Western United States

A new group of retired land managers and forest rangers said Thursday that reckless off-road vehicle recreation was the No. 1 threat to public lands in the West. The 13-member Rangers for Responsible Recreation said it was voicing the concerns of many federal land management employees in the West, including in California, who report that an increasing number of riders and the growing power of the vehicles are endangering natural resources and public safety.

Ranching, mining, energy exploration and other activities that raise dust in the West are helping diminish the snowpack that supplies much of the region's water, researchers reported Tuesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. University of Colorado scientists said dust was blowing from the deserts onto the state's snowcapped mountains, absorbing more of the sun's warmth because of its darker color and melting the snow earlier and more quickly than in the past.

If the rocks under Los Angeles were not unusually warm, the city would rest 3,756 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean, according to Utah geologists. In fact, without the rocks the only parts of the U.S. that would be above sea level would be the Pacific Northwest and the upper Rockies, they reported Monday in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth.

Crews stayed on the offensive against major blazes around California and other Western states Sunday, a day marked by an epic fire in Utah and evacuations of hundreds of homes in Washington, as well as a helicopter crash that hurt two firefighters in Santa Barbara County.

Fire crews hoped for breaks from the weather to help fight blazes fueled by high temperatures, tinder-dry conditions and gusty winds across the West on Monday. A Hot Springs, S.D., wildfire that killed a man and left more than 30 families homeless spread somewhat to the southwest of the tourist town Monday, but fire officials expected to gain on it in the next day or so. "My best guess is that we'll make some good ground on the fire," said Joe Lowe, state wildland fire suppression coordinator.

Stepping in where the Bush administration has refused to tread, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and five other Western governors, joined by two Canadian provincial leaders, pledged Wednesday to enforce a tough regional cap on greenhouse gas emissions. Under the Western Climate Initiative, the leaders agreed to slash emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate-warming pollutants to 15% below 2005 levels in their states and provinces in the next 13 years.

The federal government Thursday ushered in a new era of shortage on the Colorado River, adopting a blueprint for how it will tighten the spigot on the West's most important water source. The guidelines, more than two years in the making, come in the eighth year of the worst drought in the century-long historic record of the Colorado River, which supplies water to 25 million people and 1 million acres of farmland.

A New Year's Day avalanche killed two men who were snowmobiling near Rocky Mountain National Park northwest of Denver, and a snowshoer was missing and presumed dead after another avalanche in Utah, officials said. Forecasters warned that heavy snowfall and high wind made mountain conditions hazardous in both states. A blizzard was moving through the Colorado mountains near Trap Lake where the two snowmobilers were caught in the avalanche, authorities said.

SO far this winter, it appears the heavens have answered the prayers of skiers, particularly of those who like to travel. Ski conditions across the Western U.S. are the most consistent in years, and significant or adequate snow is blanketing resorts across the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades and the central and northern Rockies.

Apartment rents rose throughout most of the West last year in the latest sign that landlords were slowly regaining some pricing leverage, according to a report to be released today. All but two of the 20 major markets in the West surveyed by real estate research firm RealFacts Inc. ended 2005 with higher apartment rents than the previous year.