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High Country News

Drilling, one mile outside Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes

Since President Donald Trump was sworn into office last year, the administration has used its “energy dominance” agenda to require states to conduct quarterly...

Undocumented: A life, a home and a family in the rural West

This story is the first in a series that examines a community grappling with uncertainties around immigration in one of Colorado’s poorest rural counties. Before...
Dreamers and others march in support of DACA in Denver in September 2017, the year the Trump administration sought to cancel the program and the last year new applications were accepted. The Supreme Court is expected to decide by the end of June whether the Trump administration's argument that DACA was an unlawful exercise of executive power has merit. (Photo by Tina Griego)

What the battle over the Dream Act means for the West

For a short time, soccer seemed like it might be Daniela Benitez’s ticket to attending college. She didn’t begin playing soccer until the eighth...

‘Orphaned’ oil and gas wells are on the rise

In March 2015, Joe MacLaren, a state oil and gas inspector in Colorado, drove out to the Taylor 3 oil well near the tiny...

Analysis: What a new report on climate science portends for the West

The complexity of climate change means it’s hard to trace simple lines from cause to effect in daily life, much less plan for the...