public lands

In Willamette Valley, the Conservationists are Loggers

by catherine ryan high country news on May 11, 2012 · 0 comments

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Fight to save ponderosa species gains atypical supporters.

BLM Struggles With New Obama Planning Process

by kimberly hirai high country news on May 9, 2012 · 0 comments

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After the December 2008 energy lease auction made famous by its disruption by activist Tim DeChristopher, the Obama administration retooled the planning process for balancing development with preservation. As Kimberly Hirai reports, the result has been anything but simple or easy. And as we say with stories like this, it’s wonky but worth reading. About [...]

Park Ranger Pays the Price for Whistleblowing

by andrea lankford high country news on May 7, 2012 · 9 comments

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Rob Danno blew the whistle on illegal tree cutting. Now he’s paying.

Proposed New Drilling Is Threat to Western National Parks

by michael frank on May 2, 2012 · 1 comment

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A federal proposal to allow oil shale and oil sands development in parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah would be a major threat to the national parks in those states, says a report by the National Parks Conservation Association. The Bureau of Land Management is considering opening 2.3 million acres to development — the size [...]

BLM Approves 1,300 Gas Wells Near Utah’s Desolation Canyon

by michael frank on March 26, 2012 · 0 comments

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The BLM has approved 1,298 new natural gas wells in and around Utah’s Green River and Desolation Canyon, a National Historic Landmark and proposed national wilderness area. The wells will be drilled over 15 years by a publicly traded company from Colorado, Gasco, which actually wanted almost 1,500 new wells. This is all but a [...]

A Solution to Grazing Where Seemingly Everyone Wins

by jodi peterson high country news on March 13, 2012 · 0 comments

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If you’ve been trolling the news recently, you might think that ranchers still reign supreme over the federal estate, despite the fact that the number of cattle and sheep on public lands has declined by more than half since the 1950s. In November, for example, the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed a [...]

National Parks Create 10 Times the Dollars They Cost

by michael frank on March 6, 2012 · 4 comments

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In 2010 the federal government gave the National Park Service $2.7 billion and the return on investment was $31 billion and 258,400 jobs. According to a just-out study on the economic value of the NPS conducted by Michigan State University, most of the revenue was generated by lodging and food bought by visitors, who totalled [...]

Opinion: It’s Time to Stop Feeding Those Jackson Elk

In western Wyoming, feeding elk seems as normal as long winters, Grand Teton views, and oil and gas wells. But of the one million elk that now roam North America, only three percent are fed by government employees, and three-fourths of those animals are fed in Wyoming at the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole [...]

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Park Service Restricts Cape Hatteras Beach Driving, Motorists Sue

The battle over motorized use of public lands extends far beyond the mountains and forests of Colorado and the deserts of the Southwest. On the East Coast, motorized users recently went to court to try and overturn a new set of rules governing motorized use at Cape Hatteras National Seashore — despite the fact that the Cape Hatteras [...]

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Controversial Forest Service Fees Struck Down

You known those obnoxious Forest Service fee programs, like the Adventure Pass? The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that if you want to park at an undesignated trailhead, hike to an unimproved chunk of trail and set up your tent, or just pull over and eat a sandwich, the U.S. Forest Service can’t [...]

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Opinion: U.S. Senators Sell Out to Big Oil on Keystone XL

In what may go down as one of most blatantly cynical and hypocritical political moves in recent memory, a group of 44 U.S. senators introduced legislation to revive the Keystone XL pipeline. Despite President Obama’s huge strides in developing sources of sustainable, renewable homegrown energy through solar and wind, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) characterized Obama’s [...]

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Q&A: Why Bike Races in National Parks Are a Bad Idea

In 1976, fresh from the University of Maryland with degrees in French and Spanish, Joan Anzelmo began her National Park Service career greeting international tourists at the agency’s new Visitor Center in Washington, D.C. But it wasn’t long before the former “city girl” came out West, where she spent most of her 35-year tenure, including [...]

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At Long Last, Grand Canyon Bans Bottled Water

It was ugly. It was public. And it involved controversy over whose park it is anyway, Coca-Cola’s or ours, but in a plan just approved by John Wessels, National Park Service Intermountain Regional director, Grand Canyon National Park will end the sale of water sold in disposable bottles within 30 days. The park has free [...]

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House GOP Bill Could Devastate National Parks

In the past few months, we’ve reported several time on a bill making its way through the U.S. Congress that would give the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol unprecedented power in federal lands within 100 miles of the U.S. border, circumventing environmental and many other laws in favor of a shadowy effort against [...]

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After Complaint About Safety, Montana Snowbowl Refuses Pass to Longtime Customer

When Jim Sylvester put his note into the comment box at Montana Snowbowl last winter, he did it anonymously. He’d heard plenty of stories of retaliations against customers who’d complained in the past, and, as a season pass holder for decades, he wanted to keep skiing there. The hill, after all, is less than an hour [...]

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