The buildup

Proposal would spend $175 million on housing infrastructure, mortgage assistance and rent-restricted apartment projects. Amid late-session political tensions, it may face an uphill climb.

“What I think is the biggest issue in this bill is I think It will prohibit us from putting any short-term rental restrictions on the ADU. That’s a huge issue for us,” said Montana League of Cities and Towns Executive Director Kelly Lynch, who spoke against the bill.

In blue and red localities across the country, researchers find a “California-style” preference for single-family homes, hostility to density and renters, a tendency to segregate types of development (industrial, commercial, and residential), and a default toward delaying or blocking the construction of new homes, whether affordable or market-rate.

In its original form, the bill would have forced local governments to allow for more residential density in many cities across the state and cut local parking requirements. That would be a big change for many Colorado cities that mostly only allow sprawling single family neighborhoods.

Colorado’s sweeping land-use bill was gutted once, and then gutted again. Now, House Democrats will attempt reconstructive surgery to restore the bill’s most ambitious — and controversial — components, including density mandates on local governments.

States like Oregon and cities like Minneapolis have adopted similar laws over the last five years, often in the name of enabling construction and driving down housing costs — the same goals shared by Colorado’s bill. So how have those changes worked out?

Colorado lawmakers’ attempt to completely overhaul planning and zoning in almost every municipality across this state with a single piece of legislation was ambitious, drastic, and rushed.

Salt Lake City mulls new ways to bring more affordable homes into more residential and commercial areas.

The code updates allow for greater housing density and flexibility, expanding mixed residential and commercial zones into more areas of the city.

Missoula officials said the number of short-term rentals increased 25% from 2020 to 2022.

Construction in the county has slowed down since its pandemic peak, but each municipality faces its own challenges as the residential and commercial development momentum eases.

Developers are proposing to build a variety of homes on about 81 acres in south Bozeman.

Ag ground preservation is “crazy hard” because the city feels pressure to grow to fund itself in the long-term, Nampa Mayor Debbie Kling said.

Property taxes owed next year in the Denver area may increase by as much as 50% because of skyrocketing home values, county assessors warned Wednesday, as the Colorado legislature races to ease the financial burden before the 2023 lawmaking term ends May 8.

A working professional who oversees pre-nursing programs at several colleges in central and southern Utah, Jennifer Liebert doesn’t fit the stereotype many have for people caught up in St. George’s housing crunch.But despite Liebert’s high-profile job, $60,000 annual salary and life amidst bucolic redrock cliffs, she often feels St. George more resembles poet John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” than a slice of heaven.

A Morgan County judge is fielding dueling lawsuits over Wasatch Peaks Ranch, an exclusive 750-home community and private ski area under development since 2019 on the 12,700-acre former Gailey property outside Peterson.

A new account by the Yale historian Ned Blackhawk argues that Native peoples shaped the development of American democracy while being dispossessed of their land.

In Wyoming, everybody wants influence over off-rez hunting — and nobody’s happy.

More than 90% of the surveyed coho returning to their spawning grounds on the Elwha in 2012 and 2013 were tagged hatchery fish. In 2021, less than 4% of the coho were tagged, suggesting wild, naturally spawned fish are finding their way back.

Media coverage of Indigenous communities has perpetuated harmful stereotypes among other shortcomings, according to a new report from the Colorado News Collaborative.

The bureau offices will be housed within the School of Journalism at the University of Montana in Missoula through a partnership with UM and ICT’s parent company, IndiJ Public Media.

The Federal Indian Child Welfare Act is at risk. In the closing days of Montana’s legislative session, a duel — or a duet? — of would-be replacements plays out.

The Interior Department announced a partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities to document the experiences of thousands of Native students at federally funded schools across the country.

The past history of uranium contamination serves as a backdrop as Laramide Resources seeks to begin mining. The Navajo Nation feels as if it has been excluded from the process in part because of the checkerboard of land and mineral jurisdiction.

The annual Gathering of Nations kicked off with a colorful procession of Native American and Indigenous dancers from around the world moving to the beat of traditional drums as they filled an arena at the New Mexico state fairgrounds

The River of Sorrows could see increased protection with federal legislation as a survey shows growing support for a national monument around Colorado’s pristine Dolores River Canyon Country.

The Nevada Democrat who’s the heir apparent to the late Sen. Harry Reid’s role as chief defender of the mining industry across the West is for the first time feeling the wrath of environmentalists, who otherwise consider her an ally.

The ranch owner suing hunters for trespassing through his airspace to access public land says he would drop his damage claim of some $7.75 million if a judge rules in his favor in a landmark corner-crossing case.

The Montana Department of Environmental Quality described a new approach to cleanup of the Clark Fork River that will leave more contaminated tailings in place to cut remediation costs.

The Montana Legislature has passed an 11th-hour bill prohibiting the state from analyzing the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions in its permitting decisions, clearing the bill to head to Gov. Greg Gianforte’s desk.

It’s not just about higher temperatures. With them will come stronger spring floods, harsher summer droughts, longer wildfire seasons and other threats to the Wyoming way of life.

A record-shattering heat wave that blistered the Pacific Northwest in 2021 carried an important lesson, scientists say. Places that historically haven’t had to deal with extreme heat may not be prepared when it strikes.

In Washington, a new team of epidemiologists is preparing for a hotter, smokier future.

In the 1930s, two women risked their lives to record a scientific survey of the region’s plants.

The proposal, which has sparked widespread opposition, would feature up to 400 turbines on 84,000 acres of federal, state and private land in three Idaho counties.

Idaho Power has a goal of relying on 100% clean energy by 2045. Today, its energy mix consists of more than 30% hydropower, 10% wind and less than 4% solar. One-third of its energy comes from natural gas and coal.

Crossroads Agriculture, which has 400,000 acres of land in production of wheat and milo in eastern Colorado as well as New Mexico and Kansas, has announced it will partner in development of two major solar projects in eastern Colorado near the towns of Haswell and Cheyenne Wells.

Massive volumes of wind-generated electricity from Wyoming will reach California and other southwestern states. Colorado? It’s on the path—but like an interstate with no exits or on-ramps for hundreds of miles.

For the first time in several years, the federal government will have at least two oil and gas lease sales in Montana and North Dakota.

“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” stands firm in its sympathetic framing of its protagonists, and then asks you to evaluate yourself.

But polling data shows a big partisan divide and age gap on the question of whether climate change is a serious problem.

According to FWP’s monitoring data, which spans more than 40 years, declining redd numbers were documented at 48% of FWP’s monitoring sites last fall.

Don Gittleson’s 11,000-acre ranch has become a testing ground for the wild canines’ future in Colorado — and for the hopes and fears of both their advocates and opponents.

Wyoming wildlife officials are considering slashing populations of three native predators in an area where a hard winter has cratered mule deer survival rates.

Utah's record snowfall may have eased the drought, but it took a toll on Mule deer in the northern counties, where wildlife officials plan to severely cut the hunting tags.

A study in Yellowstone National Park found that cougar kill sites foster nutritious plant growth that can keep their prey coming back.

In 2020, the population count of the Behren’s silverspot was zero. That didn’t stop Clint Pogue.

Colorado’s legislative leadership promised this year that the state’s water problems would be the “centerpiece” of conservation efforts but their keystone proposal focused on the Colorado River and widespread drought plaguing the West is to study the issue further.

A group of Utah Mormon Republican lawmakers walk into a Jewish socialist kibbutz in the middle of the desert.

It’s not a joke.

In rural Arizona’s La Paz County, on the state’s rugged border with California, the decision by a Saudi-owned dairy company to grow alfalfa in the American Southwest for livestock in the Gulf kingdom first raised eyebrows nearly a decade ago. Now, worsening drought has focused new attention on the company and whether Arizona should be doing more to protect its groundwater resources.

The Suncor refinery in Commerce City again released potentially dangerous sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide into the surrounding neighborhood late Friday night, the second time in April.

Bill seeking to split weed tax collections between rural roads, wildlife habitat, veteran services and addiction treatment clears its final legislative hurdle.

McCumber has served as Lee’s local news director for the west in recent years, including supervising the top Montana and Arizona editors for the company.

The fatal shooting of Collin Neztsosie exposes the tragic consequences when someone calls for help — and police answer.

Acclaimed Indigenous author Debra Magpie Earling returns with a new novel.