After the revelers leave, volunteers clean up every piece of trash they can find.
Deserts
Posted inArticles
Comb Ridge parcel sold to highest bidder
The privatized parcel within the proposed Bears Ears national monument could be a sign of things to come.
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
A couple living off the grid fought water law — and won
The decision could upend a Colorado rule that goes back 150 years.
Posted inSeptember 19, 2016: Frontera Incognita
A mother’s flight into the desert
An excerpt from Black Dove: Mamá, Mi’jo, and Me.
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
Humans and ecosystems mix it up on the U.S. – Mexico Borderlands
Everything moves across lines here. Nothing’s straightforward.
Posted inSeptember 5, 2016: When the Doctor is Out
Time to make peace with invasive species?
A conversation with climate science director Stephen Jackson about why and where we should tolerate non-native invaders.
Posted inJuly 25, 2016: Salmon Power
See new pictures of the desert’s natural art
In ‘Death Valley: Painted Light,’ the landscape takes on abstract forms.
Posted inJune 13, 2016: Water to Dust
The lost in canyon country
A new book recounts the many mysterious disappearances in the Western desert.
Posted inJune 13, 2016: Water to Dust
When water turns to dust
In Oregon, a cluster of lakes is drying up — with dire impacts for the millions of migrating birds that survive off them.
Posted inArticles
In Utah, the fight for a Bears Ears monument heats up
In a place where history, culture and geography intermingle, ‘local’ can be hard to define.
Posted inArticles
Why Rep. Rob Bishop’s promises of wilderness ring false
Famed forester Bob Marshall foreshadowed the loss of untouched lands in Utah.
Posted inDecember 21, 2015: Secrets of the Deep
The story behind a saved cienega in New Mexico
A rancher fights to protect a restored wetland against torrential rain and other threats.
Posted inDecember 7, 2015: Good Neighbors
Latest: California’s plan for conservation-minded energy development takes its first step forward
The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan is intended to guide energy development, while protecting wildlife and recreation.
Posted inArticles
Anatomy of a flash flood
After a series of deaths, a writer considers his own close calls in canyons.
Posted inArticles
Military and enviros align in Arizona’s public lands debate
Demand for housing, recreation and energy development means military bases could lose essential buffer land.
Posted inArticles
Obama designates three more national monuments
Vast stretches of Nevada and Northern California are now protected, bringing Obama’s count to 19.
Posted inArticles
Lake Mead watch: As levels fall, hydropower dips
Why Southwest utilities are starting to sweat.
Posted inArticles
BLM advances solar project that will harm bighorn sheep
The Bechtel Corporation’s Soda Mountain solar farm will undo decades of conservation in California.