Feature

Backlash

In Gallatin County, Mont., and Delta County, Colo., local citizens and county governments are fiercely resisting the recent, no-holds-barred push to drill for coalbed methane.

Dear Friends

Breaking all the rules

Breaking all the rules, HCN writes about local coalbed methane story; Visitors; interesting mail about enviro "psychohistory"; no Centennial Hotel in Elko; HCN goes to Seattle for board meeting, potluck

Farewell to a great mountain photographer

Mountain photographers Galen and Barbara Rowell die in a California plane crash.

Writers on the Range

A NIMBY and proud of it

The term "NIMBY" is used as a term of abuse, but the writer says that when it comes to things like coalbed methane drilling on Colorado's Western Slope, he is eager and proud to declare: NOT IN MY BACKYARD.

News

EPA puts cleanup in local hands

The planned Superfund cleanup of Idaho's Lake Coeur d'Alene is taken from the EPA and given to a controversial new local commission, although the Coeur d'Alene Tribe says it will force the EPA to take back the project, if necessary.

The Latest Bounce

180 lynx to be released in Colorado; stricter noise rules in Grand Canyon; Bureau of Indian Affairs to create federal Indian Energy and Minerals office; bark beetles hit Arizona pinon pines.

Closing the loop

On the Navajo Reservation, Indigenous Community Enterprises is using thinned small trees from fire-prone, overgrown forests to build hogans for housing - and the tribal economy as well.

The other firefighters

Fire-proofing houses is a thriving new business in Durango, Colorado's fire-prone forests, but the only real solution to the problem is to quit building in the urban-wildland interface, many say.

Bush's energy push meets unintended consequences

The Bush administrations' push to drill and drill yet more in the West is likely to have surprising consequences, arousing even some Republicans to protest.

Book Reviews

An inspiring, devastating story

Land, Wind and Hard Words: A Story of Navajo Activism by John W. Sherry tells the story of the Navajo grassroots environmental group Dine CARE and the dedicated small group of people who founded it, 10 years ago.

River's end

The Culminating Conference for the year-long series, Moving Waters: The Colorado River and the West, is set for four days in September in Flagstaff, Ariz.

Telling it on the mountain

As part of the United Nations' 2002: The Year of the Mountains proclamation, a program on the problems facing mountain peoples will be held in Silverton, Colo., Sept. 26-28.

No shoes, no problem

In Barefoot Hearted: A Wild Life with Wildlife, Kathleen Meyer relates her adventures in Montana's Bitterroot Valley, where she shares an old dairy barn with her boyfriend and numerous uninvited animal guests.

The fission of a New Mexican nuclear family

Bradford Morrow's novel, Ariel's Crossing, tells a poignant story of family and reconciliation in New Mexico, where the nuclear weapons testing of 40 years ago still haunts the land and the people.

Is it possible ...

Outdoor Classroom on Rangeland Health

If you're tired ...

Sopris Foundation's Web site

Visit awhile with Molly ...

Western Colorado Congress

Essays

When nature calls, don't follow your instincts

For environmental as well as aesthetic reasons, parks like Grand Teton in Wyoming are doing away with wilderness outhouses, and requesting hikers to use "poop bags" to pack out human waste.

Heard Around the West

Heard Around the West

Mini-ranch sold on eBay; smashed toilets become office foundation; Aspen man blown away by job requirements; "Russian Mafia" robbing Idaho hikers; meth addicts stealing old-growth trees; Water Board plans cloud-seeding; and grasshopper plague.

Letters

Cross lawsuit is not petty

Great Basin belongs to all of us

Defenders defends wolves

Forest thinning urgent

Forward from the Pleistocene

Golden in drought denial

Related Stories

One Colorado county takes a stand

Poor but coal-rich Delta County, Colo., made history when its county commissioners, responding to a determined citizens' movement, voted to deny four coalbed methane test wells and attach conditions to the drilling of a fifth.