Conservation biologist Pepper Trail recounts a question he was asked recently: "What keeps you going?" His answer? Wildflowers.He’s politically active, he says, because as a scientist, he’s appalled at this administration's defunding and mismanagement of our nation’s scientific enterprise, from the National Science Foundation to the Centers for Disease Control. But along with resistance, Trail writes, there must be recharge—a hike, a walk, or just sitting in the backyard. And noticing wildflowers.

Grand Canyon educator Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff is irritated by social media influencers who assure anyone reading that an arduous hike is no big deal—anyone can do it.“One of the 'in' hikes these days is the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim” she writes. “This involves hiking 21 to 24 miles with almost 10,000 feet of elevation change. This feat requires serious levels of fitness and preparation. Yet on social media, posters encourage complete strangers to go for it, even daring people to try it twice.”The result of this bragging? Alarming rescue statistics.

This June, the Antiquities Act turns 120 years old— a date worth celebrating, says Utah writer Stephen Trimble. Since Teddy Roosevelt signed the law on June 8, 1906, nearly every president has used it to designate national monuments—a total of nearly 170 cherished preserves.The Utah congressional delegation is not likely to celebrate, Trimble says: “They’re chomping at the bit to challenge this executive power.” In the Senate, Utah Republican Mike Lee is leading the charge against what he calls “presidential abuses of the Antiquities Act.”

M-44s are spring-loaded devices that blast cyanide into the mouth of any creature that bites or pulls them, writes Ted Williams.Now, thanks to the Trump administration, M-44s will litter 245 million acres of Bureau of Land Management lands. The problem, writes Williams, is that M-44s don’t just kill coyotes, foxes or feral dogs, they kill indiscriminately — from pet dogs to over 100 species of wildlife.Worse, there was no public involvement in the decision to bring M-44s back, and it’s unclear if sheep producers even want or need the cyanide bombs.

“Whenever life becomes too turbulent,” writes Utah writer Dennis Hinkamp, he likes to visit Robert Smithson’s most famous work of art—Spiral Jetty.Perhaps the world’s most widely known earthwork, it cost the artist less than $10,000 and took only six weeks to construct, thanks to rented heavy equipment and a hired crew.Smithson meant Spiral Jetty to erode, to evolve with time, and Hinkamp has watched this happen from its very beginning in 1970.

Montana writer Todd Wilkinson spent seven years writing the definitive biography of Ted Turner, who died recently at age 87. Turner was a complicated and accomplished man, he says, not just for starting CNN and 24-hour news, building a major league baseball team, his hometown Atlanta Braves, and starting a foundation run by former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth to strengthen the United Nations.Above all else, Wilkinson says Turner loved the West’s open lands and wanted to protect them for bison and all wildlife. As his former wife Jane Fonda put it, he wanted to be known as “a good guy."

With only simple majority votes required in each chamber of Congress, the management plan for the 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument could soon be thrown out, writes Scott Braden, executive director of South Utah Wilderness Alliance.Representatives who would like to replace redrock scenery with oil and gas drilling and ATV trails have been using the Congressional Review Act to cancel management plans that were years in the making. Now it’s Utah’s turn, Braden says, and all we can do is urge everyone who cares about the state’s bedrock canyons to tell their elected representatives just that.

Tracy Stone-Manning, president of The Wilderness Society, calls the administration’s new plan for reorganizing the Forest Service “destructive.”By closing dozens of the agency’s regional offices and research centers, staffers will no longer be on the land they manage, Stone-Manning says, and many will be forced to quit. She adds that the plan to move headquarters from the nation’s capitol to Salt Lake City will only further fragment and isolate the Forest Service.

Auden Schendler lives in Basalt, Colorado, where spring is usually measured by snowpack, river levels, and the return of kayak season. But after one of the driest winters in recent memory, Schendler says the rivers he and his friends depend on never truly arrived—a loss that signals far more than a bad recreation season.Schendler argues that climate change is not only reshaping the American West’s landscape and economy, but also eroding the rituals, friendships, and sense of identity tied to home.

Until recently, David Calkin was a senior scientist for the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station. Now a wildfire consultant in Missoula, Montana, Calkin says that staff cuts in the agency have already hampered its fire-fighting ability.Under the Forest Service’s planned reorganization, Calkin says there will be even fewer skilled management teams to respond to fires. The question, he asks, is not whether the fires will come. It is whether we are still capable of responding effectively when they do.