This issue addresses state lands, and what could come of the West’s federal lands if they were transferred to states, a tenet of the Republican party platform. Our reporters investigate how wildlife, extractive industries and recreation are managed in New Mexico, North Dakota and Utah to better understand what’s at stake.

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Soulless choices

I was appalled by Linda Hasselstrom’s poem “Spring” and your newspaper’s commentary on it (“Heard Around the West,” HCN, 10/30/17). Hasselstrom categorizes drowning kittens and bashing them with a wrench as “taking responsibility.” What she calls “taking responsibility” is really a grotesque and wholly unjustifiable lack of responsibility. Her “stark choices” are no more than…

by Claire Vinet

The best job in the West

Thank you, Hal Herring, from the bottom of my tree-planting heart. You presented the situation for forest workers that many of us have been trying to address for the last 20 years (“The Changing Face of Woods Work,” HCN, 10/30/17). You connected the dots in just the right way. You didn’t blame the victims (guest…

by Cece Headley

Turning Americans away from public lands

Toward the end of his excellent essay “The Changing Face of Woods Work,” Hal Herring gets to the core issues of what is — yes, Hal — a “vast right-wing conspiracy” (HCN, 10/30/17). The goal is to create, in the minds of as many people as possible, a distaste for anything associated with the federal…

by Crista V. Worthy