Innholdsfortegnelse for November Vol. 54, No. 11 i High Country News

High Country News is an independent, reader-supported nonprofit 501(c)(3) media organization that covers the important issues and stories that define the Western U.S. Our mission is to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the West’s diverse natural and human communities. High Country News (ISSN/0191/5657) publishes monthly, 12 issues per year, from 119 Grand Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155, hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or editor@hcn.org, or call…

ON JAN. 2, 2016, ARMED anti-government extremists led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon’s Harney County. They’d hoped to ignite a national uprising against federal land management, but after 41 days, they accomplished little beyond creating a $2 million mess of trash and trenches. After the Bundys were acquitted of conspiracy and weapons charges, Ammon led an attack on the Idaho Statehouse in 2020 and urged his followers to travel to Washington, D.C., for the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Now he’s running for governor of Idaho. Meanwhile, in Harney County, the work of conserving the refuge and its surrounding rangelands has continued almost uninterrupted. Here, locals consider the occupation a mere bump…

The High Country News board of directors met in Seattle in September to approve our annual budget and kick off a strategic planning process that will result in a road map for the organization for the next three years. It was only the second time we’ve been able to meet in person since COVID hit, and it was wonderful to see each other face-to-face again. Perhaps the biggest news to come out of the meeting was the decision to sell HCN’s office building in Paonia, Colorado. It’s an idea that has been percolating for several years now, and we didn’t make the decision lightly. But we’re excited about what this represents: a new chapter for HCN, in which we’ll grow and spread our roots across the West. Paonia is still…

LAST DECEMBER, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Chuck Sams (Umatilla) made history when he shook hands with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) and became the first Native person to lead the National Park Service. He is also the agency’s first permanent director since 2017. Sams, who is Cayuse and Walla Walla, is enrolled with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation — a true Native Oregonian. HCN sat down with Sams to hear about his approach to his position. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Last year, Congress met with tribes to discuss co-management of federal lands. Now tribal comanagement is happening in Bears Ears National Monument. How do tribal nations, the National Park Service and the public benefit from co-management? Tribes benefit…

IN LATE 2020, Emily Burns watched in dismay as construction crews graded new roads and blasted off mountaintops, hustling to finish the new border wall in southern Arizona before Donald Trump left office. Burns is the program director at the Sky Island Alliance, an environmental nonprofit focused on the mountains of southeastern Arizona and northeastern Sonora, Mexico. Each new wall section threatens the habitat connectivity that the region’s wildlife — from jaguars to pronghorns — needs to thrive. “It was really painful to watch,” Burns said. “We felt like the tide was supposed to be turning, and yet that wasn’t happening.” In March 2020, Burns and I drove along a 30-mile stretch of the border while she installed wildlife cameras for a border wildlife study. When I called her in…

Thank you for your letters to the editor and for your words of encouragement to our staff. Thank you for buying gift subscriptions for your family and friends and for sending your generous donations — they keep this operation afloat in good and in difficult times. Thank you for giving us tips, story ideas, and critical feedback. Thank you for caring, for challenging assumptions, and for engaging in conversation with your neighbors and elected officials. Sometimes the challenges feel overwhelming, but we’re encouraged to know you are in it with us — moving forward with curiosity and passion, and invested in making a difference. We are grateful for you! The staff and board of High Country News…

MONTANA Weddings aren’t usually described as “gnarly,” but the word seems right for one ceremony on the scenic shores of Two Medicine Lake in Glacier National Park. Videographer Stanton Giles was filming the August nuptials when his camera was drawn from the groom’s promises of everlasting love to a dramatic commotion across the lake: A grizzly bear charged out of the bushes and tackled a moose calf while its mother looked on. Giles told Newsweek that the bride and groom were still in mid-vows when the wedding party noticed what was going on, and the festivities were forced to pause until the bear finished killing the calf. “He was there for just about as long as it took to kill the calf,” Giles said. “As soon as it died and…

IN THE 1960S AND EARLY 1970S, Congress passed a series of laws that profoundly affected Western ecosystems and human relationships to them. The Clean Air Act, designed to reduce air pollution, led the way in 1963, and in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act, sometimes called the Magna Carta of environmental protection, created a review process for federal projects. In 1972, the Clean Water Act established requirements for the restoration and maintenance of waterways, and one year later, the Endangered Species Act created protections and required recovery plans for fish, wildlife and plants deemed threatened or endangered. Conservation finally seemed to have a solid legal foundation. Six decades later, that foundation is in serious need of retrofitting. Though the West has the nation’s highest concentration of areas permanently protected for…

IT WAS NOON —AND LUNCHTIME. Armando Jimenez and Jesús Chavez took off their hard hats and sat down at a picnic table in Memorial Park in Marin County, California. The park is bordered on three sides by a playground, a parking lot and a baseball field. If a fire threatened it, it would likely approach from the fourth side, a steep hill that was, until recently, covered with flammable brush. Thanks to Jimenez, Chavez and their crewmates, that hillside has since been cleared of small trees, branches and twigs. Now, if a spark ignited a fire, the flames would be much less likely to climb into the treetops and start a dangerous conflagration. Jimenez and Chavez are part of the first cohort of FIRE Foundry, a job-training program that aims to…

It was 10 a.m. in San Luis, a small town in southern Colorado, and the grocery store had only been open for an hour. But already owner Devon Peña was dealing with a lot. Two workers were out with COVID-19, and the guy he’d hired to operate the forklift in the stockroom was proving unreliable. Then the butcher burst into his office and told him that all the freezers were down. “Oh, crap,” Peña said. “We’re going to lose thousands of dollars’ worth of meat.” The butcher and another employee began frantically moving food from the freezer into the fridges. Melting blueberries dripped blue goo onto the floor. For the past few months, Peña had faced a string of similar emergencies. Running a business isn’t easy. “I’m a professor and…

ALLISON MILLS MANUALLY DRILLED A BIT into the base of a massive yellow cedar tree on Prince of Wales Island, in Southeast Alaska. The drizzly August day filled with the dull squeak of metal rubbing against wood. Once she reached the center of the tree, she gently pulled the delicate core sample free, lifted it to her face and inhaled the wood’s slightly spicy, medicinal scent. “I love the smell so much,” she said. Mills, 16, is Tlingit and Haida, and had enthusiastically volunteered for the task. She is part of the Prince of Wales Island chapter of the Alaskan Youth Stewards, or AYS, a collaborative program that provides job experience, teaches leadership skills and gives rural youth a chance to support their communities and cultures. For 10 weeks this…

119 Grand Avenue PO Box 1090 Paonia, CO 81428 U.S. $5 | Canada$6 STELLA SAMMARIPA Nez Perce language program technician and recent NASA Minority University Research and Education Project Fellow Kamiah, Idaho My immersion in language and the histories of Nez Perce words steered my education, and my research, into the natural sciences. As a NASA fellow, I created a transdisciplinary habitat suitability model for Qéemu, our word for Indian dogbane. My ancestors utilized Qéemu to make twine, rope, basketry and nets, and it once thrived on our homelands, but it is now actively eradicated because it is toxic to livestock. We cannot go backwards in time, and I doubt that we will fully restore Qéemu to its historical distribution. I can, however, work to mitigate past harm. I understand…