The Magazine

It’s been five years since Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act requiring coal companies to reclaim strip-mines, but the science and methods of reclamation are still being developed.

A special issue on agriculture, with articles on agriculture economics, soil erosion and the secrecy surrounding the use of pesticides in Rocky Mountain states.

Despite becoming the bustling hub of the West’s energy boom, Denver is tied to an outside business elite, and remains a secondary center of power whose major role consists of dominating more exploited regions of the interior.

Environmentalists oppose bills, supported by snowmobiling and timber interests, that would establish more wilderness in Montana and Wyoming.

Forest managers are responding to the mountain pine beetle epidemic, which is killing trees across the Rocky Mountain region, with an environmentally-based method called “integrated pest management.”

A special issue on Utah, with articles on a proposed nuclear waste disposal facility near Canyonlands National Park, illegal workers, a controversial land swap, and Utah Governor Scott Matheson.

Questionable hunting practices on the Wind River Indian Reservation raise issues about tribal autonomy and wildlife management.

Is U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service head Robert Jantzen cutting an already undernourished budget and favoring ranching interests over wildlife in his predator control and grazing policies?

A special winter issue with articles on snowmobiling in national parks, avalanche know-how and swow camping.

Many domestic uranium producers fear that even if the market revived, a flood of foreign uranium could smother the future of the domestic industry.

A special issue on Colorado, with articles on the oil shale boom on Battlement Mesa, dueling small-town newspapers, Colorado politics, and Denver’s waster policy.

Bureau of Land Management head Bob Burford scares conservationists and tips the scales of management toward greater development of BLM land.

A special issue on Montana, with articles on the Rocky Mountain Front, the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, cattle and coal, and Anaconda’s bars.

One thousand miles upriver from Mexico’s farmers, in Colorado’s Grand Valley, the federal effort to control salinity is floundering.

Excerpts from Edward Abbey’s introduction to a new edition of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, plus articles on industrial revenue bonds, James Watt and more.

Since the completion of the Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan in 1980, a team of biologists has been working to re-establish breeding populations of wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

Favoring bigger trains, Burlington Northern will discontinue rail service to small agricultural communities like Rapelje, Montana.

HCN editor Dan Whipple follows a cattle drive in Utah’s Uinta Mountains.

The focus of Colorado River controversy is a federal plan to meet increased electrical power needs by expanding generation at Glen Canyon Dam, just upstream of Grand Canyon National Park.

When the Anaconda Copper Co. closed its Anaconda, Mont., smelter in October, the community appealed to the state for help in keeping the town alive. But the state’s response has been disappointing.