Can we learn to get along — not just with people, but with other species and cultures? In this issue, one of our feature stories looks into the contentious relationship the residents of Nome, Alaska have with musk oxen – photogenic animals with a tendency to trespass and attack people’s dogs. Wolves are being reintroduced to Colorado, but how do you compensate wolf-hating ranchers when their livestock gets eaten? In our investigative feature, we found that renewable energy projects in Washington are trampling tribal cultural resources. The Samish are rebuilding kelp beds in Puget Sound, while the Northern Shoshone restore ancestral lands, hoping to someday return water to Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Wild animals sometimes adapt, even to wildfires. A geoengineering company’s “just do it” approach clashes with tribal sovereignty. If new rivers open for salmon in Alaska and Canada, will extractive gold mines follow? A one-room rural schoolhouse in Montana thrives, while cannabis growers meet boom-and-bust. A chef’s hybrid world helps inspire hybrid recipes. An essayist suggests that humans don’t have to behave like invasive species.
Fire is driving animals’ evolution
Can species evolve fast enough to keep up with changing wildfire conditions?
Learning to live with musk oxen
The species were introduced to Alaska’s Seward Peninsula decades ago, without local consent. Now they pose danger to life and property.
Can coexistence with wolves be bought?
When Colorado voted for wolf reintroduction, it also mandated compensation for ranchers. The hard part: figuring out the details.
How we’re working together
The 2024 fellow cohort arrives.
The state of the West’s cannabis economy
A booming industry is reviving communities and suffering growing pangs.
‘My advice to others is to start small’
#iamthewest: Giving voice to the people that make up communities in the region.
How solar geoengineering is clouding issues of tribal consent
‘Move fast, break things’ approach runs into issues of tribal authority.
Reviving the Samish Tribe’s kelp
Researchers are documenting the decline of once-plentiful kelp beds in an effort to reverse the trend.
Bighorns, badgers, coyotes and Christmas tumbleweeds
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Still Dead
A poem by Jill McDonough.
Live and let live
How we think about the animals in our midst.
A day inside a one-room school in Montana
An old model of schooling still has promise in modern education.
Letters to the editor, February 2024
Comments from readers.
A bear hunt illuminates the complexities of a marriage
Will the gift of a significant harvest be individual or shared?
The Northwestern Shoshone are restoring the Bear River Massacre site
The tribe is reclaiming their gathering place and returning water to the Great Salt Lake.
Chef Preeti Mistry is changing the structure of food and fine dining
The award-winning, celebrity culinarian celebrates hybridness in life and cuisine.
As glaciers melt, potential salmon habitat collides with outdated mining laws
In Alaska and British Columbia, climate change may open new rivers to fish – and to gold mines.
Washington’s solar permitting leaves tribal resources vulnerable to corporations
Tribal officials say the process threatens cultural resources and what remains of healthy Indigenous foodways.