Feature

The Greening of the Plains

A conservation movement is stirring on the Great Plains, but local farmers are stuck with a harsh reality: It still pays to plow up virgin prairie

Editor's Note

Waxing and waning in the Modern West

Collaborative conservation may help revive both endangered prairie ecosystems and the struggling farm communities of the Great Plains

Dear Friends

Dear Friends

The Bush "pants on fire" mobile visits; Ed Marston at the Sopris Foundation meeting in Aspen; Adam Burke on NPR; Lisa Lombardi in Australia; and Auden and Ellen Schendler welcome a baby girl

Uncommon Westerners

Speaking up for rural Oregonians: Judge Laura Pryor

Judge Laura Pryor of Gilliam County, Ore., has led the charge to create the Eastern Oregon Rural Alliance to help eastern Oregon’s small rural communities

News

New rules coming down for off-roaders

The Forest Service plans to rein in cross-country travel by off-road vehicles, but enforcing new rules may prove next to impossible

Follow-up

BLM raises mining claim fees; scientists sign report criticizing Bush administration’s misuse of science; Biscuit Fire salvage logging plan criticized by timber industry; and the wrong waste has been going to WIPP

New Mexicans move to make roads more wildlife-friendly

In New Mexico, local residents are working with schoolkids and activists to find ways to prevent roadkill in dangerous Tijeras Canyon

An icon of the Rio Grande has all but vanished in the wild

A Fish and Wildlife Service official calls the endangered silvery minnow a "lucky species," even as biologists on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande say it’s in imminent danger of extinction

Buying ecological leverage

High Country News interviews Bill Hedden of the Grand Canyon Trust about northern Arizona’s Kane and Two Mile ranches, which the Trust and the Conservation Fund have an exclusive option to purchase

Calendar

Book Reviews

A new twist on urbanism

The Transportation and Land Use Collaborative in Southern California will hold a conference on "Latino New Urbanism"

An antidote to despair

Chip Ward’s new book, Hope’s Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land, takes a clear-eyed, optimistic look at the nation’s ecological problems

Essays

Backpacker, beware: Don't boldly go where you don't belong

Backpacker magazine is taking advantage of Global Positioning Systems to send tourists into remote and dangerous places

On a lonely road, time rolls to a stop

The writer travels from New York to Nevada every year, just to stop on one of the state’s empty highways and listen to the endless desert silence

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Fahrenheit 9/11 stirs controversy in Park City; dead cottonwoods become art in Santa Fe; Bert Raynes loves names used for animal groups; do-it-yourself burials in San Francisco; Lewis and Clark’s shopping list; bear vs. truck in Tahoe; and bad biso

Letters

Can't afford a home? Get out of the city

Grassroots wilderness movement is alive in Oregon

Locals drive Arizona campaign

Wilderness movement adapts to political landscape

Related Stories

You can't plant a prairie

Prairie advocates like Jim Stubbendieck are trying to restore sodbusted land and replant prairies, a task they acknowledge may be almost impossible