In this issue, we take a closer look at one of the West’s harshest penal systems, where incarcerated wildfire fighters learn to see themselves anew. And we travel to Vado, New Mexico, where Borderland infrastructure challenges are a major setback. We delve into a labor trafficking case in Colorado and look at what coal’s free fall means for Wyoming. We interview New Mexico Rep. Xochitl Torres Small and explain the shortcomings in the Navy’s environmental review process. A writer takes us into the tyranny of landlords and their lawns, and we look at a fight over wolf management in Alaska, where lawmakers have learned how to undermine citizen-led initiatives. We review a debut story collection by author Kali Fajardo-Anstine and take a peek inside a pocket birding book’s makeover.

Crewmembers from an Arizona Department of Corrections fire crew look out from a community bonfire, where they managed the flames. Credit: Lindsey Raisa Feldman

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Exiling BLM staff

Anyone with business experience knows that you have to be in the meeting and at the table to influence policy. And crucial decisions happen in hallway encounters. Distancing Bureau of Land Management leadership from the Washington, D.C., power center (“Critics wary of moving BLM,” HCN, 7/22/19) will weaken the BLM leadership’s impact. This plan puts BLM political appointees…

by Katherine McCoy

For the long-term eco-good

Unfortunately, with most environmental problems, agreement on solutions is not easy to achieve (“Losing Lake Coeur d’Alene,” HCN, 6/24/19). I encourage you to keep up your efforts to provide scientific and economic reasons why we should continue to cooperate for the long-term good of all members or society. I was born and raised in southern Oregon, lived most…

by Ron Pruitt

Loving lakes to death

I grew up near the Cataldo Mission, Idaho, in a dead zone (“Losing Lake Coeur d’Alene,” HCN, 6/24/19). As a teenager, I held swans in my arms as they died from lead poisoning. I graduated in 1978 and ran track, so I have felt the burn of sulfur dioxide in my throat and lungs. I am…

by Craig Kvern

A Forest Service low

I certainly agree with the article, “Forest Service might limit public comments,” (HCN, 7/22/19). It is not that they “might,” though, in my opinion, but that they will. I have made personal comments to the agency, and I can see how the U.S. Forest Service plans to remove opportunities for public comments by categorically excluding most…

by Brandt Mannchen

D.C. out of the wonk?

You’ve heard the old saying: “You can take the policy wonk out of D.C., but you can’t take the D.C. out of the policy wonk” — or something to that effect (“Critics wary of moving BLM,” HCN, 7/22/19). I find it pretty humorous, the recent administrative trend to move federal agencies out of Washington, D.C.,…

by Neil Crescenti