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A young mule stringer helps keep a dying profession alive
Mules are still needed to carry supplies in wild, roadless mountains.
A guide to the new Senate
What incoming Republican chairs might do for the West.
Will falling oil prices kill the shale revolution?
The current drilling boom is more sensitive to price fluctuations than its predecessors.
A new map shows rangeland health nationwide
Searchable BLM reports and satellite images for 20,000 grazing allotments.
Tay Wiles
Nov 12, 2014
Web Exclusive
Analyst challenges predictions for Western oil booms
North Dakota and Texas fields could be at a fraction of current productivity by 2040, says a new report.
Jeremy Miller
Nov 11, 2014
Web Exclusive
Mapping wolf dispersal
A Northern Rockies wolf may have been spotted at the Grand Canyon.
Cally Carswell
Nov 10, 2014
Web Exclusive
Water use is lower than it's been in 45 years
U.S. population has grown by 105 million people since 1970, yet we somehow shrank our water footprint.
Jonathan Thompson
Nov 10, 2014
Web Exclusive
California’s sweeping new groundwater regulations
Will the law finally mean better aquifer management for the drought-stricken state?
Jeremy Miller
Nov 10, 2014
From the
print edition
USGS launches a billion-dollar initiative to map the West in 3D
LIDAR is about to become more widespread -- helping agriculture, pilots and homeowners.
How the West fared in the midterms
Summary: It's mighty red out there.
The Uintah Basin's tricky oil and gas ozone problem
Can officials greenlight booming development and clean up the air at the same time?
What’s Drier than David Sedaris?
The Ranter Defends Both Nevadans and Count Chocula.
Roots of rebellion: A forum
Four experts discuss threats to federal public-lands employees and where we go from here.
Mission Ready for Climate Change
Five things the West can learn from the military about climate adaptation.
Will California's Proposition 1 give rise to more dams?
While some environmental groups support the water bond on Tuesday's ballot, some call it "mystery meat."
Report warns of illegal drilling on federal land
Outdated rules and budget shortfalls make it hard to catch.
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Mapping wolf dispersal
Water use is lower than it's been in 45 years
Will falling oil prices kill the shale revolution?
California’s sweeping new groundwater regulations
Analyst challenges predictions for Western oil booms
Blake Osborn on A young mule stringer helps keep a dying profession alive
Barbara Hulet on Defuse the West
Rusty Austin on House of Misrepresentatives
Doug Smith on Western states eye federal lands - again
Doug Smith on Defuse the West
Just call John Hickenlooper the Silver Fox
Forrest Whitman
Colorado can boast it was the cradle of wilderness
Andy Gulliford
Not another “ghost river,” please
Laura Paskus
Multimedia
Lost and Found Montana: Cartersville
Photographer Jeremy Lurgio unexpectedly finds that life carries on in Cartersville, a small Montana town whose name was struck from official state highway maps in 2000.
Nov 10: Sage grouse found walking through Wyoming underpass ›
Climate
NASA finds methane hot spot over Four Corners
The culprit is the extensive fossil fuel industry infrastructure, not just fracking or coal mines.
The walrus detectives
What's behind the Alaska walrus haul-outs? Everyone's calling climate change, but the truth is, we don't know.
Climate change found to have spurred worldwide heatwaves
But floods and droughts have less certain links to planetary warming.
Wildlife
Offshore oil rigs can provide prime fish habitat
But will California's platforms stay in the ocean once the oil runs out?
Has the Obama administration hobbled the Endangered Species Act?
A new policy may set the law back half a century.
The Earth has half as many animals as it did in 1970
In the Western U.S., megafauna is on the rise — but amphibians are in trouble.
1995: I like to hunt, but I don't like to kill
Public Lands
How to pass a wilderness bill in 2014
Lessons from southwest Colorado’s Hermosa Creek.
Defuse the West
Public-land employees are easy targets for a violent, government-hating fringe.
Reports from the front lines
Excerpts from official accounts of threats against U.S. Forest Service and BLM employees.
Energy & Industry
Extraction taxes are on the ballot
North Dakota and Nevada voters might learn something from Wyoming.
Regulators release report on viability of nuclear waste storage at Yucca
But it doesn't mean the Nevada site is safe — or even back on the docket.
Utilities experiment on the rural Northwest
Real-time response to demand could radically shift how the grid operates.
Water
From saltwater to drinking water?
California considers desalination as a remedy for water woes
Flash flood chaser
One man’s obsession improves forecasting in southern Utah.
Don’t drink the water
Portland’s fluoridation battle shows how tricky it is to integrate science into debates that have as much to do with values as policy.
Politics
The Young and the reckless: Alaskan congressman’s offenses draw spotlight
Don Young might be the most volatile politician in America.
Making sure every Native voter has the opportunity to cast a ballot
Mapping threats on public land
Intimidation of federal officials is widespread across the West
Books
Hope and futility on the Great Plains
Review of ‘Wild Idea: Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land’ by Dan O’Brien.
Review of "The Memory of Stone: Meditations on the Canyons of the West"
Photographs from Utah’s Monument Valley to the Petrified Forest.
Speaking art to power
Review of ‘Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and And Art in the Changing West’ by Lucy R. Lippard