Feature

A River Once More

In Oregon, a revolutionary community alliance is working to put water – and steelhead trout – back into the Deschutes River

Editor's Note

Good work in Washington

The Bush administration deserves credit for its "Water 2025" initiative, which provided grants that have helped the Deschutes River Conservancy and the Central Oregon Irrigation District begin restoring Oregon’s Deschutes River

Dear Friends

Dear friends

Mongolians visit HCN; Chuck and Tim Worley visit; Tucson’s lawns; Wilderness Society honors Terry Tempest Williams and Tom Bell; correction

Uncommon Westerners

Getting out of the office, and into hot water

California geology professor Jeff Mount uses river trips as an educational tool

Writers on the Range

When a gas pipeline blows, you get out fast

When the Windsor gas pipeline blew out near Clark, Wyo., in August, local people were kept in the dark about a dangerous situation

News

Clinton-era roadless rule is back... for now

A federal judge has reinstated President Clinton’s roadless rule protecting forests in the Lower 48 states, but the decision seems to have only confused the issue of forest management and is likely to end up back in court

On the ballot: Will Californians vote to build an off-ramp from the oil highway?

California’s Proposition 87 would tax oil produced in the state to raise money for the development of alternative fuels

Voters could be energized, or exhausted, by ballot initiatives

In 10 Western states this November, voters face a total of 82 ballot measures

Wastin' away in New Mexico

Louisiana Energy Services, a European-based company, breaks ground on the first uranium enrichment facility in the U.S. near Eunice, N.M.

Book Reviews

Brave 'yellowbellies' served the West well

In Smoke Jumping on the Western Fire Line, Mark Matthews tells the story of the conscientious objectors who pioneered smokejumping to fight Western forest fires during World War II

Dry-hiking in a desert awash with history

A 61-year-old hiker and two middle-aged friends take an epic hike through Arizona in David Roberts’ new book, Sandstone Spine

A deliberate life in the Rockies

On the Wild Edge is David Peterson’s account of the two decades he and his wife, Caroline, have spent living close to nature in a cabin in the mountains of southern Colorado

Essays

What we love will save us

We are all, too much of the time, captives of the wreck and the mistake. Can’t take our eyes off it, can’t stop thinking about it, can’t stop picking that scab. We slide into our merely negative identity — defined by what we refuse...

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Guardsmen gone wild in Texas; humorous headlines; who wouldn’t love a giant fragrant pink earthworm; fixer-upper furnished with snakes; hit-and-run ATVs in Colorado; and extreme commuters in Portland

Letters

Stop locking bikes out

Bikers have blown it

Bikers must police our own

A taste of your own medicine

Hikers and bikers unite!

No wheels in wilderness

West Watch

Some 'canned' elk get uncanned

Game elk escape in Idaho

Will your favorite Forest Service campsite be closed down next summer?

Forest Service may close campgrounds

BLM busted for booting whistleblower

BLM ordered to pay whistleblower Earle Dixon

One dam down; four in limbo

Oregon’s Chiloquin dam to come down

Mother Nature rides an ATV

Factory Butte closed to ORVs

Wildland acres burned

Western wildland acres burned

Burning money

Wildfire financial data

Policy Watch

In politics, it's not about who you want to drink a beer with

The so-called "character issue" in politics – often defined as voting for the person you’d most like to have a beer with – is absurd for many reasons...

Sidebar

How to save a creek... one drop at a time

A detailed map shows the work being done on Oregon’s Whychus Creek to restore instream flows with the cooperation of local farmers