Anti-gay violence in Wyoming is real, and it deserves a real response.
Writers on the Range
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How tribes led the fight over Badger-Two Medicine oil and gas leases
As a young girl, Blackfeet tribal member Helen Augare-Carlson remembers her grandfather anticipating his yearly hunting trip in the Badger-Two Medicine region of northern Montana. “It fulfilled him,” says Augare-Carlson. When she returned to the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning in the early 2000s, the Forest Service was beginning to establish a “traditional cultural district” within […]
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Why I’m fighting foreign garlic growers and their U.S. allies
Our little New Mexico garlic patch is raising hell in law firms and government offices.
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Privatize public lands? Start with grazing fees.
Advocates for federal-to-state land transfers have overlooked some of the implications, including higher grazing fees.
Posted inMay 16, 2016: Grizzly Face-Off
Real predators don’t eat popsicles
Once again, in Zootopia, Disney’s view of nature is sanitized and out of touch.
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The end of coal is bringing a wrenching transition
Mixed feelings from the anti-coal bandwagon as closures wreak havoc on small-town economies.
Posted inMay 2, 2016: The Gold King Reckoning
Want to build the second century of American conservation? Look to César Chávez.
On the eve of the National Parks centennial, Chávez’s son praises a monument to his father.
Posted inArticles
Why Rep. Rob Bishop’s promises of wilderness ring false
Famed forester Bob Marshall foreshadowed the loss of untouched lands in Utah.
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Meet the man who changed humans’ relationship with bears
Montana biologist Chuck Jonkel, who recently passed away, invented bear spray — and saved bears in the process.
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The drought isn’t over, so let’s not relax
It’s too soon to stop water conservation efforts. News of the drought’s end are greatly exaggerated.
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How bigotry is woven in with our Western roots
Rock Springs, Wyoming, has a largely unrecognized history of racial violence.
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This year’s weird Alaska winter should make us very, very nervous.
It’s time to think of winters like the past three as glimpses into the future.
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Inside a town where young people aren’t allowed
Last summer, my wife and I visited our friends, Randy and Abby, at their desert home outside Tucson. They live in a retirement community with age-restriction covenants. Eighty percent of the homeowners have to be over 55 years old and the remaining 20 percent at least 40. Anyone under 19 is out of luck. I […]
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Federal wildlife refuges are not up for grabs
Alaska’s attempt to intrude on federal wildlife refuges has incensed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for good reason.
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On becoming reacquainted with sandhill cranes
I’m on my way south to chase the first harbingers of spring in our High Plains desert home.
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Stop attacking pastoralists. We’re part of natural resource management, too.
A sheepherder speaks out about labor and environmental concerns.
Posted inApril 4, 2016: A Land Divided
You want to develop clean energy on tribal land? Here’s how.
Across North America, fossil-fuel extraction and production has long been robbing tribal communities of clean water, clean air and a secure future. The Navajo of the Southwest, the Houma of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Dene of Alberta, Canada, are some of the tribes sacrificing ancestral homes to oil and gas fracking projects, coal […]
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How Colorado is trying to get beyond zero-sum water wars
The new water plan represents an evolving moral algebra that transcends more primitive water law.
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No, Ted Cruz, Westerners should not follow in Texas’ footsteps
The state’s public lands boondoggle was a historical accident.
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It’s inevitable. There will be bikes in wilderness.
It hasn’t happened yet, but one day, bicycles and baby strollers will be welcome in wilderness. That’s the goal of the nonprofit Sustainable Trails Coalition, which seeks to permit other forms of human-powered trail travel in wilderness areas, besides just walking. Congress never prohibited biking or pushing a baby carriage. Both are banned by outmoded […]