An AI server farm tsunami threatens to overwhelm the West’s power grid and water supplies.
California
Posted inArticles
The West’s vanishing porcupines
Scientists are racing to figure out why porcupines are disappearing from their former stomping grounds.
Posted inNovember 2025: Precious Metalheads
In Mendocino, river restoration pays off for salmon
Coho love the newly ‘messy’ streams.
Posted inNovember 2025: Precious Metalheads
Attack of the owls, emu-cipated emus, and say ‘hi’ to the bumpy little snailfish
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
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 inIssues
Western economies falter under the Trump administration
Tariffs, layoffs and federal funding clawbacks stress budgets.
Posted inNovember 2025: Precious Metalheads
For rural Californians, unreliable power has become the norm
Years ago, the state’s largest utility rolled out a power outage program designed to reduce wildfires. Customers now experience thousands of outages a year.
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 inArticles
What we stand to lose if national monuments fall
Can one of the nation’s best conservation tools survive?
Posted inArticles
The race to protect homes from speculators post-wildfire
Around the West, community land trusts are helping people recover from disaster — and prepare for the next one.
Posted inArticles
Wildfire is a growing threat to the West’s water systems
How fire and water managers can prepare.
Posted inArticles
Searching for the next generation of American kestrels
Around California’s Mount Diablo, chicks are hard to find.
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
How one California community is turning an old oil field into protected habitat
Despite federal policies complicating Fullerton’s conservation success story.
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
Get to know the American kestrel
This small falcon faces an existential crisis.
Can nest boxes help?
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
Booting out bullfrogs, bees make a break for it, and say goodbye to the billboard!
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inArticles
In stressful times, what do the plants and animals have to say?
The time-honored tradition of humans looking to the natural world can help us survive difficult times.
Posted inArticles
Meet LA’s detective for dead marine mammals
A day in the life of a scientist studying the aftermath of the city’s deadly algal blooms.
Posted inJuly 2025: Seeds as Sustenance
Our grief is what brings us together
On a rapidly warming planet, we are not alone in our fear.
Posted inJuly 2025: Seeds as Sustenance
Two-headed snakes, tourist-tossing bison and one very good dog
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inArticles
The Trump administration is asking park rangers to rewrite history
And some national park site staffers are pushing back.