WASHINGTON TO THE RESCUE?
Roadless Rule Bill: the Timing is Right, so Just Pass It
Unnoticed by many, two members of Congress from Washington have decided it’s about time to do something to resolve the seemingly endless debate over the future of our last roadless lands.
Senator Maria Cantwell and Representative Jay Inslee, both Democrats, have re-introduced the National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Act (S.1738, H.R. 3563) to codify the Clinton-era Roadless Rule that has been on a legal roller coaster for the past nine years.
[more]OIL SHALE
In Issuing New Oil Shale Leases, Salazar Seeks Probe into Past
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Tuesday a new set of experimental oil shale leases with stricter controls than Bush-era leases, and he’s calling for an investigation of an 11th-hour move by the previous administration that critics saw as a giveaway to energy companies.
Salazar said he had “serious questions” about whether the January 15 lease addenda, which opened up 50,000 additional acres to oil shale leasing for six companies, “are in fact legal or whether or not they should be rescinded.”
He asked for the department’s inspector general to launch a probe into the Bush move before his office would take action on it.
[more]Guest Column
Living Leopold: The Rise of a New Agrarianism
In 2009, we celebrate the centennial of the arrival of the great American conservationist Aldo Leopold to the Southwest as a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service. Over the course of a diverse and influential career, Leopold eloquently advocated a variety of critical conservation concepts including wilderness protection, sustainable agriculture, wildlife research, ecological restoration, environmental education, land health, erosion control, watershed management, and famously, a land ethic.
Each of these concepts resonates today – perhaps more so than ever as the challenges of the 21st century grow more complicated and more pressing. But it was Aldo Leopold’s emphasis on conserving whole systems – soil, water, plants, animals and people together – that is most crucial today. The health of the entire system, he argued, is dependent on its indivisibility; and the knitting force was a land ethic – the moral obligation we feel to protect soil, water, plants, animals, and people together as one community.
After Leopold’s death in 1948, however, the idea of a whole system broke into fragments by a rising tide of industrialization and materialism. Fortunately, today a scattered but concerted effort is underway to knit the whole back together, beginning where it matters most – on the ground. Leopold’s call for a land ethic is the root of what is being called a new agrarianism – a diverse suite of ideas, practices, goals, and hopes all based on the persistent truth that genuine health and wealth depends on the land’s fertility.
[more]SASKATCHEWAN FISHING LODGES
Foster Lake Lodge, Five-Star Dining Spiced with a Little Fishing
After visiting about a dozen fishing lodges in northern Saskatchewan, we’re starting to notice a lot of similarities, especially the fishing and environs, but we had no problem seeing how Foster Lake Lodge stands apart from the rest.
The lodge is located on Middle Foster Lake, which is just another amazingly pristine wilderness lake loaded with lake trout and northern pike, but the only lodge on this sprawling shield lake is like no other fishing camp or resort in the province.
[more]New West Conference
Real Estate Market in the West: Where It’s Going, and How
Less can be more. The end is not nigh. The real estate market—including second-home and resort markets—will recover … eventually.
Predictions and advice about opportunity, realism, smart growth, environmentalism—and a slow-paced recovery—were the hallmarks of NewWest.net’s fourth annual Real Estate Development in the Northern Rockies conference in Missoula. The two-day event, which ended yesterday at the Hilton Garden Inn, included more than 30 speakers who discussed wide-ranging topics about development, planning, land use and the future of the West.
The boom-and-bling era of speculation and eye-popping returns on real estate have obviously vanished, said the planners, architects, developers, policy makers, real estate agents, green builders and others who took the stage. But the current economic downturn could fuel a shift that benefits people and the planet, speakers said. When smart growth replaces sprawl, when developers are good neighbors, when downtowns are revitalized and landscapes are preserved, the region will be protected from ugly booms and busts.
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NewWest.net Conference Kicks Off
Economy Will Improve—By About 2012, Top Economist Says
The economic recovery has definitely begun, but it has a long way to go. Housing prices might have a lot farther to fall. And new waves of foreclosures could keep the economy on shaky footing—for years.
Those were a few of the views offered today by leading economist Christopher Thornberg of Los Angeles-based Beacon Economics, who took the stage in Missoula to kick off NewWest.Net’s fourth annual Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies conference—and to also predict the future. It’s something Thornberg has done with uncanny precision in past years, when he was one of the few economists to warn about a coming housing bust and its dire consequences.
[more]DOC SHOCK
Film Shines Light on West’s Energy Battles
For residents of the West’s gas patch, the story is a familiar one. Gas companies roll in, wanting to drill. Homeowners find out they may own the land, but they don’t own the gas reserves underneath.
The drill rigs appear. For some, a battle ensues. Some complain of environmental problems. Some complain of health problems.
Outside the gas patch, the story of the battle between natural gas companies and residents is less well known, but a new documentary may help change that.
Santa Fe, N.M., filmmaker Debra Anderson set out to capture the stories of residents of western Colorado and New Mexico in her documentary Split Estate. The film is scheduled to run Oct. 17 and Oct. 22 on Planet Green, a Discovery Communications network.
[more]AMERICA'S HOTTEST IDEA
Climate Change ‘Greatest Threat’ to National Parks, Report Says
It’s not just melting ice at Glacier National Park. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council calls climate change the “greatest threat” to America’s national parks.
It lists 25 parks most at risk to melting ice, drought, flooding, diminishing wildlife and other factors.
“This is not just a concern for the future,” says the report, which was produced by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization for the NRDC. “The national parks that we Americans so cherish are already being harmed by a changing climate.”
[more]BEAVER CREEK BREWERY ROCKS
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door in Wibaux, Montana
Have you ever tried to convince yourself that you had a bad idea; that wouldn’t turn out as planned; might even be dangerous; and definitely wouldn’t be fun.
That’s how Gene Colling and I were feeling as we inched into Wibaux, Montana. We were on our way to Minnesota for some muskie hunting, and I’d convinced Gene we should take the opportunity to see the only microbrewery I hadn’t visited while doing my Microbrew Montana Series last year.
He agreed, somewhat reluctantly, and I had to admit, the first impression wasn’t great. Wibaux, population 481, like thousands of small prairie towns, looks a little rough around the edges as it tries to find a way to survive.
But those concerns vanished as soon as we walked through the door of the Beaver Creek Brewery.
[more]YES, NO, MAYBE
Interior Halts Some Utah Leases, OKs Others, Defers Most
Following a review of 77 controversial Utah gas leases, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has put a halt on eight of them, deferred 52 of them and is allowing 17 of them to go forward.
The decision follows the recommendations outlined in an interagency report on the leases, which Salazar found had been rushed through by the Bush administration without adequate review.
“I think the report demonstrates that there was a headlong rush to leasing in the prior administration and it ended up taking the kind of shortcuts that we have discovered here,” Salazar told reporters on Thursday. “There were areas that should not have been leased because of the ecological values.”
[more]