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4 Navajo Reservoir covers other things. The northem San Juan was the wellspring of Anasazi culture. The Reservoir flooded hundreds of Anasazi sites, ranging from camping grounds to rock art panels to whole villages. The draw-down of the San Juan, and the change in flow patterns, has also put four endemic fish species on the endangered species lists. The salinity build-up downstream, to which Navajo Dam conUibutes, is a runaway problem. And yes, there is now a world-class, blue-ribbon fishery on this heavily managed river just helow Navajo Dam. And, blessedly, yes, we can still float the San Juan from Bluff to Mexican Hat down through the Goosenecks past the mouths of Slickhom and Grand Gulch. But the San Juan River -- a whole river -. was redefmed in less than a decade. II, The Third Era in the History of the American West To he sure, the big build-up accomplished some worthy objectives. Fannland bas been watered and some farm communities strengthened. The cities have water. ElecUicity is spread out to millions of people in homes, businesses, and hospitals. But now we find increasing numbers of people asking questions: Did we have to do it on such a scale? Did the cities conserve first and then ask for water and energy? Did we care enough for the water, the land, lUld the air? And did we care enongh for the people, especially lndian people, of the interior West on whose backs the build-up was accomplished? The third era hegan just recently, as those qnestions and others like them began to he asked in many different quarters and as we hegan to get about the serious business of finding ways to answer them. I helieve that yellfS from now people will look back to the late 1980s and early 1990s as a time when our society hegan, in aconrerted way, to make its sland about this earth and its creatnres. By about the mid-1980s, new data reached the pnblic consciousness -- about global warming, depletion of the orone layer, and rain forest destruction. In the American Wes~ endangered species catapulted into public view in an unprecedented way. I think of the sharpest defining moment as being the Forest Service's draft EIS on the spotted owl, released in 1986. It generated the most comments of any Forest Service EIS ever released. Then, in 1989, the salmon runs plummeted with the low water in the Columbia This in the Insh Pacific Northwest, our most environmentally sensitive region. Then the Rio Conference further galvanized opinion and concern. This causes us to ask why we have entered a new era. One factor is simply the wave of population that has entered the region as the rest of the country has reeled the West in with jet air traffic, the interstate highway system, and the modem, fax, and e-mail. The region's population stood at sixteen million at the end of World War II. Now it is fifty-seven million. The stresses are all aronnd us. I have mentioned some of them but, for many people, the impact is more personal -. the added traffic in town, the burgeoning nnmber of health hazards for our children, lUld the loss of favorite places. Of course, we have seen this play out on the Colorado Plateau. It no longer wins any awards for God- forsakenness. Among other things, this year or next we will reach an annual total of thirty million visitor days (twenty million in the national parks) on the Colorado Plateau. Another reason for a new approach toward the land lUld water of the West involves powerful economic forces. We now understand the drawbacks of the traditional extractive indusUies. The costs of the impacts on the land and the rivers are too high, and so too are the traditional subsidies too burdensome for state and national bndgets. A new western economy is emerging -- based on recreation, scaled-back extractive industries, and light indusUies that want to settle in this wondrous place -- and this new economic mix is far ontsUipping the old. Another hallmark in recent developments has been the return of Indian Uibes. They own about four percent of all land in the West and bave been effectively asserting their rights to sovereignty, religious freedom, natural resources, and economic development in general. The Uibes, who are sovereign govermnents, bave become part of the community of governments, and while many problems remain, they are well on their way toward making their reservations into the homelands they were originally promised to be. One of the ironies of American history, then, is that Indian Uibes have made the centerpiece of their initiatives the reservation lands that they once fought so hard against being confmed to. Another great historical irony is that a much larger amount of land -- no less than fifty percent of the whole West-. that was once "leftover" land is now heartland. The federal public lands, open to aU of us, are one of the basic freedoms of Westerners. This American River Management Society