What you need to know about the law that’s shaped our region.
Michelle Nijhuis
Posted inDecember 1, 2023: December 2023
The epic history of the Endangered Species Act
The two-volume ‘Codex of the Endangered Species Act’ takes a long look back — and forward.
Posted inJune 1, 2023: Seen and Unseen
The West is an accumulation of stories
Complex and different to all, the region changes with time and tellings.
Posted inJune 1, 2023: Seen and Unseen
When fire goes feral
A conversation with John Vaillant, author of ‘Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World.’
Posted inMay 1, 2023: Reemergence
The illusion of discovery
How understanding our past can strengthen our future.
Posted inApril 1, 2023: The Path Forward
Finding tools for the future
Westerners continue to innovate despite adversity.
Posted inMarch 1, 2023: Moving Parts
Finding stillness in the whirl
The West is filled with motion and reflection.
Posted inFebruary 1, 2023: The Reveal
Water makes the rules
Political wrangling over climate change must concede that water obeys its own.
Posted inNovember 1, 2022: The Futures of Conservation
What can conservation learn from science fiction?
New works by Western authors explore the brighter futures of our swiftly tilting planet.
Posted inNovember 1, 2022: The Futures of Conservation
Conservation is an ecosystem
To protect what needs protecting, repair our ties with one another.
Posted inOctober 1, 2022: Making Refuge
Refuge is a practice
Protecting ourselves and other species has always been an active endeavor.
Posted inArticles
COP21: Let us celebrate the lack of total failure
The Paris agreement won’t end climate change. But it’s a long awaited step forward.
Posted inAugust 3, 2015: Outflanked
As wildfires get bigger, is there any way to be ready?
After one record-setting wildfire, a Washington county prepares for more.
Posted inArticles
Aldo Leopold explains it all
Should nature be protected for humans or from humans?
Posted inJanuary 12, 2015: What Are We Thinking?
Can Aldo Leopold’s land ethic tackle our toughest problems?
An argument for ‘voluntary decency.’
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
For the love of trees
Last summer, after 15 years in western Colorado, my family moved back to the Pacific Northwest. The move was a shock in many ways, taking us from dry to wet, rural to town, red politics to blue. The topography here is different, the wildlife is different, and the trees are very, very different. But our […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
The mysterious reappearance of the white-bottomed bee
A Western species that crashed in the 1990s may be making a comeback in Washington and Colorado.
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
New musical celebrates the nation’s first openly transgender mayor
‘Stu for Silverton’ debuted this summer in Seattle.
Posted inGoat
Plugging in
Cross-posted from The Last Word on Nothing, a blog about science Two weeks ago, for the first time in 15 years, I flushed the toilet inside my house. This — and by “this” I mean the 15 years of non-flushing — was not quite as gross as it might sound. Until very recently, my family […]
Posted inGoat
The carbon (spin) cycle
Cross posted from the Last Word on Nothing, a blog about science. We’ve got a lot of dead trees in the Rockies. More than usual. As the region has warmed, bark beetle populations have exploded, and they’ve been killing off massive swaths of pine and spruce. It’s hard to miss the damage, and when British […]