After a dismal 2025 season, the pears being picked right now could mean the difference between solvency and bankruptcy.
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Does your dog make you safer in bear country?
What new analysis of more than 300 bear encounters shows about the notion of dogs as early bear alarms or deterrents.
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Utah is killing the Great Salt Lake
Profligate waste and perverse tax incentives are drying up the West’s largest natural body of water.
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The Spokane burns show that not even suburbia is immune to wildfire
The Old Trails Fire burned through the city’s northwest corner — an area considered outside the highest risk zone.
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Federal plan makes steep Colorado River water cuts to Arizona, California and Nevada
The Bureau of Reclamation’s final environmental review leaves the door open for states to reach an agreement on how to share the water — and for legal battles.
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Can the last casino in Primm, Nevada, save a desert community?
A last-minute deal is another bet on the town’s unlikely survival.
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What’s destroying Utah’s monuments
The administration wants to open 3 million acres to mining claims and oil and gas leasing at the expense of the landscape.
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Tribally contested Badger Mountain solar project canceled by developer
Avangrid withdrew its application from the Washington state permitting process following years of objections and delays.
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A ban on chainsaws in wilderness is performative, not practical
An experienced trail crew leader argues that, in today’s forests, the rigidity of the regulation buries what it’s designed to protect.
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The conflict over permanent climbing anchors in wilderness
Climbers concerned about safety are pitted against wilderness advocates worried about overcrowding and unfettered bolting.
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Pueblo leaders, New Mexico lawmakers speak out to protect Chaco Canyon
Officials call push to remove an oil and gas buffer around the culturally critical monument ‘an absolute gut punch.’
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I used to ignore prediction markets. Then I learned people were betting on wildfires
My story on prediction market wildfire wagers exposed the gamification of natural disasters.
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A new section of the billion-dollar border wall in Arizona is bent out of shape
At least four panels of the wall in the San Rafael Valley were mysteriously damaged months before a controversy-plagued contractor even finished construction.
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The clock is ticking for New Mexico to cut Rio Grande water use
For now, the state is counting on voluntary cuts among vegetable and pecan farmers. But that might not be enough.
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Bears Ears cuts also end first-of-its-kind tribal land commissionÂ
A presidential proclamation slashed the monument by 90% despite a promise to involve tribes.
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Feds transfer grizzly bear management to states
After 20-year controversy and numerous court battles, the Trump administration declared grizzlies recovered despite public lands rollbacks.
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How a Utah Republican’s quiet battle for hunting access undercut LandBack hopes
Rep. Casey Snider worked behind the scenes for years to transfer large blocks of roadless state trust land to wildlife officials — cutting the Ute Tribe out in the process.
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On Mount Shasta, a photographic record outlasts living memory
The re-photo project maps what used to be.
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The rules for grazing on 155 million acres of public lands are getting overhauled
The new rule cuts public involvement and favors the livestock industry.
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The Klamath Tribes couldn’t get federal dollars for salmon. Then the Yurok stepped in
For more than 100 years, salmon had been absent from the Klamath Tribes’ lands — a fact that cut them off from funding sources to fix that.