Feature

The Great Salt Lake Mystery

The brine-shrimp industry of Great Salt Lake has helped put that misunderstood ecosystem under a microscope; can the lake be saved from its history of abuse and a rapidly increasing population around it?

Dear Friends

Dear Friends

Busy ex-interns; staffers clean up adopted Highway 133; former intern David Havlick and HCN associate journalist Niels Sparre Nokkentved publish books; new senior editor Lolly Merrell; European readers critical of wolf management.

Writers on the Range

Leave my town out of your 'Top 10'

When an article appears in Men's Journal proclaiming his home town in the "top 10" of best places to live, the author can't understand what criteria the decision was based on.

News

Zion's geriatric cottonwoods

Cottonwood trees in Utah's Zion National Park may vanish in the next few decades, according to a study by the park and the Grand Canyon Trust that recommends removal of flood-protection stone levees as a way to save the trees.

Wilted West staggers into summer

The fourth year of a crippling drought throughout the West is potential for trouble, not only for farmers, but wildlife and the human population, as well.

The Latest Bounce

Off-roaders in the Mojave Desert must yield to desert tortoises; BLM reverses its ban on four-wheelers in California's Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area; Forest Service denies Boy Scout camp on White River Forest near Aspen; Forest Service cancels Eagle

Are Wyoming's feedgrounds a hotbed of disease?

Conservation groups want to phase out 23 elk feedgrounds managed by the state, claiming they are expensive breeding grounds for disease.

Bush will edit NW Forest Plan

The Bush administration aims to overhaul the Clinton-bred forestry plan, and environmentalists pledge to oppose efforts to dilute it.

Griz ordered to get scarce

Several communities surrounding Yellowstone National Park have passed regulations banning grizzlies, wolves and other "unacceptable species," even though the laws are unenforceable.

Book Reviews

Mountainfilm

This year's Mountainfilm festival, held May 24-27 in Telluride, Colo., features 25 films that celebrate mountains and the people who love them.

Sagebrush artistry

In "Living in the Country Growing Weird," Nevada potter Dennis Parks celebrates his exit from the rat race by conveying the challenges of rural existence.

Sprawl is in the numbers

A study by Numbers USA, "Weighing Sprawl Factors in Large U.S. Cities," analyzes relative contributions of land-use decisions and population growth to sprawl in the nation's 100 largest urbanized areas.

Fateful harvest a scary read

Duff Wilson's book, "Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret," investigates a local agricultural chemicals provider who attempted to pass toxic waste off as recycled fertilizer.

Wildlife Saloon

Wildlife such as deer, elk and bighorn sheep can find water using an artificial reservoir, the "Wildlife Saloon," a new invention developed by Cedaredge, Colo., geologist Greg Hunt.

Essays

Muscle car of the prairie

The writer reminisces about the time he was a teen-age boy and encountered "nature" with Leviathan, his 1966 Pontiac LeMans, on the plains east of Aurora, Colo., which he discovered was a place of rugged beauty.

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Alligators on treadmills embarrass researchers; Colorado's state mineral must be right color; Montana coyote hunter shoots up plane's wing; ticked-off bees attack in Oregon; Basalt, Colo., turns down second-home buyers; 107-year-old Jessie Reimers of Lewi

Letters

Outlandish slaughter

Native crops for the niche West

Sibley said it for me

Under charter plan, forests would fall

But, can they reproduce?

'Sense of place' bought and sold

Re: 'Looking for the good'

Roslyn development update

Related Stories

Suburbanites compete for the lake's fresh water

Activists continue to fight against dams on the Bear River, one of three sources that feed Utah's Great Salt Lake, in their push for stricter water conservation along the Wasatch Front.

Lake stops sprawl in its tracks ... for now

Environmentalists and SLC Mayor Rocky Anderson denounce the Legacy Highway, a disputed 14-mile road that would connect Salt Lake City to Farmington, arguing that it would destroy wetlands, encourage sprawl, and degrade the Front's already murky air.