Feature

Shooting Spree

The West’s environmentalist lawyers are manning the legal barricades, as the Bush administration stealthily attacks the nation’s bedrock environmental laws

Editor's Note

Rednecks and hippies unite!

The small-town politics of a place like Paonia, Colo., are a microcosm of the nation today, revealing deep political divisions and a kind of winner-takes-all arrogance on the part of those in power

Dear Friends

Dear Friends

Lyman Orton of the Vermont Country Store and the Orton Family Foundation visits; Dianne Dumanoski talks about global warming; Krissy Clark wins Golden Reel broadcasting award for a Radio HCN feature

Uncommon Westerners

Filmmakers Filmmakers Dru Carr and Doug Hawes-Davis: Documenting the Evolving West

Dru Carr and Doug Hawes-Davis formed High Plains Films to make environmental documentaries that are even-handed, humane, and not at all preachy

News

Small steps for wilderness

Arizona activists team up with Rep. Raul Grijalva to create a small-scale wilderness proposal for the Tumacacori Highlands

Follow-up

Owyhee Initiative offers Idaho wilderness proposal; judge upholds Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument; Envirocare seeks toxic-waste dump in Iraq; and Salton Sea may be cut in half to save it

Jackson can't agree on growth

A decade after it became famous for its model land-use planning, Jackson, Wyo., is facing a stagnant downtown, crowded highways, sprawling development and sky-high real estate prices

Water 'holy war' rages in central Utah

In central Utah, Sanpete County wants to build a dam and reservoir to provide for its fast-growing population, but neighboring Carbon County says the Gooseberry Narrows Dam will be a water-stealing boondoggle

Dam's price tag skyrockets

Controversy over the long-planned Animas-La Plata Dam in southwestern Colorado flares again, when the soaring price tag of "A-LP Ultralight" becomes known

Seattle embarks on a dramatic experiment in restoration

Ecologists working for the city of Seattle, Wash., are trying to make the second-growth forest of the Cedar River Watershed function ecologically like an old-growth forest

Book Reviews

Report unearths the high cost of mining

A new report from Earthworks and Oxfam America, Dirty Metals: Mining, Communities and the Environment, details the waste and pollution produced by modern mining

Calendar

Seeing the forest for its dead trees

M. Lisa Floyd’s book, Ancient Pinon-Juniper Woodlands: A Natural History of Mesa Verde Country, brings 23 scientists and researchers together to celebrate a little-known and delicate ecosystem

Essays

Off-road vehicles are chewing up our public lands

The only solution to the destruction of public lands by off-highway vehicles is to begin to restrict their use in the backcountry

Motorized recreation belongs in the backcountry

Off-road vehicle users need to be responsible, but at the same time they should fight against any restrictions to backcountry riding

The common beauty of a spring day

A spring day in Montana leads to an encounter with sandhill cranes, and with beauty

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Arnold Schwarzenegger and hydrogen-powered cars; 19th century operas vs. political correctness; dogs vs. coyotes in Telluride; turning Mount Democrat into a Republican; Sen. Pete Dominici loses wallet and identity; stupid bank-robber tricks; and honk if y

Related Stories

The Faces Behind the Lawsuits

Environmentalist lawyers Johanna Wald, Joe Feller, Laird Lucas, Letty Belin, Mike Axline, Jay Tutchton, Roger Flynn and Tom France are briefly profiled