over sale leasing of national drilling proposals, especiall y around forest lands to oil and gas more than $18 million to buy back oil and gas Yellowstone and Teton parks (HeN, companies is about to be 12/5/88). A. - fought yet again. leases it originally soldfor $1-$2 an acre. The So, in 1988, the National Wildlife Environmental groups won the first Federation and other groups sued. charg- round in 1988, when a federal appeals leases lie below 1,600 acres bordering ing in Conner vs. Burford that the Forest court ordered the Forest Service to stop Service was playing a shell game. The . approving oil and gas leases until it eval- Lechuguilla Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San uated. the environmental consequences of Francisco agreed and ordered the Forest energy development. Park. The area, environmental groups say, is so Service to halt all leasing until it wrote _Now, five yearslater, the Forest detailed environmental analyses. Service is preparing new lease plans that sensitive to disruption it should never have been Ai first the Forest Service responded could open the West in million-acre with a two-stage system. Forest plans chunks to oil and gas exploration. But leased in the first place. were amended to determine which lands critics say the agency is again ignoring would be available for lease. Second, the impacts to wildlands from drill rigs, As the following five stories reveal, agency agreed to do separate, site-specif- pipelines and the spaghetti -like network Lechuguilla in New Mexico is just one of many ic analyses oneach lease proposal before of roads they require. a lease was granted, much the way it pre- As in 1988, the battle centers on for- flare-ups over federal oil and gas policy in the pares a site-specific timber sale. The est lands in the greater Yellowstone area, Bridger-Teton National Forest leasing where the Forest Service plans to lease 3 West. The debate centers on Forest Service plan followed this method, million acres on three adjacent national But in January 1992, an executive forests. On one, the Shoshone National decisions to approve new wells in now-wild order by Forest Service Chief F. Dale Forest in Wyoming, the agency proposed Robertson combined the two stages. opening nearly 1 million acres to oil and country, and to open millions of additional acres Now the Shoshone and ·Custer national gas leasing. Just across the Montana bor- . forest EISs, like all the forthcoming der, the Beartooth District of the Custer of Western lands to oil and gas development. studies. will serve as both cumulative National Forest released a draft environ- and site-specific analyses. Upon mental impact statement that proposes to approval each document would open lease 178,000 acres. In 1990, the' today," warns a recent Sierra Club report Umatilla and Malheur forests in Oregon; huge chunks of land for immediate leas- Bridger- Teton National Forest began titled Yellowstone Under Siege. "Once and the Helena, Beaverhead and Lewis ing without furlber study. leasing on 2 million acres. the decision (to lease) is made there will and Clark forests in Montana. The streamlined approach has drawn The thiee forests lie above one of the be no second look .. Producers will have Almost without exception, the doc- fire as just another way to "get the leases richest oil and gas provinces in the West secured the right to develop these lands." uments promote wide-ranging energy out." and are home to several producing oil fields. . The controversy also goes well exploration and will open the West a 'The Forest Service policy of 'lease Allbough new exploration is sporadic, the beyond Yellowstone. The Forest Service million acres at a time to leasing. now, worry later' hasn't changed," says energy industry, with an eye on rising gas recently approved large-scale leasing in Tom France, an attorney with the prices, is pushing for future access. ' the Little Missouri National Grasslands he surge of EISs coincides with National Wildlife Federation in Mis- However. regional environmental in North Dakota, the Pike-San Isabel rising natural gas prices, but the soula, Mont., who filed the original 1988 groups warn that the lease plans would National Forest in Colorado, and the Tstudies were actually triggered by suit. open virtually the entire eastern half of Manti-La Salle National Forest in Utah. a 1988 court decision. Before 1988, the Critics say that the new plans lease the greater Yellowstone ecosystem to oil More than a dozen other EISs are in Forest Service and Bureau of Land Man- . just about every acre of Forest Service and gas development (except for wilder- draft stage or are near completion on agement leased huge blocks of land land with oil and gas potential ~ includ- ness areas and national parks, which are forests and grasslands throughout the without much environmental analysis, . ing environmentally sensitive lands - permanently withdrawn from leasing). Rockies, including the Routt, White promising instead to do the studies if and again with only cursory environmental More significantly, activists say, the River, Gunnison and Grand Mesa when a company applied for a drilling analysis. Dan Heilig of the Wyoming leases would give industry iron-clad, national forests in Colorado; the Thunder permit. Outdoor Council says the Shoshone EIS, long-term property rights on the forests. Basin National Grasslands in Wyoming; But when activists fought drilling for example, is particularly sketchy. "The effort to preserve the Yellow- the Wasatch-Cache, Ashley, Dixie and permits, they were told that because a "For the Forest Service to say they stone ecosystem will be won or lost Uinta national forests in Utah; the . lease confers property rights, an applica- looked over and analyzed a million acres

8~HIgh Country-News c-i Aprtl 19. 1993 •• T. IsC ' BT RS' an

for site-specific leasing is impossible." stipulations will be quickly and easily Heilig points out that the EIS doesn't waived when a company wants to drill .. identify tracts to be leased or look at Moreover, he says, the Forest Service impacts to soils, water quality, wildlife relies on stipulations lOO much. Half of cover, recreation and other issues. the proposed area to be leased on the As more and more EIS s are Shoshone carries NSO stipulations released, environmental groups from because of concerns like big game win- around the region are getting involved. ter range and endangered species habitaL Kate Zimmerman, a lawyer with the Koepsel says areas that sensitive should Land and Water Fund of the Rockies in not be leased at all. Boulder, Colo., says the new EISs could Wyoming Fish and Game Depart- create a disaster. ment biologist Kevin Hurley agrees. "The Forest Service is putting millions "Stipulations are always a gamble," he of acres of land under leases with IO-year says. "They are only as strong as the lifespans with no real analysis done of paper they are written on." Hurley says cumulative impacts and no control over his agency recommended that the Forest when or where it will go into development," Service not lease critical habitat for griz- says Zimmennan. "As soon as the price of zly bear, elk, and bighorn in the oil and gas goes up, companies are going to Shoshone. "We have serious concerns he drilling holes and there's no way the For- with the preferred alternative," he says. est Service can stop them." "The thought of an oil rig in the middle Forest Service officals say they can of an elk cal ving ground is pretty scary." control much of the drilling. Bob Ross- The Greater Yellowstone Coalition, man, who heads the Shoshone EIS team, the. Sierra Club and the Wyoming Out- says areas that might warrant future pro- door Council say they will appeal the tection or in-depth studies would he leased Shoshone EIS. Other groups are gearing with stipulations. Those stipulations range up to appeal oil and gas EISs in Col- from seasonal limits that protect wildlife orado and other states. However, these migration routes or calving grounds, to a cases will face a tough hearing before No Surface Occupancy (NSO) stipulation. the Department of Interior's Board of That means a company cannot occupy the Land Appeals, which recently dismissed land but must drill from an adjacent site. a challenge to the Pike-San Isabel £IS.

o The agency says the stipulations are Zimmerman, Heilig and others say more efficient than doing an EIS for' that ulfimately the environmental com- every potential lease. "Only one out of munity will go back to federal court to every 100 leases ever has a well drilled, challenge the agency on the leasing and only one out of every 100 wells question. Most likely they will use the drilled ends up in discovery," says Verne same procedural arguments as Conner Schmitt, who heads the Rocky Mountain vs. Burford: that the Forest Service can't Region leasing program for the Forest issue leases without doing site-specific Service in Denver, Colo. Schmitt says environmental studies. AAE.p,.6 opel-! 'fo OIL-! C:J,A'S LEA51f.JG, doing a full-scale EIS for every lease But NatiooaI WildIile Federation attor- ~• A""E:A~ C-U>6I;D TO OIL ~ "'A~ LEA""I"""" would waste taxpayers' money, but with ney Tom France says doing a full-scale EIS PARI<.,WILoe.RN""S~ • ofllER .AF\I:A~ WlrlloF<,AW.( FI'DH t...£M,ltJ(, stipulations the agency preserves the on every lease is still not the answer. BY COI-bFl.ESS right to do additional analysis and set "The secretary of Interior has to re- • Lisa Cook additional controls on those leases where think how we do oil and gas leases in a company applies to drill. this part of the country," says France. Forest, 225 W. Yellowstone, Cody, WY Billings, MT 59103 (406/657-6361) .• "We're looking at reasonableness "There are resources out there that 82414-2140 (307/527-6241). here," says Schmitt. should not be leased." For a copy of the impending Former HCN intern Arden Tre- Environmental groups say stipula- For a copy of the Ian. 4, 1993, Beartooth District oil and gas leasing wartha works at Pack Creek Ranch in tions are a hoax. If the past is any' guide, Shoshone oil and gas leasing final EIS, final EIS, contact Curtis Bates, Custer Moab, Utah. Steve Hinchman is a staff says Kirk Koepsel of the Sierra Club, contact Barry Davis, Shoshone National National Forest, P.O. Box 2556, reporter for HCN. Oil firms commandeer badlands CANADA nadirect challenge to the us. Duncan's now com- dent he later helped establish both the Forest Service, an oil exploration NORTH DAkOTA pleted road and bar- National Park Service and Forest Service. company sent its bulldozers into ringthe Forest Ser- Until 20 years ago, the grasslands and . the Little Missouri National LITTLE. MISSOURI MN vice from invoking Roosevelt National Park (the site of his old Grasslands March 20 to plow a NATiONALGRA5~LAND the National Envi- ranch) made up the largest intact prairie Iroad and drill pad in a federally desig- ronmental Policy Act wilderness in the U.S. As a student in the THE.OOORE ROOSE.VELT nated roadless area. for ·oil wells where early 1970s, Kirk Koepsel helped survey NATIONAL P/'>RI<. Duncan Energy Inc. notified Forest the Forest Service the badlands for a wilderness study and Service officials in Nonh Dakota at 4 94 owns the surface and found over a half-million roadless acres. DICKINSON p.m. Friday, March 19, that it would not a private company "It was the wildest, most pristine wait for a Forest Service environmental owns the minerals. land left in the Great Plains. of North study hefore going ahead with construc- With a new pr0- America," says Koepsel, who now tion on the 2I,600-acre Kinley Plateau SD ducing well a mile works in the Sierra Club's Northern badlands - the largest roadless area away, and six more Plains office in Wyoming. remaining in North Dakota. case lacked information and declined to exploratory wells to drill, Duncan Energy's Today the grasslands are the largest Duncan Energy president Ronald file for a temporary restraining order challenge could lead to full-scale develop- money maker and most productive oil Spence says that because the minerals against Duncan Energy. Easton's refusal ment of the Kinley Plateau roadIess area. fields in the national forest system. At are privately owned, the Forest Service to intervene infuriated environmental This is the latest conflict in a series of the height of the oil boom in the early has no right to require an environmental and citizens groups in the state. developments that has turned theLinle Mis- ' 1980s, companies drilled more than impact statement, change construction "Duncan Energy essentially stole this souri National Grasslands and Theodore 1,000 wells and built more than 1,000 plans or otherwise delay access. section of the badlands from the people of Roosevelt National Park - North Dakota's miles of roads in the Little Missouri The Forest Service says it does. "It was North Dakota and the United States with most popular tourist attractions and the Grasslands. Federal royalties' brought an illegal act," says Curtis Bates, Custer no repercussions as of yet:' says Todd stale'S only significant wild areas - into a- $50 million a year to the U.S. Treasury. National Forest supervisor. Bates says his Herreid, chairman of the Dacotah Chapter booming indusbia1landscape. The boom leveled out at 500 pro- agency never questioned Duncan Energy's of the Sierra Club. "The oil company's The chaotic tumble of prairies, ducing wells. But the Forest Service is right to access, but did require an environ- attitude is one of-very pompous greed." peaks, plateaus, canyons and ridges was planning for 500 more wells and 300 mental study in order to reduce impact 10 a The case will now go to court, but not originally made famous by Teddy Roo- mi les of new roads in the northern two- nearbybighorn sheep herd and to minimize because of the Forest Service. While the sevelt, who came to ranch the badlands thirds of the grasslands alone. the intrusion into the roadJess area. Forest Service arid the Department of 1us- after the simultaneous deaths of his wife Development has taken a heavy toll. Bates made a last minute plea for tice wrangled over possible legal action, and mother and his failed run for mayor Of the 500,000 acres of wilderness help to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Duncan Energy filed suit March 29 in of New York City. Roosevelt emerged found in the1970s, only about 100,000 Bismark, N.D. But assistant attorney North Dakota district court The suit asks from the Dakota Territories reinspired Steve Easton, a Bush appointee, said the for a "declaratory judgment" legalizing and a staunch conservationist As presi- continued on next page , o / , I ,.' - I ~, " , . High Country News - April 19. 1993 - 9 . -.' • r • •• ~ LR

_......

Oil.firrns

commandeer ••• continuedfrom previous page es. But Sierra Club staffers say the For- acres scattered in small pockets remain est Service is just giving the Little Mis- undeveloped. And, like the Kinley souri Grasslands away. A 1991 Forest Plateau, much of what is left is vulnera- Service EIS approved plans to lease 98 ble. percent of the federal mineral estate in "There' are all-weather roads out the northern two-thirds of the grasslands, there going everywhere' to service the located north of Interstate 90. That deci- pumpjacks," says Wayde Schafer, chair- sion protects only 20,000 acres of lands man of the Teddy Roosevelt group of the in four parcels as roadless. Sierra Club Dacotah chapter. He says The agency is now writing a second impact includes heavy truck traffic, EIS to approve leases south of the high- drilling waste, water pollution and foul, way. Koepsel and others fear that most sulfate-laden air that often drifts from - of what is left undeveloped there will , the oil fields on Forest Service land into 'also be leased as the oil companies push parts of the 80,000-acre Roosevelt into newly discovered oil fields on the National Park. Kinley Plateau and other parts of the Custer National Forest Supervisor southern grasslands. - Bates says much of the development on The Sierra Club also charges that the grasslands isdue to its checkerboard the Forest Service is letting the oil com- ownership. Of the 1.3 million acres with- panies drill without protecting eagle in the grassland boundaries, the Forest nests, bighorn sheep herds, sensi ti ve Service owns only about 700,000 acres plant species and air and water quality. of the surface and even less of the miner- Schafer points to an internal Forest Ser- a~ estate. In addition, in the 1970s, the North Dakota Travel Department vice memo, in which the grassland's one An oll rig in North Dakota's little Missouri National Grasslands Forest Service put much of what it did' wildlife biologist, Clinton McCarthy own up for lease. writes, "... The Forest Service has often By law, Bates says, the Forest Ser- been willing to forgo regulations and commodity resource targets." drill permits issued by the Forest Service vice can't prevent drilling on private policy for proposed, endangered, threat- Since September the club has and won every case, virtually shutting lands, private minerals or previous leas- ened or sensitive species to meet our appealed nearly 'two dozen oii and gas down all activity on the grasslands. The Forest Service response, says Schafer, is to do better studies and place more requirements on oil companies. Road halted near historic ranch But the industry has resisted, especially in cases where they own the mineral he Elkhorn Ranch Unit of. is unique because unlike the surround- of Engineers do an environmental estate. Theodore Roosevelt National ing badlands, the ranch remains unde- impact statement before issuing a per- TPark is safe from a road. and veloped. It offers a glimpse of the view mit for the project. Specifically, they Faced with the loss of what the Sier- major bridge project - for now. and tranquility that inspired Roosevelt. " wanted full consideration of an alter- ra Club says are the last pristine lands in Billings County, N.D., recently with- The national park named for him nate site farther from the ranch's North Dakota, the club is calling for a halt to oil and gas leasing. " drew its permit to build almost five has become the most heavily visited boundary, which was dismissed by the miles of paved highway and a 660- tourist attraction in North Dakota. A county in its environmental assessment "The Forest Service should negoti- ate mineral exchanges and protect what foot-long bridge over the Little Mis- 1990 study by Colorado State Universi- According to Roger Andrascik, the land is left as wilderness," says souri River immediately adjacent to ty found that the park creates more than park's resource management specialist, roadless Herreid. "They should leave some natu- Roosevelt's historic ranch. 2,000 tourism-related jobs and revenues the Army Corps discussed with the ral areas untouched in the badlands." The road and bridge would have exceeding $100' million. But if more county all the reasons for possible For more information, or a copy of passed within 500 feet of the ranch 'development such as oil wells intrudes denial of the project. The county then boundary and crossed state lands set on the landscape, visitors have said they withdrew its permit. the impending Southern Little Missouri aside to protect the site. Their purpose: would spend less time at the park. "My feeling isthat they'll look for National Grasslands oil and gas leasing to cut down travel time for gas and oil The Park Service, State Historical alternative sites. I don't know if they draft EIS, contact Curtis Bates, Custer trucks and for local residents. Society, North Dakota Department of will, look in the same area, or farther National Forest, Box 2556, Billings, MT 59103 (406/657-6361); or Wayde "The county's excuse is 'we've been Fish and Game, and several other state away from the ranch," Andrascik said. building these roads, how can you stop us and national 'organizations were all "It's a sleeping giant" , Schafer, Sierra Club Dacotah Chapter, now?' " said Terri Martin of the National concerned about the visual and noise - Yvette La Pierre' Teddy Roosevelt Group, 3305 Hillside Parks and Conservation Association. impacts the bridge and traffic would Rd., Mandon, NO 58534-1430 (701/663- 0944). ~'But we've been fighting it all along." have on visitors as well as wildlife. The The writer free-lances in Grand The nO-acre Elkhorn Ranch Unit groups requested that the Army Corps Forks, North Dakota: - SIeve Hinchman Chevron takes aim at Uintas

10 o~decades, Chevron USA Main Fork drainage. The site isin a bridge and clearing a four-acre drill pad. and other energy companies w... roadless area less than two miles below Besides being within sight of the wilder- have made fortunes from the the boundary of the High Uintas Wilder- ness, the well would only be a mile and a oil-rich Overthrust Belt, ness. ridgeline removed from the popular which extends from southern /',#'1"\"\ "The environmental consequences Christmas Meadows campground and FWyoming to the Uinta Mountains near (HI~H' would be' a permanent loss of character summer" home area. Salt Lake City. The industry has mostly NY of this place. The whole drainage will be "We're not just going in there hell UINTA~ looked for oil at low altitudes, on Bureau gone," Carter says. bent for leather and trying to be cava- of Land Management land, private WilDERNE55 AREA. The place Carter's group defends is lier," Chevron's Steve Woodruff ranches and checkerboard lands owned a drainage lightly touched by develop- responds. "We recognize it's a sensitive by the railroads. ment. At the turn of the' century "tie area. But," he continues, "it's one of the Now Chevron is widening its search hackers" logged the slope for railroad best opportunities we're faced with." to the heavily forested and heavily visit- UTAH ties, and remains of their log flumes are Chevron has had its sights on. the ed slopes of the Uinta Mountains. That now considered historic. A dirt track upper Main Fork for some time. It leased has set up an angry confrontation with runs part way up the drainage, but other- the property from the Forest Service 19 the Utah Wilderness Association, a Salt A7.. wise the Main Fork is a forested-haven years ago, as part of a 25,OOO-acre "leas- Lake City-based environmental group for Wildlife. ing unit." So far it has concentrated on which calls itself the watchdog for the .the group's founder, Dick Carter, of Chevron's Table Top Well proposal high-potential sites in already roaded, Uintas. Chevron's plan to drill an exploratory oil would mean extending a gravel road up lower elevation lands. But those sites are "The whole thing is a farce," says' well at 9,400 feet, .near the top of the the Main Fork for four miles, building a beginning to play out. Chevron says sus- IO - High Country News - April 19, 1993 taining oil production in the region may high-altitude restoration work, and' will are being considered, there are no cumu- For more information, or a copy of require climbing upslope to the wilder- ' minimize its disturbances. The company , lative impacts and no need to look at the either Forest Service EIS, contact Susan ness boundary. also says the upgraded road in the Main potential consequences if Chevron hits Giannettino, Forest Supervisor, Wasatch- "Are we going to zone out and par- Fork could lead to new parking areas and oil. Cache National Forest, 8230 Federal cel out land so the wilderness areas trails to the High Uinta Wilderness. "If this well produces oil then clear- Building, 125 S. State St., Salt Lake City, become isolated islands, and develop "We'te going to respect the surface ly a full industrial oil field is planned," UT 84138 (801/524-5030). everything around the wilderness?" and we're going to do everything we can says Carter, "or why even explore?" The Utah Wilderness Association is Carter asks. "The Main Fork is filled to minimize any impacts, but the bottom "Never mind that the agency is, in a at 455 E. 400 South #306, Salt Lake with wildlife and stunning beauty and is line is we're going to be there," separate process, considering leasing all City, UT 84111 (801/359-1337). along a gem of a riparian area." Woodruff says. the restof the land," adds McFarlane. - Larry Warren "The oil and gas reserves are dimin- Chevron is not entering the Uintas UW A says the Forest Service is ishing," Woodruff points out from lightly. Itwill need to drill 17,000 feet to being intentionally deceptive, and warns Larry Warren covers environmental Chevron's Evanston, Wyo., offices. "A hit the formation it's aiming for, and a it will fight both documents to federal issues for KUTV News in Salt Lake cattleman needs cattle, _a farmer needs well that deep will cost at least $6 mil- court if neccessary. City, Utah. seed and an oil man needs oil. We're lion. So far the there to play and we think we can be exploratory well has successful." been approved by the Success is what worries Carter. Forest Service in a sep- Almost half of the 270,000-acre North arate draft EIS. A final Slope of the Uintas is blanketed by exist' EIS and decision on ing oil and gas leases. The Wasatch- the well is due by early Cache National Forest has just released a May. draft environmental impact statement The Utah Wilder- that proposes to lease everything else, If ness Association says approved, the plan would open the most- ' the Forest Service per- Iy roadless North Slope to oil and gas mitting process is full development clear up to the wilderness of holes. The agency's boundary. draft EIS on Table Top "They are trying to give the North ignored alternatives Slope of the High Uintas '-:- Utah's such as helicoptering wildest and most pristine mountain in the drill rig, slant range - over to the oil and gas indus- drilling from another try," says Gary McFarlane of the Utah location or moving the Wilderness Association. well site to already If Chevron's Table Top Well is suc- developed and roaded cessful, Carter and Mcfarlane fear the leas- areas. B Ul the biggest ing draft EIS would open the door to more problem, says McFar- and more wells, potentially turning the lane, is that the Forest whole of the North Slope into an oil field Service contends that Chevron says it is experienced in because' no other wells The north slope of the High Ulntas Wilderness Area in Utah Fouled water leads to court

URANGO,Colo. - After are people who have tarninated private wells with the gas boom. years of futile public hear- lived there for gener- Residents have also battled with the ings, letter-writing and ations and some of U.S. Forest Service, most recently over media campaigns, resi- them work or have the agency's decision to allow Amoco to , dents of La Plata County worked in industries -drill IS wells on environmentally sensi- Din southwestern Colorado have turned to UT associated with the tive lands in the HD Mountains on the lawsuits and civil disobedience to pro- oil and gas industry. I .eastern edge of La Plata County. tect themselves from the impacts of an AZ think they felt litiga- Last September, the Forest Service oil and gas boom. tion was the last closed the drilling area to the public after Since 1980, the year Congress avenue available to Western Colorado Congress and the San approved lucrative tax credits for them:' Juan Citizens Alliance blockaded and coalbed methane gas production, U.S. However, both shut down Amoco's drill rigs. After a, energy firms have drilled over 1,000 inspected and concluded that oil and gas the oil companies and the BLM, which second protest, which drew 80 people, wells into coal seams south of Durango drilling is the main source of contamina- regulates oil and gas drilling on public the Forest Service charged eight people looking for pockets of trapped methane tion of the shallow aquifers in the Ani- lands, say they think the methane with criminal trespass. gas. mas River Valley. migrates into upper aquifers naturally In a January trial, two women, The wells are scattered throughout Western Colorado Congress presi- through cracks and fissuresunderground. including a San Juan Alliance organizer, the Animas and San Juan river basins dent Jerry Swingle says the report shows They say the USGS report is a prod- were found guilty and fined $250. How- across a checkerboard of public and pri- that "the industry isn't anywhere near as uct of bad science and bias. "We are ever, Judge Edward Schlatter said he vate land. While the wells have generat- competent in preventing that kind of somewhat disturbed," the BLM respond- was troubled by the verdict. Protesters ed profits for oil companies,' they have contamination as they have led everyone ed in written comments, "that several had intended the rally to be peaceful and also brought pumpjacks, pipelines, com- -including regulators - to believe." apparent contradictions are present and legal at all times and, he believed, did pressor stations, and gravel transport Based in part on the USQS report, many conclusions are drawn based on not know they were across the closure roads to the residents of mostly rural La lawyers 'representing hundreds of area what could arguably be characterized as line. Plata County - sometimes right to their residents filed a class-action lawsuit Feb. inconclusive data." 'The Forest Service acted as a pub- backyards (HeN, 12/4189). II charging four oil companies - "We are also concerned that, to a licly financed security force for Amoco," But what continues to unite resi- Amoco Production Company, Meridian certain degree, the tone of the document say's Western Colorado Congress' dents there and in neighboring New Oil Inc., Southland Royalty Company, seems io lack objectivity," said the agen- Swingle. "The decision to prosecute was Mexico counties are accounts of foul- and Phillips Petroleum - with reckless- cy's district manager, Sally Wisely,-in a motivated not by justice, but was intend tasting well water, flaming pitchers of ness and deliberate disregard for the letter. ed as punishment, intimidation and a lemonade and exploding kitchen pipes. safety of local residents. The suit says The USGS, which was hired in a clear message to all citizens that dissi- For years, residents on both sides of the the four oil companies ignored their 1989 compromise among the various dents will not be tolerated." border have asked the Bureau of Land tests, which showedthat methane from . parties to the dispute as a neutral investi- For moreinformation, contact the Management, the Forest Service and the their deep wells was polluting shallow gator, stands by its research. "1 find (the BLM/Forest Service offices at 701 Colorado Oil and Gas Commission for aquifers, and asks for both actual and BLM's comments) really peculiar," says Camino Del Rio, Durango, CO 81301 tougher regulations, arguing that gas punitive damages. A victory could result USGS district director David Lystrom. (303/247-4082); or the Western Col- production is polluting their wells and in strict new controls on oil and gas "We're both Department of Interior orado Congress and San Juan Citizens drinking. water. So far the agencies have drilling: well maintenance and ground- agencies. What axe are they grinding?" Alliance at,820 E. 7th St., Suite B, refused to slow the boom. water monitoring. Lystrom says his agency stands by its Durango CO 81302 (303/259-3583). Recently, the growing coalition of "You'renot looking at a bunch of report, and will issue a final document residents and environmentalists found an hippies who live out in the wilderness or within a year. -Ken Wright ally in a U.S. Geological Survey draft Earth First!ers who have come in to file Local residents and environmental report released earlier this year. In a two- this lawsuit," says Chris Shuey, a water groups say the BLM's reaction reflects a Ken Wright, a former HeN intern, year study, USGS' scientists found resources specialist who acted as a tech- long-standing refusal to trust evidence covers environmental issues for The Daily methane gas in one-third of water wells pical consultant for the residents. "These linking rising numbers of methane-con- Times in Farmington, New Mexico. High Country News - ApIiI 19, i993 - 11 , . T

by Jim "Fergus plan was a simple one, universal perhaps to boys - to girls, too, can'ttellyou what makes for that matter - which may one man a hunter and account for all the runaways in another not But I can tell our society, the difference being you how this all hap- that most of the runaways have pened for one hunter. no place to go and no resources IIt began when I was a boy once they get there. But this boy growing up in the midwestern and his dog did: we were headed suburbs. I was small for my for the open country. There was a age, asthmatic, quiet and some- giant oak tree outside my bed- what timid, solitary and fre- room window; its branches quently afraid; at night I would would scratch at the glass at make a ten t of my covers and night, beckoning us. This would read sporting magazines by a be our' escape route when things pen flashlight, while my parents got really bad at home. I had battled downstairs, saying already climbed down it many things to each other that their times in preparation, had even boy simply could not bear to carried Sugar down to make sure hear. My mother 'had dark trou- I could do it; she was not crazy bles with drink; only a few about this part but she trusted years later she would die me. young, a hard death, alone on We would travel across the another continent country, Sugie and I, with my Under the covers of my fishing rod and that DaisyBB den with my flashlight I was gun which I now intended to Oilton Fergus safe; my dog, Sugar, a little Jim Fergus with hls yellow Lab, sweetser steal - desperate measures, I Welsh terrier, nestled beside knew, but Iwas a desperate boy. me. Under there, eriormo~s fish 'We would hunt and fish and live leapt on mirrored lakes and off the land, a vast storybook huge coveys of game birds A man and his dog) land of beauty, goodness, and blackened the sky over field bounty, a land studded by farms and forest, while jocular, self- and ranches and villages, inhabit- reliant outdoorsmen such as I ed by fine, upstanding, honest longed to be cooked hearty of grace folks. In this fantasy, we would mealsover an open fire and in search trade our abundant harvest of slept in bedrolls under the stars. game to the locals for produce These were my companions, all and pies or whatever else we superb shots and incredibly pro- needed, or simply for a spot in ficient anglers. Of course, later and innocence the bam to spend the night, and I would learn that many of their sometimes along the way some- tales of sporting triumphs were one would invite us into their pure fabrication, but I didn't need to know that yet One time while she was in my room talking to me, home to have dinner with the family, a family that bore I had a slingshot that I used to hunt squirrels wilh the woman's husband came in looking for her. He told no relationship whatsoever to my family. We would eat in the ravine near my house, although for a long time I her to go back to the party and then he sat down on my fried chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy and biscuits, never actually hit any, I did kill a few robins with my bed. He was very drunk and he breathed heavily and prepared by a kindly mother in a white apron, a woman slingshot, and one time I made a campfire in the ravine gave off an unpleasant sour smell. He asked me if his I am sad to recall now, who bore no relationship what- and roasted a robin on a stick as a kind of sacrament. wife had tried to have sex with me. I wasn't altogether soever to my own mother. Sugie and I would spend the Even then I believed in eating what I killed and not C' sure what the man was talking about; I knew what sex night curled together in the hay in a comer of the barn, killing what I wouldn't eat. I plucked and drew the bird was but I didn't see why his wife would want to have it warm as toast, and the next morning after a hearty farm first, and it was quite delicious. But a neighbor saw the with me. So I said by way of answer, "I'm only 10, breakfast we would be on our way, off to a new smoke from the campfire and called the lire department sir." Then the man asked me if I wanted to have a pil- . unknown destination, another day of sport and adven- . and that put an end to my robin roasts. I got in a good low light. I said no thank you, that I was supposed' to ture. bit of trouble at home. be asleep. But the man insisted, and he grabbed Ihe pil- It would be nearly 30 years before I actually One day I finally hit a squirrel with my slingshot, low from under my head and started striking me with implemented this plan, and, of course, Sugar would be but I only wounded it and then I had to kill it with a it. "C'rnon, fight back," he said, "fight back," and he long gone by then, tragically. struck by a car the year stick; it was a nasty, messy business and the squirrel hit me harder and harder with the pillow. "Fight back, after my parents both died. This is a difficult thing to suffered. This made me feel terrible. I still, all these you little shit!" Icovered my head with my arms and I acknowledge, but her death was harder for me in an years later, fed terrible thinking about it, and to this did not light back, because, you see, he had my pillow. immediate way than theirs had been. That little dog had day I remain squeamish about killing things. I hate suf- protected me from SO much harm. fering of any kind, human or animal. Don't think ugar was under the bed and I could hear her I would, over the ensuing years, lose interest in because I'm a hunter that this is not so. grOWling.Finally she could take no more of hunting in favor of organized sports; indeed, this dwin- Chad a cheap spun glass fishing 'rod, too, and I this, and she sank her teeth into the man's dling interest had started with my dispatching of . inept often fished' for perch in Lake Michigan: The lake was ankle. He hollered and jumped up, but tetriers ' the wounded squirrel. I would maintain a keen lifelong only a few blocks from my house, and I would walk are notorious for not letting go, and the man interest in fishing, though even that would be super- down there with my rod and tackle box. Already I dragged,S the dog out from under the bed at the end of his seded periodically by other interests and concerns. And wanted a bamboo fly rod, and I had my eye on a Daisy leg; he was dancing around the room and trying to shake . I would travel widely and live in several different BB gun at the hardware store, but I wasn't old enough her loose. It was quite comical. My trusty companion regions of the country and parts of the world. Eventual- to have that yet. Sugie hung on tenaciously, growling all the while, until I ly I would make my home in the countryside of the Frequently my parents gave cocktail parties and I told her to let go. How Lloved that littledog. American West. would be' sent off early to my room. I would lie in bed After that the man left my room, promising darkly and listen to 'the revelry downstairs - the chatty, ani- Ihat he was going to talk to my falher about this, but I age 39, I suddenly developed a strange, mated voices 'of the grown-ups, the tinkling of glasses think he just went back down to the party and had overpowering obsession with bird hunting, and ice cubes, and my mother's peculiar shrieking another drink because I never heard any more about it. an obsession childlike in its single-minded laughter which became dangerously higher pitched and The very next week, the man died in a car wreck on the intensity. I had started doing a bit of hunt- more hysterical as the evening wore on. expressway while driving home from work. He had , ing again over the preceding few years, There was a woman friend of my parents' who "fallen asleep at the wheel," which was the euphemism Abut this newly discovered passion was no longer casual always used to come up to see me in my room during parents used in those days for drunken driving. I still or even particularly gradual. I started buying all the sport- these parties. I believed she was a drunk, too, but she held a fresh grudge against the man, and I was secretly ing magazines again, something I had not done since I was very nice, and she would sit on the edge of my bed glad that he had died. I knew that this was a terrible was a kid, and I bought an old double-barreled shotgun, and smoke and sip her drink and talk to me - some- way- to feel, but I was an angry boy, and even then I the possession of which seemed somehow to placate times for hours - and eventually I would fall asleep understood the need for a tonic to my anger. That is the finally my boyhood desire for that Daisy BB gun - r while she talked on and on. In the morning I would point of this story, in case you're wondering,lhe begin- which Inever did own. I bought books about bird hunt- find ashes from her cigarettes and sometimes bum ning of my plan, the seed of my life as a sportsman. ing, both contemporary and classic, books about shooting marks on my blanket. Though I was only a boy, she When you're an angry boy, sport can offer some real technique, and bird dog training books - even though I would confide in me, tell me strange adult things that I measure of peace and escape - not just escape from didn't own a bird dog. Then one day I brought home a wouIdn't understand until many years later. But I did something bad, but escape to something wonderful: yellow Lab puppy, ostensibly as a gift to my wife, who understand some of what the woman told me, and I grace. had lost her beloved old dog me year before and pined understood that she had a very unhappy marriage. I That night of me one-sided pillow light, Sugar and for a replacement Of course, I had designs Of my own on liked her .and felt sorry for her in that instinctive way I firmed up our plan, made our pact under the covers that puppy. ' that children do. • with my pen flashlight and sporting magazines. The I am well aware that such an obsession, standing as I 12 - HJgh CountIy News - April 19, 1993 .'

was on the precipice of middle age, might easily be mis- wife, tolerant and vaguely amused, would inquire of us their flanks. I can still see that covey rise in my mind's taken for a "midlife crisis," although it hardly seemed every day upoo our return. She had named the new puppy eye, as if it's happening right now: the vast. empty, some- like a crisis situation to me. Rather it seemed like a con- Sweetzer after a summit in Idaho on which we had once how prehistoric country stretching away below, the wild .scious attempt to complete some unfinished business been stranded in a blizzard. That's right, Sweetzer. Over cries of the birds on the wind, and those black stripes sten- from the past, to keep an old pact, to put into action a the next year, I would take a lot of abuse from hunting ciled against the snow. I shot and killed a chukar, my first dusty plan that had been stored away all these years in an companions about this apparently sissified name, but of the species, and Sweetzer proudly retrieved it for me. . ancient trunk in one of those attic garrets of the mind, put secretly to me it seemed like a kind of magical coincidence Then I sat in the snow with my gun broken in my lap, and away so long that I had nearly forgotten it was there. At that Sweetzer sounded like the name for a Sugar substitute. opened the bird's crop to see what he had been eating the same time, it still seemed like a reasonable way of By the time I had turned 40, Sweetz and I had our before he died. The crop was packed tight with a fistful of diffusing old childhood angers. Sometimes just knowing first hunting season together under our belts - not a com- bright green cheatgrass blades, I held the still warm bird that we can always climb out that bedroom window and plete success,but not a total bust, either. We had'hunted in my hand, and put the grass up to my nose and inhaled down the branches of that old oak tree and head for the hard in Idaho, where my wife and Ihad moved recently, deeply; it reminded me oddly and intensely of my child- big country actually keeps us alive. and in late Ianuary after the season there closed, we took a hood - exactly the smell of mowing the lawn on a warm Midlife crisis or not, my new obsession seemed pretty . trip to Nevada to hunt chukar partridges alone in the high, summer day in the Midwest. I opened my fist and let the harmless, and except for the fact that I had appropriated desolate rimrock around Battle Mountain, It was there, on grass blow away on the wind. • her dog for my own nefarious purposes, my wife hardly a cold, clear winter day, having climbed for several hours , even remarked upon it. She just watched quizzically as up the steep face of a rocky, barren mountainside, having Jim Fergus is a free-lance writer who lives in Col- packages arrived at the door - more books or gear, yet finally gained the top of a broad, snow-covered, wind- orado and Idaho, The excerpt above is from his book A another shotgun. Pretty harmless even to the birds, in fact. whorled plateau, all alone on what seemed to be the very Hunter's Road, A Journey with Gun and Dog Across the given the size of my bag from the nearly daily hunting top of the world, that Sweetzer flushed a covey of chukars American Uplands, published by Henry Holt and Compa- excursions that first season. "Did you get anything?" my - grayish birds, with intense black and white stripes on ny, Inc., lIS W. 18th St.,New York, NY 10011. Leaning America, for Montana

by Richard Manning and planted no seeds. In a short time she would be gone, down the road. Her culture - ours - is inca- y house would have something to pable of inhabiting a place for thousands of years, say to all houses, rural and urban, Her husband pointed out the nearby mountains but it needed to gather its informa- as the scenic advantage of their place, and I asked tion by living in the trees. him their names. This idea of rural landscape ''Those are the foothills," he said, as if mountain guided the Project onto its most dangerous ground, ranges required no more identity than "the mall," or the problems of people living in the woods. Writing "the strip." or "Mcfronald's," about the joys of rural living is even more dangerous In this, the motor nomads are simply a distillation still, in that publicity can amplify a bad trend. Envi- of what all of us have become: a people without a ronmentalists of my region are coming to regard sub- place, We have taken our lives out of the context of the dividers and rural newcomers as an even greater Michael Gallacher land, above the land. Literally. One can see this most Author Richard Manning threat than loggers, and in many ways they are. clearly on airliners. Watch the new class of flying itin- We now believe, with justification, that we protect erant merchants, men in gray suits and laptops. Watch nature only where we succeed in- excluding people. I dreds of traditional cultures around the world suggest them board and stash carry-ons in the overhead, then have seen what people have done to the countryside, otherwise. The common denominator of these tradi- throw identical folds into identical jackets and stow so I understand this rule's origins. Still, if we adopt tional cultures is an awareness of nature, an aware- them at the top of the rack. Even before takeoff, brief- tltis exclusion as our ultimate goal then we have lost ness of the context Of their lives. They consider them- cases are snapped open, calculators are powered up, e. the fight. We have succeeded only in reinforcing our selves part of the weave, not the weavers. and numbers are crunched. Watch them land in a new distance from nature, which is the root cause or the My other story is also about context. place and never notice the window, as if the view were hubris that has caused so much damage. There must be I was flying back to Montana one clear winter's identical to that of the last place they did not see. To another way to go about this, a way my house would morning early in 199 I. I had been on a magazine them, whose job it is to distill all places to the ultimate seek. Ultimately, then, tltis house was about seeking, assignment of a curious sort, one that had originally line of a profit and loss statement - the new map of picking a quiet path among the trees. been my idea. 1 had been chasing groups of people the landscape - tltis place is indeed identical to the There are a couple of stories that frame this who live in motorhomes, a new sort of nomad 'class. last. They are at ease here above the land, distant and house's issues in their largest perspective, The first Most are retirees, people we call "secure" when what disdainful of Earth. comes from the work of ethnobotanist Gary Nabhan. we mean to say is that they have a lot of money. They As I flew around the country chasing motorhome In his. important book, The Desert Smells,Like Rain, must have to afford the life they have chosen: cramped people, I watched such scenes play repeatedly. I saw Nabhan writes about the traditional lives of the Papa- "houses" that cost well over SIOO,OOOon average, America, and. then I flew home to Montana. I was go Indians in a region straddling the border between sometimes going as high as SSOO,OOOormore. These convinced it was time I built a house. The clear win- Mexico and Arizona. behemoths stalk about the country at the rate of about ter morning that I headed home was a Sunday. In a Our experience tells us that where humans ven- five miles per gallon, seeking nothing so much as the half-full airliner the sun broke hard through the right ture, wildlife instantly becomes troubled. As a species road. We see them mostly queued up at the gates of bank of windows. Few gray suits were present. These we are notorious for making little room for the rest of national parks or, during the winter in the Sunbelt were different people. The crowd ran heavy to jeans nature. We are Shiva the destroyer. We are the engine states, stanchioned cheek by cowl in RV parks, alu- and nylon jackets. As the airliner neared Missoula, I of extinction. Accordingly, it has become our habit to minum' ghettos wrapped around golf courses. We con- noticed people moving around the plane, shifting to set aside areas free from human intrusions, areas we clude that these people are seeking scenery or sun or the right side and watching the sun play across the consider wildlife sanctuaries. Norrnally this is consid- something like that, but this turns out to be not at all snowcaps of the Continental Divide. Most of us, it ered one of our good acts, but in another sense it is an true. They are not seeking, they are fleeing. appeared, were going home. We began naming admission of our greatest failing. They flee the death of cities or small-town names. People pointed out the Bob Marshall, the With the goal of protecting nature the federal America or community, or, in a darker sense, they Swan Range, the Mission Mountains, the Garnets and government in the 19S0s set aside a bird sanctuary in flee people different from themselves. They flee the Sapphires, and below, the sedate, winding valley Papago country by evicting farmers whose culture change and loss of control. In their refugee status of the Clark Fork River, They said the names. had inhabited the place for thousands of years. they are not that different from all of us, a lost and Then the airliner banked over Mount Sentinel Decades later Nabharn visited the sanctuary with a wandering people, a people without place. Whenever and began its descent to a runway at Missoula. A , ' group of ornithologists. They found 32 species of I visit the suburbs I am amazed at how few people descent to a landing. Land that I know. As we birds. The next day, visiting an adjacent and tradi- walk. The curtains are all closed, making windows approached, I could see it all coming into focus on tional Papago village, they found 6S species of birds useless. Virtually all houses face not outdoors to their progressively more intimate scales: first the mountain living among those people. Nabhan asked his Papago land but indoors to the television, our identical win- ranges; then individual valleys; then creeks and friend to explain this phenomenon. "I've been think- dow on our identical world. draws; and finally, tucked behind a softly rounded ing over what you say about not so many birds living , I once talked to a motorhome nomad who had but hard-cut mountain, a gulch that held the very land over there anymore," he said. "That's because those been camped for months in the middle of the Califor- that is the context of my house. As the focus shifted birds, they come where the people are. When the nia desert. Outside her SIOO,OOOmotorhome an from the grand sweep to the minute and individual people live and work in a place, and plant their seeds inverted garbage can lid served as a bird feeder. bits of land, it occurred-to me that this is how we find and water their trees, the birds go live with them. i'What birds are those?" I asked her, because I our homes. We find them, then we build them .• They like those places; there's plenty to eat, and was new to the region and couldn't identify desert , , . that's when we are friends to them." species. "What are those shrubs they use for cover?" Richard Manning is a free-lance writer who lives > , I've carried that story with me now for years, "Those," she said, "are just birds. Just birds you in Missoula, Montana. The excerpt above is from his revisiting it Often: Many of us have come to accept always see. And that is just brush," book"A Good. House, BUilding>~ Life on the Land, the destruction of nature as inherent to the human There was no use in her learning tile names of the, published byGrove Press, 841 Broadway, New York, condition, yet the cases of thePapago and of hun- birds thatliad'come to live there. She watered' no 'trees NY 10003. ..

High Country News -April 19, 1993 - 13 lneR

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by Paul Koberstein taken from private lands, whose owners were busily expire this August. converting their old-growth stands to new crops of sec- At the same time, members of the Oregon congres- s President Clinton learned at the April 2 ond growth. On Weyerhaeuser lands and elsewhere, sional delegation, worried about management of forests forest conference in Portland, the legacy that conversion is essentially complete. Now the only by the courts, convened in Salem for the first timber of logging Northwest timber is written significant remaining stands of old-growth are on pub- summit. not only on' clearcuts visible from outer, lic lands, and until recently the industry had expected That June 24, 1989, event apparently broke the space but in the dejected souls of shut- permission to convert those as well. impasse with a compromise hammered out during a Atered timber towns up and down the West Coast. Now, with the Northwest's old forests apparently private lunch. Rep. Bob Smith reportedly said the best The authors of this dark chapter in Northwest his- off limits to further clearcutting, environmentalists course of action would be no action at all. To that, Rep: tory are chiefly the timber companies, with consider- worry that forests in the Rockies will be the industry's Les AuCoin, a congressman who occasionally used' able help from their friends in Congress. With the last stand. An unspoken concern at the president's for- profanity to emphasize a point, replied, "If we do noth- industry idled in political and legal gridlock, the con- est conference was the specter that old forests west of ing, Bob, we're all (expletive)." ference was an attempt by the president to redress the Cascades would be spared at the expense of The compromise from Timber Summit I, which set decades of overcutting Northwest forests by seeking increased cutting elsewhere. Clinton has promised to logging levels while protecting old growth, was for- ways to restore damaged ecosystems, to redirect devas- present a path out of this gridlock by early June, and it warded to Congress, which adopted it with immunity tated lives and to revitalize the depressed timber econo- will be worth watching to see ,whether that path will from court challenges. But it was no solution at all. It my, expired after barely one year, and failed to The surrogate for this debate is a fuzzy, address the declining forest ecosystem as it two-pound bird that barely merited a headline' affected not just owls but salmon, marbled in The Oregonian in 1987 when an obscure murrelets and 480 other species that depend environmental group in Massachusetts, Green- on that ecosystem. word, asked the U.S, Fish and Wildlife Ser- Is the Northwest But this time, members of the Northwest } vice to protect it as an endangered species. It's congressional delegation, especially House fair to say few people 'had heard of the north- Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash., were conspic- ern spotted owl before then. uous in their absence from Clinton's summit. Today many pecple are casting the owl as ready to live Members weren't invited, and most preferred a factor in the current spate of mill closures it that way. An important vote on the House I and worker layoffs. Again last week, head- floor on Friday offered a convenient excuse.. lines in USA Today depicted the struggle in Only Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., a champi- the idiotic terms of jobs vs. owls, and that within its on of timber companies and workers, made newspaper was not alone in its characteriza- noises about coming West for the event. - tion. In fact, the owl is no more to blame in As the Clinton administration writes its 1993 for economic upheaval than it was in plan, it could do well to learn, from history, 1930, 1960 and 1980, when previous rounds forests? and to focus on sustainability, a buzzword of closures and layoffs uprooted thousands that's often misused and misunderstood. Sus- and thousands of Northwest families. tainable harvesting of timber implies far more For decades, Northwest forests were cut than merely cutting the same amount year so rapidly thai the region was afflicted with log short- include trampling eastside forests. Forests there are after year in perpetuity, although it does mean that. ages, species extinctions and worker displacements. already creaking under extensive clearcutting and pat- Georgia Pacific, Inc., a timber giant that chewed The layoffs we are seeing today share the same cause. . terns of fragmentation that tend to isolate and then through most of its Oregon holdings in the 1950s and- Aaron Jones, longtime owner of the Seneca Lum- eliminate local populations of wildlife. . 1960s, professes to practice. sustainable harvesting. But ber Mill in Eugene, recalls the late 1950s, when as In the Northwest, there was no way to sustain the it does so broadly, across its vast acreages in the West many as 300 tiny timber mills dotted the tidewaters pace of the 1950s. In an important 1975 study, over- and South. Local communities have always been at risk along the Oregon coast. As would be readily apparent seen and written by Professor John Beutter, Oregon to the capricious "cut and run" operations that saw GP to anyone driving the coast these days, those mills are State University foresters warned of a future timber roam the country for localities rich in sawtimber - long gone, with only shreds of rotting buildings to "gap." only to pull out when it was liquidated. remind us of that reckless era. The mills closed without During this period, which would last years, the Sustainability must be practiced to ensure that so much as a whimper about the owl or angry words flow of old-growth logs would slow significantly while communities are no longer subject to the cut and run- for environmentalists. To blame these groups for the next crop oftimber would still be immature. ners, so that lumber cutin watersheds varies little from today's crisis amounts to blaming the messengers, as In 1989, a revised version of that study affirmed year to year.. though they were somehow responsible for abusing the the earlier conclusions. The pace of cutting cannot The timber industry, in an expensive and extensive Northwest's precious natural heritage. return to levels seen in the 1980s for more than 100 public relations campaign that began in 1990, pro- Actually, the volume of timber cut in Oregon years. claims that Oregon will never run out of trees. No peaked in 1952, when nearly 10 billion board-feet of That is precisely why the Northwest faces this cri- doubt that is correct, Industry tree farms do a good job wood fell on public and private lands. By 1962, the rate sis. 11)e problem would be less severe, however, had producing wood fiber for housing, paper and other of cutting had declined by half. (Today, the debate government agencies, the industry and Congress been products. A typical tree farm contains patches of a sin- focuses on whether the forests can cough up I billion willing to adjust to the implications of the OSU studies, gle tree species, each tree of the same age. It suffers, board-feet in the three coastal states without threaten- Instead, they conspired to quicken clearcutting on however, from lack of the complex character of a natu- ' ing the exisience of the owl and hundreds of other federal forests to help local mills boost production. ral forest composed of many species; of varied sizes species.) In' Washington, the pace of cutting peaked That policy, set in the mid-1980s, led Oregon from the and ages, including species of little or no economic decades earlier, mainly at the hands of loggers working depths of a deep recession. But it set the stage for a value. for Weyerhaeuser Co., the Tacoma timber giant that showdown. But the debate is not about trees anymore, nor is it had purchased millions of acres from the Northern That showdown continues to be played out in two 'about jobs or owls. It is about forests, and rivers, and Pacific Railroad. The clearing of forest lands is a pat- arenas: in courts and in Congress. In April 1989, Seat- wildlife, and 'people. Timber harvesting in the future tern dating back before the American' revolution. tle federal Judge William Dwyer issued the first injunc- must sustain and nourish all of these values. As Mike Clearcutters had earlier leveled lands in the Midwest. tion blocking timber sales from federal lands" Dwyer Draper, executive secretary of the Western Council of . South and East. The debate today is whether the last ruled that the federal government was illegally selling Industrial Woodworkers, said at the recent conference stands, and the fragile resources they support, should timber, not in violation of the Endangered-Species Act in words that, if not politically, COll-ect,hit the point be left alone. but of the National Forest Management Act That 1976 squarely: ''Together we can find a solution that protects As Spokane environmentalist John Osborne said law, which did not require the government to sell a sin- not only the forests of God, but the families of man." three years ago, we aren't up against the spotted owl. gle stick of timber, required instead that any 'such sales We're up against the Pacific Ocean. be done without diminishing any species of wildlife in • Years ago, the preponderance of logs were being any part of its range. Those injunctions are due to Paul Koberstein free-lances from Portland, Oregon. How we pros covered the summit

by Ed Marston April 3 anyway, so going a day early would cost little. tained rooms against the walls (CNN, CBS, NBC) and My luck continued in Portland on the moming of the some, like me, wandering h-omeless around the center or weeks I looked forward to my frrst real act summit; the expected traffic jams didn't materialize of this cube-like room. There were gradations among of' journalism. With a thousand other \ and I was able to take a trolley to within a few blocks the homeless. The' electronic types were clustered reporters, I was going to attend the forest sum- of the Portland, Convention Center. There, my laminat- together at table after table, closest to the food conces- mit. After two decades of covering events and ed White House press pass let me penetrate one police sion. Dotted around the room were various stages, like 1 people in places real journalists did not know line after another until- finally, after a' thorough search, small boxing rings, with TV reporters standing under Pexisted, I was off to Purtland to a nationalevent, I was admitted to a huge basement room. illuminated umbrellas sending off reports as if they It was a lucky break. I had to be in Portland on Inside I found 1,000 of my fellows - some in cur- were somewhere, rather than nowhere. .' 14 - High Country News -AprtI 19, 19.93 The "traveling White House Corps" had scores of thousand of us where long tables with telephones for their use. (Next to each we could see and hear, telephone was a sign telling us non-White House Corps but couldn't dominate types to keep our hands off.) At one time, their tele- events or distract partie: Pool Forms phones probably gave them an advantage. But today ipants and audience in Here . the telephones simply dated them, for most of the drop- our search for 1,000 dif- in reporters had cellular telephones. ferent angles. And everywhere were television monitors, whose Watching it on tele- significance I was yet to understand. vision would have been When the monitors showed the summit about to the perfect way for me start, I asked a woman with a White House press tag and my fellow journal- how I could get into the meeting. She looked startled, ists to cover it. if we and then said, "You can't. Only pool reporters can go hadn't been brought in and the pools are filled. You get to cover it from together in that base- here." ment, where instead we April Fool! a day late. chatted with each, inter- It took me a while to figure out what she meant by viewed each other, flirt- "pool,' but then I remembered the Gulf War, where a ed with each other,· few privileged reporters got to the front, presumably on talked on our cell ular behalf of the thousands of reporters who, like me, were telephones, played soli- milling around miles from the action. taire on our laptops, and Unfortunately, I never got any information from compared technologies. the members of the pool. The only effect on me was Luckily, by after- that periodically the loudspeaker blared: "Would the I I noon, about one-third of a.m, pool please assemble near the concession stand," the reporters had left, drowning out the dialogue on the TV monitors. making it easier for the Nevertheless, the pools were important. Without rest of us to hear the them, we had no way of knowing if there were a sum- proceedings and short- mit above our heads. It might be taking place in Rhode ening the lines at the Ed Marston Island, or have been taped weeks earlier in Little Rock. espresso stand. And a Idaho FallsPost-Register reporter Rocky Barker prepares to plunge in his To non-journalists, that may seem a small thing. few nights later, back in 3p,m. pool But to the thousand of us in the basement, it was Paonia, C-Span important; it meant we could put a "Forest Summit" replayed the event and I could watch it at my leisure, his day-long summit laid out the Northwest's reality; . dateline on the story, rather than a "C-Span" dateline. and marvel at how the Northwest's anguish and oppor- With diagnosis over, he must now play his second hand But the arrangement raised several questions: Why tunity to transform itself were being laid out for all to - that of battlefield surgeon, lopping off 20 mills here, hadn't the Office of the Vice President's Communica- see and hear. throwing away several ecosystems there. tions Office (that's its title) told me that I would be After April 2, no one, except perhaps the inattentive Triage will be the order of the day - triage of incarcerated during the summit? And why had they or distracted reporters in the convention center's base- communities. economies and ecosystems. He has no searched us so thoroughly at the door":" did they fear ment, will be able to pose the conflict as one of jobs ver- choice; he has been elected president, not God, and the armed reporters would turn on each other in frustration sus owls. Nor will they be able to deny that the timber political, economic and cultural forces that created the at their lack of "access"? industry. the Bush-Reagan administrations, the U.S. For- mess are still in place. Aside from that, locking the reporters away made est Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the 'The question is, will Clinton's triage provide a sense. Had 1,000 of us been admitted to the summit, Northwest's congressional delegation have collaborated basis for long-term recovery of the Northwest's human we would have dominated and disrupted it searching over the past decade to create an irremedial mess, extend and natural communities? Or will it be another tempo- for people to interview, setting upcameras. and chat- human suffering, and devastate natural systems. rary patch job that comes apart almost as quickly as it ting on cellular telephones. Clinton come's to this problem years, if not is fashioned? • For President Clinton to run the day as a teach-in, decades, too late. Nevertheless, he must play the cards he had to keep the press at bay: he had to place the he has been dealt. He played the first hand perfectly - Ed Marston is publisher of High Country News. ..,

John MacDonald Denver skyline .. Read about Denver and the West - next in High Country News

High Country News - April 19, 1993 - 15 LRT V2

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SURVIVAL OF HCN:..) come up with new ideas, break Ia1king about die old Soviet Union and so fact that we can do more, does not mean THE LUCKIEST impasses, embrace change and bring would tell me that the cure for its economy we are held in check by a conspiracy of about reform. What horseshit! is political freedom and a free market, I, , land developers and oilmen. The route to Dear HCN, Charles Wilkinson, fUte Mountain Ute ing in a blizzard in a known avalanche area reservations were created. and leaving the others to get back without The 1868 treaty that created the him. These actions led to a dangerous, original Ute reservation, which com- exhausting, expensive rescue effort, prised roughly the western third of Col- And here they are. safe, lucky to be orado, was declared null and void in alive and relatively unharmed, and look- 1880, following the Meeker incident of ing at big fat offers for a movie about 1879 in which a few Utes at the White their experience. This sort of misadven- River Agencyrebelled after being forced ture happens all the time, often with much into virtual slave labor to dig irrigation more dramatic and tragic results, as any ditches. They killed Meeker, the utopian- ski. or mountain-rescue person can attest. socialist Indian agent who thought he Why were the media so taken with this could transform the nomadic Utes into particular version on an old theme? Per- ([)rtJ3, yeoman farmers in three months, kid- haps because it occurred out the back 6'(ZB6 SIPif-". napped his wife and several others. door ofthe beautiful-people-rich-movie- Gov. Frederic Pitkin and other Denver star-capital of the ski world, wbere jour- Just keep making more states until everybody Is happy. ballyhooersused this incident to cry, 'The nalists can rub elbows-with the rich and Utes must go." Uncompahgreleader Ouray, famous, while looking for a story. aware that 7,500 Utes could not fight the I was amused and only a bit out- the publisher of HCN wander into the eco- zens have been forced to rely on his pro- Anglos, led a delegation that ceded all Col- raged by the vacuous awe of the media nomics department at Boulder or Fort fession, journalism, for objective science. orado Ute-owned lands in 1880, and agreed and the American public, until I heard a- " Collins - doesn't make any difference To improve this situation, he wants 10 co- 10 be removed from Colorado. Hollywood producer-type on the radio, which one - and ask why his statement mingle science, public policy and public The Yampa, Pariah and Uncompahgre explaining his interest in the story. He that the ranch-for-a-ranchhouse equation is debate as the route to objective inquiry. bands were subsequently dispatched to said, "It's kind of a story of survival of due to the West not being free to exchange We do need "good science and policy" Utah, but due 10 various political forces, the fittest." That's when outrage outbal- ideas is muddled nonsense. Ed needs to in order to address the pressing environ- the Weminuche, Mouache and Capote anced amusement, reach around in back of his thighs, grab his mental issues of the High Plains, and West- bands were allowed to stay in Colorado. The fittest had nothing to do with this neck, yank downward and open his eyes. ern universities can and should be con- - The 1895 Hunter Act provided that story. The fittest took a lookat the weather 'Charles Pace tributing more. But universities are Ute families could file on homesteads. and stayed at the pub in Aspen. The fittest ChaUis, Idabo responding to these needs in many ways. The Mouache .and Capotes accepted the left early and made it to the hut, or were Nearly every public university in the High , deal. The Weminuche voted no, so the prepared with appropriate gear and knowl- The writer is director of.Regional Plains region is moving aggressively to , feds agreed to the establishment of a edge for a night out, or torned back when Services, Inc., a consulting firm special- develop further their research efforts and reservation on the first 40 western miles, the day got late and the hut wasn't found. izing in policy analysis in the areas of teaching programs in environmental studies essentially the boundaries of the contem- The fittest turned back together after evalu- economic development, energy and use and sustainable development. At Montana porary Ute Mountain Ute reservation. ating the situation at timberline, and made of natural resources. , State University, our College of Agriculture The Southern Ute Tribe was not incor- it back to town with no drama. has introduced a new degree program in porated until 1936. Most of the Southern This is a story of survival of the Ed Marston replies: Renewable Natural Resource ManagemenL Ute lands in the Animas-La Plata project luckiest, survival of people apparently There is much to disagree with in my Researchers here are also developing excit- area were not deeded 10 the tribe until 1937. unfit to lead and unprepared to follow. essay 011 the land-grant universities, But the ing new pesticide-freebiocontrol technolo- This reservation history and two court ,To publicize their story in order to teach Wes.'s economic backwardness is not a mat- gies. Moreover, at MSU we have over SO rulings mean that there is no way the them and ourselves something for next ter focdebate. Were I to walk into the eco- faculty conducting research on the Yellow- Southern Ute Tribe could claim 1868 water time is one thing. To glorify it as if these nooiics department at the University of CoI- stone ecosystem, and they are offering rights in the areas involved in this project people, too arrogant to know that they 0I1Id0ocat COlorado State University, as you courses in environmentalstudies within the In my opinion, die above is why the shouldn't have been where they were suggest, Iwouldn't ask, openly, about the Yellowstone Center for Mountain Environ- Utes stayed in the project even after their and lucky enough to survive their errors, West Instead, I would inquire about some ments and in many other departments. water-delivery facilities were removed. piled as deep as Colorado powder, as if tinnamed region whose economy is largely Can we do more? Of course. There is from the federal one (Phase 11). The some these dangerously casual skiers were subsidizedand controlled fum a government an enormous amount of research and $60 million in cash and water storage in the some sort of heroes, is quite another. center 1,500miles away, with the decisions study to be done. We also need to find bet- main project reservoir were still a better Elizabetb Rotbman made by that government detemtined by a ter ways to integrate our research and deal than they could have gotten in court Seattle, Wasbington handful of officials doing the biddingof the , teaching into the public debate. But the As lance said, "Sam Maynes and intereststhat receivethe subsidies. Leonard Burch bluffed in a $500 million The writer is a founding member of I would also explain that the region's poker game." But however much I Women Climbers Northwest: officials have great weight in the center of BABBS admire their gambling skills, I think it is power because they represent a handful of immoral to force poor dirt farmers into .HeN PRINTS "MllDDLED people, and therefore need relativelylittle in an expensive water project or to indebt the way of subsidies, on a per capita basis, the widows and orphans in Durango and _ NONSENSE" compared tu representatives from more p0p- the New Mexican communities for water --7 Dear HCN, ulated areas. I would also explain that the 'they don't need and can't afford. Ed Marston's simple-minded edito- rural region they represent has been uashed' I thus hope that former state engi- rial in HCN, 3/8/93, divides The West ecologicallyby this mede-in-a-political-cen- neer Jeris Danielson will develop some into good guys andbad guys. The bad ter, non-market economy. Finally, I would practical alternatives so that the "dam guys (Greg Hobbs, miners, ranchers, say that most public discourse and the factu- that won't die" will finally kick the , land managers ... ) don't respect or al information on which that discourse is bucket, and we can get on with the rest encourage the free flow of information based are tightly controlled by government of our lives. It's been too damn long. and ideas. The good guys (Prof. Wilkin- bureaucracies and by research institutions. Jeanne W. Englert son, Amory Lovins, newspapers like The economists would assume I was Lafayette, Colorado 16- High Country News -April 19, 1993