In our annual Outdoor Recreation issue we examine the lure of long hauls and personal pilgrimage. Something happens once we’re outdoors that touches our deeper human natures. As we encounter the wild, and recognize our own small place in it, we can’t help but be humbled and changed.

A hiker at sunset near Kool-Aid Lake, North Cascades, Washington. Credit: Stephen Matera/ Tandemstock.com

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Saving uniqueness

As the principal author of the successful petition to list the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep as threatened in 1999, I read your article “The Cost of a Comeback” with great interest (HCN, 5/29/17). The listing gave state and federal authorities the tools they needed to address the two major threats to the sheep’s survival —…

by Johanna Wald

Seeking scientific truth

Regarding the article “On leaving the government” (HCN, 5/29/17), I would caution HCN to avoid reporting petty arguments between scientists, and to research their backgrounds more carefully before framing some scientists as more mainstream than others. There are many types of scientists working on climate change, and calling them all “climate scientists” is misleading and…

by Patricia A. Cullen

Sheep struggles

The bighorn reintroduction project in Arizona’s Catalina Mountains did not appease everyone; far from it (“The Cost of a Comeback,” HCN, 5/29/17). The Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club did not approve of the project and a local Tucson group, Friends of Wild Animals, vehemently opposed both killing mountain lions and net-gunning bighorn from…

by Ricardo Small

Stranded bighorns

It’s not surprising that, in the past, bighorn sheep found the rugged terrain of the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson ideal habitat (“The Cost of a Comeback,” HCN, 5/29/17). Whether it is still ideal is the question. While factors leading to the bighorn’s extirpation in the 1990s have been cataloged, I’m not aware of research…

by Peggy Wenrick