by Steve Moore, The Press Enterprise

PALM DESERT - At 6 a.m., a half-dozen people gather at the Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains National Monument before heading into the craggy mountains overlooking the Coachella Valley.

The Thursday Morning Hikes program attracts the adventurous and the fitness-minded.

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by Staff Reporter, Montrose Daily Press

DELTA — Hikers and campers took to Dominguez Canyon this weekend to explore an area that stands to gain federal protection through a bill before Congress.

The Fourth Annual Wild Uncompahgre Weekend gave residents an opportunity to experience local wilderness; and visit an area included in legislation to establish more federal protection and resources for the Uncompahgre Plateau's canyonlands.

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by Beth Britton, Great Falls Tribune

UPPER MISSOURI RIVER BREAKS NATIONAL MONUMENT — Just minutes after slipping our canoe into the Missouri River at Coal Banks Landing last week, my brother and I were treated to a cacophony of Mother Nature's best music.

Cottonwood trees sang in the light breeze, an occasional fish splashed near the boat and birds quacked and chirped from nearby trees and coulees.

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by Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press

Fort Stanton Cave, N.M. --

Hundreds of feet beneath Earth's surface, a small group of seasoned cave explorers venture where no human ever has set foot. With each careful step they take, their headlamps illuminate walls covered with mud, gypsum crystals and mineral deposits left behind by microscopic organisms eating through fractured rocks.

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by Lisa Huynh, Daily Press Writer

MONTROSE — The Gunnison River rangers have enviable summer jobs.

They steward the stretch of waterway that meanders through the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area. It's a landscape of ancient canyons and a river that sustains the myriad wildlife — golden eagles, beavers, mule deer, trout, the list goes on.

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Arizona Daily Star

Legislation spearheaded by Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Arizona, to preserve the rugged American West should become law.
The Committee on Natural Resources approved on March 12 the bill to make permanent the 26 million-acre National Landscape Conservation System. It would protect more than 3.3 million acres and 56 miles of trails in Arizona.

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by Faye Bowers, Christian Science Monitor

Sonoran Desert National Monument, Ariz. - This swath of desert is in full bloom. The mountainsides blanketed by towering saguaro forests are now dotted with yellow and orange Mexican poppies, purple lupine, and white chicory. The monument is home to three wilderness areas and two historic trails.

These 487,000 acres sit along a corridor between Arizona's two largest metropolitan areas, Phoenix and Tucson, where demographers predict the population will increase from 5 million people to more than 10 million by 2040.

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Arizona Republic

From the breathtaking formations of the Vermilion Cliffs in northern Arizona to the historic Lewis and Clark Trail in Idaho, the Bureau of Land Management oversees extraordinary Western treasures. While amazingly varied, these places need to be organized in a coherent system.

Then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt started the ball rolling in 2000, establishing the National Landscape Conservation System by decree.

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by April Reese, Land Letter

LAS CIENEGAS NATIONAL CONSERVATION AREA, Ariz. -- Atop a rocky hill in the heart of this mountain-ringed expanse of undulating grasslands and cottonwood-lined creeks, rancher Mac Donaldson gestures toward a stretch of bottomlands below.

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by Dennis Wagner, Arizona Republic

IRONWOOD FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT - Elena Daley, an administrator with the federal Bureau of Land Management, climbs atop a volcanic formation in the hills of southern Arizona and studies ancient petroglyphs scratched into stone by Hohokams.

There is a stick man, a pregnant sheep, a spiral.

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