In discussions of the economies of the Mountain West, natural landscapes tend to be looked upon from either of two perspectives. The first is tied to the history of European settlement of the region. Natural landscapes are looked upon as the source of the natural resource raw materials that supply the region's "basic" industries: mining and metal processing, farming and ranching and the food processing associated with them, and timber harvest and the manufacturing based on it. The second view focuses more on the present and expected future.

On March 1, 1999, at 11:56 p.m. Pacific Coast time, the people of the United States took title to the Headwaters Forest, the largest remaining stand of privately owned, old growth redwoods in the world. Uncertain until the end, the transaction was recorded only minutes before the $250 million appropriation of federal funds for the purchase expired.

The February 2000 issue of the Environmental Law Reporter (ELR) carried an Article by Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes relating the dramatic negotiations that led to the settlement of the Headwaters controversy, whereby the federal government agreed to buy the Pacific Lumber Company's (PALCO's) Headwaters Forest, a 7,500-acre tract of old growth redwood trees, in order to preserve it as a national park. Though I was one of the lawyers for PALCO, and thus my perspective of this affair understandably differs from Mr.

From the enactment of the National Park Service Organic Act (the Organic Act or the Act) in 1916 until a 1998 decision by a federal district court in Utah, the National Park Service (NPS) had managed national parks without resolving theseeming contradiction between the Act's directive to conserve park resources "unimpaired" and its simultaneous directive to provide for visitors' "enjoyment" of those resources. Uncertainty, confusion, and disputes about the inevitably conflicting implications of these mandates were virtually guaranteed by the text of the Act, which requires the NPS to—

Our magnificent 40,000-mile National Trails System was established by Congress under the National Trails System Act (NTSA) of 1968 through the combined efforts of President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, and Sens. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.) and Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.). Private and nonfederal public lands make up the lion's share of federally recognized long-distance trail corridors.

"In the ranchers' view, history has created expectations in respect to the security of 'grazing privileges'; they have relied upon those expectations; and the statute requires the Secretary to 'safeguard' that reliance."

"Their adamance derives from a recollection of history that never existed and from asserted promises that were never made."

For the last several years, federal circuit courts have debated the exact jurisdictional scope of §404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA), which authorizes the Secretary of the U.S. Army (the Army), acting through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps), to issue permits "for the discharge of dredged or fill material into the navigable waters at specified disposal sites." The circuit courts have based their debates on the assumption, well-supported by earlier CWA decisions, that Congress intended the term "navigable waters" within the CWA to extend to the limits of the U.S. Commerce Clause.

Environmentalists are no strangers to disappointment in the U.S. Supreme Court, but the recent case of Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (SWANCC) is particularly disappointing. First, it might be said that the impact of the opinion, in circumstances in which legislative amendment is virtually impossible, may be the most devastating judicial opinion affecting the environment ever.

Does the use by migratory birds of isolated, intrastate waters establish enough of a connection to "navigable waters" and interstate commerce to permit federal regulation under the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the U.S. Commerce Clause? The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers thinks so, but courts and commentators have not been entirely sympathetic to the Corps' so-called migratory bird rule. The Fourth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thomas (in a dissent from denial of certiorari) have rejected such a broad jurisdictional reach in no uncertain terms.