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High Country News

High Country News

A nonprofit independent magazine of unblinking journalism that shines a light on all of the complexities of the West.

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HCN has covered the lands, wildlife and communities of the Western U.S. for more than 50 years. Get to know the West better by signing up to receive HCN’s on-the-ground reporting and investigations in your inbox.

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Canada

Posted inDecember 2024: Land as Reparations

Get to know the Pacific brant

by Sarah Trent December 1, 2024November 26, 2024

Tech advances are transforming knowledge and conservation of North America’s favorite goose.

Ryan Madros takes a boat full of children, teens and adults to this year’s culture camp upriver from Ruby, Alaska. Madros and his wife, Rachael Kangas Madros, played key roles in organizing culture camp this year.
Posted inIssues

Fish camp in Alaska – without the fish

by Julia O'Malley November 1, 2024October 31, 2024

Yukon River communities fight to maintain their salmon fishing traditions.

Posted inArticles

Welcome to Daylight Nonsense Time

by Eva Holland October 30, 2024October 30, 2024

When the Yukon tinkered with the time change, it stretched the Mountain Time Zone to its breaking point.

Teck Coal’s Fording River coal mine in British Columbia at the headwaters of the Elk and Kootenai River watersheds.
Posted inJuly 2024

Pollution knows no borders

by Kylie Mohr July 1, 2024June 28, 2024

A long-awaited agreement will address Canadian mine waste flowing downriver into Montana
and Idaho.

Posted inArticles

Spring on Alaska’s Unuk River shouldn’t mean fighting for our way of life

by Lee Wagner May 29, 2024August 8, 2024

Transboundary-mining pollution threatens our sovereign rights.

Posted inArticles

How the Colville Tribes are restoring traditional lands and wildlife

by Rico Moore February 20, 2024February 16, 2024

The tribes are re-establishing native species wiped out by systematic colonization.

Maskwacis, Alberta.
Posted inArticles

New DNA technique could bring closure for families of missing and murdered Indigenous people

by Martha Troian and Hilary Beaumont January 31, 2024February 1, 2024

But experts say this risks DNA sovereignty.

Posted inJanuary 11, 2024: The Creatures in Our Midst

As glaciers melt, potential salmon habitat collides with outdated mining laws

by Maya L. Kapoor January 23, 2024February 1, 2024

In Alaska and British Columbia, climate change may open new rivers to fish – and to gold mines.

Posted inArticles

More than 200 wildfires require state of emergency, evacuations in Canada’s Northwest Territories

by Lyric Aquino August 17, 2023January 24, 2024

’It’s all just really terrifying.’

Posted inArticles

The terrible toll of the cruise ship industry

by Andrew Engelson March 29, 2023January 24, 2024

Noise pollution, mounds of trash and an inordinate influx of humanity damage ecosystems from Washington to Alaska.

Posted inNovember 1, 2022: The Futures of Conservation

The future of large landscape conservation begins with Indigenous communities

by Jodi Hilty and Kelly Zenkewich November 1, 2022January 24, 2024

In the Yellowstone to Yukon region, Indigenous peoples manage more than a quarter of protected lands.

Posted inArticles

Salmon need better infrastructure, too

by Ashlee Abrantes November 24, 2021January 24, 2024

Aging culverts block salmon migration between freshwater streams and the Pacific Ocean.

Posted inDecember 1, 2021: Visions of Wildness

How heat waves warp ecosystems

by Julia Rosen November 22, 2021January 24, 2024

After the Northwest ‘heat dome’ this summer, scientists look for signs of ecological ruin — or resilience.

Posted inArticles

Bringing wild bison and an endangered ecosystem back

by Louise Johns June 4, 2021January 24, 2024

A cross-border effort aims to return herds to the Great Plains and restore biodiversity and the land.

Posted inJune 1, 2021: Once and Future Fires

Supreme Court of Canada affirms trans-boundary Indigenous rights

by Anna V. Smith April 23, 2021January 24, 2024

The Arrow Lakes Band is one of many Indigenous communities bisected and disrupted by a border about which they were never consulted.

Posted inFebruary 1, 2021: End of the Line

Mountaintop removal threatens traditional Blackfoot territory

by Rosalyn LaPier February 1, 2021January 24, 2024

Stop the Grassy Mountain coal project before it starts.

Posted inArticles

How anti-Indigeneity proliferates around the West and the world

by High Country News September 25, 2020January 24, 2024

Across the globe, anti-Indigenous organizations and sympathizers work to undermine the collective rights of Indigenous peoples.

Posted inArticles

A Washington town isolated from the U.S. is now cut off from Canada, too

by Jane C. Hu August 4, 2020January 24, 2024

COVID-19 border closures have curtailed the international routines of the tiny town of Point Roberts.

Posted inArticles

Canada’s Oka Crisis marked a change in how police use force

by Rosalyn LaPier July 21, 2020January 24, 2024

Decades later, the standoff between Mohawk activists and police shows a stark comparison in militarization.

Posted inArticles

Whales are left to themselves as watchers stay at home

by Larry Pynn May 25, 2020January 24, 2024

There are pros and cons to COVID-19’s impact on whales — less boat traffic, but also less research.

Posts pagination

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