Magazine
September 19, 2005
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. Also in this issue: 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.
Feature
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
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
Uncommon Westerners
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
Essays
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
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
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
Dear Friends
Gloria Flora speaks in Paonia; visitors; fun with salmon
and eagles in Spokane
News
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
Ordinary Wolves, Seth Kantner’s extraordinary debut novel, is the coming-of-age story of a young man on the remote Alaskan tundra
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.
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
In To Save the Wild Bison, Mary Ann Franke traces the controversial history of Yellowstone National Park’s wild bison herd
Wounded by Percival Everett is a
modern-day Western novel with a twist
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
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
- John W Stephens on Latest: California fracking companies inject protected aquifers with wastewater
- Kent Schoberle on Ranch Diaries: A New Mexico cattle company is born
- Rich & Terry Fairbanks on Rural communities in the West need a fair shake
- on Jim Deacon, pioneering desert fish biologist, dies
- Larry Bullock on Ranch Diaries: A New Mexico cattle company is born
