In this issue, a look at Adelanto, California, and the economies it has turned to in order to survive: desert farming, then a military air base and finally an immigration incarceration center. Also, bears and tourists in national parks, some of Oregon’s houseless find a home, and oil and gas development under Colorado suburbs leads to a deadly explosion.
Meet Ruth, who makes a home for the houseless
After her husband’s death, a woman collects a new family.
A new face on staff and new pups in the office
We welcome Christie, Porter and Lefty to HCN.
Mistrial in Bundy standoff case
Some Bundy supporters see the jury deadlock as a sliver of hope.
Chevron cuts both ways
This is a thoughtful article, but I would like to advance a contrary view (“Shifting scales,” HCN, 5/1/17). Our basic theory of government is that Congress enacts the laws, the executive enforces the laws, and the courts decide the facts and the laws’ meaning. Administrative agencies have been fit into this structure under the theory…
See portraits of gnarled conifers
A couple draws and writes about the complexities of bristlecone pines and humans.
Choosing to ride
Your “Recapture Canyon rules” update in the May 1 issue had this quote from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke: “For many persons with disabilities or for people who just don’t get around like they used to, our public lands aren’t accessible without motorized vehicles.” For folks with legitimate disabilities, I can see this in appropriate spots,…
The myths that imprison us
A prison town reflects Western truths of reinvention and subjugation.
Congress vs. agency mission
I wonder if under President Donald Trump we’ll go back to Congress deciding every policy detail and micromanaging federal agencies, creating massive stagnation in light of a Congress that views collaboration as capitulation to the enemy (“Shifting scales,” HCN, 5/1/17). I don’t have a legal background but I can’t see that the Chevron decision is…
EPA’s dirty past
Your story about Anne Gorsuch Burford’s tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency brings back some bad memories, especially for those working in chemical industries in the early 1980s (“Scott Pruitt isn’t the first administrator hostile to the EPA’s mission,” HCN, 3/20/17). The chemical industry was quite successful in getting implementation of new and lower exposure…
Gas explosions, the numbers behind King Coal and LA policing
HCN.org news in brief.
‘If you don’t want us, tell us to go back’
The making of a California prison town.
How private prisons became a booming business
The numbers and policies behind the immigration-incarceration economy.
Learning to live with bears
Two books examine our evolving relationship with bears.
#LiveAndLetTutu; a sodden Oregon; mastodon for dinner
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Latest: Dam on Yellowstone River moves ahead
The effects on the pallid sturgeon remain uncertain.
Latest: Mexican wolves are about to get wild
An appeal court ruling allows wolves more room to roam in New Mexico.
Fact-checking Trump’s Antiquities Act order
Trump and Sen. Orrin Hatch rely on dubious claims to attack national monuments.
Public banking goes to pot
California activists turn to the cannabis industry to help launch the nation’s first public bank in nearly a century.
Suburbanites reckon with arcane drilling law
On Colorado’s Front Range, companies can extract oil and gas from private land — without homeowners’ permission.
A tribe wins rights to contested groundwater in court
A major federal court decision acknowledges that tribes have priority rights to groundwater — and could limit how much other users can take.