Fire on the Plateau: Conflict and Endurance in the American Southwest

The Colorado Plateau of southern Utah, southwestern Colorado, and northern Arizona and New Mexico is the site of some of America's most prized national parks, among them Zion and Grand Canyon. It is also the center of ongoing conflict about the best use of natural resources, as the federal government, Indian nations, and ever-growing municipalities struggle to obtain control of water, minerals, and rangeland. As a former natural-resources attorney and now professor of law at the University of Colorado, Charles Wilkinson knows that struggle well, and his new book provides an on-the-ground overview of some of the most pressing conflicts. Some of his fieldnotes will come as no surprise to Westerners and students of the environment; others come as eye-opening news, whether the fact that Navajo Indian children are regularly bused to schools far away from home, traveling as much as 150 miles a day, or that radioactive waste and fallout from cold-war mining and testing remains a critical danger to public health across the plateau. Wilkinson's findings are often depressing; as he writes, "Thirty-five years ago I saw the West as clean and fresh, open and uncluttered. I no longer see it that way. I love it still, with all my heart, but I fear for it. For it is aging rapidly." Even so, he offers a few success stories to temper the bad news, notably the hard-won designation of large sections of the plateau as protected wilderness, with the promise of more extensive protection to come. --Gregory McNamee