Magazine
August 8, 2005
In Mormon Country, young Polynesians search for identity -- and for an escape from a seemingly unstoppable cycle of violence. Also in this Issue: The BLM lets the gas industry sit behind the desk and The Great Salt Lake is loaded with mercury.
Feature
Drawn to Utah by the Mormon Church, young Polynesians
struggle to find an identity, and to escape from a seemingly
endless cycle of gang-related violence
Editor's Note
The problem of gang violence in Salt Lake City offers a
disturbing glimpse into the conflicted soul of Utah and the rest of
the rapidly growing West
Uncommon Westerners
Reba Teran is painstakingly building an audio dictionary
of spoken Shoshone, hoping to save both her language and her
culture
Essays
The neighborhoods of suburban L.A. can serve as a useful
model for the West’s urban planners
The author’s successful search for a car that can
run on biodiesel helps her understand the lure of the open
road
Dear Friends
High Country News is now in full-color;
Jacqui Banaszynski and Don Nelson give HCN some
editorial advice
News
Energy and mining companies are paying the salaries of
workers at Bureau of Land Management offices around the
West
Mexican wolf dies during checkup; another fish kill on the
Klamath; Bush nominates H. Dale Hall to be new head of U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service
EnCana Oil and Gas offers to pay for offsite mitigation in
Wyoming in exchange for intensive drilling rights in the Jonah
Field
Utah’s Great Salt Lake is loaded with mercury, and
scientists are trying to figure out whether Nevada’s gold
mines are part of the problem
Environmentalists and ORV groups accuse the BLM of
dragging its feet over implementing a plan to protect an endangered
flower in California’s Clear Creek Management Area
The rising popularity of Viagra has cut into the profits
of Western antler-hunters, including Wyoming Boy Scouts
New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici says he wants to give more
money to the Middle Rio Grande Endangered Species Act Collaborative
Program – if the program will trim its membership and put
itself under federal authority
More than half the windmills on California’s
Altamont Pass will shut down for two months this winter so
migrating birds can pass safely through the area
Book Reviews
In The United States of Wal-Mart, John
Dicker offers a viciously funny but intelligently nuanced
understanding of the Wal-Mart phenomenon
In The Back Road to Crazy, Jennifer
Bove gathers the true-life adventure stories of 25 wildlife
biologists
In The Battle over Hetch Hetchy,
history professor Robert Righter chronicles the damming of the
Hetch Hetchy Valley in California’s Yosemite National
Park
Willard Wyman’s novel High
Country tells the story of a Depression-era boy who is
wounded in World War II but finds healing in the Sierra
Nevada
Heard Around the West
The Gladstone Kibosh, EnvironGentle’s ungentle
T-shirts; bicyclists meet baby horse; dog-of-honor at the wedding;
Judge Royce Lamberth vs. the Interior Department’s
incompetence; "Nothing" becomes something in Telluride
Letters
Related Stories
Photo Essay: The varied lives of Polynesian
Mormons
