Feature

The desert that breaks Annie Proulx's heart

Writer Annie Proulx takes an unsentimental view of Wyoming’s little-known and somewhat scarred Red Desert.

Columbia Basin (Political) Science

Some fisheries scientists and environmentalists say the Bonneville Power Administration has had an unhealthy influence on salmon research in the Northwest.

Go Sell It On The Mountain

For 30 years, local environmentalists have been fighting with Crested Butte’s owners over a proposed controversial expansion of the ski resort.

Editor's Note

The call of the semi-wild

Semi-wild rural landscapes, where humans mingle with wildlife, are a richer source of biodiversity than many Westerners realize.

Dear Friends

Wanted: your support and ideas

High Country News needs reader input and support; spring snow and winter visitors.

Uncommon Westerners

Avalanches for dummies

A certified crash-test dummy known as Homer helps Montana engineering professor Robb Larson study the effects of avalanches on the human body.

Book Reviews

Nonprofits reap the profits

Christine MacDonald takes on the unscrupulous executives who run big environmental groups in Green, Inc.: An Environmental Insider Reveals How a Good Cause Has Gone Bad.

Fishing for solace

In Yellowstone Autumn, Walter Wetherell describes a short season of solitary fly-fishing and contemplation in Yellowstone National Park.

Essays

Why I ride the Greyhound

Every passenger aboard a bus becomes a citizen of the world, contemplating the Western landscape as it passes by.

Letters

"The officially sanctioned helpless"

Apparently Schwarzenegger wouldn’t agree

Golly, nukes for everybody!

More than you think?

Perspective

Last rites and forgotten landscapes

The 12 young women whose bones were found on Albuquerque’s West Mesa led lives as unvalued as the sagebrush landscape that held their murdered bodies.

Two Weeks in the West

A ghost of the 1970s

Bipartisan politics briefly returned to Washington, D.C., with the passage of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act. Also: A map highlights some of the newly protected lands in the West.

How it Works

Conservation or cop-out?

A lack of participation could scuttle voluntary conservation agreements designed to protect species like New Mexico’s lesser prairie chickens and sand dune lizards.