Magazine
March 20, 2006
With all the formerly cool, "undiscovered" small towns now caught up in the New West’s booming real estate frenzy, it’s getting hard to find an affordable place to call home. Also in this issue: A working group of 23 experts convened by the nonprofit Keystone Center could not reach consensus over how to reform the Endangered Species Act’s critical habitat provisions.
Feature
With all the formerly cool, "undiscovered" small towns now
caught up in the New West’s booming real estate frenzy,
it’s getting hard to find an affordable place to call
home
Editor's Note
The discovery of heretofore "undiscovered" small towns,
and their invasion by wealthy second-homeowners, brings money,
problems and often disillusionment to much of the West
Uncommon Westerners
Artist Joan Hoffman pours her love of wilderness into her
paintings, and uses her art as a way to fight for the
environment
Essays
The Endangered Species Act isn’t broken; we just
don’t like to enforce it
The crumbling remains of a man named J. Thomas have a
story to tell about life and death in the northern Colorado in the
1870s
Dear Friends
HCN wins design awards; Matthew Lewis visits; Black Mesa
Trust closes Flagstaff office; Dennis Weaver dies; new comment
deadline for public-land sales
News
A working group of 23 experts convened by the nonprofit
Keystone Center could not reach consensus over how to reform the
Endangered Species Act’s critical habitat
provisions
EPA abandons attempt to regulate hydraulic fracturing; BLM
briefly cuts forestry school funding and Republican Rep. Greg
Walden grills logging critic Dan Donato; California regulator tries
to stop ecological crash in San Francisco Bay-Delta
Misinformation and exaggeration abound in the debate over
the Endangered Species Act’s critical habitat
provisions
Although logging has declined drastically in the Pacific
Northwest, it’s not necessarily the fault of the Endangered
Species Act or the northern spotted owl.
The federal Energy Department and the state of Wyoming
have challenged Montana’s plan to establish pollution
controls for coalbed methane wells
Book Reviews
In The San Luis Valley: Sand Dunes and Sandhill
Cranes, Susan Tweit explores a remarkable Colorado
landscape
In Fields That Dream: A Journey to the Roots of
Our Food, Jenny Kurzweil illustrates how agricultural
injustices can be combated by purchasing food from socially
conscious local producers
In Skinny Streets and Green
Neighborhoods, writers Cynthia Girling and Ronald Kellett
examine ecologically sound communities
National Parks and the Woman’s
Voice by Polly Welts Kaufman examines the role of women
in the National Park Service
Heard Around the West
San Francisco puts dog poop to work; stupid
motorists’ tricks; warning to Mr. Cheney; Vogue tackles
global warming; Alaska retools its image
Letters
Related Stories
In the West, the real estate market is the new gold
rush
Realtors seem to be everywhere in the West today –
including community politics
- 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
