This May, we meet pinecone cowboys, toxic newts and New Mexico’s Trinity Site downwinders. With giant sequoias threatened by drought, wildfires and climate change, professional tree-climbers make a precarious living harvesting cones for planting and reforestation. In New Mexico, local residents still deal with the often deadly effects of atomic bomb testing. Pacific newts are elusive, adorable and rare — and also deadly poisonous. The self-proclaimed “last full-blooded Chumash” in California was actually a “pretendian” whose harmful legacy still haunts the state today. The Trump administration has halted funding for a pipeline to bring clean drinking water to the people who rely on the seriously contaminated, drought-stricken Arkansas River. The West’s ongoing snow drought will harm a whole lot more than the ski industry. How did a professional ballet dancer wind up in Death Valley, restoring a century-old opera house and hotel? The vaquita, the world’s most threatened marine mammal, struggles to survive in the Gulf of California. A terrible beauty is born in an out-of-season desert superbloom.

Cruz McLean makes his way to the top of a giant sequoia to collect the tree’s best cones in Sequoia National Park, California.
Cruz McLean makes his way to the top of a giant sequoia to collect the tree’s best cones in Sequoia National Park, California. Credit: Nina Riggio

Download the Digital Issue