On Andrew McGibbon’s 90,000-acre cattle ranch south  Tucson, Arizona, the West’s punishing drought isn’t just drying up pastureland and evaporating water troughs.

“We're having the death of trees like I've never seen in my lifetime. Thousands of trees are dying,” he says of species that have adapted to Arizona’s desert landscape, such as oak and mesquite.

Nearly 1,000 miles from McGibbon’s ranch, near Rio Vista, California, the drought on Ryan Mahoney’s ranch feels just as bad.

“According to my grandpa, who is 92 this year, this is the worst he’s ever seen in the Montezuma Hills,” Mahoney says. “Typical rainfall is 16 to 18 inches. We got three to five inches this year, and [the impact] is pretty drastic and dramatic.”

McGibbon and Mahoney,