Feature

Pollution in paradise

Idaho's beautiful Silver Valley and Lake Coeur d'Alene build a new resort economy on a toxic stew of mining waste.

The Republicans now own the West

A state-by-state review of the national elections reveals a West given over to Republicans.

Dear Friends

Dear friends

Election aftermath; what's wrong with this picture; corrections and emendations.

News

The "tough love' trial is over

The Utah trial of eight North Star employees in the death of Arizona teenager Aaron Bacon on a "tough-love" wilderness program ends with only the field instructor, Craig Fisher, guilty as charged.

Ted Turner makes a deal

Media mogul Ted Turner trades school trust lands for privacy in Montana.

Clean air for a price

Washington's Centralia Coal Plant want $80 million in tax breaks to stop polluting the air over Mount Rainier.

Cows, ballot measure gunned down in Oregon

Small-town doctor and environmentalist Patrick Shipsey shoots 11 cows in John Day, Ore., and accidentally kills a ballot measure that would have removed cattle from polluted streams.

Idaho jury hits 12 Cove-Mallard protesters hard

An Idaho county jury assesses $1.15 million in damages against 12 Earth First! Cove-Mallard protesters.

New Mexico environmentalists lease state lands

In New Mexico, Forest Guardians and the Southwest Environmental Center succeed in winning a bid for a tract of state land on the Rio Puerco River.

Some big birds come back

Six young condors now in a holding pen in Arizona's Vermilion Cliffs will be the first condors to live on the Colorado Plateau since 1924.

Reservoir unleashes more than water

More than 4,000 fish are killed by sediment when an irrigation company drains its reservoir on Colorado's Poudre River.

The West is just another ethnic voting bloc

Westerners vote like everybody else, with just a slight Western twang.

Essays

If politics is a baseball game, I don't even own a bat

Post election musings by a Western Democrat consider why Republicans won so easily and what new strategies environmentalists need to learn.

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

"Samowen" campground; Samish Tribe is not dead yet; urine-testing for river guides' cellular phone "rescue in Yosemite"; bears in cars; state-sponsored hairdos in Montana.

Related Stories

Piling a new economy on the old

Idaho developers build resorts on the remains of a busted mining and timber economy.

River cleanup is slow, expensive and maybe hopeless

Marti Calabretta directs the cleanup of Canyon Creek, one of the most polluted tributaries of the Coeur d'Alene River.

Sacred lands shouldn't smell

In his own words, Coeur d'Alene tribal councilman Henry SiJohn decries the pollution of a sacred place.

A tribe that takes the high road

The small but feisty Coeur d'Alene tribe has always tackled tough issues.

Logging, floods push metals downstream

Heavy-metal mining pollution in Idaho worries people downstream in Spokane, Wash.

Don't expect problem solving in 1997-1998

The next Congress will probably not solve any Western environmental problems.

The way columnist Ellen Miller saw one "96 race in Colorado

Republican Wayne Allard beat Democrat Tom Strickland in Colorado because Westerners didn't like Clinton's "land grab" in Utah, columnist says.