Stopping by the dam during a days-long experimental flood, it’s clear that even this massive feat of engineering can’t fix the arid West.
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Travels with migrant farmworkers
A conversation with Seth Holmes about on-the-ground research for his new book.
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Kids will be kids
Photographer Rebecca Drobis looks for universal images of youth on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana.
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We need a locagua movement
Whole Foods Market earlier this year opened a store in the Colorado mountain town of Frisco. Located at 9,097 feet, it can boast it’s the chain’s highest-elevation outlet. Like each of the 393 other Whole Foods markets, the Frisco store goes out of its way to emphasize local connections. In a nod to Frisco’s four […]
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HCN.org is getting a facelift. Don’t miss the action.
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Identifying ‘killer trees’ in Sequoia National Park
In the middle of August, I visit a backcountry campground in California’s Sequoia National Park to survey trees. Two teenage boys nap while their fathers roam the nearby woods, looking for firewood. I introduce myself as a forestry technician and mention that a dying white fir is leaning over one of their tents. Dropping my […]
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The Latest: battles in the West’s bitter wild horse wars
BackstoryThe 37,000 wild horses roaming the West’s public lands strain ecosystems, ranches and taxpayers alike. Despite fertility drugs designed to lessen their numbers, today, more mustangs live in captivity than in the wild, costing the Bureau of Land Management about $76 million annually. Slaughter and hunting may be the clearest solutions, but public outrage makes […]
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An interview with John Maclean
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, Nelson Harvey talks with John Maclean, author of Fire on the Mountain, a book about the 1994 South Canyon Fire in Colorado, which took 14 lives. Maclean believes the […]
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Veteran photographer shines light on US immigration
Death and deportation at the US-Mexico border, and lives after crossings.
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Ted Turner: A Good Guy After All?
The author of a new biography of one of the West’s largest landholders speaks with HCN about conservation, capitalism and Cousteau.
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Stand down from Western wildfires
A prominent wildfire expert, reacting to the deaths of 19 Arizona firefighters, says it’s time for a major change in policy.
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Problem-solving in the West
A conversation with Lucy Moore, one of the Southwest’s premier environmental mediators
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EPA’s abandoned Wyoming fracking study one retreat of many
When the federal Environmental Protection Agency abruptly retreated on its multimillion-dollar investigation into water contamination in a central Wyoming natural gas field last month, it shocked environmentalists and energy industry supporters alike. In 2011, the agency had issued a blockbuster draft report saying that the controversial practice of fracking was to blame for the pollution […]
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A long-time defender talks grizzly conservation
A Q&A with Louisa Willcox, who has spent 30 years fighting for grizzly protections.
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Researchers go to Utah to experience another planet: Mars
In March, photographer and science enthusiast Jim Urquhart ventured into the Utah desert to join a team of researchers at the Mars Desert Research Station. He came back with a collection of surreal images both extra-terrestrial and intriguing.
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Federal Helium Reserve faces uncertainty amid global shortage
While browsing the Bureau of Land Management’s website, I found an odd piece of trivia. True or False: Inhaling helium causes your vocal cords to constrict, raising the pitch of your voice. I was surprised. What was the agency in charge of overseeing the dry husks of the West’s open spaces doing with a colorless, […]
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Taking the park to the people
There will be no Fiesta Day this year at Saguaro National Park, a mountainous, cactus- and shrub-studded landscape surrounding Tucson. No mariachi band at the visitor’s center, no spread of tacos and enchiladas, no candy-filled pinatas for the kids to knock down. But the cancellation of the five-year running event, conceived by park officials as […]
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How fish consumption determines water quality
Jim Peters lives near Puget Sound in Washington, and during fishing season his kids eat smoked salmon like candy. Peters is a council member of the Squaxin Island Tribe of South Puget Sound. Fish permeate nearly every aspect of their culture; in the 1850s tribal members gave up most of their land to settlers in […]