IN THE 1960S AND EARLY 1970S, Congress passed a series of laws that profoundly affected Western ecosystems and human relationships to them. The Clean Air Act, designed to reduce air pollution, led the way in 1963, and in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act, sometimes called the Magna Carta of environmental protection, created a review process for federal projects. In 1972, the Clean Water Act established requirements for the restoration and maintenance of waterways, and one year later, the Endangered Species Act created protections and required recovery plans for fish, wildlife and plants deemed threatened or endangered. Conservation finally seemed to have a solid legal foundation.
Six decades later, that foundation is in serious need of retrofitting. Though the West has the nation’s highest concentration of areas permanently protected for biodiversity, it also has some of the highest concentrations of species at risk of extinction. Rising temperatures, precipitation extremes and larger, more destructive wildfires, all driven by climate change, are
