Feature

Planning's poster child grows up

Oregon was a pioneer in the 1970s, when the state enacted far-reaching, innovative land-use planning regulations, but now even some planning supporters say the regulations are due for some revision

Dear Friends

The changing of the guard

The changing of the guard: Ed Marston retires and Paul Larmer takes helm at HCN; rural roots of HCN; 19 incredible years at the paper; Our doors are open for a holiday open house

Writers on the Range

Wherever you go, sprawl isn't far behind

A lifetime spent in California demonstrates how our flight from sprawl and development leads to more sprawl and development wherever we go

News

Conservation vote groups optimistic

Ed Zuckerman of the Federation of State Voter Conservation Leagues says environmentalists should not despair over the recent elections, because grassroots conservation groups did very well at the local level

Election Bounce

Most green initiatives fail in West; a few bright spots; "Indian vote" helped Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., but not George Cordova in Arizona; Sen. Wayle Allard, R, re-elected in Colorado; Dems gain 11 seats in Idaho; Northwest keeps to status quo

Feds bail on snowmobile ban

The National Park Service gives up on trying to ban snowmobiles from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks

Silver state gets a little wilder

A new bill designates 450,000 acres of wilderness in Nevada, but makes it easier for Las Vegas to grow by withdrawing other land from wilderness consideration

Report slams BLM's land-exchange process

A new report criticizes the BLM's handing of land swaps, saying the process is "politicized" and results in the loss of federal money and natural resources

Clinton-era monuments weather court challenge

A federal court rules that Pres. Clinton did, in fact, have the authority to create six national monuments in four Western states

Did the BLM Spike New Mexico's ditches?

Herbicide spread by BLM land managers on range near Malaga, N.M., has washed into the Black River, contaminating a diversion ditch and killing nearby farmers' crops and trees

New ski resort goes big

The luxurious WestRock Resort is now under construction, 90 miles north of Boise, despite continued opposition from environmentalist and citizens' groups

Colorado community battles a toxic shipment

Residents of the Canon City, Colo., suburb of Lincoln Park are fighting the proposed delivery of radioactive soil from a New Jersey Superfund site to the Cotter Corp. uranium mill

Book Reviews

A briny time capsule

Drought has brought to light a long-submerged sculpture: artist Robert Smithson's earthwork, "Spiral Jetty," in the Great Salt Lake

Reports drill Bush energy plan

The Wilderness Society has published two reports criticizing the Bush administration's national energy plan

Putting green Portland on the map

The Portland Green Map lists 800 resources and points of interests to guide Portland residents and visitors who lean green

A slap of Western reality

In his memoir of rural life in Alder Creek, Idaho, On All Sides Nowhere, author William Gruber avoids the traps of sentimentality and self-importance that so often infest the genre

A Western water parable

In Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters, author Robert Jerome Glennon gives an absorbing account of the ways we use - and misuse - groundwater in the United States

Essays

Ed Marston to the West: Grow up!

A profile of Ed Marston, the outgoing publisher of High Country News, describes his path from East Coast physics professor to a small-town Colorado environmentalist publisher unusually sympathetic to ranchers

Farewell, whoopers, Western skies aren't big enough for you

The last whooping crane west of the Mississippi is dead, and the skies of the West are poorer for the loss

Heard Around the West

Heard Around the West

Sky-diving pooch; attack ad goes after candidate's dog; Warm Springs, Ore., holds "Rez Car Parade;" biggest pumkin still grown in East, but Oregon grower catching up; censorship and student journalism in Utah; and town may change name to "Got Milk?"

Letters

Religious labels are irrelevant

Nonhumans aren't a nuisance

Population growth is the problem

What were Arizona voters thinking?

Related Stories

New Urbanism creates living communities

Orenco Station, a new development in a suburb of Portland, uses principles of the New Urbanism movement to create a vibrant, livable community

Across the Columbia, a game of catch-up

Vancouver, Wash., has a rapidly growing population, many of them people who can't afford to live where they work, across the river in Portland, Ore.