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A few of the recent letters to the editor (Ferm, 10/29/18, and Mumaw, 10/15/18) lamenting High Country News’ shifts toward coverage reflecting the issues faced by people in the region — not just white recreationists, ranchers or public-lands managers, but people, including immigrants, prisoners, queer people and others, who have often been overlooked in the […]

I just read your article on the Citizens for Equal Rights Alliance with great interest and gratitude (“Why don’t anti-Indian groups count as hate groups?” HCN, 11/26/18). I’d be interested regardless, but I am a landowner in Sanders County, Montana, and have been bombarded by the oddest, most addled, acerbic and confusing series of votes […]

In the excerpt from her new book, Desert Cabal, Amy Irvine speaks volumes of truth in a few carefully chosen words (“Contrarian Cowboy: A note to Edward Abbey,” HCN, 11/12/18). I nodded in recognition as she described the contrast of old-time rural folk with the vociferous shouts of urban activists who fail to recognize that […]

As facetious as it might sound, the lawmakers in North Dakota could be included on a list of anti-Indian hate groups (“Why don’t anti-Indian groups count as hate groups?” HCN, 11/26/18). The evidence: North Dakota’s 2017 voter ID law, which requires strict forms of identification, including street addresses. The law disenfranchises voters on American Indian reservations, where […]

I wanted to commend Paige Blankenbuehler’s “The Big Threat to Bighorns” (HCN, 9/3/18). My friends and I do a big backpacking trip each year in Western wilderness areas. This year, we did a roughly 40-mile loop through the Flattops Wilderness in northwest Colorado. There were few people, but lots of cows. For roughly seven miles, […]

A recently published article (“Nature Retreat,” HCN, 10/15/18) asserts that Imperial Beach is addressing sea-level rise by planning massive moves away from the coastline, technically known as “managed retreat.” Contrary to the author’s assertion that little has been done to address this “slow-moving catastrophe,” many California coastal communities either recently have or will soon complete […]

I find it interesting that Peg Ferm of Monroe, Washington, writes in a letter to the editor that she thinks HCN’s article on Imperial Beach has no relevance for her (HCN, 10/15/18). Monroe, in Snohomish County, is located in a floodplain. There have been record (disaster-level) floods 18 times in the past 56 years in […]

A recent letter to the editor laments the author’s belief that HCN “seems to have become just another ‘woke’ partisan magazine” (HCN, 10/15/18). I disagree and applaud HCN’s efforts to diversify your coverage and engage the less-than-savory realities of the American West — racism, extraction and destruction. Basic historical literacy reveals that genocide is the […]

Oil and gas drilling poses significant future safety and environmental threats (“When Your Neighborhood Goes Boom!” HCN, 10/28/18). Wells are drilled and cased with steel and a layer of cement to prevent reservoir fluids from contaminating fresh water zones above the hydrocarbon reservoir and escaping to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, over time, the cement degrades, allowing […]