The Magazine

Is the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency going to clean up beleaguered Lake Tahoe and its surroundings – or simply drive a wedge between the elite and the working class in the community?

A new breed of green Evangelical Christians seeks to spread the good news of Bible-based environmentalism to their conservative fellow Christians.

As the small, conservative towns bordering Utah’s new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument begin to adapt to the monument they never wanted, a new vision for what gateway communities and preserved areas might be begins to slowly emerge.

A Montana ski resort originally created by newsman Chet Huntley and intended to be a model of free-market, unconstrained development, is today a morass of lawsuits, environmental degradation and inefficiency.

An unusual group founded by environmentalists and logging companies, the Willapa Alliance seeks to bring economic and ecological healing to Washington’s Willapa Bay.

The notorious self-censorship the hunting press showed when “Outdoor Life” pulled biologist Tom Beck’s article critical of bear baiting leads to speculations by an outdoor writer on why hunters are so thin-skinned about criticism.

The deliberate slaughter of bison straying from Yellowstone National Park – killed because the brucellosis they may carry might endanger livestock – provokes a storm of protest, and calls into question the concept of wildlife management in the park.

The Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep has fought its way back from near extinction, but efforts to reintroduce it to all its former range are more difficult than they appear.

Honeybees across the West – and the nation – are dying in huge numbers, and some think a pesticide, methyl parathion, may be the primary killer.

Spanish-speaking, often underestimated immigrant workers keep the West’s ski resorts running in the face of INS raids, discrimination and other trials.

Well-organized and well-heeled, off-road vehicle users constitute a large and powerful group aiming to stake its claim to the West’s public lands.

Idaho’s beautiful Silver Valley and Lake Coeur d’Alene build a new resort economy on a toxic stew of mining waste.

Colorado’s Animas-La Plata project – the last of the big BuRec projects, and the most mired in controversy – is tackled by opponents and proponents who seek consensus.

The use of initiatives and referenda – direct democracy – to change the law for environmental reasons faces a challenge when big money enters the picture.

Environmentalists join with political consultants to try to find a way to woo fickle Western voters.

In Idaho, Democrat Walt Minnick, a multimillionaire, former timber executive and environmentalist, mounts a quixotic campaign against Republican Sen. Larry Craig for Senate seat.

The EPA’s Toxic Releases Inventory report documents the annual industrial pollution of land, air and water in the U.S., with six of the top 10 polluters located in the West.

The controversial salvage logging rider, signed by President Clinton a year ago, has been harassed throughout its short life by loud and growing protest – including civil disobedience.

A collection of essays explores the quirky, the mundane and the surreal of our unique West, from coffee-hauling llamas to Navajo tacos and more.

The merger of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads creates a monopoly that may leave some of Colorado and Utah’s working towns without rail transport for their coal.