Though the western spotted skunk is less common and more elusive than the more familiar striped skunk, it’s doing better than its cousin back East, where populations have declined by at least 90% ...

Federal law requires agencies to review the environmental impacts of grazing, but government employees allege the system is riddled with loopholes.

Federal law requires agencies to review the environmental impacts of grazing, but government employees allege the system is riddled with loopholes.

The decline isn’t just in Northern California: Across the West, porcupines are vanishing. Wildlife scientists are racing to ...

One day in September 2018, as Beth Pratt was hiking in California’s Yosemite National Park, she encountered pile after pile of fresh scat along a creek flowing out of Kuna Lake. She knew it was only a ...

After repeated calls, texts and letters, the Forest Service sent the ranchers a “notice of noncompliance,” according to documents obtained via public records requests. The agency asserted that the ...

In early November, Texas-based New Era Energy & Digital announced plans to build a “hyperscale,” meaning massive, AI-processing data center complex in Lea County, New Mexico, the epicenter of the ...

Laureli Ivanoff’s article “ Working together is everything ” (September 2025) is a beautiful story. I’m ready to book a trip to Eaton Island. I so hope climate change hasn’t reworked the environment ...

HCN contributors won top honors for longform magazine writing — one for a piece about a new DNA technique that could bring closure for families of missing and murdered Indigenous people, and the other ...

Luna wrangles and assigns art and photos for the magazine and website, takes photos herself, and designs HCN materials and magazine pages. In her free time she can be found taking her camera and her ...

The FREE RANGE stories are part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation. Additional financial support was provided by the Fund for ...