The Magazine

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.

Earlier this year the Sierra Club won a major victory for air quality based on the Clean Air Act of 1970, but ambiguities in the ruling leave open the possibility of worsening air pollution.

The Bureau of Land Management has pleased conservationists by enacting management policies that will protect many of the natural resources of Wyoming’s Red Desert, a unique geologic area.

The chairman of the Wilderness Committee of the Idaho Environmental Council addresses the Forest Service. “At this time we do not have all, or even a significant part, of the needed information concerning our future wilderness recreational needs, our future timber needs …”

Nebraska Public Power District’s proposed 600-megawatt coal-fired power plant is another example of proliferating energy demands upon a land unmarked and unsullied by the march of “progress.”

Montana’s Middle Fork Flathead River flows through the proposed Great Bear Wilderness, but a Wild and Scenic designation for the river itself may be needed to stave off future dam construction.

Private property land reforms in Maine may hold lessons for the Nature Conservancy and other groups that approach the West’s environmental issues from a principle of private ownership.

When the history of the environmental movement is written, it will be found that a small band of unpaid, unsung volunteers blazed the trail. Imbued with little more than clear vision, bulldog tenacity, and a thick skin, they have taken unpopular stands in the causes loosely termed “the environment.”

From the top of Granite Peak, Montana’s highest point, the author surveys the vast rugged country that may soon be designated the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

Condemning current environmental regulations as “slow, costly, and tortuous,” University of Minnesota economist Walter Heller has advocated a strong tax on sulfur emissions.

As Wyoming Senator Clifford Hansen pushes legislation to construct an aqueduct system that would divert water for industrial use in the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming, plans for escalating extraction of coal are coming out into public view.

The Bureau of Reclamation faces off with local opponents over a proposed dam that would inundate China Meadows, a choice spot in Utah’s Uinta Mountains.