After disappointing losses in Alaska and Montana, an Indigenous-led climate case is making strides in New Mexico.
Law
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 inArticles
ICE raids in Colorado highlight how violent the U.S. has become
After migrating to Canada, a journalist reckons with the grief and gratitude of having left.
Posted inArticles
Fix Our Forests Act divides environmental community
But it’s a rare instance of bipartisan lawmaking and the biggest wildfire legislation in recent history.
Posted inArticles
Interior is failing to conserve national parks
Leaving parks open during a shutdown neglects the mandate of future enjoyment.
Posted inNovember 2025: Precious Metalheads
Want fluoride in the water? Too bad.
Across the West, lawmakers are skipping over the will of voters and yanking fluoride.
Posted inArticles
More than 2,000 jobs could be cut at Interior during shutdown
Research, wildlife and conservation are in the crosshairs.
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
Decades of public-lands planning, overturned in a day
The House voted to nullify three Bureau of Land Management plans, and critics fear many more could follow.
Posted inSeptember 2025: Who Controls Our Food?
How an immigration raid reshaped meatpacking — and America
In 2006, large-scale ICE raids in Greeley, Colorado, and elsewhere, triggered changes to the center of the country that fed today’s nativist politics.
Posted inArticles
Trump looks to suffocate public lands
The administration and Congress divert funds away from conservation.
Posted inArticles
Court delays land transfer that would enable copper mine at Oak Flat
The Western Apache and a coalition of environmental groups have fought for years against the Resolution Copper mine, which would become one of the country’s largest at the cost of a site revered by the tribe.
Posted inArticles
The Trump team sets double standard on migratory bird rules
The administration said it will go hunting for cases of wind energy companies unintentionally killing migratory birds — something it has long argued is not a violation of federal law.
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
Chicken buckets, baked beans, liters of coke: the final meals of death row inmates
Julie Green painted the last meals served to people sentenced to die in an attempt to humanize capital punishment.
Posted inArticles
Mass layoffs can move forward, with devastating impacts for conservation and science
‘Shortsighted’ cuts could eliminate bird banding program, federal bee research and much more.
Posted inJuly 2025: Seeds as Sustenance
Western states step up to save their wetlands
The West’s vital wetlands are in trouble — but states are working to safeguard them.
Posted inArticles
When we harm wolves, we harm ourselves
Anger over these wild creatures shows a lack of perspective.
Posted inArticles
Inside Utah’s PR campaign to seize public lands
Utah used actors, AI, stagecraft and NDAs as it sought to sway public opinion and take control of 18.5 million acres of federal public land.
Posted inArticles
DOJ says presidents can revoke monuments, not just create them
The 1906 Antiquities Act gave presidents the power to protect objects on public lands. A Justice Dept. memo said the Act also ”carries with it the power to revoke.”