Making Sense of Malheur Reﬂections from Inside the Oregon Occupation by Hal Herring March 21, 2016 | $5 | Vol

CALIFORNIA DROUGHT’S SILVER LINING | NEVADA (POLITICAL) TEST SITE | ALASKAN CARIBOU HUNT

High Country ForN people whoews care about the West Making Sense of Malheur Reﬂections from inside the Oregon occupation By Hal Herring March 21, 2016 | $5 | Vol. 48 No. 5 | www.hcn.org 48 No. | $5 Vol. 2016 March 21, CONTENTS

Editor’s note Snapshot of a sad moment When a band of militants took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon this winter, we at High Country News worked hard to understand not only what was happening day by day, but also why it was happening. What did Ammon Bundy and his supporters actually want? We’re still trying to figure it out. Certainly, the occupation meant something. And while it’s easy to cast the Bundyites as foolish malcontents, as many in the media have done, there’s more to it than that. The Malheur occupation generated so much interest, I think, because it strikes at core questions at work in the American West today — questions about liberty and power and control. Over the last eight years, since the election of President Barack Obama, the extreme right has steadily sown discord throughout our democracy. This has created paralysis in the federal government, Rosella Talbot drapes an American flag over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge sign on Jan. 2, the day armed militants occupied the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service buildings. BROOKE WARREN mistrust among the electorate and a general erosion Audio of civility. In many ways, the Malheur occupation is a FEATURE product of this campaign, which has also encouraged the rise of Donald Trump. Both the occupation and “Sheriffs are the ultimate 12 Making Sense of Malheur Trump’s candidacy rely on the anxieties of middle- law enforcement authority. On the cover Reflections from inside the Oregon occupation By Hal Herring and lower-class white Americans, and I’ve found it hard lately to think of one without the other. Duane Ehmer carries Because they are elected an American flag as CURRENTS A recent analysis by the Washington Post shows that in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, officials, they have more he rides his horse, 5 Hellboy, at the Why Nevada matters for the rest of the election Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Vermont, Trump won power than anybody in Malheur National Early caucuses highlighted Western issues, but the state will play proportionately more votes in the places where Wildlife Refuge near an even bigger role in November the death rate of middle-aged whites was higher their county, including Burns, Oregon, in 7 mid-January. Ehmer ‘A smart way’ for species? A study refutes claims that the Endangered than average. The rural West shares many of those the president of the was among the armed Species Act squelches development, but the devil is in the details states’ characteristics, but there is one distinction: occupiers of the 7 The Latest: WIPP radiation leak Life in the West is, in large part, an experiment in United States.” refuge. JOE RAEDLE/ cooperation. Out here, we have learned to work —Richard Mack’s philosophy, as GETTY IMAGES 8 The caribou hunter of Arctic Village Photo essay together to make use of our resources, including our explained by HCN senior editor 10 Jonathan Thompson in “West Obsessed: California drought brings opportunity Dry spell provides relief public lands, through a democratic, bureaucratic What the heck is a Sagebrush Sheriff?” for communities with contaminated drinking water process that is as messy as it is necessary. That Mack is founder of the Constitutional 10 The Latest: Hells Canyon bighorn sheep cooperation was lost on the occupiers. Sheriff and Peace Officers Association, Still, I don’t think ridiculing them will help. and author of the book The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope. DEPARTMENTS We should seek to understand them, as Montana writer Hal Herring does in this issue’s cover essay. MORE: hcne.ws/wo-sagebrushsheriff 3 HCN.ORG NEWS IN BRIEF Both sympathetic and skeptical, Herring embedded Complete access himself in the occupation and had lengthy to subscriber-only 4 LETTERS discussions with the people who found themselves, content 11 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends imperiled and at times bewildered, under Bundy’s HCN’s website hcn.org 20 MARKETPLACE banner. Herring’s sharp eye and honest writing provide an indelible snapshot of a sad moment in Digital edition 23 WRITERS ON THE RANGE Western history. hcne.ws/digi-4805 Biking in wilderness? Ain’t gonna happen. By Tim Lydon Tablet and mobile apps The occupation is over, with 25 men and

hcne.ws/HCNmobile-app 26 BOOKS women arrested, one man killed, and Bundy and his The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories by Manuel Ramos. inner circle facing felony charges. But this won’t be Reviewed by Michelle Newby Lancaster the end of the story, I suspect. We are left now to Follow us Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer. learn from it what we can. A good place to start is Reviewed by Annie Dawid Herring’s essay, which comes as close as anything 27 ESSAY Seeds in a sandstorm By Natasha Vizcarra I’ve read to an insider’s view of the occupation — the latest sign of our troubled times. @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Brian Calvert, managing editor 2 High Country News March 21, 2016 FROM OUR WEBSI TE: HCN.ORG

Clean Power stay Trending spurs green action Think-tank Environmentalists started the year on a high, influence after the Obama administration took action on coal leasing on public lands, Keystone In early March, XL and carbon emissions. Then last month, an Idaho Senate the Supreme Court delivered the movement panel passed a bill an unexpected defeat by staying the Clean that would help Power Plan. The 5-to-4 decision showed lay the groundwork environmentalists just how fragile their for more local victories are – and re-energized their efforts control of federal to influence the coming elections and the lands. The bill was search for a replacement for Supreme Court based on model Justice Antonin Scalia. Green groups, like the legislation written League of Conservation Voters, received an by the American influx of donations following the stay. The Legislative Exchange Democratic National Committee released a Council (ALEC), a video with members of Congress, most from conservative think Western states, talking about the toll climate tank whose Western change will take on their states, a signal of influence has the larger role environmental issues play in grown. The group this election than in the past. On the line has played a role in are the hard-won policies of the Obama public-lands debates administration, not least of them the Clean as far back as the A man wears a Bernie Sanders mask during a November rally in Los Angeles calling for action on Power Plan. ELIZABETH SHOGREN 1995 “Sagebrush Rebellion Act.” climate change, just before climate talks in Paris. The Supreme Court’s stay of the Clean Power Plan MORE: hcne.ws/CPPenviros last month has re-energized environmental groups’ efforts to raise the issue’s profile. During the first MARK RALSTON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES half of last year, a third of the public land transfer bills introduced in the Audio West could be LAND COVER traced back to ALEC, circa 1990 and more have “Sheriffs are the ultimate appeared already this year. law enforcement authority. LYNDSEY GILPIN

Because they are elected You say officials, they have more JE N NAY “Public-lands policy power than anybody in coming from a place their county, including LAND COVER with negligible Pre-1900s public lands. Makes the president of the sense.” DISAPPEARANCE OF United States.” Land cover CENTRAL VALLEY WET- AMY BRUNVAND Aquatic LANDS. CENTRAL VAL- “ ‘Local control’ —Richard Mack’s philosophy, as Wetland LEY HISTORIC MAPPING PROJECT, CALIFORNIA is always the explained by HCN senior editor Riparian Other floodplain habitat STATE UNIVERSITY, buzzword, but most Jonathan Thompson in “West Obsessed: CHICO, GEOGRAPHIC Grassland INFORMATION CENTER of the locals are not What the heck is a Sagebrush Sheriff?” actually in favor Mack is founder of the Constitutional they crowd together on diminishing wet areas, of handing our Sheriff and Peace Officers Association, Shrinking wetlands diseases spread, further weakening populations. quality of life over and author of the book The County In the last century, California wetlands have Conservationists and farmers have tried to slow to corporate and Sheriff: America’s Last Hope. decreased by 90 percent. That trend has continued over the past five years of drought. Birds that once the slide, but dwindling water allocations have private interests.” MORE: hcne.ws/wo-sagebrushsheriff nested in the wetlands are finding their habitual hindered their efforts. PAIGE BLANKENBUEHLER spots dried out, leading to reduced breeding. As MORE: hcne.ws/CAwetlands MICHAEL STIEHL “Why is this a surprise? What baffles me, Timeline General Land though, is why 1,000 Office surveyors the conservation Roughly the number Grazing rights over time in Oregon, circa and wilderness of Yellowstone bison 1923. The GLO, organizations don’t killed in this year’s Battles over who should be able to called by some use similar tactics controversial cull. Biolo- graze livestock on the vast stretches the “Gateway to by introducing their gists say development of federal land in Western states Land Ownership,” draft legislation.” has ended the animal’s have raged for over 150 years. because it historical migrations; Central to these disputes is whether MORE: hcne.ws/ facilitated land-transfer and without management, grazing is a “right.” Federal laws treat settlement, later bison could overcrowd grazing on public land as a privilege, Facebook.com/ merged with highcountrynews the park. but permits are often tied to another agency KRISTA LANGLOIS property, and some ranchers consider to become the them their due. TAY WILES MORE: Bureau of Land hcne.ws/bison-cull MORE: hcne.ws/grazing-timeline Management. BLM www.hcn.org High Country News 3 LETTERS Send letters to [email protected] or Editor, HCN, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428.

High Country News providing time for listening as a result EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER of the necessity of chewing. It is really Paul Larmer more basic than that. Going back to the MANAGING EDITOR early days of our species, the experi- Brian Calvert ECARTOONS.COM SENIOR EDITORS ence of sharing food calls up our deep Jodi Peterson desire for human connection. We are Jonathan Thompson E/ CAGL subconsciously reminded of our common ART DIRECTOR AGL Cindy Wehling humanity, and that changes how we ONLINE EDITOR treat each other, including our willing- Tay Wiles C DARYL ness to respectfully listen to the other’s ASSISTANT EDITOR perspective. Kate Schimel Sharing food will not prevent or D.C. CORRESPONDENT Elizabeth Shogren settle conflicts. But if practiced consis- WRITERS ON THE RANGE tently, it will make those conflicts less EDITOR Betsy Marston bitter. And maybe that will translate ASSOCIATE DESIGNER into a desire to learn each others’ stories Brooke Warren COPY EDITOR ... and our region’s history. Diane Sylvain Felice Pace CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Cally Carswell Klamath, California Sarah Gilman Glenn Nelson Michelle Nijhuis GETTING BEYOND YES OR NO CORRESPONDENTS Ben Goldfarb The Feb. 22 article “Fractured” corre- Krista Langlois TAXING WATER sumption, but rather go to feed a vast sponded in several ways with my own Sarah Tory expanse of water-guzzling livestock. The experience in dealing with management Joshua Zaffos The article from Feb. 22, “Growing lack of mention of livestock in the article issues at the Carrizo Plain National EDITORIAL FELLOW Heavy” by Sena Christian, does an left out a significant portion of where Monument in Southern California. Paige Blankenbuehler excellent job of presenting the issue of INTERNS agricultural water in California goes. In the course of an oral history California’s agricultural water usage. Lyndsey Gilpin Dairy and beef production use far more project, I interviewed a great many Bryce Gray Unfortunately, the article misses the es- water than crop production in the state; ranchers who were often unhappy about ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER sence of what is exacerbating the effects thus, changes to the livestock portion of the restrictions placed upon grazing. Alexis Halbert of California’s drought: bad economics. DEVELOPMENT MANAGER California’s agriculture would make a On a number of occasions I was invited The market has incorrectly priced water Alyssa Pinkerton much larger impact than concentrating to stay for lunch, and invariably talk DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT for agriculture, which is subsequently efforts on select food crops. turned to schooling, family and grand- Christine List destroying California’s economy and As a former resident of California, I children. After that, we were able to SUBSCRIPTIONS MARKETER allowing overdraft of water resources. JoAnn Kalenak can name dozens of ways my household speak as people rather than opponents, That cheap water is supplied by the WEB DEVELOPER Eric Strebel was told to conserve water. However, and while we might not agree, it had be- enormous amount of infrastructure paid DATABASE/IT ADMINISTRATOR we were never told to watch what we come easier for each of us to admit that Alan Wells for by taxpayers. This water is artificial- ate, even though changing our eating the situation was complicated and that COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ly priced, meaning that farmers have no habits would have a much larger impact we might not know all the answers. Gretchen King incentive to save. Increasing the tax on FINANCE MANAGER on conserving water. You can save more As a volunteer, I also participated water would force farmers to use water Beckie Avera water by not eating a hamburger for in a workshop conducted by the Bureau ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE more efficiently. Farmers would need to lunch than by giving up showering for of the Land Management, intended Jan Ho man invest in equipment or infrastructure several months. to facilitate the creation of a resource CIRCULATION MANAGER that promotes efficient water usage. Tammy York management plan for the Carrizo Plain And they would begin growing crops Carolyn Koestner CIRCULATION SYSTEMS ADMIN. Monument. In one of the exercises, we Kathy Martinez that did not require as much water, such Saratoga Springs, New York were to address an issue in the plan, CIRCULATION as cereals like millet, instead of water but had to formulate the question as: Doris Teel, Kati Johnson, intensive crops like alfalfa, rice, cotton Stephanie Kyle SHARING FOOD ... AND HISTORY “How can we accomplish X, while still and almonds. This tax would also bring ADVERTISING DIRECTOR preserving Y?” We could not ask, “Are David J. Anderson in much-needed revenue to California, Thank you for Patricia Limerick’s essay off-road vehicles to be permitted in the ADVERTISING SALES which is currently in debt. on the complex sociology of the current REPRESENTATIVE backcountry?” This would only have conflict over oil and gas development Bob Wedemeyer Sam Holmberg a “yes” or “no” answer and could only (“Fractured,” HCN, 2/22/16). Learning GRANTWRITER Los Angeles, California precipitate a struggle. Instead, we de- Janet Reasoner from the past has not been one of the bated, “How can backcountry travel be [email protected] West’s strengths. Many Westerners SAVE WATER, SKIP THE BURGERS managed while still preserving intrinsic [email protected] seem as passionately devoted to ignor- [email protected] resource values?” My group consisted of Sena Christian, in “Growing Heavy,” ing or denying history as Ms. Limerick [email protected] a range technician, a wildlife biologist, a [email protected] explains that many of California’s is to bringing history to bear on our cur- cartographer and a recreation planner. FOUNDER Tom Bell farmers, in order to cope with the ever- rent conflicts and challenges. We spent an hour looking for solutions BOARD OF DIRECTORS decreasing water supply, are putting While Limerick’s quest to get John Belkin, Colo. instead of arguing. I believe that Patri- their resources into their most valuable Westerners to pay attention to history Beth Conover, Colo. cia Limerick would understand both of Jay Dean, Calif. food crops, which also happen to be the may not prove achievable, her other these experiences. John Echohawk, Colo. most water-intensive. But many of the suggestion about the benefits of those Bob Fulkerson, Nev. Wayne Hare, Colo. state’s most water-intensive field crops on opposite sides sharing food has great Craig Deutsche Laura Helmuth, Md. are not even destined for human con- promise. The benefits are not limited to Los Angeles, California John Heyneman, Wyo. Samaria Ja e, Calif. Nicole Lampe, Ore. Marla Painter, N.M. High Country News is a nonprot 501(c)(3) (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Printed on Dan Stonington, Wash. recycled paper. Rick Tallman, Colo. High independent media organization that covers the Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post ofﬁces. Luis Torres, N.M. Country issues that dene the American West. Its mission is POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All Andy Wiessner, Colo. to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Florence Williams, D.C. News region’s diverse natural and human communities. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155 | hcn.org 4 High Country News March 21, 2016 CURRENTS Why Nevada matters for the rest of the election Early caucuses drew attention to Western issues, but the state will play an even bigger role in November

BY PAIGE BLANKENBEUHLER

t a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas And that applies especially to the Sanders and Trump offer an “outside es- A last October, a Colombian emigrant state’s racial makeup. Among its 2.8 mil- tablishment” perspective that appeals to named Myriam Witcher walked out onto lion residents, 9 percent are black, 8 per- Latino voters, says Dulce Saenz, who was the stage, her black ponytail swinging. cent are Asian and 28 percent are Hispan- born in Mexico and is Colorado state di- She clutched a tiny American flag and a ic; nationally, 13 percent of the population rector of Sanders’ campaign. (Both polls, copy of People magazine with the billion- is black, 5 percent Asian and 17 percent however, have been criticized for their aire Republican front-runner featured on Hispanic, according to the U.S. Cen- small sample sizes.) the cover. “I’m Hispanic, and I vote for Mr. sus Bureau. Across the board, minority Not only did the Nevada caucuses pro- Trump!” she cried. “We love you, all the groups tilt toward the Democratic Party: vide a testing ground for a more diverse way to the White House!” Among eligible Hispanic voters, 56 per- electorate, they also encouraged candi- Altogether, 45 percent of participating cent are registered Democrats, while 26 dates to address some of the issues that Latino Republicans voted for Trump in percent are Republicans, according to the resonate strongly in the West, such as the Nevada caucus. But that doesn’t mean Pew Research Center. public lands, extractive and renewable he’ll win that electorate’s favor come Nov. Nevada’s caucus results could be a energy and immigration reform. 8. Caucuses tend to bring out the most po- barometer for the campaign-season de- All the candidates who have visited larized voters, and thus don’t tend to rep- bate over illegal immigration. The West’s the Silver State have weighed in on the resent the broader electorate. early election season has been dominated debate over transferring public lands to But if you want an indication of how by the question of how to strengthen bor- state and local control, which came to a the West — or even the country — might der defense while addressing the status boil with the occupation of Oregon’s Mal- vote on Election Day, look to Nevada. In of undocumented people already living in heur National Wildlife Refuge earlier this the definitive race, the state has been a the U.S. year. Since the federal government owns strong indicator of the preference of the The state has 328,000 eligible His- nearly 85 percent of Nevada’s land, it whole. panic voters, 17 percent of all voters there. makes sense that the issue is important to Nevada moved to the forefront of cam- According to a caucus exit poll, Latino the state’s voters, says David Fott, a pro- paign season in 2008, becoming the first Democrats voted for Vermont Sen. Bernie fessor of political science at the University caucus in the West to take place prior to Sanders over former Secretary of State of Nevada, Las Vegas. Nevada voters debate Super Tuesday, largely due to the influ- Hillary Clinton by 53 percent to 45 per- Both Sanders and frontrunner Clinton their candidate choices ence of Senate Minority Leader Harry cent. In the Republican caucus, despite his oppose the transfer of public lands to state with an undecided voter at the East Las Reid, D-Nev. He argued that his state platform’s promise to build a wall between control, but Cruz condemned government Vegas Community provided an important contrast to Iowa the U.S. and Mexico, more Latino voters control of public lands in a television ad Center during the and New Hampshire, the predominantly supported Trump than his rivals, Sens. that ran in Nevada, and John Kasich, gov- Democratic Caucus on white early nominating-season states. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marco Rubio, R- ernor of Ohio, echoed his stance in a radio Feb. 20. Nevada’s typically low-turnout race saw Fla., according to an entrance poll. Both commercial. ZOË MEYERS dramatically increased participation this year (the Republican caucus broke re- cords, with more than 75,000 people in attendance), providing a crucial trial indication of how campaign messages are resonating with Western voters, including Latinos.

evada shares many of the nation’s N socioeconomic challenges and also embodies a complex sliver of its increas- ingly diverse and politically discontented population. Roughly 80 percent of Americans live in urban centers, and Nevada reﬂects that, with nearly 75 percent of the state’s population concentrated in Clark County, home of Las Vegas. “We have a large city (Vegas) balancing water scarcity with demand, rural communities in Elko and hip- ster enclaves in Reno,” says Laura Martin, associate director of the Progressive Lead- ership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN). (Dis- closure: HCN board member Bob Fulk- erson is the state director and co-founder of PLAN.) “We look like the future of our country,” Martin says.

Paige Blankenbuehler is an HCN editorial fellow. @PaigeBlank

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 Donald Trump February’s early caucus results aren’t supporters wait for necessarily predictive of eventual nomina- the candidate to speak tions. And yet, because of its demographics, at a rally at South the state has proven strongly representa- Point Arena in Las Vegas, the evening tive of the rest of the nation in the general before the Republican election. Nevada has picked more presiden- Caucus, on Feb. 22. tial victors than any other state, choosing ZOË MEYERS the winning candidate in every general election since 1912, except one. But the state’s caucuses have swung the other way: The candidates chosen in Nevada’s 2008 preliminary — Clinton and Mitt Romney, who also won the state’s favor later in 2012 — were both defeated by Barack Obama. At this year’s caucus, Clinton gained a narrow victory in Nevada, but Sanders claimed Colorado on Super Tuesday. Re- publican frontrunner Trump succeeded in Nevada by a wide margin — more than 20 points over Cruz and Rubio. But in the Idaho Republican primary on March 8, Cruz dominated. Overall, Nevada’s results followed the national pattern, with It’s been more difﬁcult to get a read ignorance. “Well, it’s not a subject I know Clinton and Trump winning the most del- on the issue from Trump. In an interview anything about,” he said, according to the egates so far. with outdoor magazine Field & Stream, Washington Post. The preferences of Nevada’s Hispanic in January while campaigning in Ne- voters were not echoed in another key vada, he said public lands should stay et when it comes to the presidential early state, Colorado, where Latinos make under federal control. By the end of the Y election, Nevada’s early tally is ac- up 15 percent of eligible voters. On Super month, however, Trump was criticizing tually a bit of a red herring. The state’s Tuesday, Latino Democrats favored Sand- the government’s role in his Reno Gazette- caucus relies on voter discussion, as op- ers over Clinton. No Republican results Journal editorial: “Because the BLM is so posed to the secret ballot of primaries. It’s were available, since that party opted out reluctant to release land to local disposi- a closed system, which means only reg- of early polling. tion in Nevada, the cost of land has sky- istered Democrats and Republicans can “This year, it’s a very strange race rocketed and the cost of living has become participate. By their nature, such races on both the Republican and Democratic an impediment to growth.” Then, during draw only the most vocal and polarized sides,” says political science professor Fott. the state’s Republican caucus on Feb. 23, voters in both parties. “I’m very interested in seeing what hap- he sidestepped the issue entirely, claiming That strong partisanship means that pens.”

MONEY RAISED AND SPENT IN NEVADA BY CANDIDATES IN PRESIDENTIAL RACE* WESTERN DELEGATES BY STATE RACE National Total: D-4,765, R-2,472 DEMOCRAT $682,411 State Nomination Type Delegates Hillary Clinton, Alaska D-Caucus 20 winner $443,984 (20 pledged delegates) R-Caucus 28 Arizona D-Primary 85 $190,240 Bernie Sanders R-Primary 58 $773,102 (15) California D-Primary 548 R-Primary 172 REPUBLICAN Colorado D-Caucus 78 $35,149 Donald Trump, R-Convention 37 winner $77,655 (14) Idaho D-Caucus 27 R-Primary 32 $280,434 Montana D-Primary 27 Ted Cruz R-Primary 27 $126,177 (6) Nevada D-Caucus 43 $332,603 R-Caucus 30 Marco Rubio New Mexico D-Primary 43 $290,730 (7) R-Primary 24 Raised by individuals Oregon D-Primary 74 $14,153 John Kasich Spent (pledged delegates) R-Primary 28 $50,271 (1) Utah D-Primary 37 R-Primary 40 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 Washington D-Caucus 118 THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS R-Primary 44 *Money “raised” represents donations from individuals of that state, directly to the candidate. Contributions from Super PACs, outside spending groups or political parties are not included. The statistics for money raised and money spent are updated Wyoming D-Caucus 18 monthly. SOURCE: FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION R-Convention 29

6 High Country News March 21, 2016 THE LATEST

A 2009 march in Fresno, California, Backstory organized by the Latino Water Coalition, to In February 2014, protest decreased water deliveries to Central fire erupted at New Valley farmers to protect Delta smelt. Mexico’s Waste MIKE RHODES/FRESNO ALLIANCE Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the country’s only permanent on Endangered Species Act compliance. nuclear waste Over two decades, she’s seen the process repository. Later that improve as agencies and developers be- month, in an unrelated come more familiar with compliance. The incident, containers decline in jeopardy calls, she says, is a sign of nuclear bomb of that progress. debris leaked radioactive Li thinks that’s true, to some extent, particles into the but says there are instances where a jeop- air. In response, ardy finding seemed warranted. Respond- the Department of ing to a draft environmental impact state- Energy shut down ment in 2012, Fish and Wildlife urged the WIPP, leaving the Bureau of Land Management to reject a defense industry with Mojave Desert solar plant that would cut nowhere to dispose of off a corridor that connects endangered radioactive waste like desert tortoise populations and helps to clothing, machinery parts, and sludge prevent genetic isolation. Yet in 2014, (“The leak heard the agency determined the same project ’round the nuclear wouldn’t jeopardize tortoises. Defenders industry,” HCN, sued, and litigation is ongoing. 6/9/14). ‘A smart way’ for species? “A lot of environmentalists thought that the Obama administration was going Followup A new study refutes claims that the Endangered Species Act to be a new day for wildlife protection,” Li The Energy says. But endangered species seem to rank Department squelches development, but the devil is in the details low on its environmental priority list. The concluded its president has made statements about investigation in BY CALLY CARSWELL clean air and clean water in his State of late February, the Union addresses, Li points out, but finding that Los Alamos National he snail darter is a miniature fish with of economic havoc as hyperbole. This fall, never mentioned endangered species. “To Laboratory T feathery fins and inky eyes. When it they pointed to a new study as proof. It make a jeopardy call, you’re going to have workers incorrectly was discovered in 1973, the species was found that out of 6,829 formal consulta- to be willing to defend it,” he says, and packaged waste thought to exist in just one stretch of tions from 2008 to 2015, only one deter- that’s tough to do without political capital. shipped to WIPP, the Little Tennessee River — a stretch mined that a project would harm habitat, The data point to a broader weaken- leading to the leak about to be inundated by the Tellico Dam. while two warned that a listed species ing of legal protections in favor of a col- and exposing more In 1975, after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife would be jeopardized. Study author Ya- laborative, landowner-friendly approach, than 20 workers to Service listed the fish under the new Wei Li of Defenders of Wildlife concludes says Pat Parenteau of the Vermont Law radiation. Federal Endangered Species Act, dam opponents that Section 7 doesn’t stop development: School. Sometimes this approach makes officials issued safety sued to halt construction, arguing that it “It says, ‘Do it in a smart way.’ ” sense, he says. Safe harbor agreements, violation citations to two contractors, would obliterate the species. They won in Jeopardy findings have been par- for example, assure landowners who im- but no fines. WIPP the U.S. Supreme Court, and the dam was ticularly rare recently. Under President prove habitat that they won’t face future disposal operations temporarily dead. Barack Obama, only .03 percent of consul- restrictions. On the other hand, voluntary may resume this At the heart of the case was Section 7 tations resulted in them. That’s compared deals to prevent species from getting list- year, but the cost of the Endangered Species Act, which has to 8.9 percent between 1979 and 1981, and ed often lack mechanisms to ensure that of re-starting is sparked impassioned battles ever since. 17.5 percent between 1987 and 1991. promises are kept. estimated at nearly If the Fish and Wildlife Service finds that But the decline, however dramatic, is Voluntary efforts justified the re- a half-billion dollars. a project requiring federal environmen- only a rough gauge of Section 7’s impact. cent decision not to list the greater sage In the meantime, tal review will jeopardize an endangered The 1987 to 1991 period included a few grouse, a test case for the efficacy of co- waste is backing up at Los Alamos species or its critical habitat, it must of- dozen jeopardy findings for Oregon timber operative conservation. But Parenteau and elsewhere, fer alternatives or modifications through sales that threatened spotted owls. Since remains skeptical. “If it was producing including sites in a consultation process with other agencies then, says Fish and Wildlife spokesman good results, I’d be happy,” he says. “But Nevada and Idaho. and the developer. Those alternatives can Gavin Shire, a more collaborative process if you look at what’s happening to species” LYNDSEY GILPIN have economic consequences: To save the has evolved, where the agency works with — habitat loss, competition from invasive snail darter, abandon the dam. To protect stakeholders to modify projects before mak- species, climate change — “all the indica- the spotted owl, stop old-growth logging. To ing official findings. So the decline doesn’t tors are downward.” preserve California’s tiny Delta smelt, send necessarily indicate an increase in harmful Yet jeopardy calls are no guarantee, farmers less irrigation water at times. development. It doesn’t tell you whether either. The Tellico Dam was completed af- Cases like these rile up the law’s critics. developers built mitigation into proposals, ter Congress exempted it from the Endan- After a 2008 Delta smelt “jeopardy find- or dropped projects altogether, nor how gered Species Act. And in a brutal drought, ing,” California Republicans and farmers much conservation measures cost or ac- despite some cuts in water pumped from accused the government of creating the complished, according to Wyoming lawyer its habitat, Delta smelt numbers reached drought just to save a “stupid little fish.” Mike Brennan. historic lows. In a February survey to Environmentalists usually dismiss claims The whole point of consultations is gauge the abundance of adult smelt, biolo- to respond to concerns and avoid harm- gists found fish at only five of 40 sampling Contributing editor Cally Carswell writes from ing wildlife, adds Barbara Craig, a Port- sites. Over four days they netted just six Santa Fe, New Mexico. @callycarswell land lawyer who advises private clients fish. DOE

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 PHOTOS | NATHANIEL WILDER

Photo Essay In Alaska, subsistence hunting keeps a village afloat

ach year, as spring begins, the Porcupine Nathaniel Wilder, who documented last spring’s Ecaribou herd sets out on its annual migration. migration. Swaney watches them from his house, The caribou Roughly 200,000 animals winter south of Wilder says, planning his hunts. “He called the the Brooks Range in Alaska and in the Yukon living room window ‘the Outdoor Channel,’ as he Territory, and then, starting around March, could watch patterns of the caribou and wolves hunter of spend several weeks traveling 400 miles north approaching the herd.” When he’s not hunting, to the coastal stretches of the Arctic National Swaney cuts down trees for the woodstoves that Wildlife Refuge, where they calve. When they heat Arctic Village. The work helps both him and Arctic Village pass indigenous settlements like Arctic Village, his village survive: Jobs are limited here, and cash subsistence hunters like Charlie Swaney hunt is hard to come by. Villagers have resisted offers them for food and hides. “(The caribou) hang to lease their land to oil and gas companies; out close to town for awhile, resting on the lakes, subsistence hunting and logging provide enough grazing in the muskeg forests,” says photographer stability, at least for now. KATE SCHIMEL

Charlie Swaney’s dog, Daazhraii (meaning “white swan”), pulls against a tether as Swaney, a subsistence hunter, heads out in search of caribou. While snow machines are the preferred mode of transport for hunting and gathering wood in Arctic Village, Alaska, on the edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, many villagers still keep dogs around, and some even have full sled dog teams.

Caribou from the Porcupine herd scatter a er Swaney, 54, res and kills a female, right. Caribou meat hangs to dry on a log rack near the woodstove in the living room of Charlie and his wife, Marion, far right.

WEB EXTRA See more photos of Arctic Village, Alaska, at hcne.ws/ caribouphotos

8 High Country News March 21, 2016 Swaney prepares to send three boxes of caribou meat from his hunts to his Swaney’s driveway is a transfer point for things he has gotten from the land, such as grandson’s college graduation celebration in Fairbanks, Alaska. Supplies for wood for his stove that was gathered six miles out of town and the remains of two the 150 inhabitants of Arctic Village, one of the most remote villages in North caribou he’d hunted earlier that day. Swaney is one of about 10 villagers who sell America, arrive by plane. wood to the rest of the 150 residents in Arctic Village.

e Porcupine caribou herd, which currently numbers over 190,000, lingers on a lake south of Arctic Village as it travels through the area in one of the longest land- mammal migrations in the world. Locals say the caribou came through town a month early in 2015, but no one is sure why.

www.hcn.org High Country News 9 THE LATEST Backstory Ten thousand bighorn sheep once roamed Idaho’s Hells Canyon, in the Payette National Forest. But by the 1940s, disease and habitat loss from domestic Guillermo Lopez sheep grazing brushes his teeth had decimated using bottled water the animals. In an at his home outside effort to restore Fresno, California, populations, about a er his well became 600 bighorns have contaminated and been transplanted to then dried up. Lopez Hells Canyon since the and his neighbors 1970s. To protect are on track to get them, in 2007 hooked up to city the Forest Service water this year, banned domestic thanks to funds sheep from large made available due chunks of the to the California Payette, sparking a drought. COURTESY battle over grazing SASHA KHOKHA/KQED privileges (“Sheep v. Sheep,” HCN, 10/1/07). Followup In March, Idaho California drought brings opportunity courts upheld the 2007 plan, which Dry spell provides relief for communities with contaminated drinking water calls for reducing domestic sheep BY ELIZABETH SHOGREN numbers in the Payette by 70 percent. Ranchers uillermo Lopez knew something was of the drought. But perhaps more impor- kill infants by decreasing the oxygen in and industry groups G wrong with the well water at the tantly, as soon as shallow wells started to their blood, while uranium can lead to kid- had sued in 2012, house where he has lived half his life.“It go dry, neighbors who had resisted giv- ney problems and increased cancer risks.) claiming the Forest tasted a little funny, so I never drank it,” ing up those wells began to change their But residents, who were accustomed to Service didn’t follow says Lopez, 31, who lives with his mother minds. “People started saying, ‘Yes, I do using as much water as they wanted for legal procedures. and brother. But like many people with want public water.’ It sped things up with their yards and animals without paying “(This decision) wells, the family had never had it tested. the funding, too,” says Sue Ruiz, commu- for it, were reluctant to trade their wells means the Forest They drank bottled water but used the nity development specialist for Self-Help for water bills. Service is making well water for cooking and everything else. Enterprises, which works to improve liv- Lopez met Ruiz shortly after his well proactive conservation Then, early last year, due to California’s decisions,” says ing standards for low-income families in went dry in early 2015. He embraced the Greta Anderson, long drought, their well went dry. the San Joaquin Valley. idea of public drinking water and started deputy director of the The family had to haul water for Rural California still has a widespread going door-to-door to persuade his neigh- nonprofit Western months — no easy task, because Lopez problem with contaminated drinking wa- bors. At first, they resisted the idea. Their Watersheds Project, is disabled. It was a great relief when a ter, and so far positive examples like Lo- old wells likely would have to be decom- which intervened in huge water tank was delivered to their pez’s neighborhood are few. But a recent missioned to avoid contaminating the the lawsuit. Today, front yard to get their faucets and toilet ballot initiative will bring a major influx public system, and it wasn’t clear how around 1,500 working again. But the drought is about of state dollars, and experts hope it will much the new hookups would cost. But bighorns inhabit to deliver a bigger, unexpected blessing to allow many communities to finally obtain the sell got easier, Lopez recalls, as more the Hells Canyon Lopez and the other residents of Daleville decent water. “I think this is an amazing and more wells went dry. Drilling a deeper area. LYNDSEY GILPIN Avenue, a stretch of houses in an agricul- opportunity we have for the state,” says private well, which can cost $20,000 or tural area just outside of Fresno, Califor- Boykin Witherspoon III, executive direc- more, is out of the question for many resi- nia. If all goes as planned, within a year tor of California State University’s Water dents, including the Lopez family. “We’re their street will be hooked up to reliable, Resources and Policy Initiatives. lucky we have the opportunity to have the safe drinking water from the city. Unlikely city come in,” he says. as it seems, the drought has had a silver few years ago, when the drought was Ruiz has been trying unsuccessfully lining. A still young, Ruiz identified Lopez’s to hook up another street a little farther The drought played two crucial roles in neighborhood as a place in need of cleaner from the city, where the contamination solving this neighborhood’s chronic drink- drinking water. Decades before, she had levels are even higher. The costs of con- ing-water problems. The funding to worked at an elementary school near the necting homes to public water for the first hook up the 30-odd houses is slated strip of homes outside the city bound- time can be staggering — $1 million for to come from a mixture of state and ary. She sent water samples from several just the 30 houses on Daleville and a few federal dollars, available only because homes to a lab, which found levels of ni- others on nearby streets. But the U.S. De- trates, uranium and bacteria that exceed- partment of Agriculture has already pro- Correspondent Elizabeth Shogren writes HCN’s ed drinking water standards. (Nitrates vided $500,000, and Ruiz hopes state can cause “blue baby syndrome” and even PIXABAY DC Dispatches from Washington. @ShogrenE Please see Drought’s silver lining, page 23

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Welcome, Glenn We’re excited to report that Seattle-based journalist Glenn Nelson is joining High Country News as our newest contributing editor. Glenn’s work has broken down barriers for diversity and inclusion in discussions about public lands. He’ll be joining fellow contributing editors Cally Carswell, Sarah Gilman and Michelle Nijhuis to bring even more great stories to Love the West? the magazine and website. Born in Japan, Glenn is a longtime resident of Seattle who describes his Join the club! family as “a melting pot simmering with Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Latina Join the esteemed ranks of the Sustainers’ Club and support independent ingredients.” His background gives him a uniquely nuanced view of the West journalism with your monthly donation. It’s easy, secure and reliable, and a and its public lands, he says. “Since the sensible, thoughtful way to show how much you care about the West! communities of color have not been large, they’ve always mixed, and Seattle has as many or more multiracials, like myself and now my daughters, Sassia and Mika, SIX REASONS TO JOIN THE SUSTAINERS’ CLUB: than anywhere I’ve been in this country.” As a student, Glenn co-founded the 1 Your subscription to High Country News is automatically renewed at no cost to you*, Rainbow Coalition, an organization for in exchange for your monthly membership pledge of $12/month or more. No more annoying minority students, at Seattle University. renewal notices for you, and HCN saves on postage, paper resources and administrative costs! Later, at Columbia University, where he earned his master’s degree in political (*The $37 value of the subscription will be reflected in your year-end tax receipt.) science, he focused on minority election 2 Membership is quick and easy to set up — just five minutes to get started. Contributions can politics before going on to work at the be set up through your bank account or with a credit card and are processed on the 15th of sports department at The Seattle Times. As the Internet grew as a platform for viable each month. media ventures and innovations, Glenn You’ll receive three newsletters from Executive Director Paul Larmer each year, giving you an emerged as a leader in digital journalism. 3 He helped shape rivals.com, an online intimate look behind the scenes at HCN. publication that covered college sports, You’ll be acknowledged in the pages of High Country News and in our annual report and also co-founded scout.com, which 4 covered recruiting, from high school to the ( unless, of course, you wish to remain anonymous). NFL. Then, in 1999, Glenn founded the Contributions are tax-deductible, and you’ll receive an annual tax receipt every January. first iteration of the online media venture 5 HoopGurlz, which provides a voice for fe- 6 You’ll be fiercely proud, knowing that your contributions fund our writers and photographers, male athletes. He sold HoopGurlz to ESPN who work hard to bring you essential news of the West. And we’ll send you a sweet pair of in 2008, though he continued to manage it HCN “Sole of the West” socks. for another four years. During that time, the site won numerous awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, including for Best Specialized Website. At HCN, he will help develop a new Join today! cadre of writers, who will focus on cover- • Call 1-800-905-1155 ing the modern, diverse West. You can • Register online at hcn.org/SustainHCN find more about Glenn and his work at trailposse.com. Welcome, Glenn! • or mail in this coupon below: Alas, a correction: In our story about farmers dealing with drought (“A dry future weighs heavy on California agri- YES! I want to join the Sustainers’ Club monthly giving program. culture,” HCN, 2/22/16), a photo caption misidentified the type of irrigation pipe o HERE IS MY MONTHLY GIFT: PAYMENT INFO: pictured in Merced County, California. o $12 o $15 o $20 o $25 o Other $ ______o Enclosed is my check (Send the ﬁrst month’s gift or a voided check) The pipes pictured were to be used as o Or my one-time gift of $______o Please use this credit card: aboveground sprinklers, not buried for drip irrigation. Another mistake I’m a new Sustainers’ Club mem- CARD NUMBER EXPIRES squeaked by in a national park visita- ber. Please send me a pair of HCN tion graphic in our special Travel Issue NAME ON CARD wool socks in this size (check one) (“Where you go — and where you don’t,” o S/M o L/XL BILLING ADDRESS HCN, 3/7/16). Big Hole National Battle- field is located near Wisdom, Montana, CITY/STATE/ZIP not in Idaho. We regret the errors. —Paige Blankenbuehler for the staff High Country News | P.O. Box 1090 | Paonia, CO 81428 | 800-905-1155 | hcn.org 48:05

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13 FEATURE ESSAY BY HAL HERRING

14 High Country News March 21, 2016 FEATURE ESSAY BY HAL HERRING

Making Sense of Malheur Reflections from inside the Oregon occupation

hat more can be said? I was one minimum sentencing has been a terrible of the hundreds of journalists idea since its inception. who went to the Malheur Na- I am gobsmacked by an economy that tionalW Wildlife Refuge during the Ammon seems engineered to impoverish anyone Bundy occupation, and I saw the same who dares to try to make his or her own things that all the rest of them did. If living, and by a government that seems there was any difference between me and more and more distant from the people the other journalists, maybe it was that I it represents, except when calling up went there looking for kindred spirits. our sons and daughters to attack chaotic I am a self-employed, American-born peoples that clearly have nothing to do writer with a wife and two teenage chil- with me or anybody I know. I am isolated dren living in a tiny town on the plains by a culture that is as inscrutable to me of Montana. I’m a reader of the Con- as any in the mountains of Afghanistan. stitution, one who truly believes that For loving wilderness and empty lands the Second Amendment guarantees the and birdsong, rather than teeming cit- survival of the rest of the Bill of Rights. ies, I risk being called a xenophobe, a I came of age reading Edward Abbey’s noxious nativist. For viewing guns as The Brave Cowboy, George Orwell’s 1984, constitutionally protected, essential tools and a laundry-list of anarchists from the of self-defense and, if need be, liberation, last two centuries, from Leo Tolstoy and I’m told that I defend the massacres of Peter Kropotkin to Mikhail Bakunin and innocents in mass shootings. When I came Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who gave me the to Montana at age 25, I found in this vast Ammon Bundy, maxim that defined my early 20s: “Who- landscape, especially in the public lands center, leader of the armed ever lays his hand on me to govern me where I hunted and camped and worked, takeover of is a usurper and a tyrant: I declare him the freedom that was evaporating in the the Malheur National Wildlife my enemy.” I’ve read the 18th century South, where I grew up. I got happily lost Refuge, talks with philosophers Malthus and Hobbes, Locke in the space and the history. For a nature- local residents, supporters and and Rousseau, and am a skeptic of gov- obsessed, gun-soaked malcontent like me, press in the ernment power. I was not surprised when it was home, and when Ammon Bundy early days of the stando in I learned of the outrage over the sentenc- and his men took over the Malheur Ref- eastern Oregon. ANDY NELSON/ ing of Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steve uge, on a cold night in January, I thought THE REGISTER-GUARD/ ZUMAPRESS.COM Hammond for arson; federal mandatory I should go visit my neighbors.

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 At first light on Jan. 12, in the parking lot above the headquarters of the Malheur refuge, I met Neil Wampler, a tall, white-bearded man in his 60s who was standing in the snow, at 12 degrees above zero, wearing a pair of old black running shoes and a green coat over a hooded sweatshirt. He was near the campfire where the occupiers would gather, behind the big white pickup that blocked the road into the refuge headquarters and was emblazoned with signs Timeline of an that said, “Clemency for the Hammonds.” occupation Blaine Cooper, whose real name would be revealed as Stanley Blaine Hicks (with Jan. 2, 2016 More felonious history) of Humboldt, Arizona, than 100 anti- was sitting in the pickup with the heat government protesters march through Burns, blasting. Cooper looked like an urban Oregon, to show model — perfectly trimmed and moussed support for Harney black hair, pale blue eyes, and, oddly, County ranchers given the place and the weather — 4,100- Dwight and Steve foot elevation, sagebrush steppe, severe Hammond, who were ice fog — a lightweight black Calvin charged with arson in Klein jacket. As I approached the open 2012 after setting fires window of the truck, Cooper said some- that spread to public thing to me about how the government lands in 2001 and had to be opposed. I was holding my legal 2006. pad and trying to make notes, but then Jan. 2 Ammon he said something to the effect that “the Bundy leads a group left” had killed and enslaved people and of armed militants to blown up buildings to create this refuge, occupy the Malheur National Wildlife and I smiled, nodded, and kept walking. Refuge outside of I’d learned from covering wolf reintro- Burns to protest the duction that the most outlandish quotes, Hammonds’ arrest and however entertaining, ruin stories. I call for state and local shook hands with Wampler, who was control of federal land. much calmer than Cooper, didn’t seem to Jan. 4 The be suffering from the cold, and actually Hammonds turn looked like he was having a good time. themselves in to serve “I’m just the cook, really,” he said. the remainder of their “Been cooking for the crew since Bun- five-year sentences; kerville.” He smiled. “And I can tell you, both served partial it’s good to be the cook.” When he told sentences in 2012 me that the occupation’s goal involved a after their initial federal transfer of the refuge lands to the arrest. states, I asked him how much he knew Jan. 15 The FBI about what would happen to the lands if makes its first arrest they were successful. He admitted that and the circuit-preacher intensity of his late 40s, seemed to me a most unlikely in the occupation: he didn’t know, really. “This is a deep voice was gone. “I’ll get off my soapbox couple to rant for blood and maelstrom. 62-year-old Kenneth study,” he said. “Our previous actions now. I’m an old hippie, and this is a high, They had only recently moved to Riggins, Medenbach is charged with unauthorized were more protective, to keep the federal the most exciting and energizing thing. Idaho, from Wisconsin, and I wondered if use of a vehicle for government from harming the citizens. I’m off my butt, I’m 68 years old, and my they had not misread the West and Idaho driving a U.S. Fish and This is different, because the states are friends back home are so jealous. To be an and fallen in with militants when they Wildlife Service car to asserting their 10th Amendment preroga- old hippie from San Francisco, and to be might just as easily have met and joined a local supermarket. tives. When our founders created the in this mix, to be friends with a redneck a band of merry ice fishermen. During Jan. 22 Ammon states out of the territories, 95 percent of from Alabama. It’s beautiful.” Unlike the our conversation, Sean had to keep re- Bundy unsuccessfully it was meant to be private land.” other occupiers around the fire, Wampler minding Sandy to keep her weapon with meets with FBI I asked him if he knew the history of was not conspicuously armed, perhaps her, as she shifted from place to place officials to negotiate this place — the range wars, the over- because, as other reporters would un- trying to get warm; they wore cotton fa- a resolution. The grazing, the plume hunters that led to cover, he had a 38-year-old conviction for tigues more suited to the jungle than the occupiers convene the establishment of the refuge in 1908. second-degree murder (of his father) in Great Basin in deepest winter. Sean had a so-called “citizens’ He admitted that he did not, but that he California, a crime for which he long ago some authority; at least, he had a radio, grand jury” to would like to know more. “You really need served his time but which precluded him and he politely kept me from going down hold local officials to meet Ammon, and talk to him about from legally owning firearms. to the refuge headquarters until he got accountable for these things,” he said. “I’m amenable As I write this, the Malheur occupa- word that it was all right, and he had his arresting the Hammonds and failing to other solutions, but we have to rid tion has come to an end, with Sean and (outdated but effective) Ruger Mini-14 to turn over control ourselves of this government. All three Sandy Anderson, with whom I spent a slung or close at hand. I took some rib- of federal lands, in branches are out of control. When we pleasant hour or so talking politics and bing for being unarmed, and when I said what occupiers believe were at Bunkerville, the BLM had attack smoking cigarettes, surrendering as I wasn’t sure that my Montana concealed were violations of the dogs, snipers, tasers. I saw that happen- the last of the holdouts, along with the carry permit was even reciprocated by Constitution. ing on television in California, and by youthful techie, the seemingly demented Oregon, Sean patted the little pocket 10 a.m. that morning, I was packed up Ohioan, David Fry, and Jeff Banta of Constitution visible in his coat pocket, Please see Timeline, and on the road to join up. And we had Elko, Nevada. and said, “This is the only permit you’ll page 18 a great victory there.” He brightened, The likeable Andersons, in their ever need.” 16 High Country News March 21, 2016 Caption. CREDIT

I am doing my best here to convinced of plots and powers that do not friendly man in his 40s, unarmed, asked Neil Wampler, facing exist? When I asked whether the protest- her what she wanted to see, and she said, page, who was part be respectful of people with ers were endangering the Second Amend- “Anything I’m not supposed to see.” He of the stando near whom, it turned out, I dis- ment by brandishing AR-15s, the answer looked at me and shrugged, then dutifully Cliven Bundy’s was that an occupation like this was the led her through the sagebrush. She was ranch in Nevada in 2014, traveled to agree strongly, even violently. entire purpose of the Second Amendment. quickly back, asked me for my name, and eastern Oregon from I could focus upon the essential nuttiness When I asked whether, since the county then sped away into the ice fog in a Prius. California. Sandy of the occupation, the lack of a plan for an was the highest level of government they There was the legless man — James Anderson, above outcome, the exhaustion of being assailed recognized, the occupiers would stand — who was carried in his wheelchair center, talks with her with pocket Constitutions any time one down if the sheriff asked them to (Harney across the snow to join us at the fire, an husband, Sean, le, presents an argument that cannot be County Sheriff Dave Ward, of course, al- energetic and apocalyptic monologist of with a pistol on his hip, easily countered. Crackpots are drawn ready had), they said, no, because Sheriff almost surreal dullness, who beseeched and another occupier to such an open event like moths to a Ward was a tool of the oppressors. And the Lord for forgiveness each time he who gave his name halogen light (and, no, I do not automati- when I asked whether they would stand cursed and insisted on being lifted from only as Doug. BROOKE WARREN, FACING; cally exempt myself from the category). I down if the Oregon National Guard came his chair so he could kneel in the cold ROB KERR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES, wanted to find occupiers who could argue and asked them to, they said it was too mud beside the fire pit and pray for us ABOVE for what they were doing, but what is late for that. And so on. all, whose wheelchair constantly threat- there to say when people take up arms In the parking lot was a skinny beard- ened to tip over or roll forward into the inspired by, say, a belief that President ed man in denim whose entire car was flames, despite the blocks of firewood Barack Obama is the front for an Islamic covered with professionally made ads for and kindling we jammed under the front takeover of the nation, or that the Chi- doctors who will surgically remove gov- wheels. In the seemingly endless quest nese are already committed to buying the ernment-installed microchips from your to haul breakfast or coffee or ammo on a uranium that lies underneath the Ham- brain. A young woman in a fur-trimmed rope up into the 90-foot steel fire lookout mond ranch? coat and tall leather fashion boots ap- that overlooks the parking lot, a trapdoor I went to Malheur to ask questions proached me and one of the occupiers and banged, causing Sean Anderson to flinch and to listen, to learn and report. But asked us to guide her around. The oc- (we were, after all, in a heavily armed en- what can be reported when your source is cupier, a preternaturally soft-spoken and campment that was illegally occupying a

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 Timeline, continued from page 16

Jan. 26 Ammon Bundy and other armed militants are stopped by law enforcement on Highway 395 north of the refuge. Oregon state troopers shoot and kill Robert “LaVoy” Finicum of Arizona, the occupiers’ spokesman. The eight suspects arrested include: Ammon Bundy, 40, leader of the occupation, Ryan Bundy, 43, of Nevada; Brian Cavalier, 44, of Nevada; Shawna Melissa Cooper and Shawna Cox discuss supplies in the early days of the occupation. BROOKE WARREN Cox, 59, of Utah; Ryan Payne, 32, of Montana; Joseph federal wildlife refuge, despite the fresh- briefing. The sun came briefly through (“And they call me a terrorist,” he said, O’Shaughnessy, 45, man debate team campout atmosphere), the fog, and Patrick and I stood smoking shaking his head.) He is awaiting trial of Arizona; and Peter and say, “I thought it was on there for and being pelted with bits of rime falling now, too. Santilli, 50, of a second.” To which James shouted, “I from the old Siberian elms and cotton- Jason Patrick was no cowboy, and Ohio. Jon Ritzheimer hope it is! I hope it is! Bring on the fire!” woods as the sun heated them. Below us, didn’t try to be. He wasn’t a physical surrenders in Arizona. A series of refuge-owned ATVs came up Duane Ehmer of Irrigon, Oregon (who fitness buff, rugged outdoorsman, or gun- Jan. 28 In the days the icy road, ridiculously fast, fishtailing might have been the only native Orego- ner. He might share with Ammon Bundy following Finicum’s on the trail to the fire tower, and James nian in the occupation), was feeding his and the rest of the Mormon contingent death, militants cheered. “I love everybody here!” he cow-horse, Hellboy, from hay stacked of occupiers the belief that the Constitu- gradually leave the exclaimed. by his rusted white horse trailer, both tion is divinely inspired, but that wasn’t refuge. The FBI makes To focus on the bizarre, to wallow of them taking a break from being the clear, because he did not talk religion. He three more arrests: in the cheap pleasures of ridicule, is to symbol of the occupation, the too-much- revered the Constitution as the ultimate Duane Ehmer, Jason sacrifice any chance of finding meaning photographed man on the horse with the stopgap to a government that, in his Patrick and Dylan or instruction here. Jason Patrick, one American flag. view, ruins everything it touches or tries Anderson. of the occupiers now in jail, told me that In his other life, Ehmer was a welder, to guide. His disdain for Obama was Feb. 8 Cliven Bundy, he could not care less what happened to rode Hellboy in jousting matches, hunted matched by his fury at George W. Bush. on his way to the the lands at Malheur, or what the his- black bear on horse-packing trips in the Patrick had a roofing business in Georgia refuge from Nevada, tory of the place was. “It says in Article national forest. Because he was convinced that collapsed with the economic crash is arrested at the 1, Section 8, Clause 17, that the federal Portland airport that the federal government would soon of 2008, and he believed, as I do, that and charged with government has no right to own any of sell off all public lands or close them to the endless wars and crony capitalism conspiracy, obstruction these lands. That’s it. If we don’t abide the public, he worried about the loss of of the Bush era destroyed the assets of of justice and assault by the Constitution, which limits what access to places to ride his horses. He got middle-class America, while “too big to on a federal officer the federal government can do, then we $130 a month in disability payments for fail” government relief programs further in connection with have no rule of law, we have no country.” hearing loss incurred while he was in the evaporated our money upward and away. the 2014 standoff Patrick was 43 years old and wore khaki military. His weapons were mostly sym- Like Sean Anderson, Patrick was tired of with BLM officials on pants, a dress shirt and a blue blazer, bolic, a cap-and-ball Colt revolver, and a a government that sends young people federal land near his as if ready to address a court rather single-shot 12 gauge shotgun. I suspected away to die in wars that profit, to an Nevada ranch. than stand in the snow, smoke Marlboro that he did not have the ready cash to often-obscene degree, the one class whose Feb. 11 Forty- Lights, and talk to reporters and other buy the AR-15s and Trijicon sights, the children will never serve in them. “My one days later, the skeptics, which is what he did most of the tactical sniper rifles tricked out with the father was a Vietnam veteran,” Patrick occupation officially time I saw him. latest optics, the Glock handguns that said, “and we lived on a homestead in ends when the last One morning, we stood outside the are the norm among his colleagues, but Virginia that we cut out of the woods. We four militants — Sean refuge headquarters, a venerable building it could be that he just had no interest in were off the grid a long time before that and Sandy Anderson, Jeff Banta and David of rough-cut local stone. Within, Ammon newfangled lethal gadgetry. He showed was ever a thing to be.” His father died Fry — surrender after Bundy, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum and the me his classic 1859 McClellan cavalry when Patrick was 12 years old, he says, a tense standoff with core group were having yet another meet- saddle, and told me he was trying to get a of cancer related to wartime exposure to the FBI. ing to prepare for the upcoming press relative to bring down his cavalry saber. Agent Orange. His mother spent years

18 High Country News March 21, 2016 trying to collect veteran’s benefits to sup- 2010 that number was 14,379. In 2013 the because none of them seemed to know, or port their family. U.S. recorded 41,149 suicides, 70 percent be interested in, any of that history. Our conversation was interrupted by of which were white men, who mostly shot Finicum must have known the history Finicum, who was coming out the door themselves. The most heavily affected of his homeland in the Arizona Strip, with a harried expression. Finicum and demographic is middle-aged white men in which in the time of his grandfather was Patrick had a short and slightly heated the 45 to 64 age cohort. This die-off may almost denuded by the overstocking of exchange over who had failed to clean up serve as a kind of anthropological warn- 100,000 head of cattle, and which, in the the refuge woodworking shop. As Patrick ing about the pernicious nature of global 1890s, even the hard-as-nails cattleman headed over to the shop, I was reminded capitalism and how it treats those its and visionary pioneer Preston Nutter of other groups I’ve known or been a part marketplace judges surplus. …” could not control. A smallholder like Fini- of, anarchist, communal, certain families, Forty-five to 64 was exactly the age cum, unless he had his own militia, would where hierarchy is rejected, and how the bracket that dominated the occupation of not have survived one season in the early smallest chore takes Herculean effort the Malheur. Camaraderie and unity of settlement years of the Arizona Strip. to address or convince someone else to purpose are the strongest antidotes to de- The battles over water sources and the address. This was my only contact with spair, and despite the conflicting opinions destruction of the range were such that Finicum beside the circus-like press con- and anarchic individualism of so many in Preston Nutter, not exactly a big-govern- ferences held in the parking lot. I learned the modern militia movements, unity in ment kind of businessman, was a leading later that, like Patrick, Finicum had his fiery opposition to the federal government, advocate for the Taylor Grazing Act. own business failure behind him, a bank- especially a federal government headed by It is tempting to use the philosopher ruptcy in 2002; he admitted to reporters a Democrat, remain the universal. George Santayana’s quote, “Those who that his ranch, even before he renounced It did no good whatsoever to try to cannot remember the past are con- his federal grazing leases, just covered discuss the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, demned to repeat it,” but it doesn’t fit expenses (which is why his main business which empowered the Bundy family and here. Ammon Bundy (I did not meet him was taking in foster children). With a many others among the 18,000 or so during my visit to the refuge) may or may huge family of his own — reports placed other public-lands grazers to own small the number of Finicum’s children at ei- holdings, usually around a water source, ther 11 or 14 — I could not imagine how and graze their livestock on public lands anyone can survive, much less prosper, in around those holdings for what may the current U.S. economy, with that many arguably be the lowest grazing fee on the mouths to feed, that many shoes to buy. planet. Most of the occupiers had never Even with the comfort of strong religious heard of the Taylor Grazing Act, and those faith, the stress of meeting the bills who might have insisted that “grazing every month must have been profound. rights” on public land were a property Watching Finicum walk away, in clean right attached to the base private land. Wranglers with his camouflage gaiters No amount of arguing would convince pulled tightly to the knees, a squared- them otherwise, although the Bureau of away Westerner at home in the snow and Land Management plainly states that the cold, I could not have guessed that grazing of BLM lands is not a property he would be the one to die in this chaotic, right, or a right at all, any more than my seemingly pointless takeover. neighbor’s home and yard is mine if I rent it, or that my renting a home means the owner cannot sell it or rent it to somebody It was clear to me, though, else, or paint it a different color. When that somebody would die. Such presented with that fact, an occupier like certitude as these men and women possess Jason Patrick will merely say that the demands blood sacrifice to justify itself. BLM has no right to exist. There were too many armed people in, and No one there seemed interested in circling, the occupation, with too many the fate of the lands they were claiming varying levels of sanity and too many in the takeover. None could explain why varying motivations for being there. Even a mostly Gentile band of militants were Neil Wampler, a man whose demons seem now following what was almost entirely like they are mostly in his past, had said, a Mormon-led insurrection, with a man “You can’t not give an inch and be assured named Ammon for the leader of the of a peaceful outcome. If it came down to a Nephites, at the head, or a man who calls violent showdown, we’re willing to pay the himself Captain Moroni (Alma 59:13: price.” Walking around the refuge park- “And it came to pass that Moroni was ing lot and buildings, I saw a lot of gray angry with the government, because of beards and “We the People” caps and camo their indifference concerning the free- watch caps covering thinning hair or bald dom of their country”) on guard duty, or pates. The weapons and the tactical vests a spokesman like Finicum, whose ranch lent a seriousness to men disappearing in Cane Beds, Arizona, was less than two into the irrelevance of late middle age. miles from the Fundamentalist Church of Guns, for as long as we have had them, Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) have given undue impetus to arguments enclave of Colorado City. The militants that lack merit or reason, given credence seemed uninterested in how they might to delusional rants. fit in to a renewed State of Deseret, even The American West has the highest though the language that the Bundy suicide rates in the nation, and has since leaders used was almost identical to the the frontier days. The current epidemic of 19th-century plans for that kingdom, suicide among white males in the U.S. is and the Malheur lies at the very north- part of the story here — in a recent article ern expanse of the old State of Deseret at Salon, Robert Hennelly wrote, “Accord- claims. They did not see themselves as ing to federal morbidity stats in 1999, volunteers in a new version of the Nau- LaVoy Finicum, a rancher and friend of the Bundys, on patrol Jan. 6. 9,599 white men killed themselves. By voo Legion from the Utah War of 1857-58 He became the only casualty of the Oregon occupation. RICK BOWMER/AP

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 not know the history of land use in the Where are West, but there will be no repeating the they now? free-grazing era of the late 19th century. Not in the fastest-growing developed na- On Feb. 10 and 11, eight occupiers tion on Earth, on a planet that will soon were arrested: Jason play host to 9 or 10 billion human beings. Charles Blomgren, Nothing will be free. What the Malheur 41, of North Carolina; militants were asking for was almost Blaine Cooper, 36, exactly what more mainstream political of Arizona; Wesley leaders like Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, or Kjar, 32, of Utah; the American Lands Council, now headed Eric Lee Flores, by Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder, 22, of Washington; say they want, too. The Malheur occupa- Corey Lequieu, 44, tion, with the incessant press coverage in of Nevada, Darryl William Thorn, 31, its early weeks, was the soapbox for dis- of Washington; seminating payloads of misinformation Neil Wampler, 68, about America’s public lands, about their of California; and management, about how and why we Geoffrey Stanek, 26, have them. Every sound bite was deliv- of Oregon. ered to further the goal of privatization. All 25 people were indicted on a federal The Bundys and the militants conspiracy charge of A member of the impeding the work who followed and still occupying group of federal officials support them are the agents on the tower that through threats, overlooks the intimidation and of their own destruction. Malheur National force. Sixteen of them Should these adherents to the land- Wildlife Refuge, pleaded not guilty, transfer movement ever succeed and where armed including Ammon have the public lands given or sold to militants kept watch and Ryan Bundy. The the states, some version of the State of during the siege. judge set a trial date Deseret will almost certainly flourish. RICK BOWMER/AP of April 29, but it Such a place already exists, of course: the seems unlikely that it will happen that soon. Deseret Ranches, owned by the Church of enough about what is at stake to oppose appearing as gray specks in the tongues Latter-day Saints, 235,000 acres in Utah it, we will see the transformation of our of slide rock and wind-exposed yellow On Feb. 17, a federal and 678,000 acres in Florida (2 percent country. Federal water rights that under- grass, I did not wonder what Edward Ab- grand jury indicted of Florida’s landmass). The LDS corpora- pin entire agricultural economies, and bey would have said about all of this, or Cliven, Ammon and tion would certainly be prepared to make that are critical to some of the last family Kropotkin or the lugubrious monarchist Ryan Bundy, Pete some very large purchases of what is farms and ranches in America, will be Hobbes. I thought instead of the old C.S. Santilli and Ryan now public land, but it is highly unlikely in play. Few Americans, even those in Lewis books of my childhood, and of Lewis’ Payne on 16 felony that any of the Bundy family, or any of the cities of the East who know nothing writings on the nature of evil, where evil is charges related to the Finicum’s many children, would be graz- about these lands, will be untouched by never a lie, because lying implies creation, armed assault against ing their cows there. Smaller operators federal officers at the the transformation. Once the precedent and evil, by its nature, has no creative Bundy Ranch in 2014. cannot own lands that do not put enough for divesting federal lands is well set, the power. Instead, the nature of evil is to take The judge ordered pounds on cows to pay property taxes. It Eastern public lands, most of them far a truth and twist it, sometimes as much Cliven back to Nevada, is unlikely that any of the current crop more valuable than those in the West, as 180 degrees. Love of country becomes where he will face his of smallholder ranchers anywhere in the will go on the international auction block. hatred of those we believe don’t share our six charges; the rest West will be able to bid against the church The unique American experiment in devotion, or don’t share it the same way. remain in custody in for productive land; or challenge families balancing the public freedom and good The natural right of armed self-defense Oregon. like the Wilks of Texas, who have so far with private interests will be forever becomes the means to take over a wildlife bought over 300,000 acres of austere graz- shattered, while a new kind of inequality refuge, to exert tyranny on those who At press time, ing land south of the Missouri Breaks in soars, not just inequality of economics work there, or those who love the place for Brian Cavalier, Jon Ritzheimer, Montana; or the Koch family, whose ranch and economic opportunity, but of life ex- the nature it preserves in a world replete Sean Anderson holdings comprise about 460,000 acres perience, the chance to experience liberty with man’s endeavors. The Constitution, and David Fry are (including almost a quarter-million acres itself. The understanding that we all one of the most liberal and empowering also still detained in Montana); or Ted Turner, who has some share something valuable in common — documents ever composed, becomes, with in Oregon. Joseph 2 million acres across the U.S.; or Stan the vast American landscape, yawning to just a slight annotation or interpretation, O’Shaughnessy, Kroenke, who two years ago purchased the all horizons and breathtakingly beautiful the tool of our own enslavement. Jeff Banta, Shawna 165,000-acre Broken O Ranch in Montana — will be further broken. These linked Cox, Duane Ehmer, and has just bought the 510,000 acre W.T. notions of liberty and unity and the com- This story was funded with reader donations to Geoffrey Stanek and Waggoner Ranch in Texas. mons have been obstacles to would-be the High Country News Research Fund. Sandy Anderson were Buyers, in a world packed and com- released on bail in American oligarchs and plutocrats from A version of this essay was originally published February and must petitive beyond the imaginations of those the very founding of our nation, which is on our website, hcn.org, on Feb. 12, 2016. remain in their home who set aside these unclaimed and aban- why they have been systematically at- states until trial. doned lands as forest reserves and public tacked since the Gilded Age of the 1890s. Hal Herring is a LYNDSEY GILPIN grazing lands in the early 1900s, are now I went to the Malheur looking for contributing editor at everywhere, planet-wide. As Utah state kindred spirits. I found the mad, the fer- Field and Stream and Web Extra Rep. Ken Ivory, when he was president of vent, the passionately misguided. I found wrote his first story For more of HCN’s for HCN in 1998. He the American Lands Council, famously the unknowing pawns of an existential extensive coverage covers environment, on the Malheur said of privatizing federal lands, “It’s chess game, in which we are, all of us, now guns, conservation occupation and the like having your hands on the lever of a caught. Driving home across the snow- and public lands Sagebrush Rebellion, modern-day Louisiana Purchase.” packed Malheur Basin, through mile after issues for a variety see hcne.ws/ When that lever is pulled, and it will mile of sage, with towering basalt cliffs of publications. sagebrush-rebel be, unless a majority of Americans know in the near distance, herds of mule deer halherring.com

20 High Country News March 21, 2016 MARKETPLACE

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22 High Country News March 21, 2016 Drought’s silver lining, continued from page 10 funds will fill in the gap. Lopez’s neighborhood is far from the only place in California where the drought is busting through logjams that have blocked low-income communities from receiving clean water. Scientists have documented widespread groundwater contamination in the San Joaquin Valley from nitrates, uranium and arsenic and other hazards. Agriculture can be a major source of pollutants: A 2012 University of California, Davis, study, for example, estimated that the drinking water of about a quarter-million people across the Tulare Basin and northern Salinas Valley was at risk of nitrate contamination, caused by fertilizers and animal wastes slowly seep- ing into aquifers. In 2011, a United Nations official in- vestigated the problem. The U.N. report expressed concern about “racial dispari- ties,” citing studies that show dispropor- tionate impacts on Latino households and urging the U.S. government to step in. The report highlighted the small rural Tulare County town of Seville, but even so, county officials there were unable to get funding to upgrade its water system. In addition to the nitrate contamination, tiny Seville has old, leaky water pipes that let harmful bacteria into the system. Residents are advised to boil water before they use it for drinking or cooking, and the county delivers bottled water to every Monson, another largely Latino com- Fischer says. It also can provide techni- Maria Jimenez house. “It pains me a little to talk about munity in Tulare County, also suffers cal expertise to help communities learn hugs her grandson, it,” says Chad Fischer, Tulare district en- from contaminated well water. The solu- how to operate these new systems. “That Caleb Guiterrez, gineer for the California Water Resources tion has long been obvious: Drill a deeper makes me feel pretty optimistic.” 3, outside her Control Board. “I don’t like the fact that well and connect the town’s 45 homes to Witherspoon has a grand idea for home in Monson, this is going on in California.” a community water system. “But it never what Proposition 1 can do for California. California, where water bottles have Then in mid-2014, a well that supplied got towards the finish line,” Fischer says. He envisions recruiting scores of students collected. Monson about 90 homes in Seville went dry. Final- State funding has finally come through from the state’s universities and com- is one of the ly, there was a chance to get state fund- now that the drought has dried up those munity colleges to help places like East communities in ing for a new well for the town. “We were wells. As in Seville, the fix will take time Porterville. “They need more boots on the line to get funding able to secure funding and drill a well in and will happen in stages — but at least ground; we can fill in the gaps,” he says. for water system two weeks –– and we’d been trying since it has begun. Students, many from similar communi- improvements that 2007,” recalls Denise England, Tulare Many rural communities are still in ties themselves, would go door-to-door and became available County’s water resources program man- need of safe drinking water. But state and hold meetings to educate residents and in response to ager. Unfortunately, the new well started local officials and other experts are optimis- get their consent. Business and finance the California drought. RENEE C. to go dry because of overuse, particularly tic because of a large pulse of funding on the students would write grant proposals. BYER/SACRAMENTO BEE/ by illegal marijuana growers, who were way, thanks to Proposition 1. California vot- Chemistry students would test the wa- ZUMA WIRE estimated to be using about 2,575 gallons ers in 2014 approved spending $7.5 billion ter, and engineering students could come of water per day. But that problem was re- beginning this year to improve the state’s up with technical solutions and draw up solved: The sheriff busted the growers last water storage and delivery systems. plans. “With the drought and water bond, September, and the county has prohibited “This is just a start. We’re hoping the all the stars have aligned,” Witherspoon residents from using the water outdoors. Prop. 1 money will help keep up the pace,” says. “We have a lot of traction and faith The boil-water order remains in ef- says England. “We’ve had our eye on that to make this happen.” fect because Seville still has leaky pipes. money since before it went on the ballot.” Ruiz, who understands just how much The funding to fix them is available, but Tulare County officials are working work these projects take, is happy to hear an environmental review has taken lon- on a plan to use Proposition 1 dollars to that reinforcements may be on the way. ger than expected; the area is home to the bring public water to East Porterville, a She still worries that something could rare tiger salamander, and detailed stud- larger rural community near the Sierra happen to hinder the project in Lopez’s ies are needed to figure out how to avoid Nevada foothills, where many private neighborhood, and she refuses to believe harming it. The long-term plan is to drill wells were contaminated with nitrates it’s a done deal until she sees pipes going another well to augment the existing one and about 1,000 of them went dry during into the ground. But she’s already started and connect Seville with a water system the drought. daydreaming about the kind of celebra- in a nearby community, enabling the two Many other communities will benefit tion the community will hold, once the small, economically disadvantaged com- as well. “Prop. 1 is big enough that it can water starts flowing: “A great big water munities to pool their resources. supply the money and the infrastructure,” balloon fight.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 23 WRITERS ON THE RANGE

Biking in wilderness? Ain’t gonna happen.

I shouldn’t be writing this, and you truly understanding our public lands. Zahniser was a Thoreauvian pacifist shouldn’t be reading it. Far more press- That’s not good for people or the land. deeply troubled by the Holocaust and ing issues face our public lands. But a We should remember that the Wil- other horrific events during his lifetime. vocal minority is dredging up the long- derness Act grew from a half-century of In wilderness, he saw a suite of bio- resolved question of mountain biking public-lands battles, fought by America’s physical and social values that carried in wilderness. They have even drafted most influential conservation thinkers, the potential to make us better people. a bill for somebody to introduce in Con- including Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, But to fulfill its promise in modern gress — the Human-Powered Wildlands Olaus Murie and the indefatigable times, by offering an opportunity for Travel Management Act — that would Mardy Murie, among others. Theirs was raw challenge, humility and solitude, open wilderness to biking. That means a multigenerational struggle to safe- wilderness had to remain a place of hu- OPINION BY we have to pause and rehash the facts. guard a vestige of the nation’s public man restraint. For eight years, Zahniser TIM LYDON First, no legal argument supports lands from the advances of population worked with Congress to ensure that biking in wilderness. Unambiguously, and technology. the law enshrined that ideal, with clear the 1964 Wilderness Act states there The technology part is important. limits on acceptable activities in wilder- shall be no “form of mechanical trans- The framers of the Wilderness Act knew ness. port” in wilderness areas. The discus- human ingenuity was not somehow Some of the activists pressing for sion should end there, but a few claim petering out in 1964. In fact, they lived bikes in wilderness conveniently ignore that “mechanical transport” somehow in an era of fantastic invention. Forms this central principle. Instead, they fo- does not include bicycles. They allege of transport being tested at the time in- cus on issues of trail erosion or impacts that the law unintentionally excluded cluded jetpacks, gliders, aerocycles, and to visitors and wildlife, where they an activity that emerged after it was en- various new wagons, boats and bicycles. front overly rosy claims. In diminishing acted. Or they tout an early Forest Ser- That the law anticipated future the purpose of wilderness, they hawk vice misinterpretation of the law, which invention is indisputable, but it benefits a dumbed-down version of the public initially allowed bicycles in wilderness us much more to know why it does. The estate. but was corrected over 30 years ago. reason was most concisely expressed Similarly, it is unhealthy to con- The arguments have no legal merit. by the bill’s principal author, Howard flate the ban on bikes with a ban on a WEB EXTRA To see all the current Worse, they ignore the historical context Zahniser, who in 1956 defined wilder- certain group of people. That tactic may Writers on the Range and foresight of the Wilderness Act, one ness as a place where we stand without stir emotion, but it undermines serious columns, and archives, of our foundational environmental laws. the “mechanisms that make us immedi- public-lands discourse. Nevertheless, visit hcn.org In doing so, they distract people from ate masters over our environment.” some are using the trick, including Bike

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24 High Country News March 21, 2016 Biking in wilderness? Ain’t gonna happen.

Magazine editor Vernon Felton, whose recent video casts bikes in wilderness as a civil rights issue. That’s an affront to anyone who has worked for voting rights, fair housing, protection against hate crimes or other actual civil rights. Felton and others also oversimplify prohibitions on bikes in wilderness study areas, calling them overreach by conservationists or the feds. But such bans are essential to the purpose of Mountain bikers these study areas, which must be care- ride in the Dixie fully managed to preserve their eligibil- National Forest ity as wilderness, pending congressional in Utah, with action. Ashdown Gorge Another claim is that banning bikes Wilderness in the turns people against wilderness, or background. GEORGE H.H. HUEY against even broader conservation issues. But I think those misrepresenting the facts are the ones who are driving a while most of the land is in the West, climate change, ocean acidiﬁcation, plas- wedge. Either way, diminished support most of it is also rugged and unbikable. tics pollution, sprawl and much more — for wilderness is not good news. But Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of it seems a misguided use of energy. neither is it new. The historical trajec- acres remain open to biking. tory toward better land stewardship has Still, some will demand that bikes Tim Lydon writes from Girdwood, always been the ﬁght of the few. be permitted in wilderness. And they Alaska. One last thing to consider is the will join logging, mining, off-roading, Writers on the Range is a syndicated service of issue’s scale. The wilderness system is and other interests in whittling away at High Country News, providing three opinion col- limited to roughly 53 million acres out- the boundaries of pending wilderness umns each week to more than 200 media outlets side Alaska. Smaller than Colorado, that proposals. At a time when so many more around the West. For more information, contact portion is scattered across 43 states. And serious issues confront our lands — Betsy Marston, [email protected], 970-527-4898.

soundtable

Tune into the live discussion at The West KVNF.org and tweet questions to @highcountrynews #HCNU and the In this year’s presidential race, the stakes seem higher than ever. So what Western White House issues are coming to the fore as the April 6, 2016, at 6 p.m. candidates move through their campaigns? The HCNU classroom program presents And what issues are getting left behind? SOUNDTABLE, a live radio Join High Country News for an hourlong discussion, on the West’s relevance in discussion with experts to understand the the national presidential race. West’s relevance in the national race.

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 BOOKS A retrospective from the Don of Chicano Noir

The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories is the first collection of short fiction from the Denver-based writer Manuel Ramos, often called the “God- father of Chicano Noir.” Their settings range from El Paso to rural Colorado and the megalopolis of Los Angeles, and from the Mexican Revolution to the 1950s and the present. The mostly Chicano characters include lawyers, veterans and a prostitute, with a guest appearance by Jack Kerouac. Written between 1986 and 2014, the stories reflect the stylistic development of Ramos, author of the The Skull of Pancho Edgar Award-nominated The Ballad of Villa and Other Stories Rocky Ruiz, among other acclaimed crime General Pancho Villa leads his troops during the Battle of Ojinaga in 1914, which was filmed Manuel Ramos novels. for the movie The Life of General Villa. The film included scenes of genuine battles from the 181 pages, Standouts include the eponymous Mexican Revolution. Villa’s skull was stolen from his grave in 1926. JOHN DAVIDSON WHEELAN /ARCHIVO GENERAL DE LA NACIÓN (MEXICAN GENERAL NATIONAL ARCHIVE) softcover: $17.95. “The Skull of Pancho Villa,” in which Arte Público Press, 2015. the skull, nicknamed “Panchito,” that supposedly belonged to the “Robin Hood shades of gray. You can almost hear Bogie a burned out liberal who took up space of Mexico” is stolen in an act of revenge. growl at the end of “No Hablo Inglés”: on legal aid’s payroll. … He was an ace In “Bad Haircut Day,” an ambitious “When it snows, my shoulder aches, and attorney for the underdog.” but heretofore ethical Denver attorney I smell copal and marigolds.” And what This collection is uneven, but that’s finds himself covering up a murder. could be more “Guy Noir” in flavor than not surprising in a literary retrospec- A wheelchair-bound former baseball the first sentence of “When the Air Con- tive that represents a considerable body player thwarts a burglar in “Sentimental ditioner Quit”: “When the air conditioner of work from its beginning through Value.” quit, Torres shot it.” its coming of age as Ramos becomes a Almost without exception these Most of the stories reflect a cynical master storyteller. He tells the stories of stories involve crime, law enforcement humor. From “White Devils and Cock- ordinary people in extraordinary circum- and desperation. Ramos is a master at roaches”: “Gonzalez made a living repre- stances, their lives often complicated by creating atmosphere, especially a 1940s senting crazies, weirdos, misfits, losers prejudice, just doing the best they can in private-eye feel, moodily cinematic in and plain folks who got taken. … Each los Estados Unidos. black and white and more than 50 gritty morning he reminded himself he was not BY MICHELLE NEWBY LANCASTER

Missoula, rape and elusive justice

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System lack of empathy for the few women will- There are no heroes here, but one vil- in a College Town is not intended for ing to confront their attackers — always lain rises above — or sinks below — the readers with delicate sensibilities. Jon a minority among rape victims. rest of the muck: a female prosecutor who Krakauer’s newest book investigates, in Rape, says one prosecutor, “is the only is reluctant to prosecute rape without great detail, several rapes perpetrated crime in which the victim is presumed to a guarantee of winning, and who, upon between 2008 and 2012 by members of be lying.” A defense attorney exemplifies leaving public office, immediately begins the University of Montana football team, that attitude in his address to the jury defending rapists. Kirsten Pabst, having the Grizzlies. In Missoula, the “Griz” are on behalf of his client, the team’s star established that the accused is an up- hometown heroes, and those who cast quarterback. “Why would he even think standing young man, “devoted the rest of aspersions on the celebrated players’ of committing such a reckless act, given her opening statement to vilifying his ac- reputations had better be prepared to his high profile in the community, his cuser,” Krakauer writes. Such, we learn, face the consequences. sterling reputation, and everything he is standard defense attorney procedure; The rapists and their victims receive stood to lose?” the pursuit of justice has little, if any, Missoula: Rape and equal treatment here, along with pros- Krakauer fans may be somewhat frus- role. Readers will finish this book with ecutors and defense attorneys, judges and trated by this latest work — not by the in- plenty of information but little confidence the Justice System in a detectives. Krakauer allows all of them vestigative reporter’s uniformly excellent that the courts punish the guilty. “In Mis- College Town to speak for themselves; no one emerges research, but by the dearth of compelling, soula, Grizzly football exists in a realm Jon Krakauer untainted. The “justice” in Krakauer’s admirable characters, flawed but enthrall- apart,” Krakauer concludes, and the play- 416 pages, title remains elusive at best and is tar- ing, who generally populate the writer’s ers and their lawyers “expect, and often softcover: $16.95 nished throughout, due to clumsy cops, best-selling nonfiction, such as Under the receive, special dispensation.” Anchor, 2016. politicized prosecutors, and a widespread Banner of Heaven and Into Thin Air. BY ANNIE DAWID

26 High Country News March 21, 2016 ESSAY | BY NATASHA VIZCARRA Seeds in a sandstorm as Vegas is a city of transients. Walk- torn upholstery and fixes broken furni- pregnant in the air. We went through 500 Natasha Vizcarra ing down the Strip is like wandering ture, a curious occupation in a city that seeds that afternoon. But for every seed works as a science aroundL an international airport. But prizes the new. we planted, at least two flew away. writer in Boulder, even on the margins of the city, where “What brings you here, Ellen?” I Colorado, where residents try to raise their families, asked the tall, quiet woman beside me. wo months into my brief residency in she lives with her many are in various stages of just pass- “Just a job,” she said. Sin City, I dreamed about my father. husband — who is ing through. “What kind of job?” TI was sitting in the bed of an old pickup no longer afraid of I was stuck there during the limbo be- “I’m a geologist,” she said. I was about truck, which transformed into a wooden marriage — and tween grad school and the rest of my life. to ask her more about her work when she cart pulled by a water buffalo. Suddenly, their four cats. I never liked Vegas, but my mother and threw the question back at me. I inhaled a huge amount of sand, and sister lived there, and I was job hunting. “Oh, I just finished grad school,” I realized that the water buffalo and I were I spent hours in coffee shops sending out said, “and I’m here on my way to some- in a monstrous sandstorm. The horizon applications, a journalist with a gradu- where else.” line disappeared, and I panicked. Then ate degree in environmental education. It was the easiest story I could tell, my father was beside me, not the least bit In the evenings, I bunked with my family and it seemed right for the moment. It bothered by the sand and the whipping and ate all the Filipino food I wanted. I wasn’t the time and place to say that my wind. He turned to me, held my shoulders would stay, I told myself, until I found a boyfriend had proposed to me, and then firmly and said, “It’s OK.” job or my student visa expired. got scared enough to un-propose. Or that I woke up wondering: It’s OK to what? “People stop here a while and end up I had spent my nest egg on grad school To perish in a sandstorm? To live and die staying a bit longer,” the locals liked to and was broke. Or that I was sleeping on in the desert? say. That’s what Laura said one day as I a blanket next to my sister’s bed because The day I drove back to Las Vegas helped her and Ellen, another volunteer, my mother became a hoarder after my from a job interview in Barstow, a sand- prep seeds for propagation at a botanical dad died and there was barely any room storm engulfed parts of the Strip, the old garden. We were planting delicate seeds in the apartment. Or that I just wanted downtown on Fremont Street, and the in peat pots — tiny, furry things that to land a job and make enough money to east and west suburbs. As I got off I-15, a drifted away at the hint of a hot breeze. restart my life in Manila, where I would massive, grayish-orange cloud draped it- “This is the most common story,” Lau- probably die a spinster but live sur- self over the landscape, leaving the Luxor ra said, as we dug into mounds of potting rounded by friends whom I missed and pyramid’s tip sticking out like one of Ma- soil. “ ‘I was just passing through, and my loved. My friends and I could retire to a donna’s cone boobs. As I entered the city A storm northwest car broke down. By the time it got fixed, I nice island with our cats, who would eat limits, scraps of paper whipped around of the Las Vegas had a job.’ Kind of my story, too.” fresh fish every day. And on some morn- my car, and dust swirled in the air. I Strip in July 2015. Kind of? I waited for her to go on. But ings, we would sit by the beach at sunrise panicked. Was I going to kick the bucket e monsoon storm dropped heavy rain she just smiled. The way she rolled her r’s to gawk at fishermen pulling their nets on the Tropicana Avenue exit, driving a and hail in parts of the reminded me of a friend from Johannes- to shore, their muscular brown bodies crappy rental, overeducated and jobless? valley, causing street burg. I itched to ask Laura where she was glistening. “It’s OK,” my dad had said. ooding and power from, but I felt I shouldn’t pry. The geologist, the mender, and the ex- I drove on, braced for disaster, but outages. Instead, I learned that she mends student. What we chose not to say hung made it home safe and sound. ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES

www.hcn.org High Country News 27 U.S. $5 | Canada $6

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY BETSY MARSTON

WASHINGTON cattle to run unsupervised on public land for 23 If the fish in Washington’s Puget Sound suffer years, managed to hold off the government by from migraines or depression or need birth con- his family threatening violence and “range war.” trol, they don’t need to schedule a doctor’s ap- In 2014, for example, three days before the BLM pointment: The water that passes through their had scheduled a roundup by Utah contractor ‘R’ gills is already loaded with pharmaceuticals. Livestock Connection, Ryan Bundy and others Each year, 106 wastewater treatment plants threatened the contractor with “force, violence around Puget Sound discharge “as much as and economic harm,” according to a Department 97,000 pounds of chemicals,” which, according to of Justice indictment. That escalated to the a study in the journal Environmental Pollution, standoff between BLM rangers and 400 Bundy come from drugs like Advil, Benadryl, Prozac sympathizers who brandished “too many guns to and contraceptive pills, says reporter Elaisha count,” the Justice Department said. The well- Stokes. James Meador, an aquatic toxicologist publicized confrontation ended with more than with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 400 impounded cows released to the wild, there Administration, found that some chemicals in to continue their trashing of the public land. the fish were at surprisingly high concentra- OREGON Bovine rush hour. GAIL HULT tions. “That’s the kind of information that raises WYOMING eyebrows,” Meador says, adding that though While no one was paying attention, says colum- pesticides in water get monitored, pharmaceuti- NEVADA nist Geoff O’Gara in WyoFile, “90 legislators in cals, “now ubiquitous in society,” do not. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, or more accurately Cheyenne devised ways to spend about $3 bil- back on our public land, Cliven Bundy’s surviv- lion a year, fueled by 18 years of revenues from THE WEST ing cattle, some 1,000 animals, are “mean and an energy boom.” Alas, the boom has withered As far as we know, nobody was harmed in the ornery,” says Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles into a bust, and legislators, who earn a paltry making of Backpacker magazine’s video, Sur- Gorder. The Justice Department calls Bundy’s $150 a day, will need to find new ways to spend vival School: How to Eat Your Hiking Partner. ranching operation “negligent to the point of their time while now trying to save the state’s Still, we’re reasonably sure that its tips on cruelty in sending half-wild cattle to graze money. O’Gara has some tongue-in-cheek sug- butchering will never be palatable to vegetar- illegally on protected lands without supervi- gestions, ranging from selling the state Capitol, ians — or anybody else with a queasy stomach. sion.” Unvaccinated and susceptible to illness, instead of spending $3 million to fix it up, to Standing somewhere in the backcountry, our “the cattle have little contact with humans, and instituting a capital gains tax — Wyoming is instructor uses a schematic drawing of a hapless Bundy often has no idea where they are,” re- one of six states without an income tax. He also hiker to explain that the belly is the prime cut ports the Los Angeles Times. Ken Mayer, former recommended designating a state vegetable but because “marbling” adds to the flavor. Legs, how- director of Nevada’s Department of Wildlife, realized that a state shrub was already under ever, should be eschewed as they can be stringy. adds that trying to round them up is “like hunt- consideration, and that’s “enough heavy lift- With nary a smile to indicate that he might be ing cape buffalo. They’re nasty, they’re smart, ing for one year in the State Icon department.” kidding, he urges us not to neglect to slice out and they won’t hesitate to charge.” Meanwhile, Finally, given that legislators recently refused the “tri-tips” from the back of arms as well as reports E&E News, the animals continue to $268 million in federal dollars to extend Med- the inviting “rump roast.” The brief video, which trample sensitive soils, devour native saplings icaid services, on the grounds that the money features the coup de grâce of the instructor’s un- and routinely “bed down” on Native American wasn’t guaranteed forever, O’Gara suggests fortunate colleague (who moans, helplessly, “I’m artifacts. The cattle have also invaded a commu- turning down federal school-lunch money, “be- not dead, John!”), shows the gruesome details nity garden and golf course, and more notori- fore our kids get hooked on food.” of butchering and concludes with dinner — all ously, run off scores of Bureau of Land Manage- in hideous taste and hilarious. Or maybe not; ment agents. Rob Mrowka, a biologist at the we suppose it depends on how hungry you are. Center for Biological Diversity who has spent WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see See www.backpacker.com/view/videos/survival- decades urging the BLM to remove Bundy’s hcn.org videos/survival-school-how-to-eat-your-hiking- cows, says it will be an expensive proposition Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and partner/. when the government finally acts: “I think the often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag price is going to be a lot more when you add the photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram. risk.” The now-jailed Bundy, who has allowed his

High Interior Secretary Sally Jewell ought to be the rst Country person to stand up for these treasures when they come News “ For people who care about the West. under attack. Instead, we got complete silence. High Country News covers the important issues and Matt Jenkins, in his essay, “Sally Jewell, missing in action,” stories that are unique to the American West with a from Writers on the Range, hcn.org/wotr” magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

28 High Country News March 21, 2016