High Country News September 19, 2005
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
