Over the course of August, the Comparative Wests Project at the Bill Lane Center for the American West convened in Australia to initiate a comprehensive exploration of the social and ecological processes through which such countries in Western North America and Western Australia emerge, change, and persist. The project implemented a groundbreaking, multi-disciplinary program of exchange and research to investigate the processes and implications of creating, using, transforming, restoring, and maintaining the “countries” that continue to define the Wests. Read articles on The Bill Lane Center for the American West website and on the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment website.