I GOT INTO the environmental restoration business by accident. After military tours at sea and in Iraq as a Marine grunt and sniper, I demobilized back to Salt Lake City, where my family had relocated ...

He reached into cracks and peered into crevices with a flashlight, hoping to find an endangered marine snail whose shell recently has become California’s state seashell: the black abalone. Seven ...

FIRE IS A NATURAL PART of Western ecosystems, and many forest species crave its disturbance and the resulting regeneration. But starting in the mid-to-late 1800s, the federal government banished ...

The poet Rachel Richardson learns, through writing and motherhood, to defy fear. Sign up to receive High Country News ’ email newsletters and get on-the-ground reporting and investigations delivered ...

HCN has covered the lands, wildlife and communities of the Western U.S. for more than 50 years. Get to know the West better by signing up to receive HCN’s on-the-ground reporting and investigations in ...

This article appeared in the February 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Unapologetically Indigenous.” ...

HCN has covered the lands, wildlife and communities of the Western U.S. for more than 50 years. Get to know the West better by signing up to receive HCN’s on-the-ground reporting and investigations in ...

Alexander Lemons is the co-author, with Joshua Howe, of Warbody: A Marine Sniper and the Hidden Violence of Modern Warfare, which will be published by W.W. Norton in March. Sign up to receive High ...

HCN’s readers provide three-quarters of the revenue that powers our nonprofit journalism. Our readers sponsor subscriptions for every state legislator in 12 Western states, and every member of ...

Chandler Fritz is a writer from Phoenix. He writes widely on his Substack, The Arizona Room. Sign up to receive High Country News ’ email newsletters and get on-the-ground reporting and investigations ...

D. A. Powell's books include Chronic, which won the Kingsley Tufts Prize, and Useless Landscape, or Guide for Boys, winner of the 2013 Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Sign up to receive High ...

Kevin Beltrán (Pueblo of Zuni & Salvadoran) is a photographer, farmer and father. He lives with his family in Northern New Mexico and is passionate about documenting life and the architecture of the ...