The Magazine

Why researchers are studying a group of Southwestern ranchers to learn about sharing, plus a look at the long road to protected habitat for the murrelet and the West’s disappearing fire lookouts.

Meet the men on trial for profiting off the Southwest’s drought in the latest issue of High Country News. Plus, the architects redesigning L.A. and the attorneys general taking things into their own hands.

D.C. correspondent Elizabeth Shogren travels through coal country to find where ‘keep it in the ground’ meets ‘keep the lights on.’ Plus a look at El Niño in the West, oil and gas compromises in Moab and more.

How industrial solar and wind are endangering wildlife, plus saving Washington’s wolves and a Colorado ranch that’s also an abbey.

Lisa Murkowski, the senator from Alaska, alternates between diplomat and bulldog in her rise to the top, plus the Pope on climate change, immigrants after the Front Range floods, and more.

Our special once-a-year Books and Essays issue, focusing on community and connection. Sarah Gilman finds that closeness means survival in the harsh, vast spaces of Mongolia as well as in the American West. Ana Maria Spagna describes how Maidu Indians came together to reclaim a sacred California valley from a utility company. Plus book reviews and profiles of authors like Erika T. Wurth, Mitchell S. Jackson and Lucia Berlin.

Senior editor Jonathan Thompson digs into the mysterious methane cloud above the Four Corners region, plus Montana farmers take on climate change and archaeologists try to save the Arctic’s disappearing treasures.

Cover: Storm clouds hang over the natural gas processing plant at Lybrook, New Mexico, one of the centers of natural gas production in the Four Corners region. Photo by Jim Caffrey

How the greater sage grouse became the center of the largest experiment in the history of the Endangered Species Act, sea lions eating salmon, apiaries of non-native bees on federal lands, and more.

Cover photo by Doug Dance Nature Photography

A series of stories about the way we think about wildfire in the West. Plus, a vanishing Rio Grande fish may foretell the river’s fate; the Supreme Court wants the EPA to consider the costs of new regulations as well as health benefits; and more.

SHREDDED: Will a growing, technologically evolved army of thrill seekers overrun every corner of the West?

Cover Photo: Day seven of a hut-to-hut mountain biking trip from Telluride, Colorado, to Moab, Utah. By Sergio Ballivian

Why the rare earths industry is about to bust in the American West, fracking-induced earthquakes, revival of a Montana mining town, and the sage grouse two-step. Cover image: Massimo Brega/The Lighthouse/Science Source

How genetic research on common species could be the key to saving the greatest number of plants and animals. Also, a bull trout comeback, innovations in agricultural water leasing and an ode to morel hunting.

Cover Image: Original illustration by Bryce Gladfelter.

A profile of Washington, DC, insider John Podesta, the Trans Pacific Partnership, and a contentious diversion on the Gila River.

Environmentalists battle to save urban wetlands in Los Angeles, an obscure legal provision becomes a new Sagebrush Rebellion tactic, and labor victories in Western cities.

Tucson rainwater revolution, the Bakken boom closes in on a national park, a look at the West’s drought, and more.

Strangers in a strange land: the HCN annual travel issue.
Cover image: A giant aluminum alien stands outside the Alien Research Center along Nevada’s Extraterrestrial Highway, by Finnish tourist Teemu Tuuloskorpi.

Lessons from the fossil fuel boom and bust in New Mexico, rock snot stream ecology, water delivery in rural Navajo communities and more.

Profile of the former Las Vegas water czar Pat Mulroy, solutions to rampant dust in Owen’s River Valley, community solar comes of age in the West, and more.

A long-standing dispute in Utah’s Escalante watershed comes to a head, wastewater spills in North Dakota oilfields, a statistician looks at the future of the shale oil boom, and more.

Public land access problems frustrate hikers and hunters; why greens are mad at the California governor; how balanced rocks can help us predict earthquake risk; explorations in an urban wilderness.