What’s at stake with the Republican push to tax renewable energy companies
Wyoming needs to stop stalling wind power
Posted inArticles
West Obsessed: How Trump is recoloring the West’s politics
Listen to the writers and editors of the magazine discuss the backlash to Donald Trump’s run for president.
Posted inArticles
The 10 most expensive wildfires in the West’s history
Why suppressing wildfires costs public land agencies so much money.
Posted inArticles
Malheur occupation impacts linger throughout the West
Sagebrush Rebellion flareups cooled off after Bundy arrests but the standoff’s effects ripple out.
Posted inArticles
Replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day isn’t enough
To better honor their history, activists want “justice, not gestures.”
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
What it takes to save an imperiled fish
The impressive effort to restore the Arctic grayling in a Yellowstone National Park stream.
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
Visits from students and an issue break
It’s starting to feel like autumn in Paonia. Breezes are getting crisper, ripe apples are dropping, and the aspen leaves are turning gold. The season has been busy here at High Country News headquarters, as we make some staffing adjustments. Tay Wiles, our former online editor, is moving to the San Francisco Bay area, where […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
Trump and the West
In the past, elections in the West have been fairly predictable. In urban areas and along the West Coast, folks tended to vote blue, for Democrats. In rural areas and in the Rocky Mountain interior, they leaned heavily red, for Republicans, especially in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. Over the past decade, however, that pattern […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
Meet Denise Juneau, who hopes to be the first Native American woman in Congress
Indian Country votes will help determine whether this seat flips to blue.
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
This election season’s unexpected power players: undocumented immigrants
Donald Trump’s rhetoric is sparking a movement to mobilize Hispanic voters.
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
The Western races to watch
Democrats hope to nab vulnerable Republican seats.
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
Remembering a ‘free man’ who died at the Grand Canyon
A transient outdoorsman, he only wanted to be in the mountains or down some canyon.
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
Stopping the downward spiral
While the factors Elizabeth Zach cites — low reimbursement by public insurers, reduced inpatient services, hospital mergers and others — have historically impacted the ability of rural communities to sustain viable health services, this litany of forces reflects incomplete knowledge of research dating back 30 years (“A Rural Health Care Checkup: Lessons from the Central […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
See these photos of ‘the new settlers’
In the 1960s, a counterculture revolution brought a new wave of migration Westward.
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
Resistance is not futile
It was to our dismay that the USGS Director of the Southwest Climate Science Center put forward an argument to abandon large swaths of the Sonoran Desert to invasive species (“A conversation with Stephen Jackson,” HCN, 9/5/16). Climate change is certainly going to reorganize Sonoran Desert ecosystems, but the paleo-environmental record has shown that this […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
Winners of the 2016 HCN reader photography contest
Audience and editor favorites from our national parks.
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
Lies and damn lies: What to believe on the campaign trail
HCN sorts truth from fiction on the campaign trail.
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
Inside Wyoming’s rough, tough underground
Boom and bust cycles shape the fates of Wyoming’s young people.
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
Why Utah’s Mormons waffle on this year’s GOP candidate
Trump sparks a conflict between morality and political belief.
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
How the West’s populist politics play out at the ballot box
Voter-driven ballot initiatives are a powerful force during the Western election season.