The Magazine

Wamsutter, Wyo., is a boomtown these days, but the town is
struggling to be a real community, instead of just a barracks for
the natural gas industry.

Also in this
issue: In Colorado and elsewhere in the West, the fear of
West Nile Virus brings the controversy about spraying pesticides to
a boil.

In Sierra Vista, Ariz., a partnership of developers, environmentalists and government agencies is trying to keep the San Pedro River alive, while at the same time allowing for continued growth in this burgeoning Sunbelt city. Also in this issue, Assistant Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett wants Congress to give the Bureau of Land Management increased incentive to sell off more public lands.

For all the heroism of their achievement, Lewis and Clark
would not have survived long without the help of the many Indian
peoples they encountered in the West. The Bush
administration says governors have 18 months to ask the Forest
Service to protect roadless areas in their states, but the states
will have to pay for the costly and complex petition
process.

A conservation movement is stirring on the Great Plains,
but local farmers are stuck with a harsh reality: It still pays to
plow up virgin prairie. The Forest Service plans to rein
in cross-country travel by off-road vehicles, but enforcing new
rules may prove next to impossible.

Mountain pine beetles are attacking more forests and more
varieties of trees — and thriving at higher elevations than
ever before — and some scientists believe global climate
change is at the root of the problem.


Also in this issue: A recent Supreme Court
ruling in a Utah wilderness lawsuit will limit the ability of
citizens to sue the government over how its agencies manage natural
resources.

On a 10-day walk through the northwestern New Mexico
desert, the author follows an ancient road that leads him from
silent Indian ruins into noisy, modern gas fields.

Also in this issue: Land managers have been
talking about letting more wildfires burn, but the recent blowup of
the Peppin Fire near Capitan, N.M. – home of Smokey Bear
– leads to renewed talk of aggressive fire suppression.

Wal-Mart wants to build more giant Supercenter stores in
the West, but communities like Inglewood, Calif., are starting to
take a stand against the world’s largest company.

Also in this issue: Even the National Rifle
Association came out in support of a Tucson, Ariz., open-space
saving bond, which passed in a landslide despite complaints from
critics that it was just pork.

Some activists hope that the current hard times facing
both workers and the environment will resurrect the strong
alliances that once existed between greens and labor unions.

Also in this issue: NOAA Fisheries is
drafting new regulations that will allow hatchery-raised fish to be
counted along with wild salmon and steelhead, a move that
property-rights lawyers hope will take the species off the
endangered list.

The West’s environmentalist lawyers are manning the
legal barricades, as the Bush administration stealthily attacks the
nation’s bedrock environmental laws.
Also
in this issue: Arizona activists team up with Rep. Raul
Grijalva to create a small-scale wilderness proposal for the
Tumacacori Highlands.

The Bush administration is outsourcing to private
contractors jobs formerly done by employees of federal agencies,
among them the job of the Forest Service Content Analysis Teams
(CATs) – the people who receive and report the comments of
the public. The team was sacked, many say to the detriment of the
public connection, and with increased cost to taxpayers.

Also in this issue: Controversial energy bill,
to increase domestic oil and gas drilling and force federal
agencies to expedite permits for energy projects on public lands,
came back yet again, but was defeated in the Senate,
50-47.

With the Interior West almost exclusively Republican
territory, “Democrats for the West,” a coalition of leaders, have
issued a challenge to fellow Democrats to create sustainable
Democratic majorities.

Also in this
issue: While mountain lions receive bad press for what
some say is increasing aggression against humans, experts say that
humans may be the real problem. Lion killing in most Western states
is increasing, and biologists say no state has ever had a sound
population estimate for the animals. Without sound data, politics
often plays into determining hunting quotas.

As private lands become the new frontier in the
West’s wild real estate frenzy, ranchers are turning to land
trusts in places like Gunnison, Colo., to find out how to hold on
to their land and keep it open and undeveloped.

Also in this issue: California decides
to set its own new “public health goal” for perchlorate
contamination, but critics point out that it is both legally
unenforceable and lower than the previous goal.

In Arizona, a historic water deal could give the tiny,
impoverished Gila River Indian Community a path back to its farming
roots – and turn it into one of the West’s next big
power brokers.

Also in this issue:
Western ranchers rejoice when a federal court jury finds that the
nation’s largest meatpacker, Tyson/IBP, has illegally
squeezed $1.28 billion from independent cattle producers.

Wyoming’s Green Mountain Common Allotment is one of
the West’s last big, wide-open landscapes – but these
days, ranchers, environmentalists, history buffs and the BLM are
arguing over whether it’s time to start putting up fences.

Also in this issue: Nearly a decade
after Imperial Valley irrigators fought off a water grab by Texans
Ed and Lee Bass, the Imperial Valley Irrigation District buys the
old Bass property, Western Farms, and the water rights that come
with it.

A right-wing coup is under way in the nation’s
courts, which George W. Bush is stacking with anti-environmental
judges, and the impacts on Western conservation issues are not
going to be pretty.

Also in this issue:
National Park Service wilderness coordinator Jim Walters
resigns in frustration over the agency’s neglect of
wilderness, after the superintendent of Sequoia and Kings Canyon
National Parks allows helicopters in wilderness areas.

Port Orford, Ore., is working hard to create a new kind of
community-based, sustainable fisheries management for the
over-fished ocean.

Also in this issue:
Environmentalists and immigration activists have a few doubts about
President Bush’s proposed immigration reform
policy.

The Bush administration opens up wild lands to oil and gas
drilling, pulling the rug out from under two decades of citizen
wilderness activism.

Also in this issue:
Judge Emmet Sullivan reinstates a Clinton-era ban on snowmobiles in
Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.

Mormons are often stereotyped as conservative
anti-environmentalists, but Utah activists Richard Ingebretsen and
Chris Peterson of the Glen Canyon Institute want to convince fellow
believers that it’s OK to be green.

Also in
this issue: The proposed salvage logging of the Biscuit
Fire area in Oregon’s Siskiyou Forest is one of the largest
timber sales in history, and critics say it’s not only
ecologically dangerous, but undermines the Roadless Rule.

A homegrown consensus effort called the Owyhee Initiative
is trying to save both wilderness and ranching in southwestern
Idaho – but in the polarized Bush era, consensus is often
controversial.

Also in this issue:
Federal wildlife managers admit that the massive fish
kill in the Klamath River in 2002 was caused, in part, by the
diversion of water to farmers.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is booming, revitalized by
a new era of weapons development – but the state of New
Mexico wants the lab to clean up its old Cold War-era messes before
it starts making new ones.

Also in this issue:
A 10-year-old plan to build a controversial expressway
through Petroglyph National Monument hits a “stop” sign, when
Albuquerque voters refuse to pay for it.