A Diné writer confronts how to offer a hand from far away as tragedy strikes on the Navajo Nation.
Wildfire
Posted inJuly 2025: Seeds as Sustenance
First came the record-setting fire. Then came the record-setting floods.
‘I don’t trust the water:’ How post-fire flooding has destabilized a rural community’s drinking water.
Posted inArticles
What Sonoran Desert fungi are teaching scientists
The understudied mycorrhizal fungi are vital to ecosystems and may prove critical to the survival of fragile deserts stressed by climate change.
Posted inArticles
DOGE is gutting AmeriCorps
The 30-year-old national service agency had tens of thousands working on climate change, conservation and disaster response in communities across the West.
Posted inArticles
Trump asks Congress to cut at the heart of the West
The White House wants to alter life for U.S. hunters, anglers, RVers, off-road-vehicle drivers, backpackers, birdwatchers and hikers.
Posted inMay 2025: The Art of the Cruise
How the feds abandoned reservations to burn
Tribal wildfire programs are underfunded and overburdened.
Posted inArticles
Nearly all federal workers who investigate firefighter deaths fired
The Trump administration made cuts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which also halted a study of the causes of thousands of firefighters’ cancer cases.
Posted inArticles
The horses and mules that moved mountains and hearts
Forest Service stock animals are indispensable to trail work on public lands in the West. Trump’s radical upheaval is accelerating the death of a dying art.
Posted inApril 2025: A Monumental Reckoning
Bigfoot hits the bigtime, America’s Next Top Baby Zoo Animal, and the magic bus miracle
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inArticles
After losing everything in the Eaton fire, a family holds onto joy
Navigating grief displacement and the small moments makes recovery possible for one Black family.
Posted inArticles
Five books to help young readers understand wildfire
Age-appropriate narratives and beautiful illustrations teach children how wildfire touches people’s lives.
Posted inArticles
The Trump administration is trying to fire the ‘backbone’ of wildland firefighting
Last month’s terminations cut employees who serve critical support roles on fires.
Posted inMarch 2025: The Berry Pickers
The video game that makes the climate apocalypse look good
In The Alluvials, artist Alice Bucknell reimagines the Los Angeles water system.
Posted inMarch 2025: The Berry Pickers
‘I was determined to solve this problem’
#iamthewest: Giving voice to the people that make up communities in the region.
Posted inMarch 2025: The Berry Pickers
Wild, wild turkeys, Tiptoe the Tortoise & one beary nice B&B
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inMarch 2025: The Berry Pickers
The true cost of the huckleberry industry
The Ḱamíłpa Band of the Yakama Nation has wanted an end to commercial picking of a critical cultural resource for years. Finally, the Forest Service is expected to make a decision.
Posted inArticles
Trump’s funding cuts leave the nation vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire
‘What do they want, more fires?’
Posted inArticles
Urban wildfires shouldn’t surprise us
Southern California is jolted into a new reality.
Posted inArticles
Los incendios urbanos no deberían sorprendernos
El sur de California se ve sacudido a una nueva realidad.
Posted inFebruary 2025: Immigrant Stories
The power of prescribed fire
A wildfire journalist steps behind the drip torch.