The Magazine

A pastoral letter being prepared by the Catholic bishops of the Northwest calls Catholics and others to a new environmental, economic and spiritual relationship with a sacred river – the Columbia.

Though the economic future of the area is uncertain, activists welcome a possible Superfund listing for the huge Molycorp molybdenum mine in Questa, N.M., as a way to save the town and the Red River from yet more mine-waste pollution.

As methamphetamine moves into the small, isolated towns of the rural West, the waste left by its manufacture pollutes the environment while the drug’s abuse and the traffic in it strain the resources of local law enforcement and social services.

When Paonia, Colo., resident Richard Rudin challenged a local mine’s plans for expansion, the town was painfully divided, until the efforts of the North Fork Coal Working Group brought miners, environmentalists and agencies together for a solution.

On the California-Mexico border, environmentalists from two countries are working to restore the Colorado River Delta.

The Salton Sea became the Salton Sea in 1905, when human accident flooded the desert; now its survival is uncertain, as demand for scarce water continues to grow in Southern California.

The Great Plains ranchers who have long grazed the national grasslands face a growing push by the Forest Service to take over management and try to restore the prairie landscape.

In the wake of the huge fires that swept across the Great Basin in August 1999, the BLM is seeking ways to restore the sagebrush landscape and to control the fire-prone cheatgrass that now infests it.

RBM Lumber in Columbia Falls, Mont., is a small, family-owned mill that is a pioneer in a brand new kind of timber economy, one that would restore rather than deplete forests and create low-volume, high-value wood products in a sustainable way.

In Las Vegas, strong unions help service workers achieve the kind of prosperity and security seldom reached by the working-class people of the West’s non-union resort towns.

In the Interior West, politicians must work with federal agencies and let go of fading extractive industries, if the region is to thrive as part of the nation and not be overrun by Bruce Babbitt’s new national monuments.

The Yellowstone River is the longest undammed river in the West, but Montana’s rapid growth is affecting it, as property owners afraid of floods lay huge amounts of riprap along its banks.

Asbestos-laced dust from a vermiculite mine near Libby, Mont., has caused illness and death among locals for decades, but it is only recently that the media – and victims – have called W.R. Grace & Co. to account.

The land trust movement is bigger than the earliest groups imagined, but the challenge the 250 Western groups face is even bigger, as development swallows the last open space.

While cash-strapped land managers praise the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program, some recreationists and activists rail against it, and others point out that the program isn’t producing as much money as was hoped for.

Lyle McNeal revived the Churro sheep, a dying breed, and helped the Navajos who once depended on them, but now the professor is locked in a bitter battle over the sheep and other issues with Utah State University, which once supported the project.

Recreationists of every kind have long used Colorado’s White River National Forest as a playground, and the Forest Service’s proposed new plan, which would limit some activities in an attempt to help the forest, is being met with a lot of anger.

In Washington, conservationists, farmers, and federal and state agencies are passionately debating whether four dams on the lower Snake River should be breached in an attempt to restore endangered salmon and steelhead runs.

In Colorado’s San Luis Valley, Peggy Godfrey works hard raising sheep, writing cowboy poetry, helping neighbors at calving time and living what she describes as the life of a free woman.

While Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt considers greater protection for Oregon’s Steens Mountain, local ranchers and environmentalists argue over whether the land should become a cow-free national monument or a conservation area that would allow grazing.