A sample of recent bulletins from the Old West: Montana rewrites some of the country's strongest water pollution laws as a favor to the mining industry. Idaho lawmakers award potential polluters a major voice in setting clean water standards. Utah's Governor rebuffs the stated wishes of Utah's citizens to set aside 5.7 million acres of state land as protected wilderness. Washington State's Legislature passes the nation's most far-reaching "takings" law, weakening essential land-use controls. Wyoming's Legislature authorizes a bounty on wolves -- recently re-introduced into Yellowstone National Park and protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act.

Clearly, the United States Congress is not the only place where laws protecting the environment are under siege. Throughout the West, particularly in the Rocky Mountains, state legislators and governors, egged on by commercial interests and by small but noisy groups of property-rights advocates, are engaged in full-scale mutiny against Federal and state regulations meant to protect what is left of America's natural resources.

What we are seeing is an updated but more ominous version of the Sagebrush Rebellion of the early Reagan years. That revolt was dominated by ranching interests protesting Federal regulation of public lands. The present explosion embraces not only those familiar despoilers but mining companies, timber barons, developers, big commercial farmers and virtually anyone else who stands to profit from relaxation of environmental controls.

The war in the West and the war in Congress on basic environmental protections have much in common. First, both are being driven and in some cases underwritten by big business. Second, both are being waged to save the "little guy" from Federal tyranny. Third, this alleged little guy is nowhere to be found when the time comes to draft crippling legislation. Indeed, his wishes have been largely ignored. Poll after poll suggests that what ordinary citizens want is more environmental protection if it means a cleaner environment and a healthier society. But that is not what this Congress and its Western allies want to give them.

Montana and Idaho are particularly sad cases. Despite citizen complaints, and nearly unanimous editorial opposition, two bills whistled through the Montana Legislature that would in effect permit higher levels of toxic wastes to reach the state's streams and lakes. They were signed, with some reluctance, by the Governor. Mining lobbyists were conspicuous during the parliamentary maneuvering -- including representatives from Crown Butte and its Canadian parent, Noranda Inc. These companies are working relentlessly for permission to build in geologically precarious terrain a gold mine that would leave a permanent reservoir of pollutants in the watershed of one of Montana's most important wilderness streams.

Idaho's people -- not to mention its endangered Snake River salmon -- face a double threat. Under a new statute, acceptable water quality levels will be set by watershed advisory groups. These groups will be well stocked with large landowners and representatives from timber, mining, and agribusiness companies who are almost certain to write new and more permissive regulations. Meanwhile, back in Washington, an Idaho Republican, Dirk Kempthorne, is leading the Senate charge to cripple the Endangered Species Act, which provides what little protection the salmon have. If Senator Kempthorne succeeds in transferring protection of endangered species from Washington to Boise, it will be goodbye salmon, with grizzlies and wolves to follow.

There are, of course, honorable exceptions. In Colorado, for example, ranchers, environmentalists and state officials were able to agree on less destructive grazing practices -- although it took a half-dozen or so exhausting visits from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to get the agreement. But nearly everywhere one turns the anti-Washington ideologues seem to have the upper hand.

The most conspicuous example is Nevada, where officials in Nye County passed a series of ordinances claiming ownership of Federal lands and then set about physically intimidating employees from the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. The Justice Department has now sued to reaffirm Federal jurisdiction, but Nye County's rebels have inspired imitators: More than 70 rural Western counties have passed or proposed laws to "take back" the public lands.

Lost in all the rhetoric about individualism and states' rights is one basic legal fact: At no time have the Western public lands belonged to the states. They were acquired by treaty, conquest or purchase by the Federal Government acting on behalf of all the citizens of the United States. Lost, too, is a colossal irony. Western ranchers have traditionally fed well at the trough of Federal beneficence. In their war against Washington, they are biting the hand that has fed them lavish subsidies and protected them against the disasters of nature and the vagaries of the marketplace.

But all of this escapes the Sons-of-Sagebrushers. The fact that there might be an overriding national interest in preserving the public lands and forests from exploitation is not something that quickly pops to their minds. Nor does this fact seem to register with the newer breed of rebels in the statehouses and state legislatures who would nullify more than two decades of struggle to clean America's waterways, preserve its wetlands and otherwise protect its dwindling natural heritage.

There can be no satisfaction in any of this -- except perhaps to the enemies of the environment in a Congress that is well on its way to abandoning any pretense to national stewardship.