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Southwest Life

Andrew Gulliford
Position: Fort Lewis College

Morley Nelson, birds of prey, and Snake River Canyon

I can think of no better legacy than to protect a landscape in perpetuity for wild species, but the politics of preservation are never easy. Near Boise, Idaho, Morlan “Morley” Nelson sought ...

Billy the Kid lives on in New Mexico

Billy the Kid is alive and well in New Mexico, or at least it seems that way. He’s doing much better than Sheriff Pat Garrett who shot him in the back and thus violated the Code of the West....

Lewis & Clark, Pompeys Pillar, and bison in Montana

Returning home from the Pacific Ocean and a wet winter at Fort Clatsop in Oregon, Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery was delighted to enter the thick grasslands of eastern Montana. Instead...

The Hermit Monk of New Mexico’s Organ Mountains

The Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in southern New Mexico has unique geology, birds, reptiles, plants, and human history – including a murdered monk. As we approach the Chris...

A generous donation to FLC

Longtime resident, Karen Hunzeker donates her farm to Fort Lewis College

The Columbia Icefield: Dispatch from a warming world

What is a column about Canadian glaciers doing in a newspaper section titled Southwest Life? Well, we were southwest of the Arctic Circle. Understanding climate change is important wherever ...

Cottonwood Wash, Bears Ears and the character of canyons

In an extraordinary move this summer, The Wildlands Conservancy, with support from the Center of Biological Diversity and other donors, purchased 320 acres in Cottonwood Wash near Bluff, Uta...

Following the Colorado River: London Bridge to the Dry Delta

After the Civil War steamboats huffed and puffed up the Colorado River from the Gulf of California to Yuma, Arizona where they docked to supply the U.S. Army with ordnance and supplies. At Y...

Following the Colorado River from Moab to Mexico

With the two largest reservoirs in the nation perilously low, and the Colorado River Basin experiencing the worst drought in centuries, we decided to follow the river by bus from Grand Lake ...

Celebrating half a century of the Endangered Species Act

Fifty years ago, a bipartisan Congress did the right thing by a vote of 482 to 12. Congress passed, and President Richard Nixon signed, one of the most important pieces of environmental legi...

A Dinosaur Murder Mystery at Jurassic National Monument

Over 15,000 dinosaur bones, the densest deposit of Jurassic dinosaur fossils ever located, have come from multi-colored soils in Utah. How they got there, who was eating whom and what killed...

Singing birds, flowing waters: Arizona’s San Pedro riparian NCA

After a wet snowy winter, maybe it is time to head south to Arizona, soak up some sun and listen to migratory bird songs. We think of the Bureau of Land Management as owning thousands of acr...