Feature

The Ghosts of Yosemite

Modern-day scientists, retracing the path of Joseph Grinnell in Yosemite National Park, document conspicuous changes in the natural world and find a culprit unimagined by biologists 100 years ago: global warming

Editor's Note

Is anyone home at the parks?

The Park Service has always excelled at managing visitors, and as global warming makes itself felt in Yosemite, Glacier and other national treasures, the agency should use its interpretive skills to explain what’s going on

Dear Friends

Dear friends

Santa Fe board meeting; Emily Stonington and Michael Fischer leave HCN board; Tutti Skaar, Dan Stonington and Florence Williams join board; Ruben Martinez and Angela Garcia speak to HCN meeting; Laura Paskus and Hollis Lawrence get hitched in Albuq

Uncommon Westerners

His photographs trace the passage of time

Photographer Mark Klett has made an art of rephotographing Western landscapes first documented about 100 years ago

News

Pombo takes on the Endangered Species Act

On his 12th attempt, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., succeeds in pushing a bill through the U.S. House designed to reform the Endangered Species Act and end critical habitat protection

The Latest Bounce

Gold mining gets go-ahead near South Pass, Wyo.; Eric Griego loses election to Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez; W.R. Grace tells Libby, Mont., residents they’re not that sick; farm-labor broker Global Horizons ordered to pay penalties, back wages and taxes

Handling grizzlies: How much is enough?

Increasing numbers of the West’s grizzly bears wear radio collars, and some environmentalists question the necessity of the practice

'Water bank' drags river basin deeper into debt

The Klamath Basin water bank was intended to end a tug-of-war over scarce water, but with some farmers selling off water while other wells go dry, tensions in the Oregon valley are only getting worse

Glen Canyon Dam will stand

The Bureau of Reclamation refuses to dismantle Glen Canyon Dam or drain Lake Powell

Overseas drill rigs head for the West

Faced with an increase of oil and gas drilling permits, energy companies are looking overseas, particularly to China, for enough equipment and crews to work in the West

Restoration-by-poisoning plan shot down

Just hours before the California Department of Fish and Game planned to poison a Sierra Nevada stream to help restore a threatened trout, a federal court halted the controversial project

Salvage logging speeds up

With the Forest Service’s Biscuit Fire salvage logging program acknowledged to be a failure, Oregon Reps. Greg Walden and Gordon Smith want to speed up future post-fire logging

Essays

Blood spills over a $14 camping fee

In the wake of a confrontation over a camping fee that ended in a tourist’s death, a former park ranger remembers a frightening incident from his own career

Inside the fall

A writer celebrates finding happiness and finding herself, as she romps with her children in the beautiful season of autumn

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Border collie looking for work in Boise; washing machine museum in Colorado; "parasite lost" in Wyoming; big house vs. bigger house in Utah; cyclists vs. goathead thorns in Sacramento; nude cycling in North Portland

Letters

Bring back the great little car

Biodiesel is not the answer

Quivira Coalition needs science-based grazing

Let ranchers restore the land

Grasses to grasses, dust to dust

Spirits in the stream

Fighting the Las Vegas 'water grab'

Related Stories

In the Great Basin, scientists track global warming

Wildlife biologist Erik Beever says that as the climate warms in the Great Basin, pikas are rapidly disappearing from mountains where they formerly thrived

States lead charge against global warming

With the federal government dragging its feet, Western states are beginning to take action to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and global warming