The Magazine

In Tucson, Ariz., where a dozen acres are cleared for development each day, environmentalists and concerned locals try to find ways to rein in runaway growth, and to save the desert and its remaining endangered cactus ferruginous pygmy owls.

So many people want to take a river trip through the Grand Canyon that limits set by the Park Service – which many say favor commercial outfitters over private boaters – create an administrative nightmare for the agency.

Some worry that Vail and the other booming ski resorts along Colorado’s I-70 corridor – which are more lucrative than ever as they become year-round resorts – are turning the state into an Alpine theme park more like Switzerland than the Rocky Mountains.

The uncertain truce set up by Pres. Clinton’s 1993 Northwest Forest Plan is threatened by dissatisfaction as environmentalists, loggers and scientists still fight over remaining old growth and cannot agree how best to manage the forests.

Wildlife biologists, environmentalists and Western politicians are engaged in a fierce debate over whether two decades of protection have so restored Yellowstone’s grizzly population that the animal ought to be removed from the endangered species list.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, D, is determined to solve difficult problems – such as the recovery of his state’s wild coastal coho salmon – at the state level, through consensus.

The grassroots environmental group Amigos Bravos seeks consensus in the mostly Hispanic communities along the Rio Costilla in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, where there is never enough water to go around.

Democrat Harry Reid brings a reputation for integrity, a record of environmentalism, and the toughness he kept from his hardscrabble Western upbringing into a challenging race for a third term as a U.S. Senator from Nevada.

In the leading article of this essay issue, a writer says that nature writing is about much more than nature – it is about community, morality, character and hope as well.

Washington’s Okanogan County is divided between those who support Battle Mountain Gold’s planned Buckhorn Mtn. mine for its economic promise, and local and Native American activists fighting what they see as impending ecological disaster.

One in six Westerners now lives in a trailer, but this traditionally affordable housing can become an expensive trap, as tougher zoning pushes trailers into crowded parks with ever-increasing rents and regulations.

Using legal and financial savvy and the latest computer technology, Indian tribes across the West are taking control of tribal lands that have been in the hands of the federal government and, often, non-Indian farmers for the last century.

Wyoming’s brand of insider politics is keeping the state in thrall to extractive industries and out of step with the rest of the West.

The new report, “Water in the West: The Challenge for the Next Century,” is a remarkably far-sighted federal study that should serve as both a mission statement and a wake-up call about water management in the arid West.

Bison have made a remarkable recovery from near extinction a century ago, but now the animal’s growing popularity as livestock raises questions about whether it can remain a “wild” animal.

The exotic woody shrub known as tamarisk or saltcedar has infested the West’s river systems, but scientists are divided over how to fight it, or whether it is even possible to do so in a degraded landscape.

The many newsletters put out by small environmental grassroots groups reveal a West that is complex, quirky and deeply committed.

An HCN special issue says that the old extractive West is on its deathbed.

Utah’s remote and little known Book Cliffs area seemed ripe for preservation under an innovative, locally grown initiative – until oilman Oscar Wyatt stepped in to challenge it.

The founders of the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity – Robin Silver, Kieran Suckling and Peter Galvin – are uncompromising and obsessive in their goal of preserving endangered species.