Feature

The Perpetual Growth Machine

Phoenix, Ariz., is determined to disprove the idea that the West will someday run out of water and that every boom has to come to an end

Editor's Note

Adapt or collapse

In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond warns about societies that overreach themselves – a warning that southern Arizona, in the midst of its tremendous real estate boom, ought to heed

Dear Friends

Dear friends

HCN seeks new editor as Greg Hanscom announces plans to leave; HCN goes to diversity school

Uncommon Westerners

'Miss Fish Hatchery'

Wildlife conservation biologist Jenn Logan has a soft spot for the less-glamorous endangered species like razorback suckers and boreal toads

News

Interior's new secretary — general or footsoldier?

Newly appointed Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has a chance to use his deal-making abilities to bring change to the way Western public lands are managed

The Latest Bounce

Libby, Mont., asbestos victims now eligible for disability; new wind-power farm to come to Colorado; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson petitions to protect his state’s roadless lands

On a wing and a prayer

The Gunnison sage grouse has been denied endangered species protection, and biologists like Clait Braun fear the species may be doomed

Tribes look to cash in with 'tree-market' environmentalism

The Nez Perce Tribe is trying to combat global warming – and make a few bucks – by planting trees for carbon dioxide sequestration

Mexican wolves face a rocky road to recovery

The recent deaths of 10 wolves in eastern Arizona are a wrenching example of everything that has gone wrong with the troubled Mexican wolf recovery program

Solar companies roll the dice

Two new companies have proposed building the largest solar power plant in the world near Deming, N.M.

Book Reviews

The noisy democracy of the West

The revised edition of Peter Decker’s Old Fences, New Neighbors examines the changes that population growth has brought to remote Ouray County in western Colorado

Trading goods, and stories, on the reservation

In Along Navajo Trails, Will Evans tells the stories of the Navajo Indians who came into his Shiprock Trading Post during the first part of the last century

Making room for wolves

In the anthology Comeback Wolves, 50 Western writers talk about the complex emotional – and practical – responses evoked by the return of this iconic predator

Essays

Fishing ban will make us forget salmon

Fishing is not the reason behind the decline of the Northwest’s salmon; the desire for cheap hydroelectric power is

Empty pods and pleasant graveyards

In today’s surrealistic world, where language exists only to sell things, barren desert suburbs have names like "Lake Forest" and "WillowDale," while a graveyard is called "Pleasant Valley Cemetery."

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Running shoes for immigrants; farming fun; Red Delicious apples weren’t; Utah’s only archaeology cop; Fiasco’s Mexican Grill; Codes of the West for urban newcomers

Letters

We can do better for immigrants

Immigration brings chaos

Thanks for the immigration reporting

Make Mexico the 51st state

The Zephyr is still important