The Magazine

HCN hasn’t gone from rags to riches, exactly, but we are alive and well. Happily, it’s a story not only of this paper but also you, our readers and stockholders.

The stampede into coal development in the northern Great Plains may be suddenly halted. Citizens and conservationists have filed suit to stop development until comprehensive analysis is made of the development’s regional impacts.

A hearing slated for Lander could determine how much of the Popo Agie Primitive Area in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains will be set aside as future wilderness.

Some conservationists, myself included, are tired of trading off-one region for another. No longer do we believe that one area can be saved by simply sending the energy producers elsewhere. The energy producers will be back; they have to come back.

With the waters of Lake Powell now rising to within site of Rainbow Bridge, a battle is raging over whether the reservoir’s waters will be allowed to encroach further upon the famous sandstone formation.

In a hearing concerning Wyoming’s Teton National Forest, environmental groups argued that the U.S. Forest Service had not complied with the National Environmental Policy Act or its own regulations in awarding timbering contracts.

The energy industry is increasingly offering to cooperate with environmental groups and conduct joint studies of areas like the Powder River Basin, but many environmentalists are skeptical of the industry’s intentions.

What has happened to High Country News this month is nothing short of miraculous: new subscribers and donations have put High Country News on strong footing.

The miracle may be happening. Reaction to our decision to cease publication was so swift and decisive that now, barring unforeseen circumstances, High Country News appears to be saved.

These comments on the National Water Commission’s recent report are representative of the feelings of most Westerners who have no special interest in water development, irrigation projects, barge canals or dam building.

As Montana and Wyoming struggle to enact protective legislation in the face of ever-expanding strip mining, landowners, environmentalists and an awakening public are being pitted against the energy lobby.

The Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act of 1960, the Wilderness Act of 1964 and a string of court cases during the past decade have laid the groundwork for preserving the West’s wild lands — but the next few years will be a critical time of decision-making.

Nothing in recent years has stirred the people of Montana quite so much as the problems of the energy crisis — in particular, how the rapid build-up of industry around the state’s vast coal fields will change the state’s character.

The coming energy crunch will cause a frenzied battle over the West’s coal, gas and oil in the name of sustaining America’s oversized appetite for energy and economic growth.

The 1970s have been hailed as the Age of the Environment. If so, 1972 could be marked, for the most part, as one of the great steps forward: across the country, a wave of concern for all aspects of the environment has swept all ages and all segments of society.

Magnificent Lake Powell in southern Utah is only a scant few years old, but already two major disasters have overtaken it, and a third hangs ominously over its headwaters.

The dead eagles of Wyoming still wait for justice to be done.

The first in a multi-article series on what oil shale is an what it portends for the West, exploring the methods of recovery, the extent and location of the resource, the role of the federal government, and more.

A highway proposed for a scenic canyon stretch of Wyoming’s Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River could drastically alter the canyon environment.

In the Forest Service’s ranger districts, President Richard Nixon’s order to harvest 300 million board feet of timber through thinning and salvage operations could easily be interpreted as an order to increase the cut of timber.