The San Francisco Bay-Delta isn’t quite dead, and L.A. and San Diego may end up scrambling for water. A California regulator is taking a tough stand to halt the ongoing ecological crash in the San Francisco Bay-Delta. On Wednesday, the California Water Resources Control Board served a cease-and-desist order to the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the state Department of Water Resources, which pump water out of the Delta for farmers in California’s Central Valley and the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego. The order requires the two agencies to immediately obey water-quality standards for the Delta and could require them to stop pumping water if conditions deteriorate further.

And in Global Warm and Fuzzy News, national parks are becoming a new sort of endangered species, thanks to climate change. According to studies, Glacier National Park turns to meltwater by 2030. This number might sound like a long way off, but it’s actually only 24 years away. That means my kid will likely just be settling into a career, I might be getting ready for retirement (or working like a dog, depending on what happens to Social Security), and it’s entirely possible that my parents will still be alive to squawk, “I remember when there were glaciers in Glacier.” Here’s the link at the Billings Gazette: And HCN has this story published earlier this year about why the national parks aren’t allowed to talk about their strange obsolescence (HCN: The Ghosts of Yosemite).

Blue hairs beware: the coyotes are coming, and you can’t shoot them. Sun City West, a retirement mecca in sunny, dry Arizona, has experienced an increasing number of coyotes on its golf courses and emerald green lawns. Afraid that the coyotes may pose as big bad wolves posing as grandmonthers and eat unsuspecting golf players, some residents favored shooting or trapping the critters. But a community committee formed to study the problem recommended that the canines be protected, instead. Also heck out this archived HCN article on the adaptability urban wildlife.

Klamath salmon hit rock bottom. The Klamath’s bread-and-butter fish, chinook salmon, are expected to return in such low numbers this year that fishing on a large stretch of the Oregon/California coast may be shut down altogether. Even tribes in the region may have to hang their nets and lines for what’s expected to be the worst fishing season in 15 years.

In South Dakota, it is now legal to ride horses or bicycles while intoxicated. The Governor just signed into law a measure cleansing the state DUI statutes of horses and bikes. One question: What about goats?

Rural Nevadans are rallying to fight a plan to pump water to Las Vegas by proposing the creation of a federal nature preserve. The Southern Nevada Water Authority is pushing forward with a project to pump groundwater from the Great Basin. But this week, citizens in White Pine County, Nev., unveiled a proposal to create a 323,000-acre federal preserve around the existing Great Basin National Park, near Ely. The plan was inspired by Congress’ designation of the Great Sand Dunes National Monument in Colorado’s San Luis Valley in 2000–a move intended, in part, to protect the valley from a similar project that would have pumped water to the Denver area. Check out Matt Jenkins’ HCN article Squeezing Water from a Stone for in-depth coverage of Las Vegas’ radical piping plan. Great Sand Dunes background from HCN’s archive is here and here.

And finally, it appears that Montana is embracing alternative agriculture. New statistics from Washington state paint a, uh, sobering picture of what really makes money in ag. Officials in Washington state say that last year, marijuana surpassed cherries to become the No. 8 agricultural commodity in the state.