At first blush, the 108th Congress might not seem a welcoming venue for legislation expanding the nation's wilderness system. Majority control in both the House and Senate lies with Republican lawmakers whose attitude toward initiatives backed by environmentalists has ranged from indifference to hostility.

A complex deal that would prevent large-scale development of the Hearst Ranch on California's central coast is nearly complete. But the deal that will preserve the 82,000-acre ranch does not satisfy many members of an environmental community that has fought Hearst Ranch development plans for decades. While environmental groups dislike the deal, there is wide support for it among ranchers, farmland advocates, area residents, and San Luis Obispo County officials and business leaders.

Fighting over water is a popular sport in the West, where generations of lawyers have refined the practice until it approaches an art. Often, the quantities at stake are prodigious, the output of entire watersheds. In other instances, however, the volume is so minuscule as to leave outsiders puzzled by all the fuss. A dispute of the latter sort is threatening to break out in Ventura County, where a broad coalition has united behind one of the largest dam-removal projects in American history.

Habitat conservation plans have become popular tools for balancing development with protection of imperiled plant and animal species. However, recent court rulings have resulted in the suspension of the federal government's HCP program and have cast doubt on its long-term future. >>read more

As you drive west from Santa Barbara along the Pacific Coast, fighting your way through the commuter congestion of Goleta and the scrum of caffeine-addled students buzzing around the University of California campus, you quickly leave suburbia behind. Almost without warning, Highway 101 deposits you in a corner of California that time seems to have overlooked. >>read more

Red flags went up in the environmental community during May 2002 when the Bush administration announced it was forming a task force to "modernize and improve" the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Two years later, release of the task force's final report suggests that many of the fears voiced by defenders of this landmark federal statute have yet to materialize.

The federal Clean Air Act requires new factories and power plants to use the "best available control technology" to limit air pollution, but generally lets states determine what specific systems satisfy the law. But in a closely divided decision issued in late January, the usually states rights-minded high court sided with the feds and upheld EPA's authority to override state environmental regulators.