The West is an exploiter’s paradise
High on a mesa where everyone can see it, a trophy house is going up in the northern Colorado valley…
Outside Capitol Reef, photo courtesy of Michael Shoemaker
MoreHard choices for the Colorado River
The seven Colorado River states – Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming – face a daunting mid-August…
MorePlenty of food, but not for all farmworkers 
On a summer morning in southern Idaho, the day breaks early, before 6 a.m. The air is stale, never fully…
Farm workers harvesting yellow bell peppers near Gilroy, California.
MoreWant to farm? Get a cash register
In 1991, when Lee Bradley started farming near Paonia in the North Fork Valley of Colorado, he was hired to…
Image credit: P.j. Briscoe
MoreThis rancher has radical ideas about water
If Jim Howell, a fourth-generation rancher in Western Colorado, has a guru, he’s Allan Savory, the champion of intensive cattle…
MoreLooking back to when water was plentiful
During his 50 years in rural western Colorado, Jamie Jacobson has seen a lot of flooding. While caretaking a farm…
MoreUrban-rural divide is alive and well
“The annual Western Stock Show puts cowboy hats in high-end restaurants and strip joints alike.”
Photograph by Allen Best, outside of Akron, CO
MoreThe West badly needs a restoration economy
“Restoration work is not fixing beautiful machinery … It is accepting an abandoned responsibility,”
Photograph courtesy of Allan Nash, open pit coal mine in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin
MoreIf You Like Fish and Birds, Hug a Cow
“Eighty-five percent of grazing lands — think sagebrush steppe or high desert landscapes — are not suitable for any other type of food production”
Photograph by Angela Mulligan, Courtesy of Unsplash
MoreIf the Water Goes, the Desert Moves in
“Without water, you’ve got nothing around here.”
Photograph by David Marston
MoreHere’s how to save the Colorado River
“By retiring less than 10 per cent of this irrigated acreage from production, we could eliminate the existing million acre-foot overdraft on the Colorado River..”
Photo by John Gibbons, from Unsplash
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