The Magazine

On the Great Plains, some beleagured farmers are pinning their economic hopes on local cooperatives, such as a pasta-making factory in Leeds, N.D.

The history of the copper-mining town of Butte, Mont., sparks a searching meditation on the meaning and value of work and the place it holds now, as the Old West becomes the New West.

Eccentric desert rats and clean-cut park rangers sometimes meet in a culture clash over how to manage one of the hottest, driest and strangest places in North America – Death Valley National Park.

A ranchette owner defends her home and lifestyle in a subdivision near Bozeman, Mont., a Western historian considers Montana’s long history of being panicked about growth from his ranchette in the beleaguered but beautiful Bitterroot Valley, and other essays.

Earth First! founder Dave Foreman and conservation biologist Michael Soulé founded The Wildlands Project, a scientifically based plan to save endangered wildlife by restoring and reconnecting the scattered islands of wilderness remaining in the West.

Wildlife trapping – which has a long history in the West – today comes into fierce conflict with environmentalists, animal advocates, and residents upset by the risk traps pose to domestic dogs.

Land swaps, in which the Forest Service and BLM trade odd parcels of public land for ecologically valuable private land, have a long history in the West, but some say the trades too often profit land spectators at the expense of the public and the land.

In Montana, the Church Universal and Triumphant re-invents itself as its charismatic founder, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, retires, and new leadership offers part of the sect’s Royal Teton Ranch for conservation easements and federal land trades.

David Brower tells us all environmental victories are temporary and all defeats permanent. This special issue tests that proposition, with feature articles on environmentalists seeking consensus on how to restore to the Coconino National Forest near Flagstaff, Ariz., to health after a huge forest fire, and an effort in southeastern Oregon to bring together environmentalists, ranchers and BLM staffers to find a way to restore the badly overgrazed landscape.

Western Indian reservations and former logging towns are among economically depressed communities seeking to cash in on the new market for gourmet and medicinal plants, but some worry that the boom of “wild crafting” plants may not be entirely benign.

Environmentalists, farmers and state and federal agencies try to find some kind of consensus even as each reaches for a share of the overused Platte River as it flows from Colorado, through Wyoming and across Nebraska.

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.