Extreme heat doesn’t discriminate; the ability to escape it does.
Danger
Posted inArticles
California’s Park Fire rekindles trauma from previous blazes
‘The PTSD is horrible.’
Posted inArticles
Hiking in the heat
A conversation with the head of the preventive search and rescue program in Joshua Tree National Park.
Posted inJune 2024: The Idea of Wilderness
California’s homelessness and climate crises leave unhoused communities vulnerable to floods
Seeking shelter, people are living in flood control channels and other flood-prone places.
Posted inMay 2024: A River Returns
How attacks on energy substations play into the hands of extremists
When the West’s electrical grid is targeted, motives tend to matter less than ensuing propaganda.
Posted inApril 2024: Epic Journeys
A border need not be a wall
An immigration journalist on confronting laws and encountering humanity.
Posted inArticles
California’s transgender Latinx people find refuge and empowerment in community
‘We are beginning to have that safety that we always desired.’
Posted inArticles
A hot spot for avalanche deaths in Idaho reveals forecasting gaps
Without reliable information, snowmobilers are riding eastern Idaho’s enticing terrain — and dying.
Posted inArticles
Disaster disparities in the West
The risk of climate catastrophe is complex, but people of color often face ‘unnatural hazards.’
Posted inMarch 2024: Fertile Ground
The West’s hazardous highways
America’s car culture kills people
and wrecks communities.
Posted inJanuary 11, 2024: The Creatures in Our Midst
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.
Posted inIssues
As migration routes shift toward New Mexico, so does death
Migrant deaths in the state have jumped from 2 to 109 in a few years.
Posted inArticles
Report finds Arizona 911 dispatchers fail to help lost migrants
Pima County emergency services engage in ‘unconstitutional and abusive practices’ on the border, a humanitarian group says.
Posted inNovember 1, 2023: November 1, 2023
The climate crisis is pushing Washington’s prisons to the brink
Why not let people out?
Posted inOctober 2, 2023: The Dark Side of the Sheepherding Industry
Los peligros del pastoreo
Trabajadores con visas H-2A sufren en su mayoría precariedad laboral mientras sostienen a la industria ovina del Oeste de EE.UU.
Posted inOctober 2, 2023: The Dark Side of the Sheepherding Industry
The dark side of America’s sheep industry
Sheepherders face wage theft, isolation, hunger and alleged abuse.
Posted inArticles
Washington to adopt rules protecting farmworkers from wildfire smoke
Some labor advocates say they don’t go far enough.
Posted inArticles
What downwinders inherited at Trinity
In the days of ’Oppenheimer,’ an exhibition advocates expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
Posted inArticles
More than 200 wildfires require state of emergency, evacuations in Canada’s Northwest Territories
’It’s all just really terrifying.’
Posted inArticles
Extreme heat hits the rural Southwest
How community members keep one another safe.