The bear is a huge conservation success story, and it shows that the Endangered Species Act works.
Writers on the Range
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Why is an Estonian energy giant trying to revive failed Utah oil dreams?
There’s a new proposal to extract oil from shale, at great cost to the Colorado River Basin.
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Wildfire in the West has become an uncontrollable force
A former fire dispatcher says last year’s fire season pushed firefighters to the edge.
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Homegrown anti-government militias threaten public safety
As we saw during the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014 and earlier this year at a wildlife refuge in Oregon, violent extremism is not limited to war-torn countries thousands of miles away from the United States. Armed militias have expanded in size and sophistication and now present a threat to public safety and national security. […]
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The Park Service doesn’t need corporate sponsorship. It needs proper funding.
When I was a child, I remember passing through any number of national park entrance stations in our family station wagon. I remember the historic stone kiosks where the rangers greeted us, and my excitement as we began the slow drive toward the greatest wonders of nature. Visiting a national park felt a little like […]
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Don’t just save the Grand Canyon. Save the wider region, too.
We think we’ve saved the Grand Canyon. We established a national park that is supposed to remain “forever unimpaired,” as the Park Service’s enabling legislation put it. But the Grand Canyon is so deeply enmeshed in a spider web of connections to its watershed that a lot of work needs to be done to keep […]
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It’s time to put a price on carbon
The United States should set a persuasive example for the rest of the world.
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Why is logging dying? Blame the market.
Environmental regulations and endangered species protections are not at fault for Western logging’s decline.
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How the West nurtured eco-minded agriculture
The ranchers of the Western Plains’ shortgrass prairie started a movement to find a less destructive way to farm.
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Keep ranchers on the land, and the land stays open
Want to keep those wide-open spaces? Pick ranching over development.
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The land transfer movement’s great public-lands hoax
Idaho has sold off 40 percent of its state lands. Why would it do any different with formerly federal lands?
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Are we smarter than the hummingbirds?
We produce abundance. Are we smart enough to share and sustain it?
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New Mexico’s baby wolf swap worked. Why won’t state officials get on board?
It’s time for Gov. Susana Martinez to give wolf reintroductions the nod.
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How the buffalo survived to become our new national mammal
He was one of Nature’s biggest gifts, and the country owes him thanks. Charles M. Russell, 1925 The bald eagle has been the national symbol since 1782, but the Western artist Charlie Russell was right: The buffalo was far more important to the story of the American West. The story of the buffalo, once roaming in […]
Posted inJune 13, 2016: Water to Dust
It’s time for our legislators to stop ignoring science
How public policy-making ought to work: Get the facts, make the policy.
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How to remember a century of National Parks, for people of color
When I was 7, or maybe 8, I read a book called The Hundred Penny Box. It told the story of an African-American woman who was 100 years old. She’d put a penny in that box for every year of her life, and whenever she pulled a penny out, she told her great-great-nephew a story. […]
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Note to politicians: Don’t mess with fishing access in Montana
A candidate for governor is drawing heat over revelations that he sued to close river access on the Gallatin River.