The National Park Service struggles to connect with a changing, and diverse, America. A Nevada rancher creates a Sagebrush Rebellion flare-up that’s particularly fierce. State wildlife agencies try to broaden funding sources as their duties and responsibilities expand.
‘Which parks aren’t relevant to black history?’
A black former park ranger talks about diversity on public lands.
Out in the backcountry
A profile of a gay ranger in the National Park Service.
Parks for all?
The National Park Service struggles to connect with a changing America.
Learning Forestry 101 in the Cascades
A novice logger helps thin the forest in Washington.
Look, Ma – a real Indian!
A performance artist tackles stereotypes of Native Americans in public.
A path to the parks
Veronica Verdin is a 21-year-old junior at Maine’s Bowdoin College, majoring in anthropology and minoring in history. Of Mexican and Japanese-American heritage, she grew up in El Sereno, in Southern California. She hopes to work for the National Park Service as an archaeologist or interpretive ranger and has already participated in two of the agency’s…
Pinocchios on Whitney
My April 14 issue arrived in today’s mail, and as usual I started reading pretty much right away. I was soon into the Horror Stories, where I realized that Colin Weatherby’s tall tale (“The Boy Scouts didn’t prepare us for this”) could have used some fact-checking. The peak named Mount Whitney is not “the highest in the…
Rock Art of the Grand Canyon Region
Rock Art of the Grand Canyon RegionDon D. Christensen, Jerry Dickey, and Steven M. Freers,248 pages, softcover:$24.95.Sunbelt Publications, Inc., 2013 Hiking the Grand Canyon is a journey through geologic time: The pink sedimentary layers, the limestone left by antediluvian seas, and the river-carved gorge are stunning reminders of our planet’s age. But as Rock Art…
Backcountry memoir
Yellowstone Has TeethMarjane Ambler223 pages, $16.95.Riverbend Publishing, 2013. Cindy Mernin puts it bluntly: “Paradise isn’t for sissies!” she says, recalling the 14 years she spent as a ranger’s wife at Yellowstone National Park. In particular, as she tells author Marjane Ambler, the winters weren’t for sissies. The couple had moved there in the early 1970s,…
Timeline: The BLM vs. Cliven Bundy
A detailed history of the conflict, starting in 1953.
Carbon Cost Consistency
Thank you for your nuanced reporting in “Ripple Effect” and “Betting on Coal” (HCN, 3/17/14). We particularly enjoyed Emily Guerin’s account of Shonto Energy and the young minds “bucking the brain drain.” The interviews reminded us of efforts in West Virginia to get the competence and confidence of the people out from underneath King Coal.…
Frosty recesses
I must admit that after glancing at “Touring the frosties of the Lost Sierra” (HCN, 4/14/14), I was tempted to pass over it and move on to a weightier issue that would have more resonance with an under-employed conservation biologist. But because it involved the Sierra, not to mention frosties, it latched onto something in…
Guns are welcome, Idaho poachers, and a popping eyeball.
IDAHO A secretive predator stalks the elk, moose and deer that roam the forests of north Idaho, reports the Spokesman-Review, and according to George Fischer, a state Fish and Game conservation officer, these two-legged, stealthy animals are “probably killing as many (game animals) or more than wolves … that is the shock-and-awe message.” Poachers have…
The vital diversity of our parks
It’s appropriate that this issue’s cover story on diversity in the national parks opens in Mesa Verde, Colorado. Mesa Verde represents one of the Park Service’s earliest attempts at increasing racial and ethnic diversity, by showcasing and preserving Native American culture. Yet its history also demonstrates the challenges public lands face, both in hiring minorities…
Hunting for conservation dollars
State wildlife agencies struggle to broaden funding as their duties expand.
This is our land – until it’s privatized
It’s 6 a.m. on April 8 as I head out for a hike on Mount Lemmon, in Arizona’s Coronado National Forest. Today, the temperature in Tucson will break 90 degrees, so I’m looking forward to the cooler, higher elevations. Passing Rose Canyon, I notice that the campground is still closed. Making a quick decision, I…
Not fade away
Monument Road:A NovelCharlie Quimby365 pages, softcover: $16.95.Torrey House Press, 2013. Rancher Leonard Self is the type of elderly man who keeps “his shades drawn, his talk necessary, his actions to the problem at hand.” In the wake of his wife Inetta’s death, he’s been winnowing his ranch goods, his farmhouse, his life itself, succumbing to…
Of Pulitzers and presidents
High Country News congratulates Dave Philipps, who covered the West’s wild horse controversy for us in a 2012 feature story. In April, Philipps and the Colorado Springs Gazette received the Pulitzer Prize, newspaper journalism’s highest honor, in the national reporting category for Philipps’ investigative series, “Other Than Honorable.” The three pieces “used Army data to…
The Latest: Changes afoot for oil and gas “trade secrets”
BackstoryEnergy companies have long enjoyed secrecy when it comes to the chemical makeup of the fluids they inject underground to release oil and gas. In the late 2000s, Western states like Wyoming and Colorado passed rules requiring some public disclosure, but broad exemptions for “trade secrets” remained common (“Frack forward,” HCN, 10/1/10). As hydraulic fracturing…
The revolt that wouldn’t die
The latest Sagebrush Rebellion flare-up in Nevada was unusually fierce.