The Bureau of Land Management is taking comments on whether it should open about 28 million acres to oil, gas and mineral extraction.
Public Lands
Posted inArticles
What new national monuments are likely under Biden?
New designations could help meet conservation goals set by the administration.
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What the Inflation Reduction Act means for Indian Country
$720 million goes directly to tribal nations, but compromises raise questions.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2022: Going Under
Questions about the LandBack movement, answered
Number one: Why are Indians spray-painting my Starbucks?
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The climate bill’s blind spot
A closer look at the good and the bad of specific provisions in the historic climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act.
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A new biography resurrects a Western conservation writer
Bernard DeVoto’s work has fallen into obscurity, but the land remembers his legacy.
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Was Yellowstone’s deadliest wolf hunt in 100 years an inside job?
Veteran park service employees were involved in last year’s hunt, but one says he’s a victim of a federal ‘witch hunt.’
Posted inAugust 1, 2022: Our Fiery Future
How oil companies endlessly avoid cleanup costs
In Colorado, a sale of 110 low-producing oil wells illustrates a hot potato effect, and how funding remediation eventually comes from the public.
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New Mexico wildfire sparks anger at Forest Service
An enormous blaze dredged up longstanding resentments toward federal officials
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What the Ukraine war means for Western lands
War hawks and climate hawks alike are calling for energy independence.
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How the oil and gas industry is trying to hold New Mexico’s education system hostage
Fossil fuel interest groups are saying: let us keep drilling or the state’s education system will collapse.
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Wyoming jury finds corner crossers not guilty
The hunters escaped criminal trespass charges, but still face a civil suit.
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Utah wants to build an oil railway through a wilderness area
Questions surround the fiscal viability of the project and how this aligns with Biden’s climate agenda.
Posted inMay 1, 2022: New Ways of Seeing the West
From river bottom to meadow
A runner in Ojai, California, considers how access to public space isn’t necessarily a given.
Posted inArticles
Biden’s broken promise on climate?
The administration resumes oil and gas leasing — and fixes a dysfunctional system in the process.
Posted inMay 1, 2022: New Ways of Seeing the West
Park Service’s midnight-hour rule change benefits Telecom
The eliminated policy was designed to keep the public in the loop about new cell towers.
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EVs’ demand for copper escalates threat against Apache’s Oak Flat
A massive copper mine in Arizona could destroy an Apache community’s most sacred land.
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Biden pledged to stop drilling on public lands. What happened?
The president reversed a key part of his agenda that was intended to combat the climate crisis.
Posted inMay 1, 2022: New Ways of Seeing the West
Cows, coal and climate change: A Q&A with the new BLM director
Tracy Stone-Manning discusses how the federal agency sees conservation, the climate crisis and the Indigenous history of public lands.
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For cannabis farms, ecosystem science is scarce
An interview with an ecologist studying the West’s emerging, and rarely researched, industry.