Letter to the editor

I am usually excited to receive High Country News each month and read about the important issues across our beloved American West. I am therefore disappointed in your choice to include cartoons as a cover story (“Nizhóní Girls,” HCN, 2/4/19). I did not learn anything new or gain a greater appreciation for the Navajo culture. […]

A recent article documenting the decline in Western snowpacks is misleading (“The Latest,” HCN, 1/21/19). As one of the longtime collectors of snow data and its analysis as a snow survey supervisor, and having corresponded with the authors of the paper cited, I would like to add some perspective. The article documented the decline of […]

I was one of the founders of the organization that gradually morphed into Climate Solutions, but broke with them when they closed their Energy Outreach Center. Frankly, Climate Solutions was a significant part of the problem. The refusal of “big green” to support the revenue-neutral carbon tax in 2016 resulted in a large cadre of climate […]

I am Native, a homeowner and retiree. For me, Initiative 1631 (“What Killed Washington’s Carbon Tax?” HCN, 1/21/19) came down to a couple of points for voting no. Foremost: yet another tax. Taxpayers in Washington are weary from all the taxes. Every time a new idea crops up in government, the taxpayer is leaned on […]

“What Killed Washington’s Carbon Tax?” was excellent. However, it failed to discuss the main alternative to a “carbon tax,” which does, in fact, have bipartisan support on the federal level: a carbon fee and dividend proposal currently before the House and Senate. The real reason a carbon tax will always fail, as you point out, […]

Regarding microplastics in “Welcome to the Plastocene,” (HCN, 11/26/18) and the letter “Patagonia’s plastics” (HCN, 12/24/18), it feels like we’re continuing to jump on the last thing we heard, like it’s our biggest issue, while forgetting about the bigger underlying reasons for the problem. Plastics in outdoor clothing is certainly a concern, but it’s dwarfed […]

I had to read “Welcome to the Alt-American West” (HCN, 12/24/18) a couple of times for it to really sink in. A better title would have been the “Alt-Right West,” because that is mostly where the altered reality lies. What Editor-in-Chief Brian Calvert describes jibes with what I saw in a video years ago by […]

In my 70 years in Wyoming, I have witnessed a steady decline in mule deer numbers (“The record-breaking journey of Deer 255,” HCN, 8/20/18). Fields that once hosted hundreds of deer now have dozens. The proliferation of “town deer” is not a healthy sign, either. These deer have lost their ability to migrate, so they […]

I was very disappointed by “Generation Atomic” (HCN, 12/10/18), which read like pro-nuke propaganda. Uranium mining, milling, processing and transport all take up a huge amount of natural resources and produce carbon emissions. Furthermore, nuclear waste, which remains toxic for hundreds of thousands of years, is currently stored in thin-walled stainless steel canisters in the […]

I recently retired from the U.S. Forest Service, with many years as the lead wildlife biologist on the Rio Grande National Forest. I worked extensively with bighorn sheep issues in southwest Colorado, including some of the herds mentioned in HCN’s article, which also share our landscape (“The Big Threat to Bighorns,” HCN, 9/3/18). It is […]

On Oct. 16, 2010, my friend Bob Boardman was killed by a mountain goat in Olympic National Park. Bob, an experienced mountaineer, had lived for 34 years on the Olympic Peninsula and had hiked and backpacked extensively in the park. To dismiss him as a “tourist” (“Heard Around the West,” HCN, 10/29/18) is far from […]

I feel compelled to comment on Monica Gokey’s article, “Is sporting a Patagonia fleece now a political statement?” (HCN, 12/10/18), which I found curious on many fronts. If “it’s a cardinal sin for reporters to display anything that might lead sources to believe we are anything but neutral parties,” then your considerations need to go […]

Yes, microplastics are pervasive (“Welcome to the Plastocene,” HCN, 11/26/18). Here is a quote from the Patagonia ad in the same issue: “The newest addition to the Patagonia Workwear line, our Steel Forge Denim blends 92% organic cotton with 8% Dyneema®, a fiber that’s light enough to float on water but 15 times stronger than […]

I’m an expat in Australia living in the mountains in a very similar area to the California foothills but with far fewer people. My wife and I battled and survived a 2.5-million-acre forest fire in 2003 (“How to prepare for a wildfire,” HCN, 12/10/18). There is no evacuation plan on Earth that could have handled […]