Letter to the editor

Your special issue “Frontera Incognita” was great, but I have a bit of a bone to pick on your editorial note (“In search of a borderless West,” HCN, 9/19/16). Very properly, you take Donald Trump to task for his misguided proposals on walls and immigration. But you offer no real counter to it. I have been […]

Citizens’ ballot initiatives are much in the news right now, and we have used them to good effect in Arizona despite opposition from the governor and state Legislature (“Taking initiative,” HCN, 10/3/16). Unable to prevent initiatives, they have taken to making them more difficult to present. Each voter signature sheet is now limited to only […]

Thank you for this rich issue on the Borderlands and the idea of borders (“Frontera Incognita,” HCN, 9/19/16). Complex ideas and beautiful writing in every article! Thanks also for taking a stand on the election. I imagine that it is always a difficult editorial decision (although perhaps not so difficult this year), but I appreciate […]

Thank you for publishing the John Herrick photo of “The Narrows” on Longs Peak (“Photo contest winners,” HCN, 10/3/16). During my dozen-year tenure on the Colorado Front Range, I often considered trekking to the summit of Longs, but never actually did. One of the reasons was that I’d read vague mentions of a stretch that […]

Shame on you, HCN! You claim to “care about the West,” yet you’ve just devoted an entire issue, “Purple Rain: How Donald Trump’s Divisive Campaign Is Repainting the Political Map” (HCN, 10/3/16), to smearing the one candidate who might actually do something about the root cause of the destruction of the West’s wide-open spaces –– […]

As a rangeland ecologist, I was somewhat disturbed by this article and the point being made (“Slaughter of the Innocents,” HCN, 9/5/16). Prairie dogs are on the author’s property because conditions are conducive for them, especially the depth and type of soils. The odds are that the “juniper forest” referred to was not the original […]

Kudos to Rita Clagett for sharing her anguish over what to do about the prairie dog colony on her property (“Slaughter of the Innocents,” HCN, 9/5/16). Taking us through the steps that led to her “final solution” raised ethical questions we all might well ponder. But in calling her earlier defense of the colony an […]

Stephen Jackson’s common-sense perspective — that we can’t do everything — matches the daily decision-making of land managers who determine where to invest their limited resources to best stop the spread of invasives (HCN, 9/5/16). Land managers are very aware of their limitations, and of the dynamic nature of the places they manage. The perception […]

It was to our dismay that the USGS Director of the Southwest Climate Science Center put forward an argument to abandon large swaths of the Sonoran Desert to invasive species (“A conversation with Stephen Jackson,” HCN, 9/5/16). Climate change is certainly going to reorganize Sonoran Desert ecosystems, but the paleo-environmental record has shown that this […]

While the factors Elizabeth Zach cites  —  low reimbursement by public insurers, reduced inpatient services, hospital mergers and others  —  have historically impacted the ability of rural communities to sustain viable health services, this litany of forces reflects incomplete knowledge of research dating back 30 years (“A Rural Health Care Checkup: Lessons from the Central […]

Your June 13 issue reminded me of my years on Hawaii, where, despite the good intentions of the Bishop Estate’s huge land distribution, the powers that be created conditions similar to what you describe in the present Navajo system (“Disenfranchised in Utah,” HCN, 6/13/16).  Bishop lands were in trust, to be divided in half for […]

Thanks for a great profile of Patrick Gonzalez, National Park Service climate scientist (“Climate change scientist walks the walk,” HCN, 8/22/16). His story is a good walk all the way. Let me add that his Ph.D. was actually earned through the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, where a good number of climate scientists […]

What will areas administered by the National Park Service become (HCN, 8/22/16)? Will the enormous shortage of congressional appropriations undermine a century of relative stability? Fifty years ago, massive infrastructure improvements were made under a program called Mission 66, but no such program has existed since. Congress got in the habit of not fulfilling appropriations […]

In Paige Blankenbuehler’s article on Diablo Canyon in your Aug. 22 issue, I was surprised that there was no mention that this nuclear station is located near the San Andreas fault. A few decades ago, I was staunchly opposed to nuclear power. After becoming aware of the contribution of fossil fuel-burning power plants to climate […]

I read your article on the Bureau of Land Management’s new collaborative approach to planning with skepticism (“BLM rethinks land-use planning,” HCN, 5/30/16). In this same region of western Montana, the U.S Forest Service has been applying the word “collaborative” to its timber sales because the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) requires “public collaboration.” However, […]

The map showing the counties in Western states that support the American Lands Council makes it look like a Mormon conspiracy to re-create the State of Deseret (“Land transfer support, county by county,” HCN, 7/25/16). Add to this House Bill 4751 (the Local Enforcement for Local Lands Act, which would shift law enforcement functions from […]

Hillary Rosner’s excellent article “When Water Turns to Dust” in the June 13, 2016, issue became a surprise travel guide of sorts on our recent trip across the Great Desert. On our return from Tahoe and Yosemite, we made a point to stop at Mono Lake, in part because in was mentioned in Hillary’s article. Plus, […]

In “Love and Death on the Border” in the July 25, 2016, issue, Jon M. Shumaker ends a paragraph about the risks immigrants take in illegally crossing the border with “All this in order to take dangerous, crappy jobs no one in this country wants.” With this seemingly trivial comment, he perpetuates a false assumption […]