WHAT ELSE IS LOST?
I found Savanna Strott’s piece on City and other land art interesting (“What is Permanence?” September 2024), but one thing bothered me: almost no mention of City’s intrusion on — even destruction of — its environment. It’s not only Indigenous peoples that lived there. The article does mention that the area had been a Native hunting ground. This indicates the presence of game — that is, fauna and flora. It’s hard to believe a concrete construction a mile and a half long by a half-mile wide in the desert has little impact, to say nothing of any protective fencing. I kept waiting for any mention of this and was disappointed.
Rick Ross
Sweet Home, Oregon
I’m distressed by the latest depiction of “land art.” It’s an artist’s imposition on a land that was beautifully undisturbed before and disrespects the former Indigenous occupants who lived so lightly in these areas. Whether permanent or not, the affected land is disrupted. Nature, absent such disturbance, usually is better.
Artists’ egos and energy devoted to this kind of land art would be better directed solving more critical planetary problems!
Catherine Hancock
Reno, Nevada
COPPING OUT OF COPROLITES
We’ve been thoroughly entertained by Heard Around the West under Tiffany Midge’s leadership, but we couldn’t help noticing a glaring omission in September’s column. After reading about the Poozeum, we were left wondering — just how massive was that carnivore’s “shartifact”? After some digging, we discovered it’s only 67.5 centimeters by 15.7 centimeters (2 feet 2 inches by 6 inches). Honestly, we were expecting a more colossal fossil. I guess she didn’t specify the size so readers wouldn’t poo-poo the story.
Michael Rowley and Preston Lopez
Oakland, California
WHAT ABOUT WATER?
I applaud the Eagle Mountain Nature and Wildlife Alliance for its efforts to help mule deer (“A deer corridor through sprawl,” August 2024). I can’t help but wonder where the water is going to come from for those 150,000 people projected for 2060. Shouldn’t Utah be controlling urban sprawl for this reason as well?
Katherine Brown
Cochise, Arizona
THE RIGHT WORD MATTERS
It was disappointing to see the language used by the letter in the September issue arguing in support of “Anthropocene” to describe the current era of environmental destruction. While the term has resonance and is here to stay, it ought to come with a qualification that it is “not all humans” who are causing the climate crisis. Rather, it is a small subset of the captains of industry that are to blame for climate change, not whoever implied as “overrunning” the planet. This nuance is built into other words, such as “Capitalocene.” It is important to guard against the kind of language that can lead to dangerous ecofascist ideologies at worst, and is misleading at best.
Eli Simmer
Moab, Utah
RESTORING LALÍIK
Sincere thanks for making the public aware of the radioactive waste legacy in the West. Articles like “Lalíik” (August 2024) continue to put pressure on our government to remediate hundreds of closed mine and mill sites. Those sites on Indigenous land (Church Rock and Cove on the Navajo Nation, White Mesa on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, etc.) are more dangerous to tribal residents because the areas are economically challenged and receive limited resources and financial support due to their small voice in the political machine. Tribal efforts to publicize cleanup needs are important. Keep shining a light on this problem.
David Palmer
Farmington, New Mexico
“Lalíik” raises an intriguing possibility — possible “co-management” or “co-stewardship” of the area at Hanford known to the English-speaking world as Rattlesnake Mountain. People who haven’t visited it often don’t appreciate its scale. It is an area of approximately 75,000 acres that served only as a security buffer for Hanford. No industrial or waste management areas were ever developed there. In 1967, this portion of Hanford was designated an ecological reserve, and it has retained that status ever since. The only Hanford buildings built there were a meteorological/astronomical/security facility on the crest of the mountain, and a small cluster of office and laboratories farther down the slope, where I worked for a few years. In the last quarter century, nearly all these buildings have been removed.
As things stand now, the old “reserve” is closed to the public and administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with a strip of land adjacent to the Columbia River, comprising the “Hanford Reach National Monument.” Why not honor the land’s more ancient heritage and return it to at least the custodial care of the Native Americans who have a centuries-long knowledge of, and respect for, this sacred mountain?
Maurice Warner
Seattle, Washington
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