Feature

Squeezing Water from a Stone

With only a tiny share of the Colorado River available to it, Las Vegas decides to get the water it needs from elsewhere in the state – underneath the rural high-desert Basin and Range country

Editor's Note

Weighing our water options

As the rapidly growing city of Las Vegas, Nev., schemes to find more water, it reminds those of us who live outside big cities that we also need to rethink the way we use water

Dear Friends

Dear friends

Gloria Flora speaks in Paonia; visitors; fun with salmon and eagles in Spokane

Uncommon Westerners

Dinosaur tracks on a desert shore

When drought shrank Lake Powell this summer, paleontologist Martin Lockley went to work scouring the shoreline for newly revealed rare dinosaur tracks in the sandstone

News

Revealed — secret changes to park rules

The Park Service lands in hot water when Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Paul Hoffman secretly rewrites the agency’s management manual, and the revision is leaked to the press

The Latest Bounce

Forest Service accidentally cuts a designated botanical area in southwest Oregon; California, New Mexico and Oregon sue Bush administration over repeal of Roadless Rule; Utah won’t let group test Great Salt Lake fish for mercury; BLM admits grazing regs need more work

In the orchards, questions about immigration reform

In Yakima County, Wash., the California-based labor contractor Global Horizons is stirring up controversy among local Latino farmworkers by bringing in hundreds of guest workers from Thailand to pick fruit

Western military bases still reporting for duty

Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico and Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota narrowly escape being shut down by the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission

Judge leaves Front Range cities mile-high and dry

A Colorado judge cancels the water right of a private company that had planned to build the state’s largest dam and use it to pipe water from the Western Slope to the cities of Denver and Colorado Springs

Agency slashes critical habitat for salmon

Faced with a lawsuit by the National Association of Home Builders, NOAA Fisheries decides to strip protections from four-fifths of the currently designated critical habitat for salmon

Conservative legislator takes on Wal-Mart

Idaho’s Republican Speaker of the House, Rep. Bruce Newcomb, wants to force Wal-Mart to either provide health insurance for its Idaho employees or reimburse the state for providing Medicaid coverage

Book Reviews

An honest take on a tough land

Ordinary Wolves, Seth Kantner’s extraordinary debut novel, is the coming-of-age story of a young man on the remote Alaskan tundra

The grasslands — humanity's big backyard

In Sonoita Plain: Views from a Southwestern Grassland, biologists Carl and Jane Bock convey the subtle beauty of the wildlife and people of Arizona’s Sonoita Valley.

The Boys of Winter

In The Boys of Winter, Charles Sanders tells the true stories of three champion skiers who joined the Army’s 10th Mountain Division during World War II and fought in Italy’s rugged Apennine Mountains

To Save the Wild Bison

In To Save the Wild Bison, Mary Ann Franke traces the controversial history of Yellowstone National Park’s wild bison herd

Wounded

Wounded by Percival Everett is a modern-day Western novel with a twist

Essays

Yellowstone’s Grizzlies Not out of the woods yet

Many environmentalists say the Yellowstone grizzly is a long way from being recovered, and that delisting the bear is premature and could spell disaster for the species

Dam breaching gets a surprise endorsement

A longtime consultant to the hydropower industry, biologist Don Chapman, shook the Northwest this summer when he declared that four dams on the Lower Snake River should be breached to save the salmon

Yellowstone's Grizzlies A success story

The National Wildlife Federation believes that the federal government’s proposal to remove Yellowstone’s grizzlies from the endangered species list represents a tremendous achievement

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Montana cowgirls go "bareback riding" for calendar; Forest Service worker vs. mountain lions; winery pollution in Napa Valley; violent clown nabbed; plague of toads; Durango high school reunion

Related Stories

‘Tributary issue' could force a seven-stateshowdown

Nevada is fighting with the four Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico over its right to use water from the Colorado River’s tributaries, in particular the Virgin and the Muddy rivers