Alaska officials accused American Samoans caught in a unique legal limbo of illegally voting but finally dropped those charges this month.
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Studies link New Mexico drilling to radiation, air pollution, health risks
Small towns in the Permian Basin have become a petri dish for the perils of living amid the nation’s largest oil fields.
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Tohono O’odham fight border wall on sacred, sovereign lands
The nation is using the courts and lobbying congressional Democrats to stop construction near Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Southern Arizona.
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Solar and wind continue to push coal off the West’s grid
Trump’s war on clean energy falters.
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Arctic drilling in Alaska won’t get environmental review in new proposal
The Interior Department will soon publish a ‘categorical exclusion’ that will rubber stamp oil and gas development in Alaska’s remote National Petroleum Reserve.
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Behind the cover: Drawing the ‘landscape of conversation’
Artist Armando Veve illuminates his process of world-building by pencil.
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The BLM may stop notifying landowners about drilling under private land. Ranchers are alarmed
Western cattlemen are poised to lose almost all opportunity to comment on oil and gas development underneath their property.
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Protect Sandia Mountain, our church
The Pueblo of Sandia urges lawmakers to transfer lands within the T’uf Shur Bien Preservation Area.
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It’s a make-or-break year for Hood River’s pear farmers
After a dismal 2025 season, the pears being picked right now could mean the difference between solvency and bankruptcy.
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Does your dog make you safer in bear country?
What new analysis of more than 300 bear encounters shows about the notion of dogs as early bear alarms or deterrents.
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Utah is killing the Great Salt Lake
Profligate waste and perverse tax incentives are drying up the West’s largest natural body of water.
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The Spokane burns show that not even suburbia is immune to wildfire
The Old Trails Fire burned through the city’s northwest corner — an area considered outside the highest risk zone.
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What’s destroying Utah’s monuments
The administration wants to open 3 million acres to mining claims and oil and gas leasing at the expense of the landscape.
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Tribally contested Badger Mountain solar project canceled by developer
Avangrid withdrew its application from the Washington state permitting process following years of objections and delays.
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A ban on chainsaws in wilderness is performative, not practical
An experienced trail crew leader argues that, in today’s forests, the rigidity of the regulation buries what it’s designed to protect.
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The conflict over permanent climbing anchors in wilderness
Climbers concerned about safety are pitted against wilderness advocates worried about overcrowding and unfettered bolting.
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Pueblo leaders, New Mexico lawmakers speak out to protect Chaco Canyon
Officials call push to remove an oil and gas buffer around the culturally critical monument ‘an absolute gut punch.’
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I used to ignore prediction markets. Then I learned people were betting on wildfires
My story on prediction market wildfire wagers exposed the gamification of natural disasters.
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A new section of the billion-dollar border wall in Arizona is bent out of shape
At least four panels of the wall in the San Rafael Valley were mysteriously damaged months before a controversy-plagued contractor even finished construction.
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The clock is ticking for New Mexico to cut Rio Grande water use
For now, the state is counting on voluntary cuts among vegetable and pecan farmers. But that might not be enough.