A new bill from Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar looks to remove endangered species protections.
Agriculture
Posted inDecember 2025: Wild Harvest
How ranchers accused of breaking the rules dodge oversight
Elected officials interfere with agency efforts to protect the land.
Posted inDecember 2025: Wild Harvest
Congress made it easier to ignore grazing’s harm to public lands
Federal law requires agencies to review the environmental impacts of grazing, but government employees allege the system is riddled with loopholes.
Posted inDecember 2025: Wild Harvest
The wealthy profit from public lands, and taxpayers pick up the tab
Roughly two-thirds of grazing on Bureau of Land Management land is controlled by just 10% of permit holders.
Posted inDecember 2025: Wild Harvest
How we reported Free Range, our grazing investigation
Data and analyses used in the stories.
Posted inDecember 2025: Wild Harvest
Reno’s Gay Rodeo is back
Nearly 40 years after an armed sheriff, anti-LGBTQ activists and a judge’s order shut down the Gay Rodeo Finals, this year the riders came home.
Posted inArticles
Yellowstone protects wolves. What happens when they leave the park?
Crossing what’s an arbitrary boundary for wildlife, an apex predator becomes prey.
Posted inArticles
Why Colorado River negotiations are so difficult
Basin states have had 2 years to figure out how to share the shrinking river. Will they get there before the feds step in?
Posted inOctober 2025: Limits to Growth
Ventura County is turning former farmland into affordable housing for farmworkers
This California county has some of the nation’s strictest protections for agricultural land, but developers are using a new exemption to house people who work the land.
Posted inOctober 2025: Limits to Growth
What’s it like to be a cow?
A cattle rancher reflects on her occupation and the growing movement to understand how other animals see the world.
Posted inArticles
The dismantling of the Forest Service
The Trump administration’s plans would remake the agency and public lands. The deadline to comment is Sept. 30.
Posted inSeptember 2025: Who Controls Our Food?
What old growth forests have to do with your food
More than you might think.
Posted inSeptember 2025: Who Controls Our Food?
‘How many bricks of colonization do we sit under?’
#iamthewest: Giving voice to the people that make up communities in the region.
Posted inArticles
Invasive fruit fly hits the Yakama Nation’s huckleberry fields
Students from Heritage University and Northwest Indian College were the first to document the presence of the spotted wing drosophila on the Yakama Nation Reservation — a first step to help eradicate it on tribal land.
Posted inSeptember 2025: Who Controls Our Food?
The Rio Grande’s pecan problem
How Big Ag is threatening New Mexico’s water supply.
Posted inSeptember 2025: Who Controls Our Food?
Acknowledging the hands that feed us
Narsiso Martinez aims to dignify farmworkers through his artwork
Posted inSeptember 2025: Who Controls Our Food?
Who controls food in the West?
Consolidation, shifting politics, water rights and the myth of the cowboy all play into the region’s ability to feed itself.
Posted inArticles
How community assemblies kindle advocacy and solutions
Labor organizer Rosalinda Guillen explains how participatory democracy gives workers political power.
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
What the presence of sheep means to the Diné
How to look at Milton Snow’s historical images of a livestock genocide on the Navajo Nation.
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
The West’s data centers suck (water and power)
From simple searches to chatGPT, the big digital buildup threatens the grid and water supplies.