How our children respond to a world threatened by climate change.
Watching the world slip away
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Forestry fandango
In 2013, the U.S. Forest Service thinned and intentionally burned more than 2 million acres of the nation’s public land, which is largely in the West, in order to improve forest health and reduce the risk of destructive wildfires near houses and towns. That’s an impressive figure, until you consider that the agency itself acknowledges […]
Posted inArticles
Shaken and stirred in California’s recent earthquake
How seismic events can make drought impacts worse.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Lost in the woods
How the Forest Service is botching its biggest restoration project.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Smoke and mirrors
Congress can’t seem to solve a big problem: how to pay for battling wildfires.
Posted inArticles
Two political elites prevail in Navajo primary melee
Shirley and Deschene pull ahead of 15 other candidates.
Posted inArticles
New Mexico delays controversial Gila vote
Many unanswered questions remain about proposals to divert the state’s last undammed major river.
Posted inArticles
Did Obama’s Interior hobble the Endangered Species Act?
A new policy sets the law back a half-century, conservationists say.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
The Latest: Southern Utes make another energy investment
Backstory The Southern Ute Indian Tribe has suffered plenty of historical setbacks; today, however, its 1,400 members are collectively worth billions. In the 1970s, the tribe began taking control of energy profits from its southwestern Colorado reservation, home to one of the country’s richest gas fields. In the 1990s, it formed its own energy company, […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
The Latest: Ruptured tailings pond spills waste in Canada
Backstory In the remote northwestern corner of British Columbia, next to Alaska, plans for large mining and hydropower projects have sounded alarm bells on both sides of the border. Critics, mostly environmentalists and tribes, warned that Canada’s resource rush threatens rivers that support a vital wild salmon fishery in both countries, and that the race […]
Posted inArticles
Wilderness at 50: A place to be free, a place to hide
No Place To Hide is the name of a new book by Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter who worked with whistleblower Edward Snowden to break the story on National Security Agency spying. The book’s title is drawn from commentary by Sen. Frank Church of Idaho, who held hearings in the 1970s that uncovered widespread domestic […]
Posted inArticles
Considering historical correctness in New Mexico
Kit Carson’s name is everywhere on maps of the West. Nevada’s capital city is named after him, and in California, a Carson Pass crosses the Sierra Nevada. Colorado has Carson County, a town named Kit Carson and 14,000-foot Kit Carson Peak. But was the man himself really worth honoring? A few years before Carson died […]
Posted inArticles
Rural cops get militarized
Pentagon gives guns, armored vehicles and battlefield gear to rural Western counties.
Posted inArticles
Forest Service’s mission goes up in flames
New report shows long-term firefighting costs eroding most other work.
Posted inWotr
Secrecy never went away at Rocky Flats
June 6, 1989: In a dramatic, unprecedented raid on a federal nuclear facility, more than 70 U.S. agents burst into the sprawling Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver seeking evidence of environmental crimes involving radioactive plutonium. Led by FBI special agent Jon Lipsky, the raid was kept secret from Colorado Gov. Roy Romer and […]
Posted inGoat
How much money is a healthy ecosystem worth?
For the 95,000 or so people in and around Bellingham, Washington, the water bill they pay every other month includes a charge called the “watershed acquisition fee.” It’s currently $24.81 per bill, and the city uses this money to strategically purchase land to protect Lake Whatcom and its watershed—the source of the city’s water supply. […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Fear the falcon
A man and his raptors take on Washington’s dump scavengers.
Posted inGoat
Alaska’s Senate race and the fate of the West’s public lands
Republicans look to Alaska in their bid to overtake the U.S. Senate.