Some hunters are blaming the Big Bad Wolf for a decline in
the northern Yellowstone elk herd, but Dan Whipple points out that
recent weather – and Montana hunting policy – are more
likely to be responsible.
Items by Dan Whipple
Conservationists say a draft environmental impact
statement on Northern Plains grasslands opens up too much land to
the oil and gas industry.
In the Bridger-Teton National Forest, timber is losing and wildlife and recreation may be winning.
"I saw God when I worked for High Country News, and it surprises me that I have never been mentioned in the voluminous literature on the subject."
Wyoming and Montana are apparently approaching gridlock as they try to work out the details of apportioning water from the Yellowstone River Basin under the Yellowstone Compact.
The Rockies and Great Plains are home to virtually all of the United States' land-based nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Gary Hart, Colorado's senior senator and the Rocky Mountain West's own presidential candidate, talks conservation in Snowmass Village.
The water brought from the Colorado River by the $3.4 billion Central Arizona Project will be expensive.
Widespread use of political action committees, a relatively new phenomenon on the American political scene, is driving politics in many Western states.
Does the Rocky Mountain identity really exist? Do people here feel the pull of regionalism like, say, midwesterners or New England natives?
The basic paradox of the powerful nuclear weapons that reside in Cheyenne, Wyo. and other Western locales is that they are too powerful to be used. But if this is so, they lose all their strategic and diplomatic value -- so we have to keep threatening to use them.
President Reagan announced Monday night that the controversial MX missile would be deployed at Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, Wyoming.
A review of the West's congressional delegates, based on how well they accomplished their own agendas, regardless of whether they were pro- or anti-environment.

An HCN exclusive interview with Interior Secretary James Watt during a visit to Lander, Wyo.
Acid rain, which could be exacerbated by oil and gas development, is harming lakes in Colorado and elsewhere in the West.
The water bill passed by Wyoming's 1982 Legislature is being criticized by environmental groups, who say it lacks comprehensive, long-term water planning.
Oil shale is not dead, despite what the daily newspapers may say. The promise or threat of oil shale will always be with us.
Environmentalists oppose bills, supported by snowmobiling and timber interests, that would establish more wilderness in Montana and Wyoming.
Utah Gov. Scott Matheson is requesting a long-delayed federal public land swap, as well as other land exchanges to consolidate Utah's widely dispersed state lands into more manageable blocks.
The U.S. Department of Energy may build a nuclear waste storage facility in Davis or Lavender canyons, near Utah's Canyonlands National Park.
As the West's uranium industry declines, it should reclaim mines, not wait for economics to swing back in the industry's favor.
The changes that Congress makes to the Clean Air Act when the act is renewed are sure to have an effect on the Rocky Mountain West.
HCN editor Dan Whipple follows a cattle drive in Utah's Uinta Mountains.
When the Anaconda Copper Co. closed its Anaconda, Mont., smelter in October, the community appealed to the state for help in keeping the town alive. But the state's response has been disappointing.
Sabotage of an oil and gas exploration rig outside Jackson, Wyoming, raises questions that divide the environmental community.
Editor Dan Whipple examines and critiques the roots and new tactics of the radical environmental group Earth First!
Because of outdated tax assessment methods, the state of Wyoming has lost about $10 million in uranium severance tax payments since 1977.
The U.S. Forest Service has recommended opening to oil and gas leasing several Wyoming and Montana areas being considered for wilderness designation, and inserting environmental protections into the leases may be illegal.
President Jimmy Carter's proposals to provide incentives for the production of synthetic fuels from coal have generated little new activity from companies involved in synfuel production.
Despite serious reservations at the federal Office of Surface Mining, political pressure may force the approval of a coal strip mine on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.
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