Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

“Have you bitch slapped an environmentalist today?” That’s a bumper sticker I see quite often here in western Colorado where I live. It’s sometimes accompanied by a sticker depicting Calvin peeing on one of the following words: “Tree Hugger,” “Hippy,” or the name of our local environmental group. Quite often. The stickers seem to appear in the same areas that I see billboards advertising high paying jobs in the gas fields or coal mines.

But a recent article in the Economist implies that these guys who want to bitch slap greenies are increasingly in the minority. November’s election results, the growing tendency of evangelicals/unions/sportsmen to embrace environmental causes and a blooming urgency to address global warming are all indicators that environmentalism is finally coming around.

It’s all relative, though. A few months ago, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology survey found that terrorism, the Iraq war, foreign policy and health care were the top issues on the minds of Americans today. In 12th place, just ahead of crime and close on the heels of family values, was the environment. That was significantly better than in 2003, when only 20 percent of respondents saw global warming as a major concern (now, about half of Americans are worried about it). It’s an improvement, to be sure. But just because people are concerned about global warming doesn’t mean they care about other environmental issues such as habitat degradation, sprawl or water quality. And it certainly doesn’t mean they’ll give up a portion of their paychecks in order to keep world catastrophe at bay for another few years.

Sure, enviros are beginning to feel a little more mainstream. But around here, where a lot of families rely on coal and natural gas, greenies are still feeling vulnerable to the bitch slap.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

I met Les Skramstad a couple of years ago, while I researched national political angles in the apparent backwaters of Libby, Montana. A multinational corporation — W.R. Grace — and earlier companies had poisoned hundreds of local people with deadly fibers from an asbestos mine. I wrote my take on it: The environmental movement, as a whole, seemed less interested in human victims than in ecosystems.

Les Skramstad finally surrendered to the poison and died last week. The Missoulian has a fine tribute to the man, and a link to a podcast in which you can see and hear Les himself, and another link, to a podcast of Montana Sen. Max Baucus orating his remembranches of Les in the U.S. Senate (when you take the link to the senator, you get a little graphic in the upper-left of your screen, then click on the play button there). Both podcasts are worth hearing.

If you’d like more background the Libby debacles, try my High Country News cover story on the political angles, and an earlier HCN cover by Mark Matthews, on the corporate negligence.

When someone you know dies as a direct result, the issues come home.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Rumors of a film version of “The Monkey Wrench Gang” have been circulating for years. The classic 1975 Abbey novel of eco-sabotage spawned Earth First! and inspired untold numbers to protect the land by chainsawing billboards, pulling survey stakes and pouring sugar in bulldozer gas tanks. Now, reports the Deseret News, Hayduke and friends are finally coming to the big screen.

Filming begins in New Mexico in May; Catherine Hardwicke directs. She’s known for gritty indy films like “Tank Girl,” “Thirteen” and “Lords of Dogtown,” but her last movie, “The Nativity Story,” was dissed on rottentomatoes.com: “One of the greatest stories ever told has become one of the year’s worst movies.”

The real question will be whether Hardwicke can resist the temptation to soften Abbey’s eccentric but steel-cored characters into mere lovable buffoons, and whether she’ll submerge his pro-environment/anti-development message in a bland sugar coating of comedy:

“The characters are very hysterical, they’re very funny, very eccentric and just a blast to read,” Hardwicke said. “So it’s not preachy. It’s a wild rumpus, an anarchist’s romp, about people that care passionately about the land.”

So, let’s play the casting game. Who would you most — and least — like to see playing Doc, Hayduke, Bonnie and Seldom? Post your choices below.

I’ll start with two star picks that would give me a serious case of the heebs:

Bonnie — Meg Ryan
Hayduke — Brad Pitt

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Ah, Utah, the home of the redrock wilderness, the vast and sere desert, the motorized masses yearning to ride free.

The Bureau of Land Management has been trying for years, with scant success, to curb off-roaders in southern Utah. Last fall it finally stood up to the engine-revving hordes and closed part of Factory Butte to unlimited cross-country travel, to protect two rare species of cactus.

But in true Sagebrush Rebellion tradition, the officials of Wayne County, where Factory Butte stands, have decided that they, not the federal agency, should be in charge of that chunk of public land. The Grand Junction Sentinel reports:

Disregarding the authority of the BLM, the county is developing its own management plan for 190,000 acres around Factory Butte, an area the county’s proposal calls the “Factory Butte Cross Country OHV Special Recreation Management Area,” which would stretch from Highway 24 north of Hanksville all the way to Capitol Reef National Park.

The proposal, up for review by the Wayne County Planning and Zoning Commission on Jan. 24, proclaims the Factory Butte area open for cross-country motorized-vehicle use “24 hours a day.”

The Wayne County boys are making a statement, of course, like other rabidly anti-government Utah counties who’ve bulldozed roads into wilderness study areas and ripped out BLM signs. The action won’t stand up in court, but what it will do is waste a lot of time, waste a lot of money, and perpetuate an Old-West “us versus the guvmint” attitude that’s long overdue for adjustment.

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

Dolores LaChapelle lived a life in and of the mountains of the West. She died Jan. 21 in Durango after suffering from a massive stroke.

LaChapelle is known as one of the early adherents of Deep Ecology, a philosophy described by Fritjof Capra like this:

Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else - from the natural environment. It does see the world not as a collection of isolated objects but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views human beings as just one particular strand in the web of life.

LaChapelle was one of the first female sages of the movement, rubbing elbows with the likes of Gary Snyder, Michael Soule, George Sessions and Arne Naess. She was also a pioneer of skiing deep powder — she made the first ski ascent of Canada’s Mt. Columbia and the first known ski run down Alta’s Baldy Chute in Utah. She wrote books on both deep ecology and deep powder, including: Sacred Land Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep; Deep Powder Snow; and D.H. Lawrence: Future Primitive. An essay of hers can be found here.

But I’ll remember her not for her many credentials or guru-like status she had gained amongst skiers and ecologists, but as a woman filled with delightful contradictions: She was deeply emotional about beautiful places, but could be harshly rational. She was a nature freak that loved sweets. She spent the last three decades of her life in Silverton, Colo., at 9,318 feet, surrounded by mountains. For a lot of that time, Silverton was a true, dyed-in-the wool mining town. And miners and environmentalists don’t always see eye to eye.

But that never seemed to bother Dolores. In fact, once mining died, and tourism took its place in Silverton, Dolores looked back on the old days with nostalgia. She saw that mining, as destructive as it can be to water quality, forged a direct link between the community and the land. And from that, she once told me, comes a unique, mountain culture. She did what she could to nurture that culture. She was the Silverton Brass Band’s biggest fan, her long silver braid and sincere grin distinguishing her from the rest of the crowd.

Dolores mentored and influenced and touched many people from all different realms. The mountains and their communities will miss her.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

OK, my headline exaggerates the count, but not by much. Blaine Harden at the Washington Post reports a breakthrough in enviro-worker politics:

In a first-of-its-kind alliance that could fundamentally reshape the environmental movement, 20 labor unions with nearly 5 million members are joining forces with a Republican-leaning umbrella group of conservationists — the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership — to put pressure on Congress and the Bush administration.

The Union Sportsman’s Alliance, to be rolled out in Washington on Tuesday after nearly three years of quiet negotiations, is to be a dues-based organization ($25 a year). Its primary goal is to increase federal funding for protecting wildlife habitat while guaranteeing access for hunters and anglers.

… (The alliance) is making bedfellows of blue-collar workers and old-guard conservationists, who historically have shared little but suspicion and disdain.

Some Westerners are leaders of this new direction. One I’m thinking of is Kim Floyd, who heads the Wyoming AFL-CIO. A few months ago, Floyd positioned his Wyoming unions to take a public stand against natural gas drilling in the Wyoming Range forests. More groundwork has been laid by Western foundations, including Bullitt in Seattle and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in California, as they helped launch the Apollo Alliance several years ago, trying to pull together workers and enviros.

(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

If you relish the hush of snowy winter woods on skis or snowshoes, chances are you’re finding it ever harder to escape the whine of two-stroke engines. The nonprofit Winter Wildlands Alliance just released a new report on winter recreation. It notes that about 12 million people per year snowmobile — just slightly less than the 12.3 million who ski or snowshoe. Yet 70 percent of the West’s national forests are open to snowmobile use.

Despite the fact that surveys (by the Forest Service’s National Visitor Use Monitoring Program) show 28 percent more cross-country skier and snowshoer visits than snowmobile visits, more than twice as many “backcountry” forest acres are designated motorized (multi-use) as non-motorized in winter. When difficult-to-access wilderness areas are taken out of the equation the disparity becomes more severe, with designated motorized acreage outnumbering non-motorized, non-wilderness acreage by more than seven times.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is asking Yellowstone to take a closer look at how its plan for snowmobile and snowcoach use will affect air quality, quiet and the health of both wildlife and humans. The Billings Gazette reports that the Park Service’s draft plan categorizes any localized changes in visibility and any temporary adverse effects to human health as being only “minor” effects. Makes you wonder what they’d consider major effects.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Which political party best represents white, middle aged-men and their stay-home wives?

Does that sound like a good political game plan in the 21st Century, in an increasingly steamy, diverse U.S.?

Writer David S. Bernstein sums up our political future in those terms, and analyzes details to flesh it out. In a Boston Phoenix piece reprinted in the Missoula Independent, he says:

Most political observers believe the Democrats’ gains (in November’s elections) were mostly a one-time rejection of all things Republican, thanks to the worsening situation in Iraq and a host of ethics scandals in Congress. But there is good reason to think that this is just the beginning of a period of political ascendancy for the Democratic Party.

The Dem factors include fundamentals, beginning with:

If anything, the Democrats’ slim 51-49 edge in the Senate figures to expand significantly in 2008, when the Democrats will have to defend just 12 of the seats they now hold, while 21 Republican seats will be in play. Some neutral observers are already predicting a four-seat gain for the Democrats in ’08 — and at least one Democratic pundit foresees nine.

(Read on …)

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth announced today that he will retire within a few weeks from the post he has occupied for six years. See the story in the Salt Lake Tribune.

In an interview with HCN this summer, Bosworth insisted that “the energy industry is not running the Forest Service.” The evidence hasn’t always backed up this claim. HCN also took a look at Bosworth at the beginning of his tenure.

Bosworth’s announcement comes just weeks after BLM Director Kathleen Clarke — another appointee loved by the energy industry — stepped down from her post.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Writers struggle to describe the natural-gas drilling spree on federal sagebrush and forest in western Wyoming. Video, and aerial photographs, make it vivid.

Now SkyTruth, a high-tech environmental group, debuts the Wyoming drilling on the world’s leading do-it-yourself video website, YouTube.

SkyTruth’s 10-minute video is worth seeing, not only for its illumination of the drilling impacts, but also for its savviness in using the new media tools.

Click into the Wyoming video full-screen on SkyTruth’s site, and then see how it looks on YouTube. And consider checking a previous GOAT post that has a link to SkyTruth’s time-lapse aerial photos of coalbed-methane drilling in another industry sweet spot in Wyoming.

To meet SkyTruth’s “eco-geographer,” John Amos, you can see a photo and profile of him on the Grist site.

These enviros are learning how to reach a wider public without having to go through junk mail and inevitable filters of conventional news reporting.

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

Still hungover from their victory parties following the successful midterm elections, Western Democrats are partying once again. This time because Denver has been chosen to host the 2008 Democratic National Convention. All of those delegates and journalists are expected to bring $150 million or more to the city. More importantly, the selection is another sign that the Interior West may be coming into its own in the national political scene. With just a handful of electoral votes and vast empty spaces between clusters of voters, the Interior West has long been ignored by national campaigns. Now, even if efforts to hold a regional primary fail, the Democratic candidates, at least, will have to visit the region.

Al Eisele of the Huffington Post puts it this way:

As the brothers Salazar of Colorado, Sen. Ken and Rep. John, argue, energy sources are key to many of America’s most pressing problems, including freeing us from the stranglehold of Middle Eastern oil imports. Colorado, with its vast oil shale deposits, and the West with its limitless coal deposits and other alternative energy sources, is a good place to position the party for the future.

So let’s hear it for Denver. It may be a cow town, but if Democrats want to make the west a battleground in 2008, they better be ready to ride in the rodeo.

Something about what he says raises the question: When the national political spotlight is suddenly on the West’s voters, what will we say? And what will the spotlight reveal? Will we really all band together with a common voice and demand that our public lands be managed better, that the feds come up with real solutions to immigration problems, and that we stop being treated as an energy/recreational colony of the rest of the country? Will we mature as a region and rise above the stereotypical roles we’ve been squeezed into for generations?

Or will all the media attention just reduce us to easy-to-digest, 30-second sound-image bytes (note Eisele’s label of “cow town” for Denver, and the need for Democrats to “ride the rodeo” in the West)?

This could be an important step in the development of the West as a region. It could also just end up being a bunch of sound and fury, told by idiots, and ultimately signifying nothing. Only time will tell.

So what if the Democrats have picked Denver as the site for their 2008 presidential nominating convention? And so what if the media missed a way of confirming the decision months ago? The important news: Jon Stewart of The Daily Show — the faux-news phenomenon for a new generation (or, the only funny guy on TV anymore) — is in talks with the Washington Post’s website about some sort of cooperative arrangement in covering the 2008 race.

Which means, if the talks succeed, wit will exist in the city of Denver. At least for a couple of weeks.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

A few weeks ago we blogged about a study underway in Yellowstone showing that weeds grow faster in high levels of greenhouse gas.

Now scientists say that invasive weeds will not only grow more quickly in a globally-warmed world, they’ll evolve at an explosive pace. An article in Reuters UK describes how researchers have found that weeds can shift their reproductive patterns in just seven years:

This means that the weeds will likely keep up with any attempts to develop crops that can adapt to global warming, said Arthur Weis, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine.

Just how many more ways can you say, “We’re screwed”?