Feature

The Millworker and the Forest: Notes on natural history, human industry and the deepest wilds of the Northwest

A hike through the old growth of Olympic National Park with former millworker Jim Podlesny reveals more than one way to look at a giant Douglas-fir, and also at the life of a one-time logging community.

Dear Friends

Dear Friends

Here come hunters; droppers-in; three cheers for Jared Farmer and Pete McBride; close encounter with a mountain goat; interns Ali Macalady and Karen Mockler.

News

The Cowboy State's next boom

A boom in coalbed methane gas development in Wyoming's Powder River Basin could have the strange side effect of bringing more water to the surface than the ecosystem can cope with.

The Wayward West

Helen Chenoweth to wed Wayne Hage; Wash.'s Dawn Mining Co. can't use radioactive dirt to fill old uranium mine; Baca Ranch, N.M., to be sold to feds; a water block for Cyprus Amax mine in western Colo.; trophy home near Columbia River Gorge must be moved

Disease is wasting the West's wild herds

Chronic wasting disease is slowly spreading among the West's deer and elk herds, and some fear that game farms are partly to blame for the transmission of the deadly disease.

Crow tribe lays claim to elk

The Crow Tribe plans to capture 550 elk that roam from its Montana reservation down into Wyoming, and critics say that the tribe's foray into game ranching is a plan to steal the public's wildlife.

Do you want more wilderness? Good luck

Despite growing public support for more wilderness, Congress is unlikely to add any acreage, for a variety of political and even philosophical reasons.

Downwinders speak up and pay up

Flamboyant Wyoming attorney Gerry Spence is at the head of a legal challenge to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory's plan to build a nuclear-waste incinerator, which Wyoming residents fear could send emissions into their state.

A Lewis and Clark revival hits the Northwest

A revival of interest in explorers Lewis and Clark raises questions about how to handle increased tourism on the National Historic Trail through Montana - as well as questions about how the history should be told.

A rare vote on water

For only the second time in 62 years, Colorado voters had the chance to elect board members to the upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District.

An Arizona mayor condemns the New West's thirst for servants

In a fiery open letter to the Aspen Daily News, Douglas, Ariz., Mayor Ray Borane blames the resort's dependence on cheap illegal labor for the social and economic problems that plague border towns like his.

Book Reviews

Glen Canyon unplugged

Michael Collier's photos will be shown as part of the Glen Canyon Institute's fifth annual fall conference.

Is help from a federal agency a "charade'?

The Denver-based Citizens Coal Council charges the federal office of Surface Mining with being just a pawn of the mining industry.

Blurring the landscape

Historian Mark Fiege's book, "Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West," describes southern Idaho as a hybrid habitat that reveals a complicated reciprocal relationship between people and nature.

Up in the air

An Earth First!-related group in Eugene, Ore., called Red Cloud Thunder, has published its fourth issue of a 20-page "zine called "Expletive deleted."

A gem of a park

The Conservation Fund is working with local ranchers to remove cattle from Nevada's Great Basin National Park.

Environmental Protection and Growth Management in the West - 1999

A workshop on environmental protection and growth management in the West will be held Oct. 29-30 in Denver, Colo.

Endangered boreal toads

Biologists are trying to track sightings of the endangered boreal toad in Colorado.

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Arizona's "Stupid Motorist Act"; Ara Tripp's electrical power antics in Seattle; contrails or chemtrails?; yellow starthistle infects Colo.; Scott Silver's Wild Wilderness vs. Disney; Aspen home prices; trophy home named after Thoreau; Orem Daily Joural.

Opinion

Battered borderlands

As the number of illegal immigrants crossing the Sonoran Desert into Arizona rises, the Border Patrol is faced with the need to protect a fragile environment at the same time that it polices the border.

The Red Desert: Wyoming's endangered country

Wyoming's little-known Red Desert is a unique region rich in wildlife, history - and also in deposits of oil, gas and minerals, which could lead to the destruction of the land under which they're found.