The Magazine

The Navajo Nation is determined to finally claim its
rightful share of the Colorado River after 86 years of being left
out of the region’s water politics.

California’s Salton Sea is at a crossroads, but
whether it dries up and blows away or is restored and rejuvenated,
the future does not look bright for its resident renegades,
retirees and recluses.

A copper-mining company is courting Superior, Ariz., but
the former mining town – now re-inventing itself as a modest
tourist haven – is unsure whether it really wants a new
marriage with extractive industry

Public-land managers in the era of global warming face
uncomfortable choices: Do they intervene to protect dying plants
and animals, or stand back and let this new version of
“nature” take its course?

The Interior West’s growing political voice –
and its status as the nation’s energy supplier – mean
presidential candidates need to see the region as more than
campaign flyover country.

In Catron County, N.M., an attempt to reintroduce
endangered Mexican wolves has fallen into chaos in the wake of
political misjudgments, local hostility and problems caused by
inbreeding among the wolves.

The fiercely conservative lawyers of the Sagebrush
Rebellion continue to fight against environmental regulations, but
despite all their sound and fury, very little has changed on the
public lands.

Scientists unleash a new weapon in the fight against
invasive tamarisk – a tiny exotic beetle from
Kazakhstan.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
– the West’s most powerful water agency – uses a
shrewd blend of Wall Street tactics and rural diplomacy to keep the
water flowing to L.A. and its environs.

This special issue focuses on books and essays that help
us understand the complex, chaotic West.

Plans to fence as much as possible of the U.S.-Mexico
border could derail the return of rare jaguars to the
Southwest.

Bighorn sheep and longtime sheep ranchers face off in
Hells Canyon, where a legal battle over public-lands grazing could
cause ripples across the West.

As population growth and climate change stress the
region’s water supplies, Westerners think hard about
recycling their effluent, although some worry about the possibly
harmful endocrine disrupters found in cleaned-up
effluent.

Pete McGrail believes the volcanic basalt that underlies
the Columbia River Basin may hold a cure for global warming: carbon
sequestration.

In Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, good intentions are
responsible for the introduction of exotic buffelgrass – but
all the good intentions in the world may not be enough to save the
desert now that this invasive and fire-prone plant is
spreading.

Westerners have always been deeply in love with their
firearms, and gun-shop owners like Ryan Horsley are determined to
make sure that nothing comes between them

Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to save the planet through
hydrogen power, but critics say the notion is just hot
air

The group Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife has helped to
protect a lot of Western land and wildlife – while doing its
best to kill off as many predators as possible.

Monsanto’s genetically modified Roundup Ready
alfalfa may take over the West, as the company re-engineers the
world to conform to its business plan.

The brutal murder of a Japanese tourist shines an
unwelcome spotlight on the social problems plaguing Arizona’s
beautiful but troubled Havasupai Reservation.