After megafires in the region, some forest systems may never return to their pre-fire conditions. Now, ecologists are redefining how forest ecosystems might be restored in a way that increases resiliency.   Read >>

Rosie left for Colorado when she was 6 months old. Her family travelled by covered wagon, crossing the mountains and making their way north. The year was 1921. José Delores Cordova, Rosie’s father and a recently returned veteran of the First World War, simply couldn’t make ends meet farming and ranching the high desert plateau north of Taos, New Mexico. He and his wife, Maria Refugio “Ruth” Martínez, had gotten wind of decent-paying jobs in the sugar beet fields outside of Fort Collins, Colorado, run by the Great Western Sugar Company, and so they left their ancestral village of Cerro and joined hundreds of other Hispanic New Mexico families—los Manitos—migrating north for better economic opportunities. Read >>

On a blazing February morning, the Indigenous Wounaan territorial monitoring coordinator, two forest technicians, and a local farmer climbed into the mountains outside the fishing and farming community of Majé, near Panama’s Pacific coast. As they crossed the river, the farmer stopped and pointed up at an anteater in a tree. It was unusual to see this type of anteater here, he said — anteaters generally live higher up in the mountains, but deforestation has pushed them out of their natural habitat. Read >>

New Mexico’s forests regularly see powerful storm systems with intense winds. The December storm, however, stood out for what some climatologists labeled its “ludicrous intensity.”  Read>>

EARLY LAST SEPTEMBER, I walked up from the wetlands at Río Fernando Park and onto the streets of Taos. I’d passed the afternoon photographing a pair of Cooper’s hawks and a massive great horned owl along the banks of the little creek that cuts through the center of town.

The hawks didn’t seem to mind. The male glanced my way, then returned his focus to the grassy bank of the creek, where, I was sure, he’d spotted dinner. I held my breath, waiting for the bird to pounce. He did, falling in a rush of brown and white into the grasses and lifting just as quickly to a scrag of Russian olive, where he dined on a plump mouse.  Read >>

On a frigid February day in 2019, representatives from New Mexico’s Carson National Forest and the Taos Ski Valley invited members of Taos Pueblo to join them on a ride to the top of Kachina Peak. Kachina is a rocky, snow-dressed 12,841-foot mountain that towers over Taos’ world-famous ski resort. It is also an important spiritual landmark for the people of Taos Pueblo. Read >>

ON A BLUEBIRD MORNING IN MAY, Tony Godfrey pulls his pickup off a steep gravel road winding through a stand of ponderosa pines. The New Mexico State Parks ranger slings his Canon 60D over a shoulder and straps binoculars to his chest. Then he leads me to the rim of Mills Canyon, looking for a bright red bird. Actually, several bright red birds. And a blue one. Read >>

The following conversation took place February 14, 2019, between Kristina Ortez, and writer and photographer Jim O’Donnell. Ortez and O’Donnell have been friends for over five years. O’Donnell currently works part-time as the communications and policy director for the Taos Land Trust. Read >>

“Beer is mostly water, right?” the Springfield, Missouri, reporter says. “One of our local breweries gets the water they use from a nearby lake. Well, because temperatures are going up there has been an algae bloom in the lake. It’s not a dangerous bloom — but it impacts the taste of the water and, of course, the beer.” Read >>

In late 2015, the Taos Land Trust nonprofit purchased the 20-acre Amos F. Romo family farm not far from the tourist-filled Taos Plaza. Rumors swirled that a high-end condominium complex was destined for the farm, which had been abandoned for nearly 40 years. Read >>

Jimmy Sanchez, the 55-year-old farmer and mayordomo of the Acequia de la Sierra de Holman Arriba, tells me stories of the old days. His tales are laced with old New Mexico Spanish as we wade through ankle-deep snow up one of the brazos, or branches, of the ancient irrigation system. “If there is water, the people are happy,” he says. “Wilderness protects the water.” Read >>

It is autumn in the mountains of central Europe. Scatterings of beech trees light the forest in yellows and reds. Vlado Vançura, a former park ranger for Tatra National Park, points up a narrow, twisting valley toward one of the oldest stands of spruce in the park. The spruce are draped in light-green moss. They’re so tall they block out the sunlight. Read >>

Among the rolling mesas north of Taos, New Mexico, a lush piñon pine tree reaches skyward from a rocky slope. John Ubelaker bends to its base and counts the number of branches swirling from the ground to the crown. “Young one,” he says of the tree. “It’s about 20 or so years old. Lucky one, too. It survived the dieback.” Read >>

Along the cottonwood-lined rivers of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona, the Mimbres people did something unique: By the year 1000, these farmers were producing stunning ceramics decorated with naturalistic images of fish, people, and rabbits, as well as magical creatures and elaborate geometric patterns. And then, rather abruptly, they stopped. Read >>

After three months in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, Famara (who requested his last name not be used) left for the Gourougou mountain forest of northern Morocco. Wearing nothing more than shorts, a blue jean jacket, and flip-flops, the diminutive Senegalese man joined a makeshift camp comprised of dozens of West Africans hiding in the mountains between the town of Nador and Spain’s North African city of Melilla. Read >>

A flood of migrants from the Middle East and Africa has prompted governments in the Balkans to erect hundreds of miles of border fences. Scientists say the expanding network of barriers poses a serious threat to wildlife, especially wide-ranging animals such as bears and wolves. Read >>

On a dark, plunging slope thick with spruce, Austrian wolf biologist Gudrun Pflueger and a local forest ranger by the name of Vlado Vançura are poking at — and sniffing — a pile of feces… Read >>

“We have always trusted in nature to take care of us,” said Andrea Meini, the agronomist for the Cantine Leonardo da Vinci, a wine-growers cooperative in Italy’s Tuscany region. Read >>

There is a sulfur bog and a series of burping ponds in a little valley on the south end of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The aquamarine ponds that feed the marshy area below the valley emit a very particular rottenegg smell. Read >>