This September, the public was given just 21 days to weigh in on the government’s intent to rescind the Roadless Rule. The response was overwhelming: Over 99 percent of the 183,000 comments submitted argued against removing protection for public lands without roads. Yet the Administration is pushing to open up these lands to logging and other uses that will impact water supplies and wildlife.What’s needed, says Ben Long, is fixing up the many damaged existing roads on our national forests, along with other, long-delayed maintenance projects.

This year was artwork-installer Dennis Hinkamp’s 26th year at the week-long Burning Man festival that’s held in the desolate desert of Nevada. Why do 80,000 people gather in a place that’s hot, dusty and increasingly rainy—not to mention expensive? Hinkamp hates to have to explain that’s it’s something like ritual, homecoming or maybe even shared misery, so once back at home in Utah he tries to duck explaining. This opinion is the closest he can come to sharing what draws him back year after year.

The population of the Mexican wolf, also called “El Lobo,” is down to 286 animals that call New Mexico and Arizona home, writes Ted Williams. One problem is that some locals want none of the small wolves around at all. Inbreeding is another problem, he adds, and wolf advocates support the release of adult wolves to help the population rebound—a solution not in federal recovery plans. “Meanwhile, wolf haters are shooting lobos,” Williams says.

Part of her job at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, writes Marjorie ‘Slim’ Woodruff, is patrolling trails and picking up what hikers forgot or casually left behind. The weirdest find, which earned her the nickname “The lady who found the body,” was a sealed, shiny urn containing somebody’s cremains. There’s always something peculiar or downright perplexing to discover on a trail, she adds, from an empty backpack to a queen-sized bed sheet and just one shoe.

President Trump has turbocharged logging on public lands in ways that are likely to increase dangerous wildfire, writes Mitch Friedman. Inside the “Big Beautiful Bill” that became law this summer, a provision directs the Forest Service to annually increase the timber it sells until the amount doubles to 6 billion-board-feet by 2032. And with many environmental protections dropped, it’s the big trees that will get logged, leaving behind smaller, flammable trees. “This will worsen existing tinderbox conditions, particularly in the West,” Friedman warns.

The Wyoming man who deliberately ran down a wolf with his snowmobile in 2024 didn’t suffer much afterward unless you count a $250 fine for “possessing a live animal.” But as the story and graphic photos of the wolf’s suffering was retold, public reaction could be summed up as “horrified,” writes Wendy Keefover.But nothing changed in the state until last week, when a grand jury indicted Cody Roberts for animal cruelty, a felony. Now, writes Keefover, Wyoming has a chance to change its relationship with wildlife.

Staffing and budget cuts at federal land management agencies aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet, writes Tracy Stone-Manning, president of the Wilderness Society. They indicate empty ranger stations and wildfire teams stretched so thin they can’t keep up.

In December, residents of Teton County, Wyoming, learned they were the wealthiest people in the country, making an average of $471,751 a year. That news instantly intrigued four, longtime, "dirt bag" residents of Jackson Hole. What would it be like, they wondered, if they lived and worked in the nation's second wealthiest place—Aspen, Colorado? A visit to Aspen by road bike led them to reach at least one conclusion: Second-hand clothing stores are a must when you live cheek by jowl with the rich.

Over the last decade as the failing economics of coal shuttered a series of power plants, the air on the Colorado Plateau—when not sullied by the ever-lengthening wildfire season—became ever cleaner and clearer. Yet in defiance of the free market that boosted cheaper renewables, the Trump administration is throwing multiple lifelines to the flagging coal industry.

This week’s opinion is from Marjorie ‘Slim’ Woodruff, about the increasing popularity of electric bikes. Always up for a fight, Woodruff argues that their use at national parks and other public lands is a slippery slope of electric bikers clamoring for ever-greater access—to the detriment of trails and experience in the wild.