Southwestern United States

Thirty-eight jobs will be cut from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuges in the Southwest region over the next three years, the agency announced Thursday. The Wilderness Society immediately criticized the cuts, saying that refuge staffing has been dropping for the last two years, and that the newest cuts will mean a decrease of 20% more. The Southwest region is made up of 45 refuges in Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas with 2.86 million acres of habitat.

The driest periods of the last century -- the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the droughts of the 1950s -- may become the norm in the Southwest United States within decades because of global warming, according to a study released Thursday. The research suggests that the transformation may already be underway. Much of the region has been in a severe drought since 2000, which the study's analysis of computer climate models shows as the beginning of a long dry period.

The wildfire danger will be higher than usual this spring across the Southwest, much of the Plains and parts of the South, the government warned. Wildfires have already ravaged broad areas of Texas and Oklahoma this winter. In its annual spring weather outlook, the National Weather Service said severe drought and above-normal temperatures across the region were expected to persist.

April Sall stood in the charred remnants of a Joshua tree forest, bark peeling off melted black limbs. Above her, ridges once thick with 1,000-year-old pinon and juniper pines were scorched bedrock and stumps. More than 90% of the surrounding Pipes Canyon Preserve was consumed in last month's Sawtooth blaze.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and industry executives announced plans Monday to build a $2-billion power transmission line that would carry energy to the fast-growing cities of the Southwest. If the line is successfully completed, it would run from the coal fields of Montana to Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Phoenix. It would carry electricity created by either wind power or synthetic gas derived from coal to meet clean energy requirements in the Southwest.

On the flank of a slight hill on the west side of the Rio Grande, I stand beside a 6-foot-tall concrete cross and, for a moment, hold history in the palm of my hand. The place is a rough field that in some other climate might have been called a pasture. Here in northern New Mexico, it is dry dirt and clumps of weeds, alive with small grasshoppers that ricochet around my legs when I move. Next to the cross is a red brick monument the size of a fireplace.

President Bush trolled for Latino votes and Sen. John F. Kerry campaigned for the support of senior citizens Wednesday, as the two played a game of political leapfrog across the Southwest and into Southern California. Bush, campaigning in Albuquerque, pitched his policies on small business and homeownership to a few hundred supporters in the hangar of a private aviation firm.

Block by block, house by house, Cesar Auyb and Irene Rodriguez are literally changing the complexion of politics in Nevada. But the change is coming slowly. Since May, the two have been on leave from their jobs in Las Vegas casinos to work as organizers for a union-sponsored, nonprofit organization trying to increase voter registration among the state's exploding Latino population.

Shane Henry steered his truck along a dusty road, emerging from a steep, cool pine forest and dead-ending on the edge of a precipice. The uncharted spot provided a breathtaking, 30-mile-wide panoramic view of the Virgin River Gorge, stretching northeast into Utah. For Henry, a field cartographer for the Automobile Club of Southern California, it was a great day of discovery. After finding the overlook, he spotted ruins of a forgotten century-old cattle ranch near a pair of freshwater springs.