Feature

Visionaries or dreamers?

Earth First! founder Dave Foreman and conservation biologist Michael Soulé founded The Wildlands Project, a scientifically based plan to save endangered wildlife by restoring and reconnecting the scattered islands of wilderness remaining in the West.

Can science heal the land?

An air tour of west-central New Mexico flies over the region's "sky islands" - isolated mountain ranges rich in biological diversity that activists and scientists are trying to preserve.

Dear Friends

Dear Friends

Robert Amon is legally untangled; HCN's new development associate, Michelle Anton Allen; corrections, congratulations, visitors, lost writers; and Paonia's coal mine controversy.

News

Counties put a bounty on coyotes

In southeast Colorado, Baca and Prowers counties put a bounty on coyotes - $7.50 for each pair of coyote ears.

Tribe buys a ranch

Arizona's Pascua Yaqui Tribe buys a 5,300-acre cattle ranch, thus expanding the growing tribe's land base to 6,300 acres.

Western weather: feast or famine

Meteorologists blame La Niûa for recent extreme weather in the West, with record-breaking snow and rain in the Northwest and Northern Rockies, and drought in the Southwest raising fears of summer wildfires.

Nuclear waste goes camping

Rocky Flats is running out of room to store the nuclear debris that is being cleaned up on the former bomb-making factory outside Denver.

The Wayward West

Idaho Watershed Project wins right to bid on state grazing leases; Colo. state attorney general plans to fight Gary Boyce's plan to export San Luis Valley water; Idaho Dept. of Fish & Game tries to get house in order; Montana corrals 60 stray bison.

Quincy Library Group bars outsiders

The consensus-based Quincy Library Group has decided to hold some of its meetings behind closed doors, to prevent what members describe as "disruptions" from opponents of the group's controversial forest plan.

Star light, star bright, where are you tonight?

Two-thirds of the West's Park Service managers say light pollution is a growing problem at Western national parks and monuments, especially those located near cities.

Congress searches for a "green conspiracy'

In a spirit of overreaction reminiscent of McCarthyism, Alaska Republican Don Young sets up a task force to investigate what he calls the "Warner Creek Timber Sale Eco-terrorism" - a protest on the Willamette Nat'l Forest in Oregon resulting in arrests.

Essays

Nostalgic for the Pleistocene

The lively scholarly essays collected in "Coming Home to the Pleistocene," by the late Paul Shepard, discuss "human ecology" - the study of human nature and human needs as formed by our evolution alongside wild animals.

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Sewage from the sky; PETA and pita bread; wild animals in Great Britain; Colo. brochure shows illegal dirt-biking in wilderness; "Please bare with us" in Sedona, Ariz.; Pat Shea vs. Washington Post; xenophobia in Oregon; skiers survive Colo. avalanche.

Letters

Don't trust the military

The link between lynx and stupidity

Expensive cows

How are grazing and smoking similar? Both kill

Related Stories

Extra photos to Visionaries or Dreamers

Extra photos that go with lead article

'This is not a radical notion...'

In his own words, Dave Foreman - who helped found Earth First! - discusses blending poetry with science to save wildlife through The Wildlands Project.

'It's like the Manhattan Project...'

In his own words, conservation biologist Michael Soulé discusses the responsibility of scientists to restore wilderness and preserve wildlife.