Feature

Save Our Snow

Faced with rising temperatures and a passive federal government, Western towns such as Aspen, Colo., are beginning to work out a local approach to combating global warming

Editor's Note

Hot times — hot damn

Michelle Nijhuis has just won the 2006 Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism for her series on global warming in the West, which concludes with this issue’s feature story

Dear Friends

Dear friends

HCN now has a blog; HCN’s Tucson board meeting and potluck; correction and clarification

News

Public acres for sale

President Bush revives a proposal to sell off public lands managed by the BLM and the Forest Service as part of his 2007 budget

The Latest Bounce

White Pine County, Nev., seeks federal help to fight Las Vegas groundwater grab; fired workers suddenly regain jobs at National Renewable Energy Laboratory; marijuana is Washington’s No. 8 agricultural product

Snowy middle ground

Wilderness advocates and snowmobile enthusiasts are working together in Montana to find enough room in the landscape to accommodate both their passions

Fishermen blamed for salmon troubles

James Connaughton of the Bush administration’s Council on Environmental Quality says that fishing must be curtailed to save endangered salmon, but salmon advocates say dams are still the real threat to the fish

Energy company stakes out wildlife refuge

Yates Petroleum Co. plans to drill two gas wells in New Mexico’s Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge

Wilderness: The new anti-nuclear weapon

The designation of a new wilderness area in Utah – the Cedar Mountain Wilderness -- may make it harder for nuclear power plant operators to ship radioactive waste to the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation

Taking the law into their own hands

Citizens use a little-known legal doctrine called qui tam to fight energy company profiteering – and make money in the process

Book Reviews

Big dams, big battles

In Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment, Jacques Leslie profiles people dealing with dams in India, Africa and Australia

Friends in high places

In the essays gathered in Breaking Through the Clouds, Richard Fleck weaves in history, humanity and poetry to tell the stories of the mountains he climbs

Got Sun? Go Solar

In Got Sun? Go Solar, writers Rex A. Ewing and Doug Pratt explain how to carry out home renewable energy projects

Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies

Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies by biologist Fred W. Rabe takes a detailed look at mountain lakes, describing their formation, geology and aquatic plants and animals

Essays

In hunting camp, the closet is closed

A "gay, wolf-loving, tree-hugging former Marine" writes about Brokeback Mountain, elk hunting, and his own lifelong experience with shame and prejudice

Fishering

In a part of Oregon where everybody says there have been no fishers for years, the writer stumbles across one of these rare and beautiful animals

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Sex-change doctor dies; rainy wit from Oregon; "Meth Made Easy" makes newspaper’s life hard; world’s biggest solar project slated for Nevada; GPS locates bank robbers

Letters

Corporate agriculture doesn't control universities

Time for a little outreach

Neither bison nor mustangs are truly free

Most enviro cases legit

Sympathy for destroyers

Grateful for real hunters

Keep buffalo corralled

Related Stories

States tighten rules, challenge feds to follow

The state of California pioneered pollution-control efforts decades ago in response to L.A. smog, and today, the Western states are hoping to set the course for national action on climate change

Facts about greenhouse gas emissions

Sprinkled throughout the lead story are "fun facts" about what causes greenhouse gas emissions and what people can do to reduce them