In this issue’s feature story, writer Christopher Solomon visits a rare sort of place: a bear sanctuary where humans are subordinate — assuming a role we must have played long ago. Casting aside the notion that humans are somehow above and beyond nature, this issue touches on how still-wild places can be a healing force and how we might rethink our relationship with the natural world.
A visit to Pie Town; Mermaids on maternity leave; Airplane pit-stop
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Soul and conscience
Reader responses to Linda Hasselstrom’s awfully honest poem about her father’s command to take care of the kittens reveal how little some of those readers understood her words, and how little they know about ranch life (“Heard Around the West,” HCN, 10/30/17). All too often it is urbanites, beleaguered by kittens they are too lazy…
In the home of the bear
In the McNeil River Sanctuary, bears and humans have learned to share the landscape.
Speaking for the trees
Cally Carswell has given a voice to rare plants. I thoroughly enjoyed her article “Threatened plants on state lands have few protections” (HCN, 11/27/17). Thank you for dedicating a feature article to the plight of rare plants. “Plant blindness” is a widespread malady that can only be cured by repeated exposure to the sublime world…
Celebrating the season and ‘neighboring’ one another
Still no snow, but good times and a bittersweet farewell.
The iconic bird of the ‘Sagebrush Sea’
A new book shows the life cycle of sage grouse in their natural habitat.
The insanity of wild horse management
Blaming wild horses alone for overgrazing of public lands fails to comprehend they are victims of “management” as are taxpayers (“The Navajo Nation has a wild horse problem,” HCN, 10/6/17). It is also clear that in the remaining areas on public lands where wild horses and burros are allowed to exist at all, they share…
On grappling with a past shadowed by violence
Two books examine the relationship people have with painful family histories.
Understanding humans’ place in the ecosystem
Where wildness reigns, humans give up their dominant roles.
Fire funding needs long-term solution
The situation with wildfire is more complex than captured in this short story (“Proper fire funding continues to elude Congress,” HCN, 12/6/17). This issue warrants much fuller treatment. Housing and infrastructure are expanding into untenable fire-prone settings in part because more people need housing and too many of them are attracted to or allowed to…
Glacier fires; nonsensical monument boundaries; alpine sublime
HCN.org news in brief.
Latest: Final Mexican wolf plan released
Feds intend to fix inbreeding but enviro groups call plan inadequate
In military matters, neighbors should get a say
A new Air Force base expands, without the input of locals.
The price of a national park fee hike
The proposed increase in entrance fees reignites old questions about who should fund the West’s open spaces.
Latest: The EPA drops mine cleanup proposal
Obama-era plan required mining companies to prove they can pay for remediation.
What Trump’s Supreme Court pick holds for Indian Country
Neil Gorsuch’s background in Indian law and Western issues could be useful to tribal litigants.
Interior Department’s return to the ‘robber baron’ years
Secretary Ryan Zinke will be known better for cynicism than conservationism.
By shifting nesting times, early birds adjust to climate change
As the West warms, some songbirds in California are raising their young earlier.
A map of $1.1 billion in natural gas pipeline leaks
In seven years, pipeline incidents have killed nearly 100 people nationwide.
How Ryan Bundy sees the West
The Bunkerville standoff case portends a trial over federal authority in the region.
What could be lost in a push for mining in monuments
In Grand Staircase-Escalante, coal and fossils lie side by side.