How Big Ag is threatening New Mexico’s water supply.
Economy
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
The national parks are not OK
A former national park supervisor explains how toilets may be clean this summer, but the parks themselves are actually ‘hollowed out.’
Posted inArticles
In Albuquerque, developers are turning old motels into affordable housing
Once-dilapidated buildings are finding new life as homes for immigrants and other working-class New Mexicans.
Posted inArticles
Can this Washington member of Congress turn the Democratic Party around?
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’ ‘Blue Dog’ strategy of appealing to working-class rural moderates won her a long-held Republican district.
Posted inMay 2025: The Art of the Cruise
The toll of Bozeman’s housing crisis
At the small city’s only emergency shelter, demand is higher and the work is harder than ever.
Posted inMay 2025: The Art of the Cruise
Is sustainable tourism possible?
As Western mountain towns struggle with overtourism, Jackson Hole tries out a new plan to mitigate visitors’ impacts.
Posted inMay 2025: The Art of the Cruise
The Cybertruck is all tricks and no truck, a musky Tesla fail
Tesla’s baking sheet on wheels rides fast in the recall lane toward a dead end where dysfunctional men gather.
Posted inArticles
Can Trump bring back ‘clean, beautiful coal’?
The fossil fuel-fetish once again trumps economics and common-sense.
Posted inApril 2025: A Monumental Reckoning
How a crucial homeless shelter in Boise was obstructed by neighbors
The Veterans Park Neighborhood Association sued to halt a shelter’s plans.
Posted inArticles
A return to the fight against Alaska’s Ambler Road
Alaska Native tribes and activists will use previous momentum to try and keep a road from being built through caribou migratory paths, subsistence harvest areas and remote Indigenous land.
Posted inArticles
The indomitable Butte, Montana
The misunderstood, often-maligned mining town helps itself.
Posted inArticles
How U.S. guns fuel violence south of the border
As Trump pressures Mexico to address drugs and migration, an expert says border security goes both ways.
Posted inArticles
As Colorado closes its coal plants, some schools neglect to prepare
The state’s closures can mean less funding for education and fewer jobs for graduates.
Posted inMay 2025: The Art of the Cruise
Losing more than a Forest Service job
Trail work, though underappreciated, made for a life well-lived in the woods.
Posted inMarch 2025: The Berry Pickers
As the Great Salt Lake recedes, industry rises
Utah’s Inland Port Authority works with local officials to boost development, but residents feel ignored.
Posted inMarch 2025: The Berry Pickers
The rise of the recreation economy
Public-lands tourism outpaces mining and drilling in much of the West.
Posted inArticles
Trump and Musk take aim at the rural West
Spending cuts hurt communities, economies and public lands.
Posted inArticles
Many renters are struggling after fleeing LA County wildfires
For many in the county, recovery requires a new lease, a new landlord, new schools and possibly a new state.