Blowholes are more common than you think.
Desert
Posted inMarch 2024: Fertile Ground
The desert’s Radical Faeries
How a gathering of gay men in the Sonoran Desert started a worldwide movement rooted in nature.
Posted inNovember 1, 2023: November 1, 2023
How Green River celebrates its melon farmers
Thousands turn out for Melon Days, but the future looks uncertain.
Posted inArticles
The National Park Service’s efforts to protect Quitobaquito Springs almost destroyed it
‘Indigenous presence is vital to the stewardship of the land.’
Posted inArticles
What are the real impacts on Burning Man’s playa?
Viral attention on Black Rock City’s annual festival highlight environmental consequences.
Posted inArticles
Scene from a Mojave oasis
Our reporter’s notebook from a stretch of road in the Nevada desert.
Posted inArticles
A weed is swallowing the Sonoran Desert
The invasive Stinknet plant fuels wildfires, irritates lungs and smothers native flora. ‘It’s everywhere’ and removal efforts in Arizona can’t keep up.
Posted inJanuary 1, 2023: Ripple Effects
Why are Saudi farmers pumping Arizona groundwater?
A conversation with Natalie Koch, author of ‘Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arabia and Arizona.’
Posted inJune 1, 2022: A Legacy of Weapons and War
Witness to the Cold War in the desert
Terry Tempest Williams on Emmet Gowin’s unflinching photos of the Nevada Test Site.
Posted inJune 1, 2022: A Legacy of Weapons and War
poem after a poem by césar vallejo w/ a nod to donald justice
A poem by Jay Hopler.
Posted inArticles
Searching for the lost: The people called to find missing migrants
Many Aguilas del Desierto volunteers once crossed the dangerous desert in the Borderlands themselves.
Posted inJuly 1, 2021: An Urban Greenspace Revolution
A hallucinogenic toad in peril
How a Sonoran Desert species got caught up in the commodification of spiritual awakening.
Posted inMarch 1, 2021: The Rough Road Ahead
In Nogales, joy endures
The Borderlands may be militarized, but for writer Alberto Ríos, it’s still home.
Posted inMarch 1, 2021: The Rough Road Ahead
The alternatives to Instagram-ready desert art
Popular installations often frame the desert as austere and inhospitable. But there are artists who look at the land differently.
Posted inArticles
After months of border wall construction, a look at the damage done
As President Biden takes the helm, conservation groups take stock of the border wall’s environmental impacts.
Posted inArticles
Diverted, drained and dwindling: What’s the fate of New Mexico’s Rio Grande?
Century-old water rights and climate change means the river may never flow through many communities year-round again.
Posted inJuly 1, 2020: 'I am here fighting for my life and future children'
The only catfish native to the Western U.S. is running out of water
The Yaqui catfish was going extinct. Then came the border wall.
Posted inArticles
The border wall threatens decades of binational wildlife conservation
Binational groups are preserving migratory corridors and restoring degraded areas in the Borderlands. Will the landscape be severed?
Posted inArticles
Scott Warren reflects on the Borderlands
After two years of federal prosecution the humanitarian aid worker was acquitted in November.