Reshaping Yellowstone

“The long term impact from the flood is really mostly on infrastructure, staff and visitors — less so on the park’s ecology and geology and wildlife."

The floodwaters that breached Paradise Valley farms, ranchlands and fishing access sites last June also changed the river channels. As people continue repairs, the flooding has spurred conversations about where and how people should build along the river in the future.

Yellowstone National Park is, among other things, a giant laboratory. Scientists from all over the world visit the park each year to study its geysers, its wildlife and its fish. The historic floods of 2022 paused all that work, creating delays and shortening the window for researchers to get their work done.

The economic hit to Gardiner came fast and didn’t end quickly.

“I've been on a lot of reconnaissance after extreme events, and I've never seen communities pull together and just leap into action like I saw in Wyoming and Montana. Great lessons to other communities around the country.”

One year after historic floods washed out roads in and around Yellowstone National Park, the park is mostly recovered and open for business as usual.

Ta’jin Perez, deputy director of Western Native Voice, said he hopes the ruling will inspire others to learn more about the Indian Child Welfare Act and the historical context in which it was enacted.

After SCOTUS rejected challenges to the 1978 law enacted to halt the separation of Indigenous children from their families, traditions and cultures, Wyoming task force considers next steps.

For one, many adoption agencies and lawyers see the law as taking potential adoptees “off the market” and cutting into their bottom line.

After fighting to win back her parental rights, a young Native American mother prevailed. Then the state came for her second child.

Enrolled members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and Crow Tribe testified to the impact of climate change on their cultural heritage.

Plaintiffs in a first-of-its-kind youth climate lawsuit sought to illustrate both the feasibility of transitioning Montana to fossil fuel-free energy sources and the physical, emotional and societal dangers of a “business as usual” approach to climate policy in the fifth day of the Held v. Montana bench trial.

Chris Dorrington, director of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, testified that he hadn’t been familiar with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, before the trial.

The state called just one expert witness on the penultimate day of the Held v. Montana trial; closing remarks were scheduled for Tuesday morning.

Montana officials sought to downplay a first-of-its-kind trial taking place over the state’s obligations to protect residents from climate change, saying Monday that a victory by the young plaintiffs would not change approvals for fossil fuel projects.

"The Colorado River Basin isn't alone in water management challenges," said Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton.

Leaders of several tribes say they continue to be left out of key talks between state and federal officials, and they are demanding inclusion as the Biden administration begins the process of developing new rules for dealing with shortages after 2026, when the current rules are set to expire.

The price of water is rising across the Southwest as utilities look to cover the cost of the increasingly scarce resource, the infrastructure to treat and distribute it and the search for new supplies.

The Great Salt Lake’s dust storms aren’t just harming Utah’s air quality. They’re threatening the snowpack, water supply and forests in the Wasatch Mountains. A new study co-authored by three University of Utah scientists found the 2021-2022 winter was the dustiest on record in the Wasatch. And a whopping 23% of those dust loads came from the Great Salt Lake.

Heavy snow this past winter dramatically rose water levels in Colorado's Blue Mesa Reservoir. Just look at these photos from 2021 and 2023.

“It’s a whole new world out there,” Jennifer Gimbel, a senior water policy scholar at Colorado State University, said. “This is a great year but it’s not enough to get us out of this situation.”

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto announced Thursday she introduced legislation asking Congress to let the Southern Nevada Water Authority drill the underground pipeline through part of Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area.

Can a private, luxurious surf community in the middle of a wind-swept desert be rad enough to be successful? Developer Jason Christensen insists it can — and he’s banking on it. He and his partners have poured millions of dollars into the resort thus far.

Officials in the U.S. West take advantage of wet conditions to set controlled fires in hopes of reducing the risk of destructive blazes.

A conversation with County Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann on her community and what comes next for the Boulder-area suburbs.

Smoke from distant wildfires contributes a big chunk of Colorado's ozone problem, complicating efforts to cut the toxic gas, a study shows.

Where charred soil once was, a healthy amount of trees and plants are now growing. But there’s still work to do.

As fires now rage across Canada, their frequency and intensity bound to increase due to climate change, experts are urging planners to mind the connective tissue between fires and floods and back again.

A jury found PacifiCorp liable for devastating wildfires in Oregon in 2020, highlighting the risks utilities face if they don't prepare for climate change.

In a filing Thursday with the Oregon Public Utility Commission, PacifiCorp asked its regulators to allow it to defer any costs related to wildfire liability through June 2024. That would allow the company the option to add those costs to customer rates in the future.

The Donnie Creek wildfire, the largest ever recorded in the province’s history, is burning in one of the world’s biggest gas deposits, suspending fracking operations and raising questions about potential dangers to human health.

On Tuesday, state and federal officials will break ground on TransWest Express, a transmission line that will move electricity from the $5 billion, 3,000-megawatt, 600-turbine Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farm in southern Wyoming to southern California, a place legally mandated to switch to clean energy. The wind farm will be the country’s biggest yet.

Utah, one of the best places in the United States to capture energy from solar fields, has multiple projects in the works that will diversify the grid. One company is making a difference with its approach to community engagement.

The uranium mining hype continues to heat up, with a conflagration of news of drilling results and acquisitions. Meanwhile, the domestic uranium industry appears to be sinking deeper into its long coma.

New Mexico’s local colleges are training students to work in a plutonium pit factory. What does this mean for their future — and the world’s?

At the urging of several Western states, the Fish and Wildlife Service is reassessing whether the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bear population still requires Endangered Species Act protections. In an interview Friday, U.S. Geological Survey scientist Frank van Manen said the new study showing the bear's resilience and diet adaptability could inform the decision.

A recently released study on the threat of lead exposure in bald eagles found that 89% of free-flying bald eagles have elevated levels of lead in their system in the months following Montana’s big-game hunting season.

Two elk-related bills are poised to emerge from the Agriculture Committee, where lawmakers took on an unassigned topic because of dissatisfaction with another committee’s response.

Unplanned quota hike is a direct response to mule deer winterkill in the Wyoming Range. A lion hunter blasts the proposal.

Outfitters, guides and others in southwest Montana concerned about declining populations of brown and rainbow trout have formed a new, privately-funded organization to identify potential causes and remedies.

Four tribes in Oregon can now issue their own hunting and fishing licenses for their citizens, based on harvest limits informed by tribal values. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife shelved its planned agreement with a fifth tribe.

The governors of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and South Dakota signed a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Wednesday asking her to withdraw the proposal.

The bill would not only require the BLM director to withdraw the draft rule, but prohibit the bureau from developing "any substantially similar rule" in the future.

The Bureau of Land Management is developing a proposal to carve out parcels of public land from its 245-million-acre portfolio that carry cultural and ecological value, making them ineligible for development.

Crowding is increasingly affecting all kinds of public lands. Adjoining communities need to find ways to manage it, or risk harm to the attractions that make them a destination.

The misconduct has prompted some workers to refer to Yellowstone visitors as "tourons," a mashup of "tourist" and "moron."

“While we've seen this incredible surge of getting more people outside, we now need to figure out how to really instill this ethos of responsible recreation in everyone.”

Feeling let down by law enforcement and tangled in a web of complex legal jurisdictions, family members often conduct their own investigations into their loved one's disappearance or death.

In 2021, there were 30,060 new residents in Montana that had resided in a different state the previous year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About 4,278 of those people came from Arizona, followed by 3,740 from Washington.

Strong demand and tight supply means landlords are incentivized to get the maximum possible rent.

Proponents say the new approach will allow for more diverse housing types built within Boise city limits, which lends itself to more affordable options in the decades to come and more walkable, mixed-use communities instead of endlessly sprawling suburbs.

Colorado's ski resorts reported a record 14.8 million ski visits in 2022-23, with mountain towns reporting highest-ever tax revenue.

The ICELab in Gunnison joins with Moosejaw Business Accelerator program to foster next generation of outdoor recreation entrepreneurs.

New Wasatch Mountain Institute program strives to remove barriers for Black families wanting to explore the outdoors.

Colorado’s Front Range has already recorded violations of federal ozone caps for 2023 that put the state into the “serious”pollution infraction category, and regulators should voluntarily call for EPA sanctions in order to speed up health-protecting fixes, environmental watchdogs said.

A plan to dredge Utah’s largest freshwater lake and build islands with the spoils appears officially scrapped.

Removing the need for many projects to obtain permits under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, which governs dredge-and-fill discharges, would also erase important triggers for National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act reviews, said Robert Glicksman, a law professor at George Washington University. “The programs are intertwined in ways that aren’t immediately obvious,” he said.

Digging deep into a humble lake in Canada, scientists found a spot on Earth like no other — and a record that could redefine our history of the planet.