Innholdsfortegnelse for February Vol. 56, No. 02 i High Country News

ON DEC. 18, DIGNITARIES watched as five wolves bounded from crates, loped across snow and brittle grass, and vanished into scraggly forest. Tranquilized with darts fired from helicopters in Oregon a day earlier, the quintet had been fitted with tracking collars, flown to Colorado and driven to a remote corner of Grand County, where they became the first wolves released under the state’s voter-led reintroduction program. In the following days, Colorado Parks and Wildlife freed another five wolves; over the next several years, it plans to release up to 40 more. In theory, the canids are well-positioned to flourish: Colorado boasts 8.3 million acres of public land and the West’s largest elk herd. But the Centennial State is also home to more than 3 million head of cattle and sheep…

FROM HELENA, MONTANA, drive about 90 miles, winding past mountains and the Missouri River, to Great Falls. Keep driving, until there are no more buildings, not even houses, just a two-lane road splitting endless fields of wheat and barley. Wave to some trucks, sail past silos. And then take a left. Soon a small building will appear. Look for the American flag, the swing set, the John Deere. This is Benton Lake School. It’s one of roughly 50 active one-room schoolhouses in Montana, the state that may have the most in the country. “It’s just like the olden days,” said Dawn Dawson, Benton Lake’s teacher (and custodian, and librarian, and lunch monitor). “Except our school was built in the ’60s.” The building, constructed when two nearby schools merged, doesn’t resemble…

IN THE AUTUMN of 2021, an 800-page report crossed the desk of Washington state lands archaeologist Sara Palmer. It came from an energy developer called Avangrid Renewables, which was proposing to build a solar facility partly on a parcel of public land managed by the state. Palmer was in charge of reviewing reports like these, which are based on land surveys intended to identify archaeologically and culturally significant resources. Developers have proposed dozens of similar solar and wind projects across the state — a “green rush” of sorts amid rising fears of climate change. With the projects came more reports. Often, Palmer, who worked for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR), read the reports and signed off; sometimes she shared notes on any concerns or told the developer…

Like a lot of the kids in Southeast LA, I grew up with asthma. We had health conditions brought on by industrialization, poor air quality and pollution. Because we’re in such a heavily industrialized area, our surface temperatures are high, and that can cause heat exhaustion, too. When you look at other places with higher incomes and fewer people of color, kids don’t have those issues growing up. That’s what got me into environmental justice: the fact that my family was being hit so hard by pollution, and there was something that I could do about it. My advice to others is to start small: Any kind of community you can create, whether it be at school or at home, really helps build the support system that you’re going to…

AS HUMAN-CAUSED climate change points a giant hair dryer at Western North America’s glaciers, melting them ever more rapidly, potential Pacific salmon habitat is opening up. New river systems are starting to flow, and rain and snowmelt will keep many running even after the ice disappears. In some, salmon are appearing for the first time. But mining companies are homing in, too. According to peer-reviewed research published in Science last November, there’s substantial overlap between potential future salmon habitat and new mining claims in Southeast Alaska and in western British Columbia, where many Pacific salmon spawn. But there is hope: The establishment of Indigenous protected areas in British Columbia could protect at least some of these new waterways, and their fish, for future generations. “The science is very clear,” said…

BY THE AFTERNOON of Dec. 13, 2022, idyllic winter conditions had finally arrived in Nome, Alaska. Famous for hosting the finish of the Iditarod sled dog race, this remote town is closer to Russia than it is to Anchorage; here, vast tundra landscapes meet the sea ice that forms over the Bering Strait. A series of dreaded rain-on-snow events earlier in the month had made winter travel miserable. But now, a fresh white blanket covered the rolling hills, reflecting the pinks and blues of a clear sub-Arctic sky. Snowmachines were whining, and the local mushers were looking forward to another season of exercising their sled dogs. One of them, Curtis Worland, took a break from work to visit his kennel on the outskirts of Nome. Worland was a court services…

An exploration of living in direct relationship with the land, water, plants and animals in and around Uŋalaqłiq (Unalakleet), on the west coast of what’s now called Alaska. “YOU CAN FEEL the berries in there,” said Timm, my husband, touching the black bear’s stomach after he pulled the organs from the body. Our young son and I felt the hard round balls through the bear’s fleshy pink stomach. We were curious, so Timm cut the stomach open. Quarts and quarts of crowberries spilled out, and we all stood in awe of how many berries it takes to sustain such an animal. As Timm pulled heavy handfuls of viscera fat, pink and pretty, from the belly of the bear, my own belly bubbled with thanks. After seeing the berries, the little…

TOBY MCLEOD grew up on a fishing boat. Before he could walk, he said, he swears he remembers dozing off in bed and waking up among fishing gear, his father having carried him aboard in the early morning darkness. McLeod’s father and grandfather were both tribal fishermen; his father started at the age of 11, in 1957. On fishing trips, he and his dad would take their boat up to Cattle Point, a lookout on the southeastern tip of San Juan Island, the second-largest island in the San Juan Archipelago in Washington’s Puget Sound. There, in the heart of Samish traditional territory, grassy dunes rose from the calm sea water, ringed with jagged glacier-carved rocks. Just offshore, thick kelp stalks reached up from under the surface, connected to bulb-shaped heads…

ON A CRISP and sunny November morning, the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation welcomed nearly 400 people onto their land to plant 8,500 trees and shrubs. Steam rose from the Bear River’s hot springs. As volunteers arrived, the tribe’s conservation partners unloaded black plastic trays filled with cuttings of willow, cottonwood, chokecherry and more. Brad Parry, the tribe’s vice chairman, stood in a pickup truck bed and greeted tribal members, environmental activists, college students and church groups. “This is the Bear River Massacre site,” he said, “what we call Wuda Ogwa, or Bear River.” Here, on Jan. 29, 1863, the U.S. Army murdered an estimated 400 Shoshone people, decimating the Northwestern Band in one of the deadliest massacres of Native people in U.S. history. Afterward, Mormon settlers dispossessed the…

TRINIDAD, COLORADO, a town of about 8,000 nestled in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, has long drawn dreamers and seekers. In the late 19th century, its bountiful coal deposits drew immigrants to work the mines and run local businesses. Later, people came from all over to see Stanley Biber, one of the nation’s only skilled gender-reassignment surgeons. But the coal seams emptied and the mines shut down and Biber’s practice moved to California, leaving many of the town’s stately Victorian storefronts vacant and the economy in ruins. In 2012, however, Colorado residents threw Trinidad a lifeline: They voted to legalize recreational marijuana. Many communities jumped on the bud-tending bandwagon, but Trinidad was uniquely positioned to succeed. Its leaders generally welcomed the industry. The infrastructure was already there,…

LIKE MANY OTHERS, I typically listen to my local public radio station while I’m driving, my attention drifting in and out as I gaze out of the windshield. But my ears pricked up on a recent morning once I realized the entire newscast was dedicated to local wildlife. There was something about the pack of some 30 to 50 javelinas that ripped up a golf course near Sedona, Arizona, about 200 miles from where I live, followed by talk of the recent sighting of a jaguar, a species that ranged across Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, until construction of the border wall blocked the way last year. Finally, there was an update on Mexican wolf reintroduction efforts in New Mexico and Arizona. The results were mixed: Nine of the wolves had…