Must we kill one species to save another?
Barred owls, with their vivid brown stripes, are acting like bullies of the forest in the Northwest, driving their smaller…
MoreProtect the firefighters who protect our homes and forests
You probably don’t see wildland firefighters on the job because they usually work in remote areas. But with wildfires moving…
Federal firefighters digging a fire line, photo courtesy National Interagency Fire Center
MoreEnergy dominance harms our public lands
I live in Jackson County, in northern Colorado, where hundreds of inactive and abandoned oil wells litter the landscape. Not…
More“De-extinction” is a fool’s errand
To breathless media coverage, a company called Colossal Biosciences now claims to have produced three genetically engineered pups of the…
MoreRural Colorado county gets ready for wildfire
When La Plata County in southwestern Colorado needed a director of emergency management in 2021, they found a winner in…
Shawna Legarza Kennebec Trail Race 2024
MoreIt’s still the West against itself
Nearly 80 years ago, Bernard DeVoto, the Utah-born writer and historian, wrote an essay titled “The West Against Itself” for…
MoreWe see the climate change in New Mexico
Here in New Mexico, our growing season has lengthened since the 1970s, even as stream flows have decreased. Fire season…
MoreLos Angeles is a wake-up call for the West—especially Durango
After fierce winds whipped fire out of brush-covered hills on January 7, entire Los Angeles neighborhoods burned down. Within a…
MoreImagine a river more fascinating than football
Imagine a best-selling, 900-page novel using “a sad, bewildered nothing of a river” as its centerpiece, connecting the earth’s geologic…
South Platte at 52 bridge image by Laura Perry, courtesy USGS
MoreNature is becoming unreliable
Twice a year, I hike a favorite trail in Oregon’s Cascade Range. I have done this for over 20 years,…
MoreGo all-electric—and help change the world
The company I work for recently built a new ticket office at the base of Buttermilk Mountain in Aspen, Colorado….
MoreDitch “inefficiencies” give us wetlands
Imagine Westerners waking up one morning only to discover that many of their most cherished wetlands have dried up, gone….
Since 1917, five generations have lived along the Animas Consolidated Ditch outside of Durango, CO, Patty Zink pictured, courtesy Dave Marston
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