When I first joined Wildland Restoration Volunteers, I had the naive idea that helping the environment was a lot like a blind date: You get together and hope you click. Some of the projects were just like that: We’d carry tools in, rebuild a trail so it no longer interfered with endangered plants, and go […]
Wildland restoration is like marriage: An imperfect work in progress
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Ranch Diaries: Why cowboy life is intense
We have other interests, like art and cooking, that take a backseat to the needs of our land and animals.
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No direction home
Nearly a year after San Jose shut down the Bay Area’s biggest homeless encampment, hundreds still live along city creeks. What went wrong?
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Rants from the Hill: The aliens that make Nevada home
Military history, conspiracy theories and the landscape itself make Nevada ground zero for the bizarre and otherworldly.
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Mass shootings in Western states, by the numbers
In October, a man opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, leaving 10 dead.
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Hidden camera traps capture wildlife in Wyoming
An ecologist uses a scientific tool for artistic purposes.
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EPA releases a stricter, health-based smog standard
Failure to meet the new requirements can trigger serious economic consequences for some communities.
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Congress lets sun set on Land and Water Conservation Fund
The nation’s most successful conservation program is in jeopardy.
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University research controversy exposes the perils of industry influence
How close should academics let industry get to fracking research?
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Can Eugene, Oregon become a haven for startups?
This May, 30 game developers were laid off at the Zynga videogame company office in Eugene, Oregon. But soon after, Joe Maruschak spoke at the Barn Light coffee shop on how to launch a startup business. Game developers crowded around the tables. Maruschak, chief startup officer at Eugene’s Regional Accelerator and Innovation Network, encouraged the […]
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Why Jim Unger came West: a Yellowstone love affair
There are tourists, and then there’s Jim Unger, a Pennsylvania resident who headed out this summer on his 41st pilgrimage to some of the places that have become his second home — the national parks, monuments and historic sites of the West. It all started in 1971, when Jim and his wife, Sandy, both elementary […]
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Congress subscribed to High Country News
How do you keep policy makers on top of the issues shaping the changing face of the West? Get them a subscription to High Country News. When HCN asked for help in funding a subscription for each member of the House of Representatives and the Senate, readers responded overwhelmingly by contributing more than $10,000 to send all […]
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Fossil fuel extraction on public lands is the next climate fight
Stopping Keystone is only one part of the larger agenda to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
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Endurance runners in the Grand Canyon are missing the point
When I was 18, back in the swinging ’60s, I ran with equally driven friends through the Grand Canyon, going from the North Rim to the South Rim in a single day. Our trek involved traversing the 14-mile North Kaibab trail, the 7-mile South Kaibab Trail and the Old Bright Angel Trail, 14 miles of […]
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Can herbicides keep Tahoe blue?
A new chemical weed management plan has the lake’s water suppliers nervous.
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Shell’s giving up drilling in the Arctic Ocean. Now what?
The (controversial) case for drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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Anatomy of a flash flood
After a series of deaths, a writer considers his own close calls in canyons.
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Does optimism have a place in Western water politics?
Writer John Fleck wants us to abandon our dried-up narratives of doom.
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What Mt. Hood’s fading summer ski season means
As year-round skiing in the Pacific Northwest diminishes, what else will be lost?
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How to drought-proof California’s farms
Three years into its most severe drought in over a thousand years, it’s unclear how much longer California can continue growing half of the nation’s produce. The crisis confronting Big Ag and family farmers alike may signal the end of agriculture as it’s currently practiced. But it need not spell doom for farming altogether: On […]