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  • Look on Seabright Side

    Jeff Seabright, executive director of the White House Task Force on Climate Change, is bailing out in the waning days of the Clinton administration for a plum job in the private sector, namely as vice president for policy planning at Texaco. Muckraker had been hearing rumblings of the imminent departure for a week, but couldn’t […]

  • New Mexico ranchers are howling over reintroduction efforts

    Two years after the first 11 Mexican gray wolves were released to much fanfare in the Apache National Forest of southeastern Arizona, and a year after an additional 22 wolves were freed in 1998, only seven remain in the wild. A lone wolf. Photo: J. & K. Hollingsworth, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The problems […]

  • Sierra Club Can't Take a Leak

    A memo circulated recently around the Sierra Club‘s offices highlighted the “Top Ten” reasons the group should not endorse Vice Pres. Al Gore. The memo, written by Sierra Club board member Michael Dorsey and unearthed by the Washington Times last week, says: “Does Vice President Gore really care about nature? Does he care about protecting […]

  • A new preserve keeps chilis from going up in smoke

    A tongue-smoking red chili may stay out of hot water thanks to a new botanical area in Arizona, the first in the U.S. set aside to protect wild relatives of domesticated crops. The botanical area — a four-square-mile parcel in the Coronado National Forest, 50 miles south of Tucson — was officially dedicated to the […]

  • Is the military about to blow its chance to protect southwestern desert land?

    A bombshell exploded a few weeks ago in the midst of tangled negotiations over the fate of the 2.7 million-acre Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range in the Sonoran Desert of southwestern Arizona. Mohawk Dunes, Goldwater Bombing Range. The Air Force accidentally dropped a 500-pound bomb April 30 on a part of the range that the […]

  • Will the military protect the West's last best place?

    As parks and forests in the West get overrun by tourists who love too much, the millions of acres controlled by the Department of Defense are suddenly looking sexier. In the Sonoran desert, for example, the last best place is a bombing range. It is a sign of the times that the 2.7 million-acre Barry […]