In this issue, we travel to Arizona, where the West’s “wild” horse problem is as enigmatic as ever. We also delve into the bankruptcy of California energy company PG&E following catastrophic wildfires, and we examine questions of intellectual property questions around Indigenous recordings, which were often made and sold without permission. We check in on Utah bees and dive into a complicated conservation arrangement on undeveloped California land. In our essays and reviews, we look back at historic public lands policies; showcase photography from the gay rodeo circuit; and examine racism in language in California’s Dixie School District.
White fragility and the fight over Marin County’s Dixie School District
North of San Francisco, a well-heeled community has its privilege tested.
An outsider endures violence and redemption in the Wild West
A familiar trope of storytelling puts women and people of color on center stage.
A bittersweet goodbye
An editor moves on while others tackle some of journalism’s biggest challenges.
The West is large enough to host contradictions
Embrace incongruity, both domesticated and the wonderfully wild.
Tenacious & twelve; junior ranger at 103; imperiled snowplow drivers
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Free beer vs. carbon tax
One of the insights offered by recent Nobel economics laureate William Nordhaus was that the framing used to advance carbon fees/taxes is really the whole story (“What Killed Washington’s Carbon Tax?” HCN, 1/21/19). Instead of putting a carbon tax on the ballot, we might have better luck with “free beer,” “health care for all,” or perhaps…
Navajo generating station
You are missing one of the pieces to solve the puzzle (“Healing wounds from the war on coal,” HCN, 3/4/19). I have always admired the Navajo Coal Plant as a great opportunity to generate electricity and provide jobs on tribal land. Currently, I am working with another of the tribes to develop a wind-generating facility that…
Resisting what?
The essay by Raksha Vasudevan (“Mountain biking is my act of resistance,” HCN, 3/4/19) has disquieted me. This may be the intent of HCN’s editors, but I wonder what the takeaway is for most readers. For me, it is frustration with a mindset that claims victim status just for being different, and with a publication…
Roadkill beats factory-farmed
If one wishes to eat animal flesh, then Ella Jacobson is correct that it’s far more ethical to eat animals that were accidentally killed on highways than ones cruelly killed in slaughterhouses (“Road-killed cuisine for the Anthropocene,” HCN, 2/4/19). Unlike cows, chickens and pigs, most animals killed on roads have lived a free life and died…
What’s left of the tallgrass prairie
A ‘grassland education’ from nature photographer Harvey Payne.
Commercial honeybees threaten to displace Utah’s native bees
Federal lands could offer hives a respite from pesticides.
Gay rodeo and the subversion of Western clichés
A photo exhibit asks viewers to ponder whether, in reclaiming the idea of the cowboy, gay rodeos renounce violence or reinvest in it.
Is a new copyright law a ‘colonization of knowledge’?
Indigenous oral histories have often been recorded and sold without permission.
‘Things are not going to get better for a long time’
PG&E’s bankruptcy complicates an already difficult recovery for Camp Fire survivors.
Police-state tactics at the U.S.-Mexico border
The real crisis at the border is of Trump’s own making.
It’s time to revisit an old way to resolve public land fights
Commissions offer a way to navigate thorny policy questions and find consensus.
Development plans test a decade-old conservation deal
Were concessions to protect undeveloped land in California worth it?
Arizona’s wild horse paradox
Activists and agencies try to balance the West’s horse mythology against herd impacts.