A new generation of activists on and off reservations struggle for visibility.
Cities
Posted inJune 12, 2017: The Big Swing
The danger of urban ‘heat islands’
How built-up cities and higher temperatures threaten human health.
Posted inMay 15, 2017: Prison Town
‘If you don’t want us, tell us to go back’
The making of a California prison town.
Posted inMay 15, 2017: Prison Town
How private prisons became a booming business
The numbers and policies behind the immigration-incarceration economy.
Posted inArticles
A New Mexico electricity co-op declares its independence
A co-op leaves its power provider, whose reliance on coal kept prices too high.
Posted inArticles
Fatal Colorado home explosion reignites drilling safety debate
Have regulators done enough to protect public safety?
Posted inArticles
Police, la migra and the trouble with Trump
A ride-along with LAPD shows how tricky community policing can be.
Posted inMay 15, 2017: Prison Town
Suburbanites reckon with arcane drilling law
On Colorado’s Front Range, companies can extract oil and gas from private land — without homeowners’ permission.
Posted inFebruary 20, 2017: Overdosed
How a Chicano band blends urban and wild life
Quetzal finds a sense of place in East Los Angeles.
Posted inFebruary 6, 2017: River of Healing
How to see the urban wild
Practical advice for the nature-lonely city-dweller.
Posted inArticles
Western states react to Trump’s immigration travel ban
At least eight Republican Congressmen have broken with their party line in opposition.
Posted inDecember 12, 2016: How the Park Service is Failing Women
Tolerance in Trump’s America
Amid fear and despair, we’ll have to find ways to talk to each other.
Posted inArticles
An interloper’s eye-opening Thanksgiving
A city dweller recounts a holiday spent with a Native American family.
Posted inSeptember 19, 2016: Frontera Incognita
How humans nurtured the hated mosquito
Alexander von Humboldt and the spread of Aedes aegypti.
Posted inSeptember 19, 2016: Frontera Incognita
Sometimes a place
A family’s journey from the San Luis Valley to Denver, in illustrations.
Posted inArticles
Where are the fracking fights this fall?
Fracktivists look to exercise local control over energy development this November.
Posted inArticles
Partisan politics are pulling my town apart
Can lessons from ecology offer a way to find common ground in our polarized nation?
Posted inArticles
Can California’s water agencies keep up the conservation momentum?
Without mandatory regulations, some local districts fear a return to water waste.
Posted inMay 30, 2016: Trial by Fire
Why Hetch Hetchy is staying under water
A judge ruled in favor of San Francisco water needs over the valley’s restoration.
Posted inArticles
Mapping the large-scale loss of natural areas in the West
Urban sprawl, energy development, agriculture and forestry have an ever-larger footprint on the West.