From the Editor (summer 2014)
The forests that cloak mountainsides are one of the defining ecosystems of the western US. Recent big bark beetle outbreaks and wildfires raise questions about how forests are changing and how we should respond.
Beetle-Kill Fuels Bioenergy
Innovations Turn a Rocky Mountain Disaster into a Clean Energy Opportunity
On a morning in early March, I ride with Cody Neff, owner of West Range Reclamation (WRR), in his truck from Frisco, Colorado, to the company’s nearby worksite
Up in Flames
The Economics of Protecting Homes in the Wildland Urban Interface
This photo, taken by Casper Star-Tribune photographer Alan Rogers during the 2012 Sheep Herder Hill fire on Casper Mountain, says it all:
On Fire
An Artist Reckons with the Blaze that Consumed His Family’s Home
On a June morning Bently Spang’s mother, son, niece, and nephew watched a column of smoke climb into the sky about eight miles north of their home.
Zombie Trees
If Bark-Beetle-Killed Trees Aren’t Using the Water, Where is it Going?
“We call them zombie trees.”
Rails-to-Trails… Derailed?
The US Supreme Court Decides a Wyoming Property Rights Case
In 1909 the United States granted the Laramie, Hahn’s Peak & Pacific Railway Company a right-of-way to construct a railroad in southeast Wyoming from Laramie to Centennial, south to Albany, through Fox Park, and on to Coalmont, Colorado.
Prescribed Burns, Toppling Trees, and Vulnerable Cabins, Oh My
Social Scientists Reveal what the Public Thinks of Post-beetle Forest Management
At the height of the mountain pine beetle epidemic in northern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming, Phil Cruz, Forest Supervisor
Collaboration in Action
Wilderness and Livestock Advocates Advise US Forest Service on New Planning Rule
When Jim Magagna, Executive Vice President of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, arrived at the first national advisory committee meeting for forest planning, he looked around
The Bird that Tore the West Apart
Editor:
I was shocked to read, in the winter 2014 edition article on sage grouse, the statement that the State of Wyoming has broad authority to enforce the core area policy on non-federal land. While the State of Wyoming has authority over state lands
Rotational grazing does the trick
Dear Editor,
I was shocked, and honestly appalled, at your article “Conservation Grazing: Ranchers Lead the Way.” You have created a totally false dichotomy
Essay: The Ancient History and Uncertain Future of Western Forests
Throughout the western states, trees grow abundantly over large areas only on the higher mountain ranges.