The Magazine

As with any other Western religion, the worship of uranium is a mixture of love and fear of the deity worshiped. And fear of radioactive uranium may be well justified.

All three of North Dakota’s congressmen were first elected before the environment was a major political issue, and because the state has a strong tradition of returning incumbents to office, all three continue to be re-elected despite their generally poor environmental records.

Enthusiasm for solar electric technology is being dampened by the reality that most consumers cannot afford it.

William O. Douglas has articulated one of the most progressive environmental concepts of recent times: that the natural world should have legal rights.

Conservationists are alarmed by a bill that would makes it easier for the Bonneville Power Administration to build power plants in Western coal-producing states.

Indian tribes, given land that a hundred years ago was often considered wasteland, realize that the vast wealth of their coal, oil, gas, and uranium can represent both a threat as well as a blessing, and are taking steps to increase tribal influence over Indian-owned energy resources.

A highway accident on Colorado’s southeastern plains resulted in a spill of ground-up concentrate of uranium oxide, raising danger of radiation poisoning in the vicinity.

The discovery of a potential major oil and gas deposit in the heart of the Bridger-Teton National Forest in western Wyoming is creating a conflict between two highly valued resources: oil and wilderness.

Although the sagebrush flats of southern Wyoming appear monotonous and dry, to biologists they are a complex natural system — one that is likely to be disturbed by extraction of coal.

The stories of solar homeowners indicate that harnessing the sun for heat by putting collectors on a roof may not be as simple as it appears.

If America expects to preserve the grizzly bear, certain public land use policies must change. And there is no better example than the custom of allowing thousands of domestic sheep to graze the last remnants of grizzly habitat around Yellowstone National Park.

In the West, environmentalists and farmers and ranchers have worked together for several years opposing some common threats, including coal mines, loss of agricultural water, the social impact of industrialization, and transmission lines.

Concerned citizens in Montana’s North Fork Flathead River valley are organizing against a proposal by Sage Creek Coal Ltd. to mine coal upstream, across the Canadian border.

ANG Coal Gasification Company quieted opposition to its plans for a facility in North Dakota by purchasing land owned by members of the community who opposed the project.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved the Northern Cheyenne Indian tribe’s request for Class I — the most stringent classification — air quality for its reservation, a decision that could have a major impact on nearby construction of the Colstrip power plant units 3 and 4.

Recent headlines saying that 22 Indian tribes are meeting with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have brought national attention to the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, an organization that had virtually been ignored since its formation in 1975.

HCN editor Dan Whipple takes stock of the environmental movement and its quest for clout in the political system.

A Colorado company called Bio-Gas claims it can provide rural electricity by harvesting and digesting cow manure to produce burnable methane gas.

A group led by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of Land Management embarks along Wyoming’s Sweetwater Canyon to determine whether this river section measures up to Wild and Scenic status.

A massive Canadian energy complex along the U.S.-Canadian border in Saskatchewan is becoming one of the most complicated legal controversies the West has ever faced.