Innholdsfortegnelse for April Vol. 57, No 4 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 $45 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…

Support HCN so we can support you These are dizzying times. The Trump administration is clear-cutting the agencies that oversee our beloved national parks and forests and range-lands and refuges — the public lands that make up half of the Western U.S. At the same time, it has frozen funds for conservation and restoration work on private and tribal lands, as well as for clean energy and climate adaptation projects. Some of these moves were blocked, but plenty of serious damage has been done, and Westerners continue to be whipsawed by the shifting orders and confusing directives from the White House and the courts. Adding insult to injury, the administration has ordered public agencies to cancel their subscriptions to news organizations like HCN, depriving staffers of information that is often…

AT FIRST, I heard the noises at night — a stairstep creaking, the rattle of a window, soft skittering across the floor. In bed, I would lie awake in the dark, listening to noises until I finally turned the light on. I was sure there was a ghost living in my house. My house was a raised ranch close to downtown Laramie, Wyoming, built in 1919. I had never thought I would buy a house by myself, but when I was in my 30s, with no husband or kids in sight, my grandmother left me some money. This was years ago, when buying a house, especially in Wyoming, was doable for people of modest means. And, crazily, I didn’t set foot in the house until the day I closed on…

RIPLEY CUNNINGHAM took the microphone and looked out at an audience of about 350 people in the echoey, ornate rotunda of Montana’s state Capitol, her favorite thriftstore flower pendant around her neck. It was January, the start of the legislative session, and the high school senior, a speech and debate star, was emceeing a statewide climate gathering. “I am comforted in knowing that we have an interconnected community of people fighting for the future of our home,” she said. Cunningham, who’d just turned 18, added that she’d not yet been able to vote in an election, but “being here today helps me realize the power that my voice carries and the change that it can create.” Cunningham and five other members of Green Initiative, a student climate club at Park…

LAST FALL, a Clallam County, Washington, resident spotted a young male cougar walking slowly through a field on the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. It was the middle of the day — a clear sign that something was off — and he was also skinny and weak, dragging his matted tail in the mud. The resident called a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) game warden and Mark Elbroch, puma director of Panthera, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting wild cats globally. (Cougars are also called mountain lions or pumas.) Elbroch and the warden approached the cougar, yelling and clapping to gauge the animal’s alertness. But even when they were less than 20 feet away, the cougar didn’t respond. “The cat was on its last legs,” Elbroch said. “He…

WOOLLY RUMPS SWAYED in unison as two stock trailers rumbled into the Ellensburg, Washington, rodeo grounds. The passengers took in their surroundings, ears flicking and nostrils flaring in the 39-degree air. After a full day of bumping over local roads from Bureau of Land Management corrals in Oregon, the mustangs had finally arrived. Marjie Hicks, 64, watched the horses roll in. She and her husband, Richard, 68, had driven two and a half hours from their home in western Washington to this March 2024 event, which was organized by a nonprofit called Mustang Yearlings Washington Youth. (Despite its name, MYWY is open to adults, both human and equine.) Five years earlier, Hicks trained her first mustang through MYWY. She was hooked by the experience and brimmed with anticipation at training…

CALIFORNIA The Golden State’s official dinosaur is Augustynolophus morrisi, a vegetarian hadrosaur that looks like Jar Jar Binks’ head was grafted onto the body of an over-muscled kangaroo; the state’s official fabric is, naturally, denim; and its official mollusk is the very banana-like banana slug. But there’s no “state cryptid” yet, so Assemblymember Chris Rogers, D-Santa Rosa, introduced Assembly Bill 666 to nominate Bigfoot, as in Sasquatch, for the role. (As far as we know, the “666” is just a coincidence, and Satan has nothing to do with it.) Believers insist that the hairy ape-man of the forest is not mythical but an actual wandering biped of some sort. Just ask Matt Moneymaker — yes, that’s his real name — president of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization and a Bigfoot…

Cutting ‘boots-on-the-ground, getting-it-done stuff’ could harm the West’s fish and wildlife for decades The research co-ops that have been funded by Congress every year since 1960 provide substantial returns for taxpayers. By Christine Peterson The Trump administration is trying to fire the ‘backbone’ of wildland firefighting Last month’s terminations cut employees who serve critical support roles on fires. By Kylie Mohr Scan to read these stories and all our web-exclusive content. Follow us @highcountrynews ON THE COVER Historical researcher and former journalist Nancy Ukai stands for a portrait on the site of the Topaz Relocation Center in Millard County, Utah, during events marking the 80th anniversary of the killing of Topaz prisoner James Wakasa. Kori Suzuki / HCN…

ALASKA NATIVE YOUTH are living through a pivotal time, bearing witness to the dramatic impacts of climate change that have occurred during their lifetimes: rapidly melting permafrost, warming oceans and declining salmon runs. Subsistence living, which is critical to Alaska Native culture and rural food security, has suffered in turn, whether it involves Iñupiaq whale hunts, Gwich’in caribou harvest or Tlingit salmon fishing. The threat to a shared way of life is uniting many Indigenous people across the state, calling them to protect Alaska Native homelands and cultural continuity. In light of this, many Alaska Native youth are dedicating their careers to protecting the environment and bringing Indigenous knowledge into mainstream spaces, including environmental science, policy work, increased tribal co-management and conservation initiatives. High Country News talked to four young Alaska…

GERRI-LYNN GRAVES has lived in Boise, Idaho, nearly all of her life. But after progressive back pain and a botched surgery caused a series of medical issues, walking became excruciating, and she lost her job. Bills mounted and she could not pay rent. With a small suitcase in hand, in November of 2021, she went to the Interfaith Sanctuary, a homeless shelter in downtown Boise. Surrounded by a busy highway, businesses and warehouses, the low tan-and-blue brick building is the only “low-barrier” shelter in Ada County, where Boise lies. Unlike other shelters in town, Interfaith does not require sobriety, employment or ID to enter. For a year and a half, Graves stayed at the shelter, leaving each morning per the shelter’s rules. Sometimes, the shelter lacked enough beds for everyone,…

VIOLENCE HAD BROUGHT the old man here, and violence would take him away. The blue mountains rose as he walked through the desert in the fading evening light. The powdery soil of an ancient lakebed sank beneath his feet. The man’s name was James Wakasa, and he was a prisoner of the United States. It was April 1943, and the world was at war. Sixteen months earlier, Japanese planes attacked an American naval base in Hawai’i. As a wave of bitter, anti-immigrant fury swept the country, President Franklin Roosevelt responded by ordering the mass removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Thousands of people — immigrants and U.S. citizens alike — were forced to leave their homes and taken to 10 remote federal prison camps, mostly in the Western…