High Country News

“But losing her friend twice, first to cancer and then to the underworld of the cadaver market, reminded her that, no matter how much she attempted to confront death, there were many unimagined trap doors.”

For too long, California’s public school history curriculum has reduced Indigenous people to peaceful workers at the Spanish missions, and omitted their enslavement and suffering. Can California Assembly Bill 738 correct that?

In Death Valley National Park lies Devils Hole: an aquifer-fed pool home to one of the rarest fish species in the world — the Devils Hole pupfish. The pupfish has been the center of controversy between conservationists dedicated to protecting the inch-long fish species and Nevadans who believe the fish isn’t worth sacrificing their right to pump water on their land. Trent Sargent learned about how well the pupfish is protected the hard way.

By 2050, the ocean is expected to consistently flood Imperial Beach, California, but in recent years, high tides have already flooded many streets. The town is now discussing how to confront rising sea levels. One tactic is called a managed retreat, and the discussion alone has many property owners trying to sell.

Cisco, Utah isn’t a ghost town. Thirty-four year old Eileen Muza lives there, for now.

Outdoorsy types may love recreating in nature, but that doesn’t make them conservationists.

Veterans Stand for Standing Rock, a self-described “peaceful, unarmed militia,” was established in 2016 to help protect Indigenous opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. High Country News finds that the $1.4 million they raised on GoFundMe during the confrontation was “at best, squandered and at worst, egregiously misspent.”

Downtown Tucson’s redevelopment efforts are pitting property owners against each other and driving out renters. It has hit long-time Latino renters especially hard. Redevelopment will also mean more residents but not more postal carriers. Here’s how gentrification looks along one long-time carrier’s route, and what continuity means in a community.

For a teenager in the Siberian Yupik village of Gambell, killing a whale would be a rite of passage, and entry into manhood. But then, Chris Apassingok, age 16, was targeted with online harassment for his kill, and the town of 700 felt the weight of an internet-pile on tear through the community.

They don’t have their own Law & Order spin off yet, but they should. These are the men and women of law enforcement who investigate certain strains of agricultural crime. These are their stories.