To wage war on wildfire, President Bush convinced Congress to help him change the rules of forest management. Are we better off now?
Kathie Durbin
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Slim margins
Loggers say forest restoration work doesn’t put much food on the table
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
National Fire Plan vs. the Healthy Forests rule changes
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The War on Wildfire.” THE NATIONAL FIRE PLAN What is it? A 10-year strategy, launched in 2000 by Western governors, to attack overgrown forests and to increase fire protection for communities Key players Former Govs. John Kitzhaber, D-Ore., and Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho Rule changes […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Unsalvageable
With environmentalists fuming, logging companies grousing, and timber rotting, the Bush administration tries to save face — and a sliver of its grand plans to log the Northwest’s forest sanctuaries
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Massive logging plan shakes Northwest
One of the largest timber sales in history uncovers old animosity, and undermines the Roadless Rule
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
A revival on Hart Mountain
The antelope refuge looks better than it has in decades, but managers seem stuck in the past
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
On a new national monument, has an agency been cowed?
Can cows coexist with rare plant communities in a national monument? That is what President Clinton asked the Bureau of Land Management to determine when he created the 52,947-acre Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in 2000. The monument, east of Ashland, Ore., is an ecological crossroads where three distinct bioregions – the Siskiyou Mountains, the Cascade Range […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 2003: Courting the Bomb
In fire’s aftermath, salvage logging makes a comeback
Bush administration pushes to cut trees burned by Oregon’s Biscuit Fire, science be damned
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
Renegade house with a view – for now
The three-story cedar house with its tall windows and panoramic views stands boldly on an open bluff near the rim of the Columbia River Gorge, where its prominence defies a federal law that says it should not be there. Since the house went up last year, it has become a test of the 13-year-old National […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
LAKEVIEW, Ore. – David Dobkin crouches in an expanse of low sagebrush and admires clumps of grasses and forbs. It is morning on this sweep of high desert that stretches east from the rising fault-block mountain that gives Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge its name. Umbrella-shaped canopies of mountain mahogany grow from the mountain’s outcrops […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Selling science to the agencies: an ecologist’s story
Note: this article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. David Dobkin’s epiphany occurred in New Jersey in 1989, as he drove down a road in the Pine Barrens. At each turn he encountered another trash heap of wrecked automobiles and abandoned refrigerators. The Rutgers University zoology professor knew he was in the wrong […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Do coyotes need “control’ on the refuge?
Note: this article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Mike Nunn and Dan Alonso stop their rig on a punishing track in the southeastern corner of the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge. They have sighted two female pronghorn, just dark dots on the landscape to untrained observers. The does head toward a distant […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Habitat plans are in full flood
Note: this article is part of a suite of feature articles in this issue about the Endangered Species Act and Habitat Protection Plans. Nowhere is enthusiasm for Habitat Conservation Plans greater than in the Pacific Northwest. For that, thank (or blame) the northern spotted owl. Since 1990, when the owl was listed as a threatened […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Timber’s bad boy comes to the table
Note: this article is part of a suite of feature articles in this issue about the Endangered Species Act and Habitat Protection Plans. ROSLYN, Wash. – Lorin Hicks climbs the steep, muddy slope in long strides, stopping several hundred feet uphill of a goshawk nest. The agitated female screeches annoyance and lifts off the towering […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
New plan draws hisses, boos
What do you get when two government agencies spend three-and-a-half years and $36 million on a mega-conservation plan covering all or part of seven states? That’s the question environmentalists, Indian tribes, ranchers, loggers and others in the Northwest are pondering following the release last month of the Clinton administration’s draft plan of the Interior Columbia […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
Rain and clearcuts make fatal brew
UMPQUA, Ore. – In their octagonal house on a remote forested slope 30 miles northwest of Roseburg, Rick and Susan Moon and their next-door neighbor, Sharon Marvin, sat in the path of disaster Nov. 18. Above them in the gathering dark, curtains of rain were working away at the mountain, swelling a small creek and […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Proposed gold mine stirs up a rural Washington county
For 15 years, Roger Jackson has raised hay and grain, sheep and goats on his spread in northeastern Washington’s Okanogan County. Then last June, Jackson learned that Battle Mountain Gold Co. planned to operate an open-pit gold mine six miles from his farm, on Buckhorn Mountain in Okanogan National Forest. Worse, Jackson learned that the […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Reformation in the Vatican of sawlog forestry
History takes Oregon State for a ride
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
The ax falls at the University of Washington
Environmental institute is chopped; other programs cut
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Silencing science at UW: one researcher’s story
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The ax falls at the University of Washington, in a special issue about the West’s forestry schools. When the University of Washington offered aquatic biologist Steve Ralph a job in 1989 directing a major new stream-research program, he jumped at the chance. His […]