When Carlos was 14, he became a marked man. He’d witnessed a gang execution in his Latin American hometown, and suddenly, his life was precarious. He fled. Entering the United States, the teenager registered with authorities and asked for asylum.That means Carlos is not a lawful permanent resident, and his ability to remain here depends on the outcome of his application. Despite limited English and without his parents to help, Carlos graduated from public high school in my western Colorado town, bolstered by caring teachers and friends who got to know him through their own children. Now 18, he wants to become an electrician, he says, to help the country he credits with saving his life.

There are about 15 million hunters in the United States (I’m one of them), and an estimated 13 million of us still use bullets made of lead despite its toxic effects on wildlife and human health, which is why I switched to nontoxic ammo years ago.Hunters are not alone in loving lead. The Romans employed lead in their plumbing, Gutenberg made printing type from a lead-tin alloy, and lead-acid batteries worldwide start our cars. Lead is especially suitable for making bullets. Because of its low melting point, lead is easy to pour and cast; it retains its kinetic energy over long distances; and it deforms on impact.

In early September, President Trump signed an executive order that continued to rely on big-bad-wolf myths. He claimed that living in wolf country is “very dangerous.”He then directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to determine whether gray wolves and Mexican wolves should lose federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Without waiting for an answer, he also directed Burgum to support Congressional removal of gray wolves from the endangered species list.

In late August, national headlines exposed the National Park Service’s efforts to swap land from one of America’s natural crown jewels, Yosemite National Park, so that a developer could give his planned resort direct access to the park.Federal land trades are meant to advance land management objectives, such as enhancing recreation opportunities and access. Unfortunately, many swaps are not initiated to directly benefit the public. Rather than federal agencies spurring land deals, private parties, such as developers or landowners, often initiate the deals that benefit themselves, not the public. Public land trades are also meant to go through a public process.

There’s a major reason that Yellowstone National Park attracts close to 5 million visitors every year. Yes, there are spectacular geysers and world-class trout rivers, but what’s unique about the national park is that it’s home to all the wild animals native to its area, from grizzly bears and wolves to elk, deer and bison.That they flourish is due to Yellowstone’s huge expanse of wildlands — you’d have to drive 1,000 miles to circle what’s called the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.But new policies from Washington, D.C., would dramatically reduce the size of these wildlands and threaten wildlife’s ability to survive.

When fire commanders try to figure out how to contain a major wildfire, the last thing you might expect them to deploy is a herd of beef cattle. But on the recent Gold Mountain Fire in western Colorado, cows are eating the “fine fuels” along a three-mile fire line on the Big Cimarron River.Putting that idea into practice five years ago would have required miles of electric fencing and a range rider to gather strays. Now, new technology has changed the game for cattle grazing by putting electronic collars — all solar-powered — on cows and linking them by satellite.

Picture a clear stream where spawning salmon undulate over clean gravels, pressing upstream through waters the iconic fish once vanished from entirely. That’s Lookingglass Creek, in the Umatilla National Forest.In the Wallowa National Forest, Huckleberry Mountain sustains rare species like the Wallowa rosy finch, and on the Malheur National Forest, there’s an Alaska yellow cedar forest hundreds of miles inland from its core range.These three national forests in eastern Oregon share something in common: They are intact roadless forests now on the verge of losing the protections that have kept them free from industrial logging and new roads. These lands are also common ground shared by Tribal members, hunters, anglers, wildlife watchers and anyone who values a quiet trail into the backcountry.

When I was 18 and first worked as a river guide, I assumed I had to be as tough — or even tougher — than the guys I worked with.It was the early 2000s, when few women were guiding. Though I loved being on the river, I often felt isolated, thinking I had to work harder than anyone else to be taken seriously. I believed that in part because I didn’t know the stories of women who had come before me.Little by little, I began to hear about Georgie White, the first female guide on the Colorado River through Grand Canyon. She started Georgie’s Royal River Rats in the early 1950s and made a name for herself running huge motorboats — stocked with Coors and manned exclusively by Los Angeles firemen. Her trips were known to be raucous and so were her outfits, leopard prints preferred. But the stories sometimes made her seem more like a caricature, a wild and outrageous woman.

When Wendell Berry, 92, died August 31, the West lost a writer who focused on the importance of rural land. He studied under the writer Wallace Stegner at Stanford University and wrote nine novels about characters — some like himself — who farmed and cared about the land.What also stood out about him was his public leadership — his readiness to march and commit civil disobedience, protesting against national, state and local government when he found their policies harmful and short-sighted. His targets included both a coal-fired and nuclear power plant, our war in Vietnam and the death penalty. He said he also opposed abortion. A Christian, Berry was a critic of organized religion for what he saw as its abstract notion of compassion.

Had Donald Trump been president in 1973, when Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into federal law, the Gunnison sage-grouse would be extinct. Close to 90 percent of all Gunnison sage-grouse remaining on the planet are in the Gunnison River Basin of west-central Colorado. The rest are in Utah. They’ve been extirpated from Arizona and New Mexico.The species is critically endangered in fact, if not by official decree. It is protected by the Act as just “threatened” because the Interior Department lost a lawsuit brought by Gunnison County, the states of Utah and Colorado, and ranching, livestock and energy-development interests.