Letter to the editor

My name is Ed “Cowboy” After Buffalo Jr. As I read the story “A Land Divided” (HCN, 4/4/16), I am getting ready to attend the kick-off event for the Blackfeet tribal land buyback program on April 8, hoping to get good feedback on the program, which in turn will help me make an informed decision […]

Jonathan Thompson did a particularly comprehensive job of covering issues in Silverton (“The Gold King Reckoning,” HCN, 5/2/16). There is probably an additional point relative to Superfund opposition. Mining communities throughout Colorado witnessed the conflicts between local governments and the Environmental Protection Agency at Leadville’s Superfund site over several decades. As a consequence, many communities strongly prefer […]

“And even environmentalists who oppose both projects agree that with annual park visitation expected to double to 10 million by mid-century, more beds and infrastructure are needed.” This next-to-last sentence in the informative “State of the Grand” (HCN, 5/4/16) fades into a disturbing whimper without challenge. It implies and allows no imagined alternative to the […]

Dear High Country News: You can’t read the Wilderness Act of 1964 and think that it would ever allow mountain bikers into wilderness. The language is unambiguous: Section 4 (c) states that there shall be…no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment”…and “no other form of mechanical transport…” The mention of those prohibitions in the same […]

Sierra Crane-Murdoch’s beautifully illustrated feature exposes several inherent tensions in federal efforts to purchase and return lands that were stolen from tribes a century ago and given to individuals (“A Land Divided,” HCN, 4/4/16). But the tone of the article is hostile toward a program that is successfully addressing a serious historical injustice and a […]

I appreciate Hal Herring’s candid description of his personal longing for freedom and his disappointment in the low intellectual content of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupiers’ motivations (“Making Sense of Malheur,” HCN, 3/21/16). Half a lifetime ago, I would have had more sympathy with the malcontents. Even now, I think that while the Hammonds […]

Hal Herring writes thoughtfully and deeply about a misled and misdirected tragedy of ignorance (“Making Sense of Malheur”). His frustration at the lack of discussions of substance is what so many of us experience when trying to have a meaningful give-and-take dialogue with people who care not about any history other than that they’ve constructed […]

I lived in the Los Alamos area for over 26 years, and I am very dismayed and saddened to see what has become of the beloved Valle Grande (“A park ‘in the raw’,” HCN, 3/7/16), now Valles Caldera National Preserve. It was always so special to know that there was at least one place where […]

The Oregon Trail was my introduction to the West (“Oregon’s Trail Through Time,” HCN, 3/7/16). In 1975, I embarked on an auto trip along as much of the trail as I could manage, using the late Gregory Franzwa’s The Oregon Trail Revisited as my guide, along with a huge roll of county road maps at […]

Sena Christian, in “Growing Heavy,” explains that many of California’s farmers, in order to cope with the ever-decreasing water supply, are putting their resources into their most valuable food crops, which also happen to be the most water-intensive. But many of the state’s most water-intensive field crops are not even destined for human consumption, but […]

Thank you for Patricia Limerick’s essay on the complex sociology of the current conflict over oil and gas development (“Fractured,” HCN, 2/22/16). Learning from the past has not been one of the West’s strengths. Many Westerners seem as passionately devoted to ignoring or denying history as Ms. Limerick is to bringing history to bear on […]

The article from Feb. 22, “Growing Heavy” by Sena Christian, does an excellent job of presenting the issue of California’s agricultural water usage. Unfortunately, the article misses the essence of what is exacerbating the effects of California’s drought: bad economics. The market has incorrectly priced water for agriculture, which is subsequently destroying California’s economy and […]

Some were hoping that the Malheur occupation would fizzle out on its own, but the continuing rhetoric from the criminals made it seem they did not intend to leave peacefully (“Inside the Sagebrush Insurgency,” HCN, 2/2/16). I know a little about national wildlife refuges. I worked for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service for […]

Has HCN stepped into the role of moderator of civil disobedience, declaring what qualifies and what does not? Despite the HCN spin, the Recapture Protest was exactly as it purported to be — a legal, peaceful protest against the collusion between the Bureau of Land Management and special interest groups (“The Sagebrush Sheriffs,” HCN, 2/2/16). […]

Your article on Wildlife Services (“The Forever War,” HCN, 1/25/16) was informative, but much too complimentary of that rogue federal agency, which simply needs to go away. Its use of public funds to kill public resources (native birds and mammals) on public lands at the behest of private industry (livestock producers with federal grazing permits) […]

The Dec. 7 feature “Good Neighbors” was an interesting article, and hooray for the “kumbaya” factor among the parties involved. But the author failed to explore the real story of fossil water mining that he alludes to. I have an old friend who lives in the Sulphur Springs Valley, and because of the obscene thirsts […]

Ben Goldfarb shines an even-handed light on Wildlife Services, a federal agency operating in the shadows whose purpose is “controlling” targeted wildlife species, by any means (“The Forever War,” HCN, 1/25/16). The 2014 statistics Goldfarb cited show just how effectively and quietly the agency goes about the job of killing. Its objectives reflect and remain […]

Regarding your Dec. 7 feature “Good Neighbors,” I’ve never understood why Peter Kropotkin’s book Mutual Aid has been buried for over a century in favor of a “survival of the fittest” mentality. The scholars mentioned in this story would do well to look it over if they aren’t familiar with it. The American West is […]

Wonderful trenchant article on the surface, but the real story lies just below ground (“Coal company bankruptcies jeopardize reclamation,” HCN, 1/25/16). The article mentioned the various methods that are used to ensure a mine site would be cleaned up in the future, i.e., surety bonds, letters of credit, cash deposits, etc. As a young bank […]