The Magazine

In Northwest Mexico, rancher Carlos Robles Elías works hard to make his Rancho El Aribabi into an oasis of biodiversity, despite the challenges of a sagging economy and rampant drug cartel violence. Also, Arizona’s clean elections law, tackling gangs with Steinbeck, balancing fish and farms, and more.

North Dakota’s Three Affiliated Tribes are struggling with living in the heart of the Bakken Formation, North Dakota’s gigantic oil play; an “all of the above” renewable bill; extreme cartography; how Peter Gleick’s fall hurts California water policy, and more.

Bob Rawlings, publisher of the Pueblo Chieftain, has battled for decades to bring water to southeastern Colorado and, once it’s there, to keep it no matter what. Also, sodbusting farmers plow up the Northern Plains prairie, saving a rare Oregon ponderosa pine, healing art on the Navajo Nation, finding the Old Spanish Trail, and more.

Dead and half-dead subdivisions plague the West, especially in Teton County, Idaho, where locals are trying to deal with the unforeseen impacts of the real estate bust.

If you want to understand why Jared Lee Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others at a Tucson Safeway in 2011, look to Arizona’s soulless culture and vitriolic politics. Also, ground truthing Obama’s praise of natural gas, ecosystem services of water-cleaning forests, an environmental warrior still going strong at 95, and more.

Wildlife biologists study the seasonal coat changes of snowshoe hares for clues about how wild animals may evolve in response to climate change. Also, local planning gets challenged as a U.N. conspiracy theory, the politics of choosing judges, and a Wyoming naturalist seeks Sasquatch.

In Salt Lake City and other Western communities, billboard companies battle local democracy. Also in this issue: Buying out grazing permits to solve public lands conflicts, mom-and-pop energy companies risk a lot to find new reserves, A lawsuit raises questions about how far environmentalists should go to keep wilderness ‘untrammeled.’, and much more.

Along the 120-mile-long “Path of the Pronghorn,” migrating animals cross rivers, dodge traffic, battle blizzards and navigate the infrastructure of Wyoming energy development.

As whitebark pines in the Northern Rockies succumb to pine beetles and blister rust, hardworking climbers defy gravity to collect pine cones from canopies to supply efforts to breed more resilient and resistant trees.

Viva Farms is a “farm incubator” in Washington’s Skagit Valley, helping aspiring cash-poor farmers like Nelida Martinez start and successfully operate their own businesses.

Captive wolves and wolf-dog hybrids are kept all over the West for various purposes, often in poorly regulated facilities.

In Utah, scientists are exploring the site of a long-vanished inland sea called Lake Bonneville to understand the West’s past – and future – climate.

Why good policy and good intentions won’t stop big, destructive fires.

Reclamation, removal, and recovery

The dedicated volunteers of the Hummingbird Monitoring Network serve as citizen scientists, gathering field data on the birds they love.

The West’s largest tribe works to reform its government.

The marijuana growers of California’s notorious “Emerald Triangle” wrestle with bringing their shadow economy into the light of day.

China’s insatiable energy appetite is fueling a natural resource boom in the West.

A Wyoming farmer battles industry and bureaucracy trying to find out whether hydraulic fracturing – used in natural gas drilling – polluted his drinking water.

An air-tour businessman and Italian developers become deeply enmeshed in the politics of tiny Tusayan, Ariz., part of a plan to profit from the nearby Grand Canyon.