drought

The Colorado River through the Grand Canyon National Park holds lessons for managing an essential and diminishing resource in a rapidly warming climate.

When you think of Chihuahua, Mexico, it's probably a dry desert with little plant life. But it hasn't always been so arid. Now, ranchers there are trying to bring back the tall grasses, wildlife and rain using a holistic approach to land management, a method that could be used in the American West in the face of droughts and climate change. Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards spoke with Alejandro Carrillo who runs the family's Las Damas Ranch and started the advocacy group Pasticultores del Desierto.

Governor Mark Gordon said the Colorado River shortage focuses attention on water storage concerns in Wyoming.

Five members of a Wyoming state engineer's advisory board recommended rejecting eight permits to drill high capacity water wells in Laramie County. The case has driven a wedge between neighbors since 2019.

An adoption program could spare 6,000 wild horses suffering extreme drought. Opponents fear some will meet a worse fate at slaughterhouses.

Two Western cities registered the poorest air quality in the world over the last week as smoke from wildfires in northern California turned the skies over the Rocky Mountains into a chalky white abyss.

Western and much of northeastern Wyoming is dealing with a serious drought this summer, and the dryness and heat are impacting stock growers in the state. Jim Magagna, the executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, said many livestock owners didn't get the normal growth of forage for their cattle. The little that was there has been drying up.

Seven years ago, a pulse of water on the Colorado River at the U.S.-Mexico border temporarily reconnected it to the Pacific Ocean. Scientists used the so-called "pulse flow" to study what plant and animal life returned to the desiccated delta along with water.

There’s an ice shortage in parts of the Mountain West, so you may not be able to buy as much as you need for that backyard gathering. The shortage is due to a big increase in events, the heat wave and a labor shortage. Distributors say it’s especially hard to find truck drivers to deliver the ice.

This summer, drought reigns supreme across the West. A reminder that, here, water is valuable. One source, though, seems safely tucked away--groundwater. But is it? Ranchers in southeast Wyoming are fighting to protect their groundwater, as one family aims to pump billions of gallons out of it. Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards reports.