Minorities, millennials and urbanites are less likely to visit national parks than upwardly mobile, white baby-boomers.
Articles
Missoula and the revelations of rape
Missoula, Montana, home of the University of Montana, is abuzz with debates about rape, a football culture gone to extremes, criminal prosecution or the lack thereof, and ruined reputations. You can blame Jon Krakauer, author of “Into Thin Air” and “Into the Wild,” who has now tackled the subject of sexual assault throughout the country, […]
Rains bring incomplete drought relief to parts of Southwest
Snowpack is above normal in spots, but doesn’t make up for its lack earlier in the year.
American Indian students in Utah face harsh discipline
Research finds they are referred to law enforcement and arrested more than any other group.
A valley in Colorado fights for its rural life
I agreed to buy our 45-acre ranch sight unseen after my husband, Kevin, came back from a fishing trip to western Colorado’s North Fork Valley. He’d been suffering from a kind of emptiness that couldn’t be filled by our marriage, our family, or his work. It turned out he needed to get back to the […]
Wyoming trespass law is the latest in grazing battle
Questions remain over whether the bill prohibits certain data collection on federal land or just private and state.
Obama’s preemptive strike to reform Endangered Species Act
The administration’s proposal is aimed at warding off a GOP overhaul of the law.
Saving an island fox could be a benchmark
The recovery of the endangered fox on Channel Islands National Park off the Southern California coast might be a benchmark for modern conservation. With the cinnamon-colored fox due to come off the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s endangered species list in about two years, this could be the fastest recovery of a land mammal in […]
Should states be responsible for protecting the atmosphere?
A youth-led climate action campaign in Oregon gets its days in court.
Ranch Diaries: An orphaned calf gets rescued
Surrogate parenting after a cow dies at the Triangle P in New Mexico.
Sightseeing at an open pit mine in Arizona copper country
The mines are still in business, yet towns that once flourished are now mostly gone.
The taxpayer money that fuels federal land transfer demands
How the behind-the-scenes lobby group American Lands Council gets funding.
Courts force feds to consider climate impacts of mining coal
A Colorado mine sees the latest in a string of rulings that may threaten the industry.
A gathering of maritime minstrels on the Oregon coast
Pat Dixon wrote his first fishing poem in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. For 12 years, Dixon had gillnetted salmon in Cook Inlet, the finger of water that points from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage. But after the Valdez dumped its noxious cargo into nearby Prince William Sound, fishing in Cook […]
More Alaskan forests are burning, not just due to climate change
Populated areas are seeing a large increase in wildfire, despite suppression efforts.
Finding a confluence on the Bright Angel Trail
The young man who looked like he was from the Middle East was sitting against the wall of the Grand Canyon, a Go-Pro camera strapped to his chest. My aching quads begged for a break, so I stopped, said hello, and pulled out my own camera lest he think I was intruding. He had chosen a […]
New border security bill would roll back public lands protections
Sen. John McCain’s proposal would give Border Patrol more immediate access to sensitive borderlands.
Are cows drinking the West dry?
On a recent trip to California, I visited the North Coast, where spring usually means green hills with deep grass strewn with lupine and bright orange poppies bobbing in sea breezes. This year, we found stunted grass, browning hills and the local news obsessing on the worst drought in California’s recorded history. Suddenly, the most […]
Western states wrestle with Obama’s Clean Power Plan
Closed-door sessions on the EPA’s proposal to cut coal-fired power plant emissions.
Tesla’s new home battery: energy revolution or pure hype?
Powerwall aims to fill a missing link to integrate wind and solar into the grid.
