The staff of High Country News tackles tough questions about small-town agriculture.
Communities
Posted inOctober 31, 2016: A Monumental Divide
The bid for Bears Ears
The tribal push for a Bears Ears monument raises thorny questions of homeland and sovereignty.
Posted inArticles
How independent libraries are transforming some New Mexico towns
In Rio Arriba County, a community fix for a book deficit.
Posted inArticles
Wildfires spark where growth is sprawling
Nationally, nearly a third of homes built since 2000 are in wildland areas.
Posted inArticles
West Obsessed: How to fix a broken rural health care system
The staff of High Country News discuss the solutions small towns are trying to patch up their healthcare.
Posted inSeptember 19, 2016: Frontera Incognita
How humans nurtured the hated mosquito
Alexander von Humboldt and the spread of Aedes aegypti.
Posted inArticles
How for-profit detention persists in the West
Federal policy changes only go part of the way in dismantling private immigrant detention.
Posted inArticles
Can a Montana community run its own forest?
Local citizens collaborate to restore, protect, and utilize Alvord Lake.
Posted inSeptember 5, 2016: When the Doctor is Out
A cure for the ‘catch-all’ emergency room
In Colorado, a new movement aims to provide an alternative for people experiencing mental health crises. But does it work?
Posted inSeptember 5, 2016: When the Doctor is Out
Rural hospitals pool their resources to survive
A group of ten New Mexico hospitals is making a go of it in tough times.
Posted inSeptember 5, 2016: When the Doctor is Out
Telemedicine shrinks the West’s vast health desert
In New Mexico, an experiment in treating stroke victims at a distance.
Posted inSeptember 5, 2016: When the Doctor is Out
The West’s widening health care gaps
Changing demographics, including an aging rural population, put more pressure on health care systems.
Posted inArticles
Photos of the North Dakota pipeline protest
Background on the Standing Rock Sioux pipeline protests and how social media and climate activism raised their profile.
Posted inArticles
Photos from rural America’s veteran heartland
These Nevada counties outrank almost anywhere else in the country for per capita veteran populations.
Posted inArticles
Border wall divides lands, but not culture
A wall bars the physical passage of people in a park near San Diego— but music scales that barrier.
Posted inArticles
Wildfire rips through California’s windy Cajon Pass
Under potentially ‘new normal’ fire conditions, 80,000 people have been evacuated.
Posted inArticles
BLM partners with mountain bikers to combat illegal trails
The agency is increasingly looking to locals to help deal with high demand for recreation access.
Posted inArticles
A community curbs pain pill abuse, but heroin addiction grows
Interventions intended to reduce over-prescription of pain medicine may unintentionally be feeding a rise in heroin use in southwest Colorado.
Posted inAugust 8, 2016: Line of Descent
Columbia River ‘shadow tribes’ face a housing crisis
The feds have promised lodging at traditional fish camps — but haven’t delivered.
Posted inArticles
Report: Coal jobs will decline with or without federal regulations
A new study from the Energy Information Administration finds the Clean Power Plan speeds coal’s decline.