New West Feature

Utah Pawn Shop Law Requiring Fingerprinting Threatens Other Secondhand Shops

Owners of secondhand bookshops, used CD stores and antique shops in Utah say a board of pawn shop owners and law enforcement officials has been trying to use the state legislature to drive them out of business, and they’re sick of it.

“They want to make it so that any dealer of secondhand goods would have to obey the same draconian laws as pawn shops,” says Ken Sanders, owner of Ken Sander’s Rare Books, a prominent used bookstore in downtown Salt Lake City. “That would put me and a lot of other people out of business.”

Guest Column

The Great Outdoors: Protecting Our National Parks and Our Local Economies

In my roles as a city planner, national park ranger, state legislator, outdoorsman and parent, every challenge has reminded me of the critical importance of collaboration. That is why I’m pleased America’s Great Outdoors Initiative will be presenting the results of this summer’s listening tour to the President on Nov. 15.

In an effort reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt’s life-changing tour of the American West, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and other top federal officials held listening sessions throughout the country, including one in Salt Lake City. The Obama Administration is committed to collaborating with Utah farmers, ranchers, foresters, businesspeople, recreation enthusiasts and conservation groups in meeting a shared challenge vital for our economy and central to our way of life: reconnecting our residents to our natural spaces and protecting Utah’s spectacular outdoors. America’s Great Outdoors Initiative gave all Americans the opportunity to talk about the landscapes that define our lives, our economy, and our future, and about how we want to be involved in conserving them.

STOP NEGOTIATING?

Now Anti-Wolf Groups Are Blowing It

No reasonable deed goes unpunished, eh?

That must be how wildlife managers or advocates who actually want to resolve the wolf-delisting impasse must feel.

On September 23, I posted a commentary with the title, Pro-Wolf Groups Blew It where I criticized the left-leaning plaintiffs in the various lawsuits for pushing too hard, too long, and turning fence setters and most western politicians into the anti-wolf camp and possibly endangering the integrity of the Endangered Species Act.

Now, the pendulum has swung to the far right.

TIME TO MOVE ON

NRA Still Getting it Right, Except on Tester

Here’s something that isn’t news to anybody. The number of guns Americans own has skyrocketed, but how is this significant?

An incredible--and later proven unfounded--paranoia swept the country starting back in 2008 when it started to look like a perceived anti-gunner, Barack Obama, might become Commander-in-Chief. The rest of the economy tanked, but thanks to Obama, the gun industry flourished and had its best three-year run ever. Firearms manufacturers worked three shifts per day and still couldn’t make enough guns, especially handguns, to meet demand. Not only has the number of handguns owned by private citizens at least doubled, to more than 100 million handguns, about one handgun for every two adults, but sales of long guns and shotguns has also soared. Americans now own at least 250 million guns, more than one per adult, including at least 20 million firearms gun control advocates might call “assault weapons.” The number of privately owned firearms continues to go up by at least 4 million per year, and interestingly, many new handgun buyers are women. 

COULD IT ALL HAVE BEEN OVER ON SEPTEMBER 30?

Leading Sportsman Blasts Montana Senators for Derailing Wolf Delisting

The founder of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife (SFW), a multi-state conservation group that has been aggressively pushing for a congressional resolution to the wolf delisting controversy, claims Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester, both Democrats, are not his allies.

Instead, he insists, both the Montana Senators worked behind the scenes to actually derail delisting efforts at the same time they were jointly introducing a bill to delist the wolf.

No, I’m not making it up.

GUEST COMMENTARY

Grizzly Managers Spin Whitebark Pine Woes

Whether or not you care about the recovery of grizzly bears, we face a serious challenge today of how to protect the safety of people who live and recreate in grizzly country, as whitebark pine, the driver of the health of the population for Yellowstone grizzly bear population, continues to suffer from a climate-driven beetle epidemic. At this critical juncture, it has been confusing and unconstructive to see grizzly bear management agencies flip-flop on the fundamental question of whether or not whitebark pine matters to the Yellowstone grizzly bear population, and the effects of its loss on human-bear conflicts.

Wildlife on the Great Salt Lake

Sold to the Highest Bidder: Trophy Hunting on Utah’s Antelope Island

To call Antelope Island State Park an island at all is to stretch the term to its limits. Its brown spine rises up out of the bleached salt flats, primordial muck and ankle-deep marshes of the Great Salt Lake, an isolated spot of land for much of the planet’s relatively recent geology. Now Antelope Island has been beached.

Today, the 42-square-mile sandy sea of sun-browned grasses is home to herds of pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep, bison and migrating birds that congregate on and around the island in staggering numbers. And, for the first time since the island became protected as a state park in 1981, soon it will be home to bighorn-sheep and mule-deer hunters looking to add a few more trophies to their collection.

In a controversial decision earlier this month, the Utah State Parks Board voted 6-2 to allow four hunters--two via a statewide drawing and the two highest bidders at a winter auction--the chance to bag bighorn sheep or mule deer in 2011, despite some strong local opposition.

column

Bill to Cut Congressional Pay Includes Western Co-Sponsors

Congress last had a pay cut in April 1933, during the worst of the Great Depression.

A bill to end that 77-year-long era, H.R. 4720, sponsored by Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz. and co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers was introduced in the House of Representatives in March.

If the bill becomes law, salaries for all senators and representatives would be cut by 5 percent, which would save $4.7 million, and block automatic increases in congressional salaries for 2011.

“The American people have had enough of Washington politicians refusing to live up to their responsibilities,” said Rep. Kirkpatrick. “If elected officials are going to say that this country is facing its most difficult economic times in generations, then they need to act like it.”

Utahns’ memories not that short

Rural Utahns are awaiting the results from a second request for records from the Obama Administration regarding an inventory of 13 million acres of public and private lands in 11 Western states. The inventory’s purpose was to determine the studied lands’ qualifications as future national monuments.