Contention growing over public lands The vast open spaces of Western states like Arizona, California and Nevada offer millions of Americans room to play, provide land for raising cattle and growing crops, and are a rich source of fuels for an energy-hungry nation. But exploding population growth, coupled with increasing energy demands and diminishing natural resources, is making it difficult for the federal government to efficiently manage the country's public lands for multiple uses. In recent years, officials with the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service have had to make increasingly unpopular decisions about whether to leave some tracts in their natural state and where to allow mining, oil drilling and cattle grazing. In many cases, their choices have angered conservationists, who say the federal government has failed to protect these open spaces from environmental damage. They hope a new administration, under President-elect Barack Obama, will provide new legal protections for national parks and wildlife....