When it comes to public lands, Alaska is the most privileged state in the union. With more than 325 million acres of state and federal jurisdiction, there’s an endless stream of recreational opportunities up there. At the other end of the spectrum is Delaware, which has less than a thousand acres. Somewhere in between is Arizona we rank fourth, behind Alaska, Nevada and California. Our 35 million-plus acres of public lands include state parks, national forests, wilderness areas, national monuments, national parks, national conservation areas and more.
When Davina Two Bears was working on getting her bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College in the late 1980s, she had such a hard time fitting in, and the courses were so difficult, that she almost dropped out. “It was a lonely time,” she recalls. “I was a fish out of water.” Or, more precisely, Two Bears was a Navajo in New Hampshire.
It was a banner water year for the Colorado River Basin, with water use in the three Lower Basin states including Arizona way below normal and water supplies in the