Book excerpt: Many changessome discouraging, others hopefulhave occurred in the Rocky Mountain region since the first edition of this widely acclaimed book was published. Wildlife habitat has become more fragmented, once-abundant sage grouse are now scarce, and forest fires occur more frequently. At the same time, wolves have been successfully reintroduced, and new approaches to conservation have been adopted. For this updated and expanded Second Edition, the authors provide a highly readable synthesis of research undertaken in the past two decades and address two important questions: How can ecosystems be used so that future generations benefit from them as we have? How can we anticipate and adapt to climate changes while conserving biological diversity?