At the border, migrants and long-distance trekkers hike side by side but worlds apart.
Deserts
Posted inJune 26, 2017: Personal Pilgrimage
A network of trails that spans the country
The National Trails System, by the numbers.
Posted inJune 12, 2017: The Big Swing
Hooligan Island; Tree-hoppers in Joshua Tree; Kanye for president?
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inMay 29, 2017: The Cost of a Comeback
Why are coyotes so polarizing?
A new book seeks to make sense of the hated canid’s history.
Posted inArticles
West Obsessed: The prison economy traps the innocent
How a town dependent on incarceration came to be and what that meant for one asylum-seeker.
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
See portraits of gnarled conifers
A couple draws and writes about the complexities of bristlecone pines and humans.
Posted inArticles
Interior has yet to meet with Bears Ears tribal leaders
Zinke is losing the faith of a tribal coalition as a monument review looms.
Posted inMay 1, 2017: Change Comes to Short Creek
An end to Tucson’s growth wars
A conservation plan puts science ahead of politics.
Posted inMay 1, 2017: Change Comes to Short Creek
Ten years, 3 million pounds of soil and 1,800 sensors
The numbers behind the world’s largest weathering experiment.
Posted inArticles
California’s desert wildflowers burst into bright ‘super bloom’
Following the ideal combination of rain, sun and wind, blossoms abound.
Posted inArticles
See the landscapes that a border wall would bisect
Terrain along the Mexico border ignores the man-made divide.
Posted inArticles
Invade, steal water: The plant spreading in Utah’s wetlands
Battling a nonnative reed to protect Great Salt Lake bird habitat.
Posted inMarch 20, 2017: The Tree Ring
HCN gets an editor-in-chief
Managing Editor Brian Calvert steps into a new role.
Posted inMarch 20, 2017: The Tree Ring
Nature got your heart?
These photos tell the story of writer John Nichols’ love affair with the wild.
Posted inMay 1, 2017: Change Comes to Short Creek
The biocrust conundrum
By destroying biocrust communities, climate change may be making arid lands more reflective — which could slow down warming.
Posted inFebruary 20, 2017: Overdosed
The winding beauty of Southwest deserts
A collection of photographs capture nature’s rhythms.
Posted inFebruary 6, 2017: River of Healing
Naked in the desert
The sunburned, imperfect and deeper wild of the human body.
Posted inNovember 28, 2016: A Weird and Perfect Wilderness
Hope in a post-nature society
A writer seeks answers from Lake Powell.
Posted inNovember 14, 2016: The Long View
Science fiction’s warnings for the present
Kim Stanley Robinson on climate change and the precarious health of the planet.