There doesn't seem to be a lot of details about how the three leading candidates stand on such Western issues.

Those who put stock in League of Conservation Voters ratings can look to 2006 when the group gave Barack Obama a 100 percent rating, Hillary Clinton 71 and John McCain 29. McCain dropped to zero in the most recent listing.

McCain, a long-time Western senator, has a good feel for issues such as multiple-use management of public lands, Colorado River water woes, uncontrolled growth and wilderness.

Depending on whether you like Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument or not, the fact that President Clinton created it might give a hint as to how Hillary Clinton might treat the West.

As former Bureau of Land Management director Jim Baca wrote in a recent onlyinnewmexico blogspot, Obama is a mystery when it comes to Western public land issues.

Log on to the Web sites of the three candidates to find more information on Western issues, and you will be disappointed.

Clinton offers little on her site. Obama has a feel-good statement on the value of hunting with no specifics. McCain probably shows the most interest in Western issues with this online statement:

"Ensuring clean air, safe and healthy water, sustainable land use, ample greenspace - and the faithful care and management of our natural treasures, including our proud National Park System - is a patriotic responsibility. One that must be met not only for the benefit of our generation, but for our children and those to whom we will pass the American legacy."

That's the most eloquent statement of the three candidates. Yet, it does not get into specifics.

Westerners deserve better.

Candidates need to tell us about the importance they place in balancing preservation of national public lands with energy development. We need to know their philosophy about growth in Western urban areas and where the water will come from to support it. We need to hear about whether land management agencies will be financially starved to the point where they can't do their jobs. In an era of out-of-control deficit spending, will there be money available to help protect our national parks?

These are important issues to the West that continue to be ignored by the candidates.

wharton@sltrib.com