Little Big Bird the Greater Sage Grouse Is at the Center of the Biggest Experiment in the History of the Endangered Species Act

HONEYBEES VS. BUMBLEBEES | 5 | PUEBLO’S GROWING ECONOMY | 6 | EATING THE SCENERY | 24

High Country ForN people whoews care about the West Little Big Bird The greater sage grouse is at the center of the biggest experiment in the history of the Endangered Species Act. ... And the clock is ticking. By Jodi Peterson August 17, 2015 | $5 | Vol. 47 No. 14 | www.hcn.org 14 No. 47 | $5 Vol. 2015 August 17, CONTENTS

Editor’s note The hammer that never fell Twenty years ago, I got into an argument with a wildlife biologist over the endangered Species act. environmentalists, he said, were abusing the law in their quest to create an ecologically pristine West devoid of loggers, ranchers and other salt-of-the-earth Westerners. By relentlessly pushing the federal government to protect ever more species and habitat, and then suing when they didn’t get their way, they were paralyzing already-strapped federal agencies and alienating the green movement’s natural allies — namely, the ranchers who control so much of the West’s prime wildlife habitat. I pointed out that without the law, and the environmentalists who were using it, logging companies would have razed the last remnants of ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest without a second thought, wiping out not only the northern spotted owl, but also a whole range of species that depend on that ecosystem. In the process, they A sage grouse lies dead in the Jonah Field area of natural gas development in Wyoming. JeReMy R. RoBeRTS/coNSeRvaTIoN MeDIa would have destroyed the resource base of their own industry. The law, I argued, is necessary: how else FEATURE can citizens put the brakes on ecologically mindless exploitation? We never came to agreement, but a decade 12 Little Big Bird later, in 2002, the themes of our debate resonated The greater sage grouse is at the center of the biggest experiment in the in High Country News’ first major story about “the history of the Endangered Species Act. ... And the clock is ticking. next spotted owl,” the greater sage grouse. From By Jodi Peterson a scientific perspective, the finicky denizen of the 15 Sage grouse saga One step forward, two steps back: A timeline West’s rapidly declining “sagebrush sea” clearly qualified for federal protection. But a listing could On the cover 19 The birds and the bugs mean new restrictions for energy companies and A male sage grouse thousands of ranchers across 11 states. displays at the CURRENTS Many predicted a political fiasco that would sim- Bluebank lek east of ply encourage congress to gut the law, but 13 years Worland, Wyoming. Doug DaNce 5 To bee or not to bee Invasive species rules on federal lands later, as Senior editor Jodi Peterson reports in this NaTuRe PhoTogRaPhy 6 issue, something remarkable has happened: Instead The Silicon Valley of marijuana? Pueblo’s growing economy of hunkering down for an endless legal battle, ranch- 8 Sea lions feast on Columbia salmon Predators at Bonneville Dam ers, biologists, land managers, environmentalists 8 The Latest: Resolution Copper’s Oak Flat land swap and even energy companies are working together to conserve and restore millions of acres of private and 9 The Latest: Boulder-White Clouds wilderness public lands for the bird — and by extension the ecosystem it depends on. The progress, led by far-sighted biologists and greased by millions of taxpayer DEPARTMENTS dollars, has been so rapid and extensive that Interior Complete access Secretary Sally Jewell says her department will do to subscriber-only 3 HCN.ORG NEWS IN BRIEF everything in its power to not list the bird, whose content 4 LETTERS status comes up for re-evaluation in September. HCN’s website The u.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may eventu- hcn.org 10 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends ally be forced to list if the grouse’s numbers — now Digital edition 21 MARKETPLACE around 400,000 — continue to decline. But even hcne.ws/digi-4714 24 WRITERS ON THE RANGE if that happens, Peterson says, the work already iPhone app done by the diverse stakeholders will serve as a hcne.ws/wuZsWu When eating the scenery makes you sick By Tom Ribe solid foundation for any federal recovery plan. There iPad app 26 BOOKS should be few surprises, and less of a reason for the hcne.ws/NgtByx usual fear-mongering over-reactions. Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell. Reviewed by Jenny Shank That our nation’s strongest environmental law Follow us Water to the Angels by Les Standiford. Reviewed by Traci J. MacNamara might function better as a catalyst for ecosystem- 27 ESSAY wide conservation than as last-minute cPR for Dreaming where I walk By Priyanka Kumar individual species is a development that I imagine my debater of yore would wholeheartedly embrace. @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston It is surely a sign that the West is finally maturing. 2 High Country News August 17, 2015 --Paul Larmer, executive director/publisher HCN.ORG NEWS iN bRiEf

Trending The Royal Dutch The 2015 fire Shell-leased icebreaker MSV season hasn’t Fennica approaches broken any the St. Johns Bridge all-time in Portland, where records – yet climbers hang in an attempt to this year’s fire season prevent the ship has been an odd one: from passing on the Southwest has its way to deliver burned less than the equipment critical pacific Northwest, for oil drilling in california and the Chukchi Sea, off Alaska, and more the north coast of Alaska. than 82 percent of © Steve DIpAolA / the total acreage GreeNpeAce burned has been in Alaska. the 2015 Danglers on July 31, dozens of kayaks and canoes gathered under a coal, oil and gas must pass through to reach international fire season started vs. drillers bridge on portland, oregon’s Willamette river, to block the markets. A few months ago, kayaktivists surrounded a off with a bang. As passage of a ship headed for oil drilling in the Arctic. the so- Shell drilling rig in Seattle’s puget Sound. Still, admits one of the first week called “kayaktivists” were protesting the government’s recent protester on the Willamette, “we can only fight them off in August, 40 fires approval of Shell’s plan to drill in the chukchi Sea, where for a day or two.” After a 40-hour hold-up, the MVS Fennica over 100 acres in the risk of a spill remains high. Similar efforts are growing in made its way to the sea. Sarah gilman size were burning in the pacific Northwest, an important transportation hub that hcne.ws/orshellno Western states. But whether this year sets any national wildfire A flood of cars shuttled onto a five-hour detour. the trucking records will depend In mid-July, an el Niño-fueled flash flood ripped industry was hit hard, as were the freeway towns on how fires unfold $12 billion down tex Wash near Desert center, california, that have come to rely on passing travelers. this fall. Amount in coal royalties and revenues wrecking a bridge and closing a section of Yet, surprisingly, the event didn’t spur calls for by gloria DiCkiE generated on federal lands over the past decade I-10, the major artery linking phoenix with los more transportation options linking Western and split with states Angeles. the closed stretch of road normally sees cities, such as rail lines or even new highways. You say 25,000 or more cars per day, all of which were Jonathan thompSon hcne.ws/flood-lessons DavE DECkEr: $850 million Moving 12-month total of vehicle miles traveled in the U.S. “calFire has been Amount taxpayers lost from 2008-2012, 3,100,000 pretty good at according to a new report, because federal U.S. recession ‘managing’ fires royalty rates are below market value 3,080,000 in my neck of the woods, so far this At the first of five public sessions to discuss 3,060,000 year.” the future of the federal coal program, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and other officials got 3,040,000 an earful — mostly from its critics. A recent ann SnyDEr: “Southern oregon report found that current royalty rates shorted 3,020,000 taxpayers, and many of the speakers called is on fire again this year in forests that for higher rates. Several said the royalty rates 3,000,000 should reflect the climate impacts of coal, Millions of miles haven’t burned often which could make it too expensive to extract. 2,980,000 enough, nor been Meanwhile, a bill introduced in the Senate could logged recently, so close loopholes that keep royalty rates low for 2,960,000 the fires are burning companies. Four more listening sessions will AND ADMINIStrAtIoN FeDerAl HIGHWAY U.S. SoUrce: UISFeD.orG. IcoN: ANDreW SeArleS/tHeNoUNproJect IcoN: UISFeD.orG. hotter, and with more take place, in Western cities from New Mexico to tlo

2,940,000 S people living out Montana. ElizabEth ShogrEn hcne.ws/fed-coal 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 there, there are more people in danger.”

hElEn nowlin: Video “Alaska’s tundra “At night, they’ve is drying out, City cats come into town and quick!” 3% Are mountain lions becoming more and maybe made Amount over a century by habituated to humans? or are they as a kill ... killed a hcne.ws/2015fires which carbon storage ca- aloof as ever? colorado researchers are raccoon or deer pacity could be reduced and facebook.com/ tracking the big cats to see how they’re or something. highcountrynews in Southwestern forests adapting as cities encroach further due to drought. “three into their habitat. See the latest in the They feed on it, percent is not very much Wild Science video series, Mountain then they slip if it’s five trees. It means Lions on Colorado’s Front Range. back out to the something different if Dakin hEnDErSon it’s thousands of trees,” hcne.ws/mtn-lions open space.” says one forest ecologist. —Mat Alldredge, colorado parks and Cally CarSwEll Wildlife researcher hcne.ws/dry-trees DAkIN HeNDerSoN 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 SElliNG THE WEST NO ADS FOR THE ExECutivE DirECtor/publiShEr AVERAGE READER Paul Larmer Your latest cover about the West being SHREDDED After I read the news managing EDitor Brian Calvert made me nauseous — not in your July 20 special SEnior EDitorS because of the vertigo- recreation issue, I read Jonathan Thompson inducing image of bikers all the ads. They were Jodi Peterson perched at cliff edge, but about one-third of the art DirECtor Cindy Wehling because it reminds me print content. What’s onlinE EDitor that enjoyment of Western in the ads for me? I’m Tay Wiles public lands is becoming 20 years over the 55.6 D.C. CorrESponDEnt impossible (HCN, 7/20/15). median age of readers, Elizabeth Shogren Since my backpacking make a little less than writErS on thE rangE days are over, my solitude- the median household EDitor Betsy Marston seeking trips now tend income ($63,750), and aSSoCiatE DESignEr Brooke Warren to yield annoyance and my M.A. makes me Copy EDitor irritation instead of joy. well-educated. I own a Diane Sylvain I gave up on places like 12-year-old SUV, camp- Contributing EDitorS Moab years ago, but now ing supplies and clothes Cally Carswell it seems everywhere, no (albeit raggedy), and an Craig Childs PaT Bagley/The SalT laKe TRIBuNe. caglecaRTooNS.coM Sarah Gilman matter how remote, suffers abiding love of cheap Judith Lewis Mernit from too many people and adventures in the empty Jeremy Miller majority of people in this country. Sierra Crane-Murdoch machines. wild lands. These ads were mostly for This reminds me how far we have to Michelle Nijhuis I don’t know how to make this sound the young and wealthy. They could get Josh Zaffos go to really recognize just how exclusive less like another rant from another expensive environmental educations CorrESponDEntS this culture can be. It’s not intentional, old grouch — maybe by pointing out or travel with high-priced eco-tours Ben Goldfarb but there are not many people — black, Krista Langlois the hypocrisy of media treatment. For to well-known and loved places (like Kate Schimel brown OR white — who can identify every hand-wringing article or study wolf-watching at Yellowstone). The only EDitorial FEllow with the lifestyle and choices depicted about how to attract more kids to the cheap tour I found was for free day trips Sarah Tory in that article. By not recognizing that, backcountry and entice more people of if I joined IdahoConservation.org. Unfor- intErnS you miss an opportunity to include more Paige Blankenbuehler all kinds to the parks, there is a story tunately, I live in Oregon. people in the dialogue — and maybe Gloria Dickie lamenting destruction of places that are aSSoCiatE publiShEr even turn people off. Diane Sward Rapaport being loved to death. We can’t have it Alexis Halbert I see that HCN has a diversity Burns, Oregon both ways. DEvElopmEnt managEr statement. That is great, and impor- I would like to see fewer programs Alyssa Pinkerton tant. I challenge you to continually ask STANDiNG UP FOR REGUlATiONS and advertising to attract more people DEvElopmEnt aSSiStant yourselves how the articles you publish Christine List into the outback, such as Utah’s “Mighty Reading the special recreation edi- — the framing, the assumptions, the SubSCriptionS markEtEr 5” program, which has overwhelmed tion, a theme came through to me: It is conclusions — may perpetuate a culture JoAnn Kalenak already-crowded national parks. Those understandable and even honorable to wEb DEvElopEr that has traditionally excluded all but Eric Strebel who deserve the wild will find it on their push the envelope, stretch the rules, and the most well-off, and white, Westerners. DatabaSE/it aDminiStrator own, with a little initiative. Let’s stop Alan Wells even break them now and then in the inciting herd-based industrial tourism Erin Uloth interests of pursuing the right to recre- Community EngagEmEnt Gretchen King and glamorizing adventure “sports.” Bellingham, Washington ation. Whether biking, BASE jumping, FinanCE managEr (Even colleges compete for applicants skiing, etc., rules and restrictions are Beckie Avera by pitching outdoor recreation. Look at ACkNOWlEDGiNG THE lAWbREAkERS un-American, even when they exist to aCCountS rECEivablE the ads in HCN.) But the cat is out of protect our wild places, and those who Sarah Tory’s July 2 article, “End of the Jan Hoffman the bag, and there is money to be made challenge them are maverick rogues. Trail Wars,” ends with, “We reach an CirCulation managEr selling nature and adventure. I’m just I had an eerie sense that somewhere Tammy York intersection where a big Forest Ser- glad I saw it when the going was good, there’s a mirror-image publication writ- CirCulation SyStEmS aDmin. vice alert sign warns us that the trail and I didn’t need a reservation or have ten for the extraction industries and Kathy Martinez is closed except to pedestrian traffic. to wait in line. ranchers. There, regulations that protect CirCulation ‘Rama’ stops and looks around briefly, Doris Teel, Kati Johnson, our wild lands are to be challenged and Stephanie Kyle Dennis Slifer, aka “Slickrock Slim” ‘Well,’ he says, a mischievous glint in his dismantled because they are un-Amer- aDvErtiSing DirECtor Lexington, Virginia eyes, ‘I can’t resist.’ ” Why you choose ican and restrict corporate growth and David J. Anderson to express recognition (bordering on profits. It’s OK to frack anywhere, drill grantwritEr A CUlTURE OF PRiVilEGE praise) for “Rama,” a “bandit” trail rider, Janet Reasoner and lay pipelines, exterminate predators is incomprehensible. He is choosing to FounDEr I wanted to give you feedback on the so that ranchers can run their livestock Tom Bell invade on his mountain bike a pedes- “Living the Dream” article (HCN, on public lands. Our wild places are [email protected] trian trail where he endangers hikers 7/20/15). When someone is profiled who under pressure on the one side by the [email protected] enjoying a peaceful walk. Writing this is only earns $1,800 a summer, it tells profit motive, and on the other by the [email protected] a poor editorial choice. Please consider [email protected] me: “This is someone who has a sup- recreation urge. using your energy to acknowledge those port structure in place to be able to live boarD oF DirECtorS who abide by the law and are creating Anthony Ricketts John Belkin, Colo. on that little money.” It’s someone who legal, sustainable, popular trail systems. Santa Fe, New Mexico Beth Conover, Colo. does not need to support other family Jay Dean, Calif. Bob Fulkerson, Nev. members and does not have debt — Lee Rimel Wayne Hare, Colo. conditions that do not apply to the vast Edwards, Colorado Laura Helmuth, Md. John Heyneman, Wyo. Nicole Lampe, Ore. Marla Painter, N.M. High Country News is a nonprofit 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 define 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 August 17, 2015 CurrEntS

To bee or not to bee Beekeepers vs. invasive species rules on federal lands by gloria DiCkiE

very 10 days, Paul Limbach loads tee- Paul Limbach checks E tering beehives onto his white flatbed one of his beehives truck and follows dusty roads through the in Colorado’s White White River National Forest up to the al- River National pine meadows of the sprawling Flat Tops Forest, where he has been keeping bees Wilderness Area. since the 1970s. It’s a long drive from his home in Silt, gloRIa DIcKIe; Bee cloSe-uP Colorado, but the Flat Tops are one of his RgBSTocK, cc vIa FlIcKR favorite places to work. Here, rolling fields of purple lupine, yellow coneflowers and wild geranium abut thick aspen forests. In — good news for the beleaguered and be- to put hives on pub- Apiary permits in Western a good year, the days are just long enough loved honeybees, though perhaps not for Mt. Baker- national forests lic lands is increasing, Snoqualmie to transform a honey trickle into a golden native pollinators. says Darren Cox, presi- flow. A growing body of research blames dent of the American Limbach, a 68-year-old second-genera- honeybees for transmitting diseases, such Honey Producers As- Mt. hood tion beekeeper, has been running bees in as deformed wing virus, to increasingly sociation. Whether the Flat Tops since the early 1970s, when rare native bumblebees. Such pathogen they’ll be rebuffed a Forest Service friend let him stack a few transmission is compounded when bees by invasive spe- Sawtooth experimental hives in exchange for a jar of are moved from stable summer sites to cies rules, or wel- Klamath honey. Since then, he’s expanded to six lo- California’s Central Valley, where bee- caribou-caribou- comed under the Shasta-Trinity Targhee cations in the White River, paying roughly keepers are paid for pollinating crops. new strategy, lassen $100 a year per location in permit fees. Much like airplane travelers, the bees can will depend on Mendocino Though Limbach typically gets less than easily pick up and transmit diseases to individual envi- 30 pounds of honey here, his bees have new colonies. ronmental and uinta- Stanislaus Wasatch- been able to evade colony collapse dis- There’s also speculation that under infrastructure Sierra cache order, the syndrome that has decimated harsh environmental conditions, such as White assessments. Inyo River hives nationwide. drought, honeybees will outcompete na- Up at 9,300 Sequoia Getting more bees into such pristine tive bees. feet in the Flat los angeles habitat is a central part of the Obama “There is so much enthusiasm right Tops, Limbach is Padres San Kaibab administration’s new pollinator strategy, now among wildlife conservation profes- busy adding more Bernardino released this past May, which promotes sionals,” says Sarina Jepsen, endangered hives to his teeming coconino cleveland apache-Sitgreaves beekeeping on federal land as a means species program director at the Xerces So- pallet piles. He wears Tonto to help the honeybee. For the growing ciety, a native invertebrate conservation a veil but not a beekeep- Prescott number of local hobbyists as well as the organization. “But honeybees are exotic; ing suit; after a lifetime of shrinking number of commercial keepers, they’re like livestock. You’re not conserv- bee handling, his tanned skin coronado this could be a sweet deal after years of ing wild colonies, and you may be doing is hardened against stings. wading through bureaucratic miasma to damage.” “In a normal year, we just about break SCAlE get a permit. But there’s just one problem: But beekeepers argue other livestock, even up here,” he says. “But this year Number of permits Honeybees, or Apis mellifera, aren’t native like cattle, do just as much damage to eco- we’re gonna make some money.” 33 10 to the United States. That means they’re systems — and they aren’t barred from Bees swarm the hillside, where there 1 SouRce: subject to federal invasive species rules, public lands. are more flowers than grass. The red col- u.S. FoReST SeRvIce which could take precedence over the pol- Dov Sax, a researcher at Brown Uni- umbine flowers, so abundant at lower el- linator strategy. versity who studies non-natives, says the evations, are largely absent here, however. Prior to the new plan, getting a permit line dividing natives from non-natives Honeybees, Limbach noted earlier, can’t to place hives on federal land was lengthy, is fuzzy. Honeybees were imported from see red. frustrating and costly. Limbach is the only Africa and Europe in the 1600s for their “Between me and the livestock, we’ve national forest permittee in his state; he utilitarian purpose, and have since spread probably changed the ecology up here a was grandfathered in when beekeeping across the continent, leading many people bit,” he says. The cows that crowd the ac- rules were formalized in White River in to believe they were always here. cess road eat mostly grass, and the bees 1979. There are just 126 active permits “There are naturalized honeybees, and pollinate whatever remains. Pretty soon, on Western national forests, 102 of them it’s unclear whether they’re invasive,” Sax you’re walking through little more than a in California, and 63 authorized permits says. “But the ones managed in hives, I soft bed of petals. WEb ExTRA See a gallery of on BLM land in the West. Those numbers wouldn’t call those invasive, I would call “Whether that’s a good or bad thing, gloria Dickie’s could increase under the new strategy that domesticated.” I guess that depends who you are,” Lim- photographs of Regardless of honeybees’ status, with bach adds as an afterthought. “But I don’t beekeeping in the gloria Dickie is a High Country News intern. more and more beekeepers driven from think there are as many bumblebees as White River National @gloriaDickie pesticide-doused farmland, the demand there used to be.” Forest at hcn.org.

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 The Silicon Valley of marijuana? Local officials want Pueblo County, Colorado, to be the best place to grow, but not everyone’s high on the idea

by JoEl warnEr

ark Morley looks out over 30 acres he marijuana business laws.” Pueblo Coun- approvals by the local government. M owns east of Pueblo, Colorado, and ty’s economy, he adds, “has gone through But Pueblo County offered something imagines the future. On this blustery May the roof.” beyond cheap real estate. Unlike Denver, afternoon, there’s little more than mud But the area’s relationship with pot it had an abundance of available agricul- and puddles here, bordered by highway remains ambivalent. This is, after all, a tural land. So local officials made mari- and railroad tracks and flanked by farm place where irate voters recalled their juana cultivation a use by right there, too buildings and rolling hills. But by the end state senator over new gun restrictions. — likely the first Colorado county to do so, of September, if all goes well, he’ll be look- Some worry that the county’s latest according to Vicente and Joan Armstrong, ing at a pungent green thicket, as 14,400 growth industry is bringing social prob- Pueblo County’s planning director. marijuana plants reach their full 8-foot lems along with money, and others doubt The county has also issued pioneer- height. It’s one of several major outdoor whether the bold experiment will reap ing rules that prohibit hemp grows with grows launching this summer in Pueblo the promised rewards. “Up to the 1970s, male plants from being located within County. Eventually, Morley plans to ex- Pueblo was known as ‘P.U. Town’ because five miles of existing marijuana grows. Charter buses pand onto another 1,500 acres, investing of the steel mill,” says Paula McPheeters, This prevents cross-pollination that could filled with in center-pivot irrigation, greenhouses co-founder of Pueblo for Positive Impact, lower the marijuana plants’ THC content and processing facilities able to handle which opposes the county’s pot-friendly while increasing THC in the hemp, which wall Street 40,000 plants. laws. “Now we’re getting known for that can’t exceed 0.3 percent under state law. investors have Morley, 55 and dressed in jeans, flan- again, because of marijuana.” Even the Pueblo Board of Water Works, nel shirt and a Tigers baseball cap, is a the local utility that leases water for busi- been touring major Colorado Springs real estate de- he city of Pueblo is sometimes called ness and agricultural use, is trying to ac- local farmland, veloper. After a marijuana dispensary T the “Pittsburgh of the West,” and like commodate the industry. Last year, when opened in one of his buildings, he real- its steel-town sister city back east, its the Bureau of Reclamation explicitly pro- and there’s talk ized how lucrative the business could be. glory years lie in the past. Call centers — hibited the use of federal water for pot of branding “Why,” he wondered, “am I not doing this one of the few active industries — dot its cultivation, water board employees calcu- myself?” If he planted corn on this land, downtown area. Pueblo County Director of lated that they could lease up to 800 acre- “pueblo-grown each acre would require approximately Economic Development Chris Markuson feet of raw water to marijuana cultivators pot,” along 2.2 acre-feet of water per year and produce says that one of his predecessors used without running afoul of the feds. “This $768 in annual sales, according to Rachel to drive potential business owners down was completely new territory for us,” says the lines of Zancanella, a Pueblo-based Colorado Di- the east side’s crumbling streets and past resources manager Alan Ward, who notes pueblo green vision of Water Resources engineer. That crack houses and say enthusiastically, 92 acre-feet of the so-called “marijuana” same acre planted with marijuana would “Look at these people. They will work for water was already under contract as of chile, another require roughly 2.65 acre-feet of water –– anything!” — hoping that the promise of a this May. “When Amendment 64 was first celebrated and gross Morley $6 million. cheap labor force would prove irresistible. passed, I didn’t put much thought into how Welcome to the big business of rural Amendment 64 gave local govern- it was going to affect my job. But for a few local crop. weed. Ever since the local steel industry ments the power to decide whether and months, it seemed like it was nearly all I collapsed in the 1980s, Pueblo County has how to permit recreational pot within was focused on.” been seeking an economic savior. Nearly their communities. The Pueblo City Coun- The new rules are more than paying a third of its population is on public as- cil, for example, banned recreational pot for themselves: In 2014, the county netted sistance, and in 2010, the metropolitan shops and grows within city limits. It re- $1.8 million from licensing fees for pot es- area around its eponymous city had the acted similarly when medical marijuana tablishments and marijuana sales taxes, highest unemployment rate in the state. was legalized in 2000, placing a morato- covering the cost of its virtual marijuana When Colorado voters passed Amend- rium on dispensaries. The Colorado Mari- “department” and boosting its general ment 64 in 2012, paving the way for legal- juana Enforcement Division’s 2014 annu- fund. Since marijuana remains illegal at ized marijuana, the county commission- al report says that 228 local jurisdictions the federal level, most banks are still cagey ers saw a chance for revival. They hired have voted to prohibit medical and retail about allowing pot businesses as custom- Brian Vicente, the Denver lawyer who marijuana operations. ers; that means county staff have gotten helped write the ballot initiative, to craft Pueblo County, however, rolled out the used to owners plopping tens of thousands rules for growing and selling pot outside welcome mat. “(Marijuana) stores don’t of dollars in cash on their desks. Markuson city limits. require a lot of space, but indoor grow op- says charter buses filled with Wall Street As a result, about 50 entities — includ- erations can,” says Pueblo County Com- investors have been touring local farming Morley — are now licensed or condi- missioner Terry Hart. “And Pueblo County land, and there’s talk of branding “Pueblo- tionally approved to do so in the county. got hit pretty hard in the recession, so we grown pot,” along the lines of Pueblo green “Historically, the biggest opponent of had a lot of empty commercial buildings chile, another celebrated local crop. marijuana reform has been the govern- throughout the county that realtors were Real estate prices are rising, too. In- ment,” Vicente says. “Here, the tables have trying desperately to fill.” Like some other dustrial properties have nearly doubled WEb ExTRA See turned. No one else in history has taken pot-friendly communities, the county made in price to $50 per square foot just since photos from the past as comprehensive a look at establishing marijuana businesses a “use by right” in 2014, says local realtor Kendall Curtis, five years of pot in industrial and business districts — mean- and now that the first outdoor grows and Washington state Joel Warner writes from Denver, colorado. ing they weren’t subject to sometimes time- greenhouses are materializing, agricul- hcne.ws/pot-pics @joelmwarner consuming and arduous special reviews or tural land prices have doubled to up to

6 High Country News August 17, 2015 $10,000 an acre. All in all, the Southern authored concluded that roughly 20,000 a nearby 500-acre ranch, where he’s spent Colorado Growers Association, the local acres of pot would supply the entire U.S. $6.6 million installing the first of 16 cut- marijuana trade organization, claims the market. “It sounds like they have a plan ting-edge, large-scale greenhouses that industry has provided 1,300 new jobs and to really have a huge amount of supply will require 150 employees. He already contributed more than $120 million to the while other jurisdictions aren’t licensing has several “Boonies,” as he calls them, on local economy. any growers, so you could see the county his crew, and he’s paying some of them to The county is also hoping to attract gaining a short-term advantage and hav- fix up the town’s century-old Veterans of marijuana testing labs and processing ing a huge market share,” says Oglesby. Foreign Wars building, where Morley and plants. “Pueblo could be the Silicon Val- “Whether that is an advantage that can Ayotte dine on frozen pizzas and Dos Eq- ley of marijuana,” says Markuson, the be kept over time, I don’t know.” uis beers at the bar. county’s economic development director. In the meantime, the tiny town of Yes, there‘s still a sign on the VFW’s He’d prefer that to becoming a Napa Val- Boone, population 339, in eastern Pueblo wall declaring a zero-tolerance policy ley clone: The county wants to export its County, seems grateful for the boost. En- for drug use, but bartender Edna Rivera products, not host busloads of marijuana trepreneurs Mark Morley and Jeff Ayotte, doesn’t flinch as the two pot barons brain- tourists. Former growers association pres- a food-plant developer originally from the storm about recruiting Israeli cannabis ident Tommy Giodone is a Pueblo native, East Coast, stop in Boone one afternoon researchers. As she wryly observes, be- restaurateur and rodeo organizer who for lunch after comparing notes on their tween serving up rounds of beers, “If it hosts an annual country music festival developing grow operations. Ayotte bought makes money, I don’t care.” east of the city. He opened a dispensary nearby, but he doesn’t smoke pot. “I’m 49 years old,” he says. “Once they legalized it, I wasn’t going to be like, ‘Woo-hoo, I’m going to be a pothead.’ ” Left, Tammy White, 52, shows her son and he fact that Pueblo County wants to his friend the products T keep a fairly low profile hasn’t ap- she bought at The peased the industry’s critics, though. Spot 420 in Pueblo Marijuana hearings are heated, county West. They drove from commissioners have received threatening Florida for the week phone calls, and growers worry that some so Tammy, who has zealot with a crop duster could devastate chronic back pain from the outdoor harvest. “Our commissioners bone spurs, could buy and smoke pot legally. rushed headlong into this without con- Below, Mark Morley sulting the county (residents),” complains takes a business call Pueblo for Positive Impact’s McPheeters. while on his land east That allowed a glut of marijuana stores of Pueblo, where he and indoor grows to spring up in Pueblo is starting an outdoor West, the unincorporated suburb where marijuana grow called she lives. Los Sueños. In the The growth has come at a steep social foreground, pot clones cost, McPheeters and other critics say. are ready to plant. BRooKe WaRReN Marijuana-related crimes, including the 2014 armed robbery of a marijuana shop, have increased, according to Undersher- iff J.R. Hall. Meanwhile, local affordable housing organizations and shelters have been flooded with families who traveled here hoping to find jobs. In the first four months of 2015 alone, 306 households re- located to Pueblo because of marijuana, says Anne Stattleman, who directs a nonprofit housing assistance organization called Posada. “It is not easy to get a good- paying job in the pot industry,” Stattleman says. “Many people can’t pass the back- ground checks and other checks needed.” And the problems could have repercus- sions far beyond Pueblo County. In Febru- ary, a local couple filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, claiming that the pot grow next door devalued their property. It’s one of two lawsuits aimed at striking down Colorado’s system on the grounds that it conflicts with federal drug laws. Even if the state laws stand, Pat Oglesby, a tax attorney who studies marijuana at the Center for New Revenue in North Carolina, isn’t sure how much Pueblo’s head start in the reefer race will ultimately pay off. A 2015 report he co-

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 THE lATEST Backstory Resolution copper has long had its eye on a huge copper deposit underneath oak Flat, near Superior, arizona, which had been protected by a 1955 executive order from President Dwight D. eisenhower. In order to mine the deposit, the company engineered a land swap with the federal government, which stalled in Congress, due in part to opposition from local activists and the nearby San Carlos Apache Tribe, for whom oak Flat is holy ground (“Reluctant Boomtown,” HCN, 2/18/08). Followup In December, the land exchange was smuggled through congress as part of the National Defense authorization act. ThoMaS BoyD/The oRegoNIaN In June, Rep. Raúl Birds hover as a sea lion eats a salmon near Bonneville Dam. grijalva, D-ariz, introduced a bill that would repeal the land- exchange legislation. and in July, he joined Sea lions feast on Columbia salmon members of the San carlos apache Tribe in Fishermen, tribes and environmentalists flummoxed as a 2,000-mile protest journey to capitol hill predator numbers swell below Bonneville Dam in Washington, D.c. grijalva’s bill has little by bEn golDFarb chance of passing, so members of the tribe are now circulating olling whitecaps thumped against the Begay idled the boat and stared down- clashes with an endangered fish? Some a petition to get Oak R hull of the CRITFC3 as Bobby Begay river, waiting to see if the sea lion would regard sea lions as ravenous pests; others Flat designated — piloted the boat up the Columbia River on resurface. “We’re seeing a lot of new ani- as scapegoats for the more serious prob- and protected — as a a breezy spring morning. Herons and cor- mals this year,” he said. “It’s like everyone lems afflicting salmon. But almost every- national monument. morants skated against the blue sky. On brought a friend.” one agrees that they’re symptoms of a de- paigE the vessel’s dashboard sat yellow binocu- Though the animal surely disliked the graded river, in which natural conditions blankEnbuEhlEr lars, a bag of snickerdoodle cookies, and a rude treatment, it wasn’t harmed. Jack- have been distorted by human meddling. carton of orange, finger-length explosives: son’s shotgun was loaded not with bul- seal bombs. lets but with cracker shells — explosive or proof that conservation laws can Apache Stronghold Begay, a boulder-sized fisheries techni- projectiles that, like seal bombs, are de- F work, look no further than Zalophus Rally in Washington, cian at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal signed merely to scare away critters. For californianus, the California sea lion, D.C., July 2015. Fish Commission (CRITFC), swung the years, CRITFC, the fish and wildlife agen- which ranges from Mexico to Alaska. RoBeRT MeyeRS/ boat hard to port, where the black head cy that represents four Columbia River Though sea lions were hunted nearly to gReeNPeace of a sea lion bobbed near the river’s Wash- tribes, has been hazing sea lions away extinction for their hides and oil-rich blub- ington bank. Russell Jackson, a ponytailed from Bonneville Dam, the hydroelectric ber, in 1972 Congress passed the Marine technician wearing a Seahawks cap, hoist- dam closest to the ocean. The reason: to Mammal Protection Act, sparking a dra- ed a Remington .780 Marine Magnum prevent the pinnipeds from devouring matic recovery. These days, more than 12-gauge shotgun and fired a few cacopho- sturgeon, lamprey and threatened and 300,000 roam U.S. waters — likely more nous rounds. Another crewman flipped a endangered salmon surging upriver to than at any time in the last 10,000 years. seal bomb over the starboard gunwale; spawn. As sea lions rebounded, they began moments later, the detonation resounded This year, that task was harder than colonizing the lower Columbia River. In through the hull. The head vanished. ever, as unprecedented numbers of sea li- 2001, six sea lions appeared in the tail- ons flooded into the Columbia. The influx waters of Bonneville Dam, 145 river reignited a smoldering debate: What hap- miles inland, where homeward-bound HCN correspondent Ben goldfarb writes from pens when a protected marine mammal salmon and steelhead congregate before Seattle. @ben_a_goldfarb

8 High Country News August 17, 2015 squirrel’s not going to replace it. You’re just setting up a treadmill of death.” After my ride with Begay, I joined Doug Hatch, the biologist who heads CRITFC’s sea lion program, at an over- look above Bonneville Dam. Two dozen gaRy o. gRIMM cc vIa FlIcKR glinting heads floated in the white churn. The newly protected Every minute or two, a sea lion surfaced wilderness in central with a salmon clenched in its jaws, shak- Idaho. ing its head violently to break the fish into manageable chunks. THE lATEST I asked Hatch how well hazing works. He laughed. “Short answer: It doesn’t,” Backstory he said above the roar of the dam. “We’re In 2004, Idaho Rep. moving them downstream, but once we Mike Simpson, R, intro- quit hazing they’re coming right back. It’s duced a bill to pro- not the long-term solution.” tect nearly 300,000 Ultimately, the tribes, whose fish- acres of alpine ing rights give them a vested interest in terrain in idaho’s salmon recovery, want more authority to boulder Mountains and White Cloud remove sea lions. In January, congress- Peaks. Simpson’s wil- men from Washington and Oregon intro- derness proposal drew California sea lions lounge on the boat docks in Astoria’s East Mooring Basin, Oregon. duced a bill, now stalled, that would grant criticism from both Thousands of sea lions congregate there in the spring.lyN ToPINKa/coluMBIaRIveRIMageS.coM them that power. “We certainly don’t ad- sides; some thought vocate killing all the sea lions, but we need it protected too little more management options,” Hatch said. and others too much. ascending fish ladders. By 2004, around It’s a rancorous debate. The federal Hatch and his colleagues can safely eventually, though, it 100 were showing up each year. This year, government spends over $500 million on eliminate one prospective solution. In gained the support of food shortages off the California coast salmon recovery each year, and some fish- June, Astoria officials deployed a motor- many conservation- drove record numbers into the Columbia. eries managers fear that sea lion preda- ized artificial orca, dubbed “Fauxby Dick,” ists, and at one point, Idaho’s entire congres- In March, biologists counted 2,400 sea li- tion is impeding those efforts. Commercial to frighten the sea lions off the docks. The sional delegation. Still, ons along the waterfront in Astoria, Ore- and recreational fishermen, meanwhile, whale went belly-up. The sea lions didn’t it languished, and gon, near the river’s mouth — 1,000 more complain that sea lions steal their catch. move. when a particularly than last year. The pinniped proliferation, worries Or- conservative Repub- It’s hard to say how many fish they egon Outdoor Council president Dominic he conflict, like many animal issues, lican cohort took the consume. Biologists estimate sea lions Aiello, is “altering the balance of our natu- T seems mired in divergent views about u.S. house in 2010, eat about one in 25 returning spring chi- ral resources.” what wildlife is. To many biologists, it’s its prospects dimmed nook salmon at the dam, but predation Starting in 2008, NOAA permitted a resource — like, say, timber — and the again: The gridlocked throughout the entire river may be far Oregon and Washington to trap and kill goal is sustainable management on a 112th congress was the first since 1966 to higher. In 2010, NOAA biologist Michelle sea lions that continued eating fish at the grand scale. To the Defense Brigade, how- not designate any new Wargo Rub began inserting trackable dam. These days, the states are autho- ever, sea lions are charismatic fauna, pos- wilderness (“Wilder- microchips into chinook at the Colum- rized to “remove” up to 92 repeat offend- sessed of liquid eyes, capable of breathtak- ness bills languish bia’s mouth to see how many passed the ers — identified by brands seared into ing elegance, and deserving of individual in legislative limbo,” dam. In 2011 and ’12, more than 80 per- their skin — annually. Since 2008, the rights, including the right to eat fish. HCN, 3/5/12). cent reached the dam; but in 2014, only states have euthanized 85 California sea Yet both sides can agree on the prob- 55 percent did. Nearly half the run, in lions and sent another 15 off to captivity. lem’s root: Bonneville Dam. By concen- Followup other words, disappeared. And while the According to Robin Brown, marine mam- trating and disorienting salmon, the dam In early august, evidence implicating Z. californianus is mal program leader at the Oregon Depart- has created a canned hunt; the sea lions Congress finally circumstantial, it’s compelling: Fish that ment of Fish and Wildlife, the regimen has are simply behaving like human fisher- protected 275,000 Wargo Rub tagged in March, when sea worked. “Every year after we started re- men at a stocked pond. Of course, any acres in the Boulder- lions are abundant, vanished most fre- moval, the average number of California species that flourishes in our novel ecosys- White clouds, nudged quently. After the mammals decamped for sea lions feeding at the dam went down,” tems risks our wrath: Ravens that nest on by the possibility their California breeding grounds in May, he says. “We were making headway” —un- transmission towers and eat sage grouse that the obama salmon survival shot up. til this year. eggs get poisoned; coyotes that prey on administration would To be sure, sea lions are far from the But the killing infuriates groups like livestock are shot. Several Columbia create an even larger national monument greatest threat to salmon: Dams, fisher- the Sea Lion Defense Brigade, which River sea lions have been assassinated by if congress didn’t men, habitat loss and invasive fish take watchdogs the government’s pinniped anonymous killers. The mammals are vic- act. The wilderness a huge toll. Nonetheless, the pinnipeds activities on Facebook. To the mammal’s tims of their own success. bill had the support pose a problem. “The estimate (of only defenders, lethal removal distracts from Back on the CRITFC3, Begay ap- of Idaho lawmakers, 55 percent survival) might not be spot- everything else that imperils fish. proached one final sea lion as it mauled environmentalists on, but we’re focusing on the trend,” says “It’s not that we don’t care about a salmon, an oily sheen spreading in its and even motorized Wargo Rub. “We’re seeing lower survival salmon — it’s because we care about salm- wake. Jackson reached for his shotgun, groups, who will at the same time that we’re seeing more on that we don’t want this program to con- but Begay told him to hold his fire. Visit- maintain access to predators.” tinue,” says Sharon Young, marine issues ing Sea World trainers had advised him certain areas excluded from the bill. field director for the Humane Society of the not to haze sea lions while they ate. hese days, the barking hordes are back United States, which has repeatedly sued “Let ’em eat this fish, and maybe they Cally CarSwEll T in California, and Astoria’s waterfront to stop the lethal campaign. “It’s like the won’t be hungry for the next one,” Begay stands silent. But in a few short months, squirrel and the birdfeeder: You may kill explained. He spun the boat upriver and WEb ExTRA they’ll be back — and we humans will face the squirrel that’s on the birdfeeder today, the sea lion ducked beneath the Colum- hcne.ws/ some tough decisions. but you’re crazy if you think some other bia, its belly full, for now. whitecloudsbill

www.hcn.org High Country News 9 thE hCn Community

ReSeaRch FuND Thank you, Research Fund donors, for helping us hatch stories of the West

Photographer and writer Dave Showalter has spent a quarter century wandering the sagebrush of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado Accolades and visitors and New Mexico. In Sage Spirit: The American West at a Cross- when they drove over Grand roads, he takes the reader on a journey across the “Sagebrush Sea,” one of America’s most imperiled landscapes. The book’s We’re delighted that the Mesa to show off their gorgeous impassioned essays and evocative photographs focus on the American Geophysical Union backyard. Steve has subscribed competing conservation policies for the ecosystem and its diverse has named doug Fox its 2015 since the early 1980s. wildlife, particularly the sage grouse, known for its puffed-out Walter Sullivan Award Winner The Wolff pack — Kevin chest and flamboyant courtship dance. Showalter employs the for his story “Dust Detectives,” Wolff, maureen grady and their bird as a guide to the complicated tangos between public and which appeared in our Dec. 22 children, abigail and david — private lands, and between threatened wildlife and human history. issue. The award committee dropped in while exploring the Photographs capture the bird’s intricate dance, while immersive praised Fox’s “excellent story- area. The Chicago-based family essays by biologists, ornithologists and others trace the complex, telling, compelling characters, spent a week in town while not always successful, maneuvers of land managers. Together and his choice of an important, they create a somewhat mismatched and yet melodious duet that Kevin trained at Paonia’s Solar yearns for more collaborative conservation in the West. newsworthy topic.” Way to go, Energy International. Though PAIGE BLANKENBuEHLER Doug, and by the way, where is from the Midwest, they have your next story? (Hint, hint!) multiple Paonia connections — Sage thrasher eggs on a nest in dense sagebrush in Sublette Meanwhile, former HCN visible from the parents’ Chaco- County, Wyoming, left. A biologist holds a sage thrasher chick Editor-in-Chief greg hanscom is clad feet (the sandal company while studying sagebrush songbirds, below. DAVE SHOWALTER now editing-in-chief for Cross- was founded here), to their love cut, an online independent news of HCN. service covering the Pacific Internationally recognized Northwest. Yay, Greg! speaker, business expert and And High Country News HCN reader Jon Schallert isn’t just running for Congress; stopped by after presenting we’ve already gotten there! a workshop for locals on how Thanks to generous readers to transform Paonia, a former who donated $5,000 — matched coal-mining town with great by a longtime supporter — each organic fruit and produce, wine member of Congress will begin and a creative arts sector, into receiving a subscription in time a successful “destination.” It for the fall session. Our heart- turns out that Jon and his wife, felt thanks to all who contrib- peg, have another connection to uted. Paonia: Their son helped build Kevin Eyraud | Salt Lake City, UT David Kliger | Cottonwood Heights, UT our new public library. Patricia Flores | Northridge, CA Carol Korich | Tucson, AZ ViSitorS Celebrating their 50th Joseph & Robin Fulford | Poulsbo, WA Mark Langner & Lynn Inouye | Coleville, CA Summer has brought an unusu- wedding anniversary, John Roger Gambs | Atascadero, CA Ronald L. Laub, DVM | Lockeford, CA al amount of rain to the North and carol Bisbee visited with Ennis Geraghty | Columbus, MT Peggy L. Littlejohn | Mancos, CO Fork Valley, nicely greening up their daughter, Kari o’connell, the mesas and bringing peaches, who is from Corvallis, Oregon. Stephen Gerdes | Bozeman, MT Eric & Suellen Lodge | Solana Beach, CA cherries and a bunch of visitors John, a retired college biology W.R. Gibbs | Salmon, ID H.G. Longobardi | Meeteetse, WY to our Paonia headquarters. professor, and Kari, who works Kent & Lois Gill | Tucson, AZ Ronald Lundquist | Denver, CO dixie and Bob Jahnke drove for the forestry extension at Paul Gordon | Helena, MT George & Ann Luthringer | Camarillo, CA their green 1960s Austin Healey Oregon State University, are Irmgard Grabo | Bainbridge Island, WA Michael Madden | Montara, CA into Paonia this June after a longtime subscribers. The Stephen Grabowski | Boise, ID David L. Maddox | Tabernash, CO car rally in Glenwood Springs. group then planned to camp W.D. Gram | Bozeman, MT Michael Maller | Fort Collins, CO They’d passed Paonia more than out at nearby Lost Lake. Susanne A. Haffner | Clovis, CA Lawrence Marquess | Lakewood, CO once and heard about HCN, Faithful readers paul Jakus James Halvorson | Pueblo, CO William Marshall | Scottsdale, AZ but didn’t subscribe until now. and his wife, Flora Shrode, Larry Hampson & Laura Ackerman | William Mattsson | Ukiah, CA Welcome to the club! stopped by for a quick respite Spokane, WA Diane & Dick Mayfield | Farmington, UT Steve, donna and alex from the heat and their bike David L. Hanson | Albuquerque, NM Paul McCann | Olympia, WA morrall of nearby Grand ride. Paul is a professor at John Hegyes | Las Vegas, NV Richard McCausland | Fernley, NV Junction brought their Utah State University and Will Hiatt | Denver, CO Marjorie McCloy | Salt Lake City, UT Midwestern visitors, Lynne associate director of the Center Bob & Judy Hiester | Oak Creek, CO Harry McGavran Jr. | Los Alamos, NM cruse and marilyn aardema, by for Society, Economy and the Ron & Judi Hodgson | Benicia, CA Megan McKenna | Albuquerque, NM Environment. Marie Hogan | Piedmont, CA Bob Meehan | Portland, OR During their off- Dan Holland | Belgrade, MT Andrew C. Mergen | Washington, DC time, the couple Seth Hoyt | Long Lake, MN Connie Miller | Elizabeth, CO travel the Hyrum Huskey | Las Vegas, NV F. Alden Moberg | Keizer, OR country to see Heather Ireton | Longview, WA Brandon Moore | Amarillo, TX the band Phish. Linda Irrgang | Black Diamond, WA Robert Moore | Garden Valley, ID This was their Stephen Jackson | Sangerville, ME Linda Morgan | Sagle, ID first expedition Terry Janzen | Ritzville, WA Richard Morris | San Francisco, CA to Paonia. Brian Joedicker | Gilbert, AZ Sam L. Mortimer | Rapid City, SD —Jonathan Mark Jordan | Seattle, WA Allen V. Mundt | Reno, NV Thompson Becca Katz & Eric Wanless | Leadville, CO Harriet & James Neal | Placitas, NM for the staff Andrea Keleher | Denver, CO Joyce T. Nelson | Golden, CO Steve Kellar | St. Helens, OR Michael Newton | Henderson, NV

Linda Kervin | Logan, UT Margie Noren | Olympia, WA DIANE SYLVAIN Al King | McCall, ID Andy Norman & Sparky Colby | Jackson, WY Rob Kirkwood | Olympia, WA Jim Olmstead | St. Paul, MN www.hcn.org High Country News 11 LittL e Big Bird The greater sage grouse is at the center of the biggest experiment in the history of the Endangered Species Act. ... And the clock is ticking.

FEATURE By Jodi PETERson

12 High Country News August 17, 2015 In late aprIl, the hIlls of Cross MountaIn ranCh, near Species Act works best when it never goes into effect at all. Craig, Colorado, are already dry; the only snow in sight caps the “I see a lot of people working hard together. Relationships higher peaks on the horizon. A pond sparkles in the sun, and to have formed among people who never used to talk,” says John the west, where the land rises in ridges, dark patches of juniper Freemuth, professor of public policy at Boise State University. finger down the draws. On the crest of the hill where I stand, Still, it remains to be seen whether those relationships will something catches my eye in a pile of rocks. It’s a greater sage survive once crisis mode has passed, or whether the feel-good grouse egg, buff-green with brown speckles. collaboration will be enough to save the long-suffering grouse. Peering into its sand-crusted interior, I imagine a tiny “This is a pivotal Western moment,” Freemuth says. “In 30 striped chick emerging, toddling hopefully after its mother in years, how will we be writing about this? How did the trajectory search of food. But biologist Chris Yarbrough sets me straight: change?” A raven probably devoured this one, he says, turning the shell over on his palm. A hatchling would have pushed out the egg’s Many speCIes, when shouldered off theIr preferred large end; here, the middle is crumpled inward. I look again, my habItats, can make a living elsewhere — robins, coyotes, mule cheerful fantasy replaced by a scene from Jurassic Park — the deer. But sage grouse are exceedingly sensitive — disturbed by one where the T. Rex shoves its head into a Land Rover to try to human activity near breeding areas; alarmed by trees and tall extract screaming children. structures where raptors can perch. They’re loyal to the places Aside from this particular chick, though, Cross Mountain’s they know, even if those places are no longer suitable. Matt Hol- grouse seem to have it pretty good. Last winter, a federal loran, chief scientist at Wildlife Management Research Support, program called the Sage Grouse Initiative helped permanently describes how one female grouse in western Wyoming laid eggs protect 16,000 acres of prime habitat here through a conserva- in the same general spot each year as a major natural gas field in 2010, the tion easement. The property’s abundant sagebrush provides rose up around her. When a well pad replaced her nest site, she food and cover for grouse, and its thick grass helps camouflage finally moved –– but just 30 feet away. U.s. Fish nesting hens. Ranch manager Rex Tuttle, a slight, soft-spoken This sensitivity makes greater sage grouse a strong indica- 45-year-old, points out the pipes he installed from the pond tor of ecosystem health: If they’re not thriving across the vast and Wildlife to watering holes down valley; they feed wet meadows, where Interior West, then things look bad for the region’s 350 other service grouse chicks can fatten on insects. In the far distance, sheep species, from sagebrush obligates like the sage thrasher and graze; Tuttle says he’ll shift them to higher pastures in June to pygmy rabbit, to seasonal migrants like sandhill cranes and elk. declined let the grass here go to seed, so it can shelter grouse this year Says Jennifer Hayward, Pinedale district conservationist for and grow lush again next year. the Natural Resources Conservation Service –– the umbrella to list the He’ll do the same on the neighboring ranch, where he grew agency for the Sage Grouse Initiative –– “I don’t know why they greater sage up and where another 15,000 acres have been under easement don’t just list sagebrush itself.” since 2012. Add in a third easement and neighboring federal Listing the plant, though, might run up against the same grouse, not lands, and a quarter-million acres here are now protected to limitations as listing the grouse. Under the Endangered Species support grouse and other wildlife. Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is supposed to evaluate because it It’s a conservation outcome that few could have imagined imperiled species’ circumstances and determine what level of in the 1990s, when biologists first realized that sage grouse protection they need based on science, exclusive of politics and didn’t need were in trouble across their range. Before European settlement, economics. The law works best when used to protect a species protection, sagebrush covered more than 500,000 square miles; today, oil from a single, controllable threat; peregrine falcons, for exam- and gas development, renewable energy projects, subdivisions, ple, bounced back after DDT was banned. but because wildfire, invasive species and poorly managed grazing have But the sage grouse’s huge range and lack of adaptability whittled it down to about 250,000 square miles scattered across complicate things, and the myriad threats it faces — many other 11 states. Perhaps 400,000 grouse survive, down from as many related to industries that define Western rural economies and creatures as 16 million. identity — make wielding the law a much trickier prospect. But in 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made a Conservative politicians have for years sought to gut the act, needed it decision that set in motion what many are calling a landmark and many conservationists worry a sage grouse listing would transformation in how the nation recovers imperiled wildlife. provoke fiercer attack — a prospect underscored by recent more. Ordinarily, the sage grouse’s situation might land it on the fed- congressional attempts to boot several creatures off the list alto- eral endangered species list, ushering in much-feared land-use gether and block funding for others. restrictions. But the agency declined to list the bird, not because That political grandstanding fuels fear and misinformation it didn’t need protection — listing was warranted, it declared — about what would actually happen if the bird were listed, says but because other creatures needed it more. Instead, the agency Pat Deibert, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s national sage grouse promised to make a final call on sage grouse by Sept. 30 of this coordinator. “It’s like this big black hole,” she says. “People think year. the world would end, that they’d lose the ranch. But most would That court-ordered deadline has been a galvanizing force be relatively unaffected.” for grouse conservation like no other. The federal government More than one-third of sage grouse range is on private land, and the states have partnered with industry, landowners and where the Endangered Species Act holds little sway. The law environmental nonprofits to protect places like Cross Mountain, prohibits harming protected species, for example, but it can’t A male sage grouse spending hundreds of millions of dollars on everything from set- force landowners to undertake conservation projects that might displays in the sage ting aside vast swaths of sagebrush to cutting down junipers and help those species recover. Meanwhile, the Fish and Wildlife country south of poisoning ravens. The Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service is plagued with tight budgets and has a long line of spe- Pinedale, Wyoming, Service are cooperating with each other and with the states to cies waiting for recovery. There are more than 1,200 on the list, at the base of the protect habitat across tens of millions of acres. If they succeed in and 250 candidates await final determinations, some for more Wind River Range. doing a good enough job, they may prove that the Endangered than a decade. Mark Gocke

www.hcn.org High Country News 13 Battling male sage grouse, below. At right, journalists walk the largest lek in northwestern Colorado, looking for feathers lost by greater sage grouse males. rick Mcewen/SaGe GrouSe initiative, below; theo Stein/uSFwS, riGht

States, on the other hand, can move Wyoming — home to roughly 40 Just after dawn, Yarbrough indicates faster, and have greater on-the-ground percent of the nation’s remaining grouse that I should peer through a spotting expertise than the federal agency. Former — mounted the most comprehensive effort. scope aimed at a gravelly area at the base Idaho and Colorado wildlife department While other state plans relied almost en- of a draw. I kneel on a red plastic placemat biologists Jack Connelly and Clait Braun tirely on voluntary efforts, a state statute in front of the scope to keep from getting were among the first to raise the alarm gave Wyoming regulatory authority over muddy, and about 50 male sage grouse pop about grouse declines. In the mid ’90s, as oil and gas development, the primary into focus, their wings held vertically and mounting threats became clear, they put threat facing grouse in the state, across their spiky tails fanned wide. together “all the data we could get our federal, state and private jurisdictions. The If sagebrush makes up the grouse’s hands on,” says Connelly, and brought state created a policy in 2008 to protect universe, then this is the center of its so- it to the attention of wildlife managers. what it determined to be the most impor- lar system. It’s a lek, where male grouse In 1995, the Western Association of Fish tant chunks of habitat. Ranchers, miners, return each year to dance for females and and Wildlife Agencies convened the states oil and gas companies, environmental scuffle with rivals. Most stories about with grouse populations and nudged them groups, state and federal agencies all had a sage grouse open with a scene of clichéd into action. They began creating conser- place at the table. They capped the amount majesty — the ancient ritual of the danc- vation strategies; some took a bottom-up of surface disturbance allowed inside these ing birds. But when the males puff their approach, first developing local working “core areas” and instituted seasonal work white chests and inflate their yellow air groups, then rolling those results up into stoppages. Wind development was dis- sacs, the result looks disconcertingly like statewide plans. Idaho’s came in 1997, couraged in those areas, and oil, gas and a halved hard-boiled egg. Whup whup Nevada’s in 2001. transmission lines were restricted. sounds drift through the chilly air. Sev- But as environmentalists’ court eral males strut boldly in the lek’s center, battles to list the bird intensified over the but most lurk in the shrubs, as if half- same timeframe, it was becoming clear hoping no one sees them. “They’re like that, range-wide, grouse conservation the less-popular boys at the high school efforts still weren’t cutting it. Oil and gas dance,” comments Chris West, then exec- were booming again, and wind turbines utive director of the Colorado Cattlemen’s popped up like mushrooms. In the Great Agricultural Land Trust, as he takes a Basin, severe wildfires devoured sage- turn with the scope. “Kinda standing brush and invasive cheatgrass moved in, against the wall with their hands in their fueling more big burns. Livestock grazing pockets.” The hens seem unimpressed. continued to degrade land in some areas, This particular lek is on a ranch sev- while in others, drought dried up water eral miles east of Cross Mountain. Most supplies and withered plants. The Bureau other leks are on or near private land, too: of Land Management and Forest Service A Sage Grouse Initiative study suggests weren’t doing enough to stop habitat loss, they’re almost always within six miles of while many states weren’t effectively the wet summer habitats where grouse implementing their plans. Nobody had raise chicks. These meadowy areas are made enough sacrifices to ensure the overwhelmingly in private hands, because bird’s long-term survival. they also attracted human settlement. In some ways, little seemed to have That’s where the Sage Grouse Initia- changed since High Country News ran a tive comes in. Tim Griffiths, the pro- cover story assessing the situation in Feb- gram’s national coordinator from 2010 ruary 2002. “Several years into a West- until July 2015, knows from experience wide effort to conserve the grouse and the how endangered species struggles can sagebrush ecosystem,” author Hal Clifford breed mistrust. He was a Fish and Wild- wrote, “there are only modest results.” life biologist in Klamath Falls, Oregon, in rocky Mountain elk Foundation 14 High Country News August 17, 2015 A male greater sage grouse struts on a road in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. bryant olSen cc via Flickr

Sage grouse saga One step forward, two steps back: A timeline By MARshAll sWEARingEn

2001 and 2002, when farmers’ irrigation 1995 the western association of Fish and wildlife agencies — an organization of state wildlife management agencies — reports range-wide declines water was turned off to protect salmon in populations since the 1950s. Members agree to work “Folks saw — prompting a near-insurrection — and cooperatively to conserve sage grouse. then turned on while salmon fry died we weren’t by the thousands. “Wildlife was pitted 1999 the u.S. Fish and wildlife Service receives the first of five petitions tolist against agriculture,” he recalls, “and in greater sage grouse as threatened or endangered in parts of its coming out the end, nobody won.” range. He remained convinced that the two with black could be reconciled, and in Montana in 2000 the western association of Fish and wildlife agencies, the blM, Forest helicopters, 2004, he got the chance to prove it with Service, and Fish and wildlife Service task a team of federal and state a fish called the fluvial Arctic grayling, biologists with developing a range-wide conservation strategy. and heard which was headed for an emergency listing. Griffiths and State Conservationist 2002 Fish and wildlife receives the first of three petitions tolist greater sage through Dave White, now both working for the grouse across its entire 11-state range. coffee-shop Natural Resources Conservation Service, the western association of Fish and wildlife agencies completes the first helped channel Farm Bill dollars into 2004 detailed, range-wide assessment of sage grouse populations and talk about efforts to keep more water in a stretch of habitat, confirming a continued decline. the Big Hole River and improve its qual- the benefits: ity by helping ranchers move feedlots and 2005 Fish and wildlife finds thatgrouse don’t warrant federal protection healthy restore riparian areas. It was the first range-wide, because existing conservation efforts are enough to prevent time that the NRCS had set aside a dedi- extinction. rangelands cated pool of money from its own wildlife habitat incentive programs to help with a april 2006 the interior department receives an anonymous complaint alleging support sage broader species conservation initiative. unethical and illegal behavior by Julie Macdonald, deputy Those voluntary efforts worked so assistant secretary for Fish, wildlife and Parks, a political appointee who grouse and well that the agency decided to apply the oversees endangered species reviews. also support approach to a species with a much bigger range: The greater sage grouse. Taking december 2006 the western association of Fish and wildlife agencies releases the first vibrant a card from Wyoming’s deck, Montana’s range-wide strategy for conserving greater sage grouse through collaboration among local, state and federal efforts. Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department agriculture.” mapped out the areas containing 75 March 2007 interior’s inspector general finds that Macdonald repeatedly intimidated —Tim Griffiths, former percent of the state’s birds. Then, in one of Fish and wildlife field staff and tinkered with scientists’ findings, national coordinator those core areas near Roundup, the NRCS including a key 2004 sage grouse analysis. two months later, for the Sage Grouse developed conservation plans with 10 she resigns. Initiative ranchers to test the approach. Because the agency works with agricultural producers december 2007 a federal district court in Idaho remands fish and wildlife’s as a partner rather than as an enforcer, it 2005 “not warranted” decision to the agency, excoriating it as lacks the political baggage of the federal tainted by Macdonald’s actions. under a settlement agreement, the Fish and Wildlife Service. “Folks saw we agency agrees to issue a new finding by May 2009, later postponing it weren’t coming out with black helicopters, until 2010. and heard through coffee-shop talk about the benefits,” says Griffiths. “Healthy 2008 democratic Gov. dave Freudenthal of wyoming, which has the greatest share of sage grouse, issues an executive order creating a “core area” rangelands support sage grouse and also strategy, which identifies key areas of remaining habitat — across the support vibrant agriculture.” Eventually, state’s private and public lands — and establishes new conservation 90 percent of the 200,000-acre core area measures. it becomes a model for other state and federal plans. was covered with conservation plans. Please see sage grouse timeline, page 17 www.hcn.org High Country News 15 Cattle and sage grouse coexist on the Big Creek Ranch in Idaho, which works with the Sage Grouse Initiative to maintain grazing practices that improve habitat for sage grouse and other wildlife. Below, vinyl fence markers are installed in Montana to help prevent collisions that injure or kill sage grouse and other birds. roSana rieth/uSda/ nrcS, riGht; JereMy r. robertS/conServation Media, below

So far, the initiative and its partners They also get a lot of federal dollars have invested about $425 million in to make improvements on their land projects involving 1,200 landowners, with that benefit their bottom line as well as greater reach than an endangered species the bird. But 80 percent of the ranchers listing could achieve. Participants receive involved rely on BLM and Forest Service a compliance check once every three to five grazing allotments, so the Sage Grouse years, says Jason Weller, head of NRCS, Initiative hopes to figure out how to and most follow their conservation plan. extend approved conservation plans to The stats seem impressive: 400,000 cover those acres, as well. “(The whole acres of important grouse range have program) is truly the biggest experiment been cleared of encroaching conifers, in the history of the Endangered Species which provide perches for predators Act,” says Griffiths. “Nothing this big, this and crowd out sagebrush. Ranchers orchestrated, has ever been attempted.” now maintain taller grass on 2.6 million acres — which the initiative says on a wIndy May afternoon, I stroll bumps up nesting success by 10 percent. along a wall of red shipping containers At least 500 miles of fencing have been lined end to end. A tall metal structure moved or marked, reducing often-fatal rises behind them, and the groan of diesel So the conservation service extended collisions with wires by more than 80 engines and clank of pipes fills the air. the program to the rest of Montana’s core percent. And more than 450,000 acres This could be an industrial shipping yard areas, and then began scaling up to the have been placed in conservation ease- on Seattle’s Puget Sound. But it’s a ter- other 10 sage grouse states, which each ments, permanently protecting most of minal on a very different sea: Sagebrush mapped key grouse habitat. By the time them from subdivisions and wind farms, rolls in green waves eastward all the way the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached and substantially reducing the threat of to Wyoming’s Wind River Range. Here on its “warranted but precluded” decision in oil and gas development. the Pinedale Anticline, managed by the March 2010, the Sage Grouse Initiative Back on Cross Mountain, Chris West BLM, the infrastructure of natural gas was ready to go, with White as NRCS says that the conservation easement the extraction lies thick — well pads, pipe- chief. “We launched the very next day,” Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land lines, roads, compressor stations, built by Griffiths recalls. Trust placed on the ranch wouldn’t have Shell, Ultra and other companies. Now funded with Farm Bill money been possible without the Sage Grouse The shipping containers, which are through 2018, the Sage Grouse Initiative Initiative. It contributed half of the $5.6 set atop earthen berms, are one com- works with more than 75 partners, in- million paid to the ranch’s owners; a pany’s response to BLM limits on drilling cluding state wildlife departments, ener- private donor and Colorado Parks and noise, which can cut lek attendance and gy companies and nonprofit groups. Most Wildlife covered the rest. Initiative dol- breeding success. It’s part of a much more came on board through a migratory bird lars have made more than a dozen other sweeping effort to change how business project called the Intermountain West Trust easements possible. is done on the federal land that is home Joint Venture, which contributed $15 Under Endangered Species Act to two-thirds of the remaining grouse million to help put “boots on the ground” “candidate conservation agreements with habitat, in order to avert an endangered in rural areas to work with landowners. assurances,” landowners who imple- species listing. Today, about 30 biologists are stationed ment certain conservation measures are But the most important part of that in small towns like Randolph, Utah, and protected from further restrictions if that has less to do with how energy companies Burley, Idaho. All are jointly employed species is listed. In a similar way, initia- develop resources than with regulations with partner organizations, including tive signatories get 30 years of certainty governing where they’re allowed to do Yarbrough with the Rocky Mountain Elk that if the bird is listed and they continue it. That was a significant shortcoming Foundation. “They’re 10 percent of (the approved conservation practices, they of previous federal efforts to safeguard initiative’s) work force,” says Griffiths, won’t be asked to change those practices, grouse. The lack of regulatory certainty “but they account for 50 percent of our nor will they be prosecuted if they ac- that habitat would be protected was one accomplishments.” cidentally harm or kill a grouse. of the primary reasons the Fish and Wild-

16 High Country News August 17, 2015 sage grouse timeline, continued from page 15 life Service decided in 2010 that federal protection was warranted. Subdivision In response, the Interior Department in prime and Agriculture Department have thrown sage grouse a huge amount of muscle and money into habitat outside a comprehensive strategy to manage Pinedale, BLM and Forest Service lands, devel- Wyoming. oped in close cooperation with the states. JereMy r. “These (federal) plans are unprecedented robertS/ conServation — they’re collaborative, landscape-level Media and science-based,” says Jim Lyons, deputy assistant secretary with the Depart- ment of Interior. “This is really the first attempt to implement the Endangered Species Act as it was intended — by conserving habitat so listing is not needed.” The centerpiece of the federal effort came out this summer, when the agen- March 2010 Fish and wildlife announces that the greater sage grouse now cies unveiled 14 near-final plans that will warrants federal protection across its range, though other, higher- usher in much more stringent protections priority candidates preclude further action. “Sagebrush habitats are than previously existed on 66 million becoming increasingly degraded and fragmented,” it declares, citing acres of federal grouse habitat. They’ll the “inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms.” also set in motion large restoration and the agriculture department’s natural resources conservation Service mitigation efforts to compensate for March 2010 launches the sage Grouse Initiative, channeling Farm bill funding unavoidable development, and, perhaps into a major effort to work with private landowners to protect and “This is really most importantly, institute range-wide restore sage grouse habitat. monitoring frameworks to determine the first how conservation strategies are work- May 2011 with Fish and wildlife facing a backlog of hundreds of candidate ing. Those frameworks include specific species for listing, the agency enters into a settlement agree- attempt to trigger points: If the number of male ment with wildearth Guardians that creates a timeline for implement birds attending leks declines by a certain rulings, including a Sept. 30, 2015, deadline for greater sage grouse. percentage, for example, then protections the will be ratcheted up. august 2011 the blM begins amending 78 resource management plans for All the plans take a tiered approach to areas containing sage grouse habitat across 10 western states; the Endangered habitat protection, similar to the strate- Forest Service later does the same for plans on 13 national forests. gies favored by Wyoming and the Natural species Act Resources Conservation Service. The december 2011 Secretary of interior ken Salazar and wyoming Gov. Matt Mead convene representatives from 10 states and several federal agencies as it was tightest restrictions apply to “focal areas” and create a grouse task force to coordinate “regulatory mechanisms” critical for grouse survival; next is “prior- and conservation goals to stave off eSa listing. intended — ity” habitat. Existing energy leases and by conserving rights of way are grandfathered in, but January 2013 fish and wildlife proposes to list Gunnison sage grouse, a both designations limit additional surface related species found in colorado and utah, as endangered. habitat so disturbance. “General” habitat offers the least restrictions. Though grazing, prop- March 2013 Fish and wildlife releases its conservation objectives team report, listing is not erly managed, is not generally consid- enumerating specific conservation goals for sage grouse that could ered a major threat, the plans prioritize prevent listing. the report, which stresses the importance of habitat needed.” reviewing allotments within high-priority protection, becomes the blueprint for revising blM and forest service management plans. —Jim Lyons, deputy habitat; some may also allow for the per- assistant secretary manent retirement of certain allotments. after re-evaluating development trends in the Gunnison basin and the with the Department Many conservation groups, especially 2014 of Interior conservation efforts of states, tribes, private landowners and others, the large mainstream ones, regard the Fish and wildlife decides to list Gunnison sage grouse as federal plans as a huge improvement. threatened rather than endangered. “It’s achieved a lot of what we hoped it would achieve,” says Nada Culver, direc- March 2015 eleven scientists write to Secretary Jewell, criticizing the draft tor of The Wilderness Society’s BLM Ac- blM and forest service plans and calling the conservation tion Center. “Compared to other planning objectives team report “elastic, subjective.” efforts we’ve seen, these plans provide more certainty, more landscape-scale March 2015 a scientific study commissioned by the Pew charitable trusts cooperation and more actual protection.” documents a 56 percent decline in greater sage grouse between The federal plans differ from each 2007 and 2013, and states, “the conclusion seems pretty straightfor- other in significant ways to better mesh ward that current policies and programs are accomplishing little.” with state strategies, which have also generally gotten more rigorous as the april 2015 Jewell announces that the bi-state greater sage grouse — an deadline nears. In 2011, then-Secretary isolated population on the nevada-california border — no longer warrants federal protection because of a concerted conservation effort, of Interior Ken Salazar convened the bolstering hopes that a range-wide listing can be similarly avoided. State-Federal Sage Grouse Task Force and encouraged states to step up their May 2015 Forest Service and blM propose new management plans efforts. Some governors issued executive that seek to limit disturbance within priority sage grouse orders requiring state agencies to consult habitat across 10 states. with wildlife departments before doing anything that might harm grouse, while sept. 30, 2015 under the 2011 court settlement, fish and wildlife must issue others revised and strengthened earlier its new finding for greater sage grouse, even though a budget plans, often with input from the Fish and rider prohibits it from proposing a listing rule, its normal procedure. Wildlife Service.

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 cally at least, be designated as “critical habitat” and legally safeguarded. In late July, WildEarth Guardians released a report showing that, compared to draft versions, the near-final BLM and Forest Service plans have dropped protections for about one-quarter of the priority habitat that the Fish and Wildlife Service had specified as vital to recovery. “How is that agency now going to say with a straight face that these plans are adequate to protect the species and prevent a listing?” asks Erik Molvar, who directs the group’s Sagebrush Sea Campaign. (As of press time, the Interior Department hadn’t responded to the report.) Clait Braun, the biologist who helped raise early alarms about grouse, is similarly skeptical. “I have no confidence that anything anyone is doing is working,” he says. Wildlife species need connectivity to maintain healthy genetics, and scattered areas of high-priority habitat are not enough to provide that. Nor do any plans set aside large permanent reserves, protected from all development. Voluntary conservation efforts fall short, since many, A greater sage grouse lies dead on the side of a road that services gas wells in the Jonah Field area of Wyoming. especially those undertaken by industry, JereMy r. robertS/conServation Media aren’t measured to see what they’re actually accomplishing. Braun sees the Sage “it’s a slick In Idaho, for example, Republican added to state efforts, as every Western Grouse Initiative as less an effective way Gov. Butch Otter assembled legisla- governor has endorsed plans and every to conserve grouse than a taxpayer-funded PR effort, but tors, industry representatives, ranchers, state legislature has dealt with the issue. subsidy program for ranchers. “It’s a slick sportsmen, county commissioners, and Now, he says, “their credibility is on the PR effort, but I fail to see the results. i fail to see members of conservation groups. “At first, line. There’s an earnest attempt to make There’s no data to show that grouse num- the results. it didn’t look like the all-star team,” says sure things get implemented.” bers have increased or that their distribu- grouse biologist Connelly, who advised tion has increased.” Within 30 years, he There’s no the team along with other experts. “But yet despIte all the plans, projects and predicts, the birds will persist only in tiny, they incorporated the best available collaborations, it’s hard to tell if the con- widely dispersed populations. data to show science, even when they didn’t like it.” servation actions undertaken by states, And despite strong monitoring and The plan prohibits wind development, the Sage Grouse Initiative or any other adaptive management, in which the that grouse transmission lines and other energy group will bump up grouse numbers federal plans change course whenever numbers have development in the most important sage- over the long haul. The birds are fairly trigger points are hit, others fear that the grouse habitat. If that habitat is lost to long-lived and reproduce slowly, and their land agencies’ own pinched budgets and increased or wildfire or otherwise destroyed, or if large populations tend to cycle, hitting natural political inertia will sabotage the effort. numbers of birds die off, additional pro- highs and lows over many years. “Monitoring is expensive, and it has to that their tections kick in. The BLM incorporated A recent study for the Pew Chari- be implemented in the long term,” says distribution Idaho’s plan as a preferred alternative table Trusts, for example, found that bird former BLM biologist Steve Belinda. “And for its Idaho and Southwest Montana numbers dropped a whopping 56 per- what happens if you don’t turn things has regional plan. cent between 2007 and 2013. In August, around for grouse? BLM’s history on adap- In Wyoming, federal plans hew closely though, the Western Association of Fish tive management is poor to fair at best.” increased.” to the state’s core-area strategy, which and Wildlife Agencies reported that they’ve At least 200 protests have been filed has garnered both praise and criticism. climbed by two-thirds since that time. It against the plans, from every direction. —Clait Braun, biologist who helped raise early Endangered species advocates believe may take decades to average out such The Western Energy Alliance says oil and alarms about grouse the state plan, despite multiple updates, spikes and dips; many biologists think the gas development is unduly restricted, remains too friendly to industry, and overall trend is either stable or downward. while Colorado and Montana complain indeed, significant new development has “Sage grouse declines are not as dramatic that the plans don’t give them enough been allowed inside some core areas. And as they were 70 years ago,” says Holloran, authority over protections for the bird. the BLM’s plans adopt Wyoming’s lek who’s studied grouse since the ’90s. “But Earlier this summer, Wyoming Gov. Matt buffers, which forbid surface occupancy overall there still seems to be a decline.” Mead praised the federal plans in ap- for drilling only within a .6-mile radius “In Wyoming, you’re not going to stem pearances with Interior Secretary Sally — much less than the distance that losses,” adds Griffiths. “But with policy Jewell. But now he’s backed away, citing scientists recommend. Even so, the Fish and easements, you’re going to greatly numerous issues that he claims have and Wildlife Service supports the state curb those losses. And in other places like gone unaddressed. Idaho Gov. Butch plan, citing its breadth and regulatory Oregon and Idaho — there, you’re actu- Otter has expressed similar reservations. force. Federal plans covering Colorado ally building birds up and building range Western Watersheds Project, and Nevada, meanwhile, extend the up. We’re hoping this will even out over WildEarth Guardians and other environ- no-surface-occupancy restriction across the range.” mental groups have protested as well, priority habitat and enforce a three-mile However, critics argue that the focus claiming that the plans’ provisions are buffer around leks. on preserving just the best remaining far weaker than what’s needed to avert a Over the past five years, says San habitat means that the bird will get listing. And at this point, listing is an out- Stiver, sage grouse coordinator for the considerably less protection across its come that few want to see — even on the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife range than it needs. If it were listed, most environmentalist side. “We wouldn’t be as Agencies, a lot of horsepower has been of the land it occupies would, theoreti- engaged (in sage grouse conservation) if it

18 High Country News August 17, 2015 was a listed species,” says The Wilderness Society’s Culver. A listing would make conservation actions more piecemeal, as individual projects are proposed and the feds evaluate how each one might affect the birds the grouse. “That’s a lot more challenging,” she says. “We have a big scope, but we don’t have endless resources.” and the bugs Tom Christiansen, Wyoming’s lead sage grouse scientist, puts it more blunt- on a hot June MornInG, I follow Hayes Goosey ly: “What message would it send to our across a wide, lonely stretch of fragrant rangeland society,” he asks, “if the largest conserva- 12 miles north of Ryegate, Montana. Scanning the tion effort ever undertaken failed?” ground for snakes while sidestepping clusters of blooming cactus, we arrive, finally, at a strange so what would a saGe Grouse lIstInG scene: Soapy water-filled plastic bowls scattered actually look like? Ask an endangered among sagebrush and grama grass, next to a line species activist or lawyer, and you’re of plastic Solo cups buried to their rims in the likely to get generalities, accompanied ground. It resembles the remnants of a rained-out, by reminders that nobody has a crystal hastily abandoned prairie cookout, but it’s actu- ball. A “threatened” designation allows ally one of Goosey’s study sites. And the Montana for more flexible management than an State University entomologist seems pleased: The “endangered” listing. The activist would picnic-ware traps are literally crawling with bugs. tell you that either adds public account- I count nine coffee-colored dung beetles in one cup ability — opening the door for lawsuits if alone. In others, inch-long, Halloween-hued carrion the government isn’t doing enough — and beetles serve as life rafts for smaller, less buoy- both experts would mention additional ant insects. Meanwhile, the surface pan-traps are restrictions on economic activity and a witch’s brew of butterfly wings and bee bodies. prohibitions on injuring or killing a sage Most people, Goosey says, “have no idea that all of grouse. Furthermore, the Fish and Wild- this stuff is out here or how important it is.” life Service would have to be consulted The range, it turns out, is not so lonely after all: about any federally funded or permitted It supports a mini-metropolis of arthropods that activity — drilling or grazing, say — that pollinate forbs and break down dung and carrion. might harm the bird or its habitat, which But Goosey is primarily interested in their role can cause significant and costly delays. as food for other rangeland creatures — particu- But even if the grouse is listed, it larly sage grouse. During their first three weeks doesn’t mean that “the largest conserva- of life, sage grouse chicks feed almost exclusively tion effort ever undertaken” has failed, on arthropods, which are rich in proteins, fat and Hayes Goosey because the effort itself is likely to define nutrients essential for early development. on rangeland near Ryegate, the terms of the listing — possibly even Thanks to habitat loss and fragmentation, the Montana, where making it stronger than what the agency bird is a candidate for endangered species protec- he uses traps to would have developed on its own. The Fish tion, inspiring a raft of conservation and research assess grazing’s and Wildlife Service would lean heavily on projects to help with recovery. In Montana, where impact on food the existing work when it puts together its sage grouse share nearly 100 percent of their core arthropods, own recovery plans. And the private land habitat with domestic livestock, grouse conserva- like these dung agreements designed to help grouse would tion efforts often focus on resting pastures for a beetles, and pollinators. remain in place. The sage grouse, in other year or more, or rotating livestock more quickly kirSt Marian lyMan words, has already flown. through them, in order to avoid overgrazing and This scenario has played out with the ensure the vigorous return of grouse-concealing, that rested pastures harbor significantly more sage grouse’s cousin, the lesser prairie forage-providing grasses and shrubs. Despite this, food arthropods than grazed pastures, as well as chicken, which lives mostly on private Goosey says, few people have looked into how graz- taller vegetation, which shelters and feeds both the land in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, ing practices influence an equally vital component birds and their arthropod prey. That suggests that New Mexico and Texas. When the bird of sage grouse habitat: food arthropods. So, in 2012, deferring grazing during the early brooding period landed on the “warranted but precluded” he tackled the problem. may increase the number of chicks that survive to roster in 1995, collaborative efforts This site — which he’s currently using for a adulthood, he says. sprang up; the Western Association of related project involving rangeland pollinators — And while some recommend removing cows Fish and Wildlife Agencies developed a lies just across the road from some of the 26 sites altogether, healthy ranches are a bulwark against range-wide plan, and a Lesser Prairie Goosey used during the resulting three-year study. sod-busting for farms — a much bigger threat to Chicken Initiative followed later. Fish The sites were spread across five different ranches grouse survival. “Sage grouse can coexist with and Wildlife still listed the bird as threat- between Roundup and Ryegate. Each was imple- grazing,” says Lorelle Berkeley, a research biolo- ened in March 2014, after worsening menting a grazing plan under the Sage Grouse gist with Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife drought knocked its numbers to perhaps Initiative, a federal program that uses Farm and Parks. But row crops wipe out the woody 18,000. But the agency noted that the Bill money to promote conservation practices on shrub that defines the bird’s habitat, and “it takes collaborative efforts were similar to the private lands. Using the same Solo cup-fashioned decades to grow back.” kind of formal recovery plan it would nor- pitfall traps as the current study, as well as sweep Indeed, given the often knotty and contentious mally create several years after a species’ net passes of the rangeland vegetation, Goosey col- nature of sage grouse conservation, Goosey feels listing, and developed a special 4(d) rule lected beetles, grasshoppers, butterflies and other his findings represent a refreshingly win-win situ- meant to soften the blow for businesses arthropods from grazed and rested pasture sites. ation. “Because (conservation) grazing is supposed and landowners by honoring existing He timed his collecting to coincide with the sage to help decrease the percentage of bare ground,” he efforts. grouse’s nesting and early brooding periods during says, “and because bare ground means less forage As a result, the listing has been far the spring and early summer, when the chicks for livestock and is also a detriment to food arthro- from catastrophic. “We heard a dull thud. — and their recovering moms — depend most on pods … what is good for grouse is good for cattle is Nothing happened,” says Terry Riley, rangeland bugs. good for bugs.” MARiAn lyMAn KiRsT director of conservation for the North Goosey’s preliminary analysis (he plans to sub- American Grouse Partnership. “Energy mit final reports for publication this fall), suggests Marian Lyman Kirst writes from Billings, Montana.

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 for the flycatcher will work to remove invasive species and restore the riparian habitat that all those creatures — including the yellow-billed cuckoo, Chiricahua leopard frog and New Mexico jumping mouse — rely on. If any are later added to the list or upgraded to endangered, the ranchers will have the same 30-year certainty that the Sage Grouse Initiative offers. “Now we have predictability for the whole riparian ecosystem,” says Weller. Still, it’s unclear just how well that approach will work. Dealing with dozens of species at once does add “layers of complexity,” says Griffiths. “We’ll have to test drive this for a year or two and see what needs tuning.” The Fish and Wildlife Service itself realizes that this kind of effort, with engagement from landowners, industry, and every level of government, can result in the kind of landscape-scale conservation needed to preserve not just a single spe- Mitigation efforts companies haven’t gone out of business, added to the candidate list in 2010, and cies, but entire ecosystems. “The success like this one, which ranchers haven’t lost their operations. three years later the agency proposed to is in the partnerships,” Deibert says. “I’m removed piñon and That was a surprise to a lot of people.” list them as “threatened”; now, provided hopeful that eventually, even if folks don’t juniper from grouse With sage grouse, too, the threat of a populations remain strong, they won’t agree a particular species is of value, habitat in the Smith listing has mobilized conservation work be listed at all. “It’s a great feeling of ac- they’ll realize it’s a good business decision Valley near Minden, much more quickly than an actual listing complishment, and of enthusiasm to keep for them to do conservation.” Nevada, helped stave probably would have done. What’s more, off the listing of the moving forward,” says Shawn Espinosa, bi-state sage grouse. says Ya-Wei Li, senior director of endan- a state biologist who’s been part of the bounCInG down a dIrt road on Cross uSda/nrcS gered species conservation with Defend- collaborative efforts. “Now we won’t have Mountain Ranch in his white pickup, Rex ers of Wildlife, “the restrictions imposed that specter (of potential listing) lurking Tuttle gestures toward a large black-and- under these (federal) frameworks are far behind every working group meeting.” white border collie sitting in the back of more significant than what we’ve seen for If the same thing happens with the crew cab. “Don’t try to pet Junior,” many other species that have been listed greater sage grouse, it could add mo- he warns me; the dog doesn’t like to be for decades.” mentum to, rather than undermine, the bothered by strangers, a sentiment that Still, the risk of alienating stake- ecosystem-wide efforts the bird’s predica- might apply to Tuttle as well. The ranch holders is very real, and state buy-in, ment has inspired. “This is the start of manager looks anxious, reflecting the like landowner buy-in, is vital. “Several something bigger,” says Holloran. “It has apprehension pervading the sagebrush governors have told me that if it’s a the potential to evolve into the process steppe about Fish and Wildlife’s upcom- federal bird, then it’s a federal problem, under which all wildlife is managed,” ing decision on Sept. 30. and the feds can fund it and the feds can at least for landscape-scale species that But things are unlikely to change on deal with it,” says Audubon Society Vice range on private land. Cross Mountain or anywhere else, any- President Brian Rutledge, who has long Indeed, that’s already happening at time soon. Thanks to a budget rider Con- been involved with Wyoming’s efforts. the Natural Resources Conservation gress passed last December, the agency “We would much rather have the sage Service. “There’s a big shift in the wind will be able to announce only whether the grouse managed at the local level,” adds here that’s really good,” says agency chief sage grouse is or is not still a candidate Fish and Wildlife’s Deibert, “(so people) Weller. Within the past year, the Oregon for listing. If the bird warrants protection, can make decisions relevant to their chub was delisted and the Louisiana the agency is blocked from developing a landscape. That’s very difficult for us to black bear was proposed for delist- rule to protect it as threatened or endan- do looking across 11 states.” ing — both of them saved by voluntary gered for at least another year. landowner conservation that the NRCS Still, Tuttle is clearly worried about that kInd of loCal ManaGeMent is helped foster. As with sage grouse, pro- the future of his own neighboring ranch, now the rule for at least one small group tecting these species protects other crea- which he hopes to pass down to his sons, of sage grouse — much to the relief of tures that share the same habitat — an now 15 and 17. The conservation ease- ranchers, Washoe Tribe members, and the approach that the agency has continued ment reduces the ranch’s value and hence many other stakeholders who had been to concentrate on. the eventual inheritance tax, in addition working since 1999 to save the bi-state In 2012, the conservation service cre- to benefiting wildlife. “We’ve done all population of greater sage grouse. ated the Working Lands for Wildlife Pro- we can to help grouse,” Tuttle says, “but On April 21, Interior Secretary Jewell, gram, expanding Sage Grouse Initiative- we can’t force other ranchers to do the along with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval style efforts to six other umbrella species right thing.” If the grouse is eventually and other officials, stood on a stage out- across the U.S., including the southwest- listed, Tuttle wonders if his operation Jodi Peterson is a side the Nevada Department of Wildlife’s ern willow flycatcher; Griffiths was just can remain viable — especially since it senior editor at High headquarters to announce that the 2,500 named Western regional coordinator for relies on hundreds of thousands of acres Country News, and to 9,000 birds on the California-Nevada the program. Working Lands for Wildlife of public-land allotments where grazing writes from Paonia, border no longer warranted federal pro- and the Fish and Wildlife Service recent- might be curtailed. Ranching is already colorado. @Peterson_Jodi tection, thanks to voluntary conservation ly released an ecosystem-wide biological dicey enough, he says, citing difficulties efforts. It was a hot, sunny day, and most opinion for the flycatcher that covered with hiring sheepherders and fending off this coverage is sup- of the chairs arranged on the grassy lawn 83 other species that are either listed as predators like black bears. “I told my boys ported by contributors were empty. But a big round of applause threatened or are candidates for listing they both need to plan to go to college to the high country went up from under the surrounding — the first time the agencies had issued and get degrees,” he says, sounding re- news enterprise trees, where dozens of attendees had a collective opinion for multiple species. signed. “That way they can do something Journalism Fund. sought shade. The bi-state birds had been Landowners who sign conservation plans else if the ranch doesn’t work out.”

20 High Country News August 17, 2015 MARKETPLACE

Notice to our advertisers: You can Berkeley, Calif., and Sept. 25 in Santa Clara, including fundraising, planning and pro- Field Organizer — The Southwest Environ- place classified ads with our online classi- Calif. A benefit for Snowlands Network. Info grams, fiscal management, personnel, admin- mental Center seeks a part-time field orga- fied system. Visit hcn.org/classifieds. Aug. at www.snowlands.org/events. istration and Board relations. The President nizer based in Las Cruces to mobilize public 17 is the deadline to place your print ad in will also provide leadership within the con- support for our campaigns to protect native the Aug. 31 issue. Call 800-311-5852, or The Public Land and Resources Law servation community at large. For a detailed wildlife and wildlands in the Southwest. Ex- e-mail [email protected] for help or in- Review will host the 36th Public Land Law job description, qualifications and details on perience preferred but not required. Details formation. For more information about our Conference on Oct. 1-2, 2015. This year’s Con- submitting an application for this position, at wildmesquite.org. current rates and display ad options, visit ference focuses on “Transcending Boundaries: visit our website: y2y.net. hcn.org/advertising. Achieving Success in Cooperative Manage- Montana Conservation Voters seeks a ment of Natural Resources.” The opening Executive Director — The Quivira Coalition, new Executive Director who can build on Business Opportunities Keynote Address will be presented by Hilary a nonprofit dedicated to building resilience MCV’s 16 years of success at building power Tompkins, solicitor, U.S. Department of the in Western working landscapes, is seeking an and working to achieve results for the con- Conservationist? Irrigable Land? Stellar Interior. executive director to provide inspired leader- servation and environmental movements in seed-saving NGO is available to serious part- ship and management. The ideal candidate Montana. The announcement can be found ner. Package must include financial support. will have seven or more years of leadership ex- on MCV’s website: mtvoters.org/brief/2015/ Details: http://seeds.ojaidigital.net. Sixth Annual Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent Conference, Missoula, Mont., perience within a highly respected organiza- help_mcv_recruit_a_new_executive_director. Sept. 16-18, 2015. Please visit www.crown- tion, the skills necessary to build bridges and MCV has retained ThinkingAhead Executive conferences and events roundtable.org/6thconference2015.html. consensus among diverse constituencies, and Search. Applications or inquiries must be di- Oct. 7-10, 2015, SHIFT Festival, the vision and creativity to develop effective rected to Kara Teising, Partner, at Jackson, Wyo. An in-depth exploration of EMPLOYMENT programming. For a full job description, see [email protected]. outdoor access, responsible recreation, con- quiviracoalition.org/About_Us/Quivira_Ex- servation leadership and youth engagement WorkInFarming.com — Where job seekers ecutive_Search/index.html. To apply, send a The American Independent Business Al- for communities striving to live in balance and farmers connect. Facebook, Twitter, Linke- résumé, cover letter and contact information liance helps communities build more durable with nature. Tickets at www.shiftjh.org. din, Google+. for three professional references to the Qui- local economies and sustain local indepen- vira Coalition, Attn: Board of Directors, 1413 dent businesses. AMIBA seeks Development/ Pacific Coast Fog Fest — Saturday-Sun- President — The Yellowstone to Yukon Second Street Suite 1, Santa Fe, NM 87505, Engagement Coordinator at our Bozeman, day, Sept. 26 and 27, 2015, in Pacifica, Calif. Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) is a joint Cana- [email protected]. Mont., headquarters. Learn more at AMIBA. Fun along the coast. Celebrating 30 years da-U.S. nonprofit organization with a mission net/about/jobs. of wine, art, three stages of live music, fog to connect and protect wildlife habitat from Membership Coordinator —The Southwest jog, fog cutter, family fun rest, parade and Yellowstone to Yukon so people and nature Environmental Center seeks a part-time Mem- Watershed Partnership Coordinator — more! Fifteen minutes south of San Francisco. can thrive. The organization is seeking a Pres- bership Coordinator to increase our mem- Escalante River Watershed Partnership (Utah) pacificcoastfogfest.com. Facebook, Twitter. ident passionately committed to large-scale bership and manage membership programs. seeks a full-time, experienced Watershed Part- conservation and possessing the vision, skills Responsibilities include: membership devel- nership Coordinator. Résumé deadline Aug. Faster-Steeper-Higher-Deeper! The Banff and other attributes necessary to build on opment, communications, fundraising, and 31. For detailed job announcement and po- Radical Reels Tour. The best high-adrenaline past successes with new accomplishments. outreach. Visit www.wildmesquite.org to view sition description, go to www.escalanteriver- films from the Banff Mountain Film Festival. The successful candidate will report to the job description. watershedpartnership.org. Get stoked about skiing, boarding, biking and Board of Directors and be responsible for paddling. Sept. 20 in Reno, Nev., Sept. 24 in leadership of all aspects of the organization,

www.hcn.org High Country News 21 MARKETPLACE

Notice to our advertisers: You can Berkeley, Calif., and Sept. 25 in Santa Clara, including fundraising, planning and pro- field Organizer — The Southwest Environ- place classified ads with our online classi- Calif. A benefit for Snowlands Network. Info grams, fiscal management, personnel, admin- mental Center seeks a part-time field orga- fied system. Visit hcn.org/classifieds. Aug. at www.snowlands.org/events. istration and Board relations. The President nizer based in Las Cruces to mobilize public 17 is the deadline to place your print ad in will also provide leadership within the con- support for our campaigns to protect native the Aug. 31 issue. Call 800-311-5852, or the public Land and resources Law servation community at large. For a detailed wildlife and wildlands in the Southwest. Ex- e-mail [email protected] for help or in- review will host the 36th Public Land Law job description, qualifications and details on perience preferred but not required. Details formation. For more information about our Conference on Oct. 1-2, 2015. This year’s Con- submitting an application for this position, at wildmesquite.org. current rates and display ad options, visit ference focuses on “Transcending Boundaries: visit our website: y2y.net. hcn.org/advertising. Achieving Success in Cooperative Manage- Montana Conservation voters seeks a ment of Natural Resources.” The opening executive director — The Quivira Coalition, new Executive Director who can build on BusiNess OppOrtuNities Keynote Address will be presented by Hilary a nonprofit dedicated to building resilience MCV’s 16 years of success at building power Tompkins, solicitor, U.S. Department of the in Western working landscapes, is seeking an and working to achieve results for the con- Conservationist? irrigable Land? Stellar Interior. executive director to provide inspired leader- servation and environmental movements in seed-saving NGO is available to serious part- ship and management. The ideal candidate Montana. The announcement can be found ner. Package must include financial support. will have seven or more years of leadership ex- on MCV’s website: mtvoters.org/brief/2015/ Details: http://seeds.ojaidigital.net. sixth annual roundtable on the Crown of the Continent Conference, Missoula, Mont., perience within a highly respected organiza- help_mcv_recruit_a_new_executive_director. Sept. 16-18, 2015. Please visit www.crown- tion, the skills necessary to build bridges and MCV has retained ThinkingAhead Executive CONfereNCes aNd eveNts roundtable.org/6thconference2015.html. consensus among diverse constituencies, and Search. Applications or inquiries must be di- Oct. 7-10, 2015, sHift festival, the vision and creativity to develop effective rected to Kara Teising, Partner, at Jackson, Wyo. An in-depth exploration of eMpLOYMeNt programming. For a full job description, see [email protected]. outdoor access, responsible recreation, con- quiviracoalition.org/About_Us/Quivira_Ex- servation leadership and youth engagement Workinfarming.com — Where job seekers ecutive_Search/index.html. To apply, send a the american independent Business al- for communities striving to live in balance and farmers connect. Facebook, Twitter, Linke- résumé, cover letter and contact information liance helps communities build more durable with nature. Tickets at www.shiftjh.org. din, Google+. for three professional references to the Qui- local economies and sustain local indepen- vira Coalition, Attn: Board of Directors, 1413 dent businesses. AMIBA seeks Development/ pacific Coast fog fest — Saturday-Sun- president — The Yellowstone to Yukon Second Street Suite 1, Santa Fe, NM 87505, Engagement Coordinator at our Bozeman, day, Sept. 26 and 27, 2015, in Pacifica, Calif. Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) is a joint Cana- [email protected]. Mont., headquarters. Learn more at AMIBA. Fun along the coast. Celebrating 30 years da-U.S. nonprofit organization with a mission net/about/jobs. of wine, art, three stages of live music, fog to connect and protect wildlife habitat from Membership Coordinator —The Southwest jog, fog cutter, family fun rest, parade and Yellowstone to Yukon so people and nature Environmental Center seeks a part-time Mem- Watershed partnership Coordinator — more! Fifteen minutes south of San Francisco. can thrive. The organization is seeking a Pres- bership Coordinator to increase our mem- Escalante River Watershed Partnership (Utah) pacificcoastfogfest.com. Facebook, Twitter. ident passionately committed to large-scale bership and manage membership programs. seeks a full-time, experienced Watershed Part- conservation and possessing the vision, skills Responsibilities include: membership devel- nership Coordinator. Résumé deadline Aug. faster-steeper-Higher-deeper! The Banff and other attributes necessary to build on opment, communications, fundraising, and 31. For detailed job announcement and po- Radical Reels Tour. The best high-adrenaline past successes with new accomplishments. outreach. Visit www.wildmesquite.org to view sition description, go to www.escalanteriver- films from the Banff Mountain Film Festival. The successful candidate will report to the job description. watershedpartnership.org. Get stoked about skiing, boarding, biking and Board of Directors and be responsible for paddling. Sept. 20 in Reno, Nev., Sept. 24 in leadership of all aspects of the organization,

www.hcn.org High Country News 21 MARKETPLACE

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

When eating the scenery makes you sick

Sometimes you get your heart’s desire, with visitors may boost local business parks to reduce staff in law enforce- and it’s too much. On May 23, the Utah traffic, but it also stresses the region’s ment, maintenance and public education. Highway Patrol had to close the entrance gateway communities. Local citizens Overall, the national parks face an $11.5 to Arches National Park after traffic got complain that the state has yet to dip in billion maintenance backlog because of backed up for five miles on the highway to those tourist-generated taxes to fund inadequate congressional appropriations into nearby Moab. their strained medical clinics, sewer and over many years. Zion’s backlog alone Southwest of Arches, Zion National water systems, law enforcement and accounts for $62 million. Park and its gateway town of Springdale transportation. Springdale’s medical For parks like Zion and Arches, fewer also suffer from too many visitors and too clinic, for example, is funded by residents staff means fewer rangers to do safety little money to manage the impacts of the and run by part-time staff. Meanwhile, patrols or greet and educate visitors, and OPINION BY crowds. Zion has seen an annual 28 per- all the new hotels are overwhelming the fewer workers to fix deteriorating roads, Tom Ribe cent increase in visitation to around 3.2 antiquated sewer and water systems in restrooms and trails. And when visitors million visitors a year. Arches National this vulnerable canyon. don’t see rangers out in the field, they Park was up 19 percent in 2014, and will “Many local citizens and park are more likely to damage national heri- likely match that increase this year. employees would like to request that tage resources with graffiti, vandalism, The spiking visitor numbers may you stop your ad blitzes, which must off-road driving and trash. be partly attributed to a $12 million cost millions,” said Springdale resident “We are seeing a very high level of advertising campaign, launched by the Betina Lindsey in an open letter to the visitation — a significant increase,” says Utah Office of Tourism and specifically state published in the St. George Inde- Kate Cannon, superintendent of Arches focused on Utah’s national parks. The pendent. “You might say you are bringing National Park. “It’s difficult for us to multimedia ad blitz, known as “The jobs. No, you are bringing tourism and keep up with the demands of visitors Mighty 5” campaign, is designed to bring unsustainable consumerism to a fragile on facilities and on search and rescue. out-of-state visitors to southern Utah. ecosystem.” We have gridlock at the parking lots. The tourism office claims that for every Even as the state turns a blind eye People’s experience at Arches should not WEB EXTRA dollar spent on its ad campaign, $5.90 in to the real cost of tourism in southern be about trouble finding a place to park.” To see all the current Writers on the Range income will flow to state businesses, and Utah, the National Park Service has The National Park Service’s budget columns, and archives, $960 million will return through local been struggling to keep its head above problems, however, will receive little help visit HCN’s Web site, and state taxes. water ever since a 5 percent budget from the Utah congressional delegation. hcn.org Swamping Utah’s national parks cut in 2012. Lack of money has forced The agency’s budget is only one-fifteenth

Coming September 14, 2015

HCN’s Annual Hot Off the Press Issue

INSIDE THIS SPECIAL ISSUE: Stories devoted to thought-provoking books, authors, videos, music, publishers and bookstores well worth getting to know. • Writer profiles and Q&As • Reviews of new titles - fiction and nonfiction To advertise contact: • Special ad page insert David Anderson at (800) 311-5852 for your books, media or [email protected] and outlets Space Reservation Visit hcn.org/HOTP Deadline: August 24, 2015 for more information.

24 High Country News August 17, 2015 Crowds gather for sunset photographs at Delicate Arch in Arches National Park last July. Rodd Halstead

of 1 percent of the federal budget, but the national parks. Meanwhile, Utah’s ment, is based in northern Utah. despite the fact that the national parks House members get an average 15 It is certainly hypocritical for Utah Writers on the Range are a big economic draw for Utah, the percent rating. to hype its national parks with taxpayer- is a syndicated service of High state’s elected officials consistently vote Tellingly, the national campaign to funded ad campaigns while refusing to Country News, against their financial needs. divest the American people of their Bu- support those parks or their gateway providing three The nonprofit National Parks reau of Land Management and Forest communities, which are also suffering opinion columns Conservation Association, which tracks Service lands and transfer them to the from overuse. Utah is eating the scenery each week to more park-related legislation in Washington, states excludes National Park Service on public land in the form of economic than 70 newspapers D.C., gives Utah Republican Sen. Orrin lands, perhaps because of strong public development; it is past time for the state around the West. For more information, Hatch a 33 percent rating for his votes support for the national park system or to pitch in and help pay for the meal. contact related to national parks. His colleague, the draw of the national parks brand. Betsy Marston, Republican Sen. Mike Lee, earned a The American Lands Council, a clear- Tom Ribe writes about environmental [email protected], zero percent rating for not supporting inghouse for the land-transfer move- policy in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 970-527-4898.

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 BOOKS Tombstone’s true grit

Every day in Tombstone, Arizona, actors novel, Doc, before Holliday’s brief stint in with Johnny Behan, eventual sheriff of recreate the famous gunfight of October Tombstone, largely because she felt the Cochise County, Arizona, a man deter- 1881, when the Earp brothers — Virgil, O.K. Corral overshadowed the rest of a mined to further his political career by Morgan and the legendary Wyatt — remarkable life. But now Russell carries any means necessary, including exploit- along with their friend, Doc Holliday, forward Doc’s story, as he is increasingly ing the violence plaguing Tombstone. confronted a gang of local troublemak- incapacitated by tuberculosis and seldom Behan discreetly allies himself with the ers known as the “Cow Boys,” in a able to practice his chosen profession, Cow Boys, thereby rousing Wyatt Earp’s shootout that wounded several and left dentistry. As Russell tells it, in fact, Doc ire and eventually estranging Marcus, three dead. The battle lasted a mere 30 first comes to Tombstone in 1880 as who becomes Earp’s lover. seconds, though in modern cinematic a special favor in order to tend Wyatt Epitaph shows how a single bloody slow-motion it goes on forever. In Epi- Earp’s toothache. Russell vividly depicts skirmish in the streets — a rare occur- taph, Mary Doria Russell goes beyond Holliday’s suffering, both physical and rence historically — becomes the mythic Epitaph: A Novel of the bloody melodrama, turning painstak- mental: A man whose reputation as an model of daily life in Western frontier The O.K. Corral ing historical research into an absorbing outlaw gunslinger becomes increasingly towns. Russell ably evokes this epic Mary Doria Russell 600-page novel that seeks to understand ridiculous as his strength wanes. myth, which continues to fuel our imagi- 592 pages, these men and the context in which they Holliday was the main focus of Doc, nation, but what she really excels at is hardcover: $27.99. lived and fought. Russell writes of the but dozens of distinctive characters immersing readers in the reality of life in participants, “Whether you live another populate Epitaph, a story that Rus- the early 1880s — the clashing tempers Ecco, 2015. five minutes or another fifty years, those sell tells with omniscient aplomb. One and political factions of people striving awful thirty seconds will become a pri- standout character is Josephine Marcus, for power, fortune or at least a toehold in vate eclipse of the sun, darkening every the daughter of a San Francisco Jewish life amid the day-to-day grit of a rugged moment left to you.” baker who ran away as a teenager to desert outpost. Russell ended her terrific 2011 become an actress. She winds up living By Jenny Shank

The man behind the monumental aqueduct

Few issues in the West are more contro- failure of Mulholland’s career, the 1928 was responsible, intelligent, honest and versial than water, and Les Standiford collapse of the St. Francis Dam, which tireless in his dedication to the public dives headfirst into the topic in his new killed hundreds in one of the worst civil good. Although Mulholland doesn’t float nonfiction book, Water to the Angels, a engineering disasters in U.S. history. unscathed through controversy — and in dramatic account of the life of William “Devastated by the event that refash- fact, controversy still swirls around him Mulholland. Standiford traces Mulhol- ioned him from civic hero to villain in an today — Standiford’s story of the ditch- land’s rise from an Irish immigrant eye-blink, Mulholland would at one point digger who built the monumental aque- ditch-digger to the mastermind behind confide to a reporter, ‘I envy those who duct will inspire anyone who has dared to the Los Angeles Aqueduct, one of the were killed.’ ” dream the impossible, and then set out to greatest civil engineering projects of the Water to the Angels ultimately make it happen. 20th century. In the process, Standiford, portrays Mulholland as a man who By Traci J. Macnamara an accomplished novelist, displays his Water to the Angels talent for finding and sharing compelling Les Standiford anecdotes that highlight the drama and 336 pages, adventure of Mulholland’s story. hardcover: $28.99. Unlike other books written about Ecco, 2015. Western water issues, such as Marc Reis- ner’s magisterial Cadillac Desert (1986), Standiford’s Water to the Angels passes over the complexity of the region’s water politics in order to focus on the larger- than-life person of Mulholland himself. Of course, politics and controversy flow with water wherever it goes, and Mulhol- land’s personal story remains inextricably linked to its context. “But controversies,” says Standiford, “have only one small part of my fascination with such tales wherein one of the most powerful men of an era undertakes a project that most consider impossible and overcomes all obstacles.” Mulholland is clearly the hero of this story, but Standiford’s portrayal is nuanced and never overblown: The man was, after all, a mere mortal, who confronted numerous challenges in his life and made his share of enemies along the way. And the mistakes he made were, on occasion, both public and catastrophic. William Mulholland and Commissioner Del Valle in an 80-inch pipe at Power Plant 1 Standiford recounts the most tragic construction in 1916. L os Angeles Department of Water and Power

26 High Country News August 17, 2015 Essay | By Priyanka Kumar Dreaming where I walk

When I took my oath of American citizenship, the United States I visit the American Museum of Natural History and its Citizenship and Immigration Services realized I was an author scrumptious bookstore whenever I can. During one of my first and a filmmaker, so I was invited to be the guest speaker for visits, I picked up biographies of John James Audubon and the ceremony. A few hundred people packed the South Broad- Theodore Roosevelt. I drank up Roosevelt’s story: how he be- way Cultural Center in Albuquerque that September morning came a birder; how he was Mr. Vitality. I read about his creation last year, as 80 people from 12 countries — including Bolivia, of the U.S. Forest Service, and his vision for the national parks. Germany, India, Mexico and Russia — took the oath. This is an Because of people like Roosevelt, I can now drive 10 minutes excerpt from my talk. from where I live in Santa Fe and be in a national forest with my husband and our toddler. I was delighted to discover that Roosevelt combined read- hen I was a child in India, I was told that Prime Minister ing, writing and the outdoors, something I like to do as well. W Jawaharlal Nehru kept on his desk this verse from the He didn’t believe in wasting time: In 1886, while chasing boat American poet Robert Frost: thieves down a river thick with ice in the North Dakota Bad- lands, he read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Much later, on his The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. Brazilian voyage down the Rio da Dúvida, the swarms of mos- But I have promises to keep, quitoes and unbelievable hardships did not stop him from being And miles to go before I sleep, a scientific explorer and an almost pathological diarist. And miles to go before I sleep. Though I am still rooted in my origins — I am fascinated by the Indian storytelling tradition, which is ancient and rich and My family moved from India to Canada when I was a teen- deep — these days I’m dreaming more about where I live now. ager, and I came to America as a graduate student. The film Many of the stories I’m writing are set here in America, and school at the University of Southern California was supposedly the characters in them are people like you and me — the new the best of its kind, and soon I was up to my neck in coursework. citizens in this auditorium. Still, the images that stick with me from those years are of a I still have many miles to go, but now I feel that where I’m tree-lined campus where I could walk and think about life, and coming from is right here. I think this moment will change the The author resting of long drives to Northern California that sometimes ended in way I tell stories. I hope that, as I at the Summit of hiking and camping in Yosemite. I can’t say exactly when try to interpret America’s wild Cloud’s Rest in Yosemite National it happened, but I began to fall in love with this coun- spaces, I will make the Park, left, and in try. At 21, of course, it’s easy to fall in love. ghosts of Teddy Roo- Big Basin Redwoods But many years later, despite the chal- sevelt and Robert State Park, below. lenges I’ve faced as an artist, I still feel the Frost smile. Courtesy Priyanka Kumar same way. My position has nothing to do with politics. Recently, I got to visit Robert Frost’s cabin in Ripton, Vermont. As I gazed at his bookshelves, his Modern Library editions, I pinched myself; it felt like a dream. The solitary cabin and a glorious field that stretched out past it echoed the aspect of Frost’s work that appeals to me most — his fusion of the isolation and exhilaration of the road “less travelled.” For me, America is a country where I can dream. This is a place where I can fail and try again. It’s a place where I’ve been able to grow. I’ve grown partly because of my experience of American wilderness — its mountains, rivers, national parks, even its visitor centers. In Yosemite, on the knife’s edge of Clouds Rest, I realized that one wrong move could mean death. Still, over the years, I kept returning. On a trail in Kings Canyon National Park, I encountered a mother bear with three cubs; I turned around, only to startle another bear off the trail. At that point, I began to run. In such moments, I’ve felt like I was pushing my physical limits, but looking back, I think I was stretching my sense of who I am and who I can be. In nature, it’s still possible to have that rare thing: an origi- Priyanka Kumar is the author of the novel nal experience. The experience of deep wilderness is rarer still: Take Wing and Fly Here, and she is the In Europe, it’s almost nonexistent; in India, though there are writer/director/producer of the feature still some wild places, a lone woman hiking — even a woman documentary The Song of the Little Road, with a companion — faces scrutiny, if not harassment. starring Martin Scorsese and Peter .

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

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY Betsy Marston

IDAHO COLORADO “I guess when you gotta go, you gotta go,” Crested Butte in western Colorado is being BLM spokeswoman Carrie Bilbao told loved to death. According to an impas- KTVB. She was talking about the moun- sioned editorial in the Crested Butte tain biker who started a 73-acre wildfire News, a flood of visitors to the beautiful in the Boise foothills by burning his toilet backcountry around the mountain town paper in a dry ravine. The biker, who is causing “chaos” and “disaster.” As the was not identified, came forward to tell head of the Rocky Mountain Biological the Bureau of Land Management what Laboratory put it, “We’re losing meadows happened; apparently, he tried to burn to illegal roads, illegal parking and illegal and bury his waste to avoid littering, “but camping. It’s not good for anybody — visi- an ember spread to nearby dry grass,” tors, scientists or ranchers.” The agency in reports The Associated Press. Occasionally, charge of the increasingly trashed public environmentally minded recreationists try land near town is the Forest Service, and to dispose of their waste in this fashion, sadly, it hasn’t done much because it is said Bilbao, but burning anything in a fire- “overwhelmed.” Editorial writer Mark prone area is never a smart idea — and ALASKA Gulled-eagle sandwich. Reaman compared the high-elevation that’s the latest poop. D avid Canales/U.S. Department of the Interior overcrowding to a spreading rash, and worried that Crested Butte might find itself in MONTANA bankruptcy.” Left holding the bag, the state has “an abusive relationship” with its visitors. Then there’s starting fires by deliberately pouring taken possession of 2,300 of the company’s coal- The values that make the wild so wonderful are gasoline down gopher holes and tossing matches bed methane wells, and the Wyoming Oil and disappearing, he warned, especially respect for in afterward. That’s what a landowner did south Gas Conservation Commission plans to “plug the backcountry. He wants the Forest Service to of Billings, Montana, but his scorched-burrows the derelict gas wells.” post signs telling tourists how to behave and to War on Gophers quickly became a grass fire that consider adding buses to cut down the number burned 21 acres. “No one was injured,” reports YELLOWSTONE of cars on dirt roads. kpax.com — except, of course, for the gophers, Yellowstone National Park bison, those formi- who lost their homes in the blaze. dable animals that can weigh 2,000 pounds, CALIFORNIA AND NEVADA appear to value their privacy. In particular, they It’s always been assumed that Lake Tahoe’s WYOMING seem to detest having tourists take selfies and intense cobalt-blue color was linked to the lake’s Is the Interior Department much too forbearing post them on Facebook without their permis- clarity — the bluer the lake, the cleaner the when it comes to policing oil and gas companies? sion. Wielding their massive shaggy heads like water — but now, scientists from the Univer- A recent Associated Press story would appear to battering rams, bison recently tossed three too- sity of California, Davis, have found that the answer “yes.” For several years, High Plains Gas intrusive visitors into the air. Each encounter lake’s blue color is caused by the presence of never bothered to report how much gas it was occurred as a tourist tried to pose for a picture algae. Environment & Energy Daily reports that extracting from the Powder River Basin, until with a nearby bison. Two other people were at- researchers also found a surprising benefit from finally, the Interior Department fined it $4.2 mil- tacked for moving too close, including a teenager the ongoing drought: Reduced snowmelt and lion. More recently, Interior fined the company from Taiwan who was gored near Old Faithful. precipitation meant that fewer sediments flowed an additional $6.9 million for not even keep- The Park Service has posted signs that warn into the lake, increasing its clarity to a depth ing track of its gas production, a civil penalty tourists about charging bison, but somehow, of 77.8 feet last year, 7.6 feet more than 2013’s that’s said to rank among the most severe ever people remain convinced that the huge animals levels. The iconic lake is the country’s second assessed by the department’s Office of Natural are tranquil and slow-moving. Park officials deepest, at 1,645 feet. Resources Revenue. But it’s doubtful that the warn that annoyed bison can suddenly erupt, company will ever pay up: High Plains Gas has sprinting “three times faster than humans can WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see been out of existence for more than a year. It has run and are unpredictable and dangerous.” The hcn.org. no working phone, and this April, its CEO, Ed best idea is to stay at least 25 yards away from Presley, told the Casper Star-Tribune that “the Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and a bison, and until 75-foot-long selfie sticks are often shared in this column. Write [email protected]. company didn’t even have the money to file for invented, just keep yourself out of the picture.

High What the Nevada desert — which was seen for so many Country years as a place to be mined, bombed and nuked News “ For people who care about the West. — needs is understanding, not transformation. High Country News covers the important issues and Matt Jenkins, in his essay “The desert doesn’t need this ‘City’ ” 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 August 17, 2015 MARKETPLACE

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www.hcn.org High Country News 23 WRITeRS ON THe RANGe

When eating the scenery makes you sick

Sometimes you get your heart’s desire, with visitors may boost local business parks to reduce staff in law enforce- and it’s too much. On May 23, the Utah traffic, but it also stresses the region’s ment, maintenance and public education. Highway Patrol had to close the entrance gateway communities. Local citizens Overall, the national parks face an $11.5 to Arches National Park after traffic got complain that the state has yet to dip in billion maintenance backlog because of backed up for five miles on the highway to those tourist-generated taxes to fund inadequate congressional appropriations into nearby Moab. their strained medical clinics, sewer and over many years. Zion’s backlog alone Southwest of Arches, Zion National water systems, law enforcement and accounts for $62 million. Park and its gateway town of Springdale transportation. Springdale’s medical For parks like Zion and Arches, fewer also suffer from too many visitors and too clinic, for example, is funded by residents staff means fewer rangers to do safety little money to manage the impacts of the and run by part-time staff. Meanwhile, patrols or greet and educate visitors, and OPINION BY crowds. Zion has seen an annual 28 per- all the new hotels are overwhelming the fewer workers to fix deteriorating roads, TOm RIBe cent increase in visitation to around 3.2 antiquated sewer and water systems in restrooms and trails. And when visitors million visitors a year. Arches National this vulnerable canyon. don’t see rangers out in the field, they Park was up 19 percent in 2014, and will “Many local citizens and park are more likely to damage national heri- likely match that increase this year. employees would like to request that tage resources with graffiti, vandalism, The spiking visitor numbers may you stop your ad blitzes, which must off-road driving and trash. be partly attributed to a $12 million cost millions,” said Springdale resident “We are seeing a very high level of advertising campaign, launched by the Betina Lindsey in an open letter to the visitation — a significant increase,” says Utah Office of Tourism and specifically state published in the St. George Inde- Kate Cannon, superintendent of Arches focused on Utah’s national parks. The pendent. “You might say you are bringing National Park. “It’s difficult for us to multimedia ad blitz, known as “The jobs. No, you are bringing tourism and keep up with the demands of visitors Mighty 5” campaign, is designed to bring unsustainable consumerism to a fragile on facilities and on search and rescue. out-of-state visitors to southern Utah. ecosystem.” We have gridlock at the parking lots. The tourism office claims that for every Even as the state turns a blind eye People’s experience at Arches should not WEB EXTRA dollar spent on its ad campaign, $5.90 in to the real cost of tourism in southern be about trouble finding a place to park.” To see all the current Writers on the Range income will flow to state businesses, and Utah, the National Park Service has The National Park Service’s budget columns, and archives, $960 million will return through local been struggling to keep its head above problems, however, will receive little help visit HCN’s Web site, and state taxes. water ever since a 5 percent budget from the Utah congressional delegation. hcn.org Swamping Utah’s national parks cut in 2012. Lack of money has forced The agency’s budget is only one-fifteenth

Coming September 14, 2015

HCN’s Annual Hot Off the Press Issue

24 High Country News August 17, 2015 Crowds gather for sunset photographs at Delicate Arch in Arches National Park last July. Rodd HalsTead

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 BOOKS Tombstone’s true grit

Every day in Tombstone, Arizona, actors novel, Doc, before Holliday’s brief stint in with Johnny Behan, eventual sheriff of recreate the famous gunfight of October Tombstone, largely because she felt the Cochise County, Arizona, a man deter- 1881, when the Earp brothers — Virgil, O.K. Corral overshadowed the rest of a mined to further his political career by Morgan and the legendary Wyatt — remarkable life. But now Russell carries any means necessary, including exploit- along with their friend, Doc Holliday, forward Doc’s story, as he is increasingly ing the violence plaguing Tombstone. confronted a gang of local troublemak- incapacitated by tuberculosis and seldom Behan discreetly allies himself with the ers known as the “Cow Boys,” in a able to practice his chosen profession, Cow Boys, thereby rousing Wyatt Earp’s shootout that wounded several and left dentistry. As Russell tells it, in fact, Doc ire and eventually estranging Marcus, three dead. The battle lasted a mere 30 first comes to Tombstone in 1880 as who becomes Earp’s lover. seconds, though in modern cinematic a special favor in order to tend Wyatt Epitaph shows how a single bloody slow-motion it goes on forever. In Epi- Earp’s toothache. Russell vividly depicts skirmish in the streets — a rare occur- taph, Mary Doria Russell goes beyond Holliday’s suffering, both physical and rence historically — becomes the mythic epitaph: A Novel of the bloody melodrama, turning painstak- mental: A man whose reputation as an model of daily life in Western frontier The O.K. Corral ing historical research into an absorbing outlaw gunslinger becomes increasingly towns. Russell ably evokes this epic Mary doria Russell 600-page novel that seeks to understand ridiculous as his strength wanes. myth, which continues to fuel our imagi- 592 pages, these men and the context in which they Holliday was the main focus of Doc, nation, but what she really excels at is hardcover: $27.99. lived and fought. Russell writes of the but dozens of distinctive characters immersing readers in the reality of life in participants, “Whether you live another populate Epitaph, a story that Rus- the early 1880s — the clashing tempers ecco, 2015. five minutes or another fifty years, those sell tells with omniscient aplomb. One and political factions of people striving awful thirty seconds will become a pri- standout character is Josephine Marcus, for power, fortune or at least a toehold in vate eclipse of the sun, darkening every the daughter of a San Francisco Jewish life amid the day-to-day grit of a rugged moment left to you.” baker who ran away as a teenager to desert outpost. Russell ended her terrific 2011 become an actress. She winds up living BY JeNNY SHANK

The man behind the monumental aqueduct

Few issues in the West are more contro- failure of Mulholland’s career, the 1928 was responsible, intelligent, honest and versial than water, and Les Standiford collapse of the St. Francis Dam, which tireless in his dedication to the public dives headfirst into the topic in his new killed hundreds in one of the worst civil good. Although Mulholland doesn’t float nonfiction book, Water to the Angels, a engineering disasters in U.S. history. unscathed through controversy — and in dramatic account of the life of William “Devastated by the event that refash- fact, controversy still swirls around him Mulholland. Standiford traces Mulhol- ioned him from civic hero to villain in an today — Standiford’s story of the ditch- land’s rise from an Irish immigrant eye-blink, Mulholland would at one point digger who built the monumental aque- ditch-digger to the mastermind behind confide to a reporter, ‘I envy those who duct will inspire anyone who has dared to the Los Angeles Aqueduct, one of the were killed.’ ” dream the impossible, and then set out to greatest civil engineering projects of the Water to the Angels ultimately make it happen. 20th century. In the process, Standiford, portrays Mulholland as a man who BY TRACI J. mACNAmARA an accomplished novelist, displays his Water to the Angels talent for finding and sharing compelling les standiford anecdotes that highlight the drama and 336 pages, adventure of Mulholland’s story. hardcover: $28.99. Unlike other books written about ecco, 2015. Western water issues, such as Marc Reis- ner’s magisterial Cadillac Desert (1986), Standiford’s Water to the Angels passes over the complexity of the region’s water politics in order to focus on the larger- than-life person of Mulholland himself. Of course, politics and controversy flow with water wherever it goes, and Mulhol- land’s personal story remains inextricably linked to its context. “But controversies,” says Standiford, “have only one small part of my fascination with such tales wherein one of the most powerful men of an era undertakes a project that most consider impossible and overcomes all obstacles.” Mulholland is clearly the hero of this story, but Standiford’s portrayal is nuanced and never overblown: The man was, after all, a mere mortal, who confronted numerous challenges in his life and made his share of enemies along the way. And the mistakes he made were, on occasion, both public and catastrophic. William Mulholland and Commissioner Del Valle in an 80-inch pipe at Power Plant 1 Standiford recounts the most tragic construction in 1916. los angeles depaRTMenT oF WaTeR and poWeR

26 High Country News August 17, 2015 eSSAY | BY PRIYANKA KumAR Dreaming where I walk

When I took my oath of American citizenship, the United States I visit the American Museum of Natural History and its Citizenship and Immigration Services realized I was an author scrumptious bookstore whenever I can. During one of my first and a filmmaker, so I was invited to be the guest speaker for visits, I picked up biographies of John James Audubon and the ceremony. A few hundred people packed the South Broad- Theodore Roosevelt. I drank up Roosevelt’s story: how he be- way Cultural Center in Albuquerque that September morning came a birder; how he was Mr. Vitality. I read about his creation last year, as 80 people from 12 countries — including Bolivia, of the U.S. Forest Service, and his vision for the national parks. Germany, India, Mexico and Russia — took the oath. This is an Because of people like Roosevelt, I can now drive 10 minutes excerpt from my talk. from where I live in Santa Fe and be in a national forest with my husband and our toddler. I was delighted to discover that Roosevelt combined read- hen I was a child in India, I was told that Prime Minister ing, writing and the outdoors, something I like to do as well. W Jawaharlal Nehru kept on his desk this verse from the He didn’t believe in wasting time: In 1886, while chasing boat American poet Robert Frost: thieves down a river thick with ice in the North Dakota Bad- lands, he read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Much later, on his The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. Brazilian voyage down the Rio da Dúvida, the swarms of mos- But I have promises to keep, quitoes and unbelievable hardships did not stop him from being And miles to go before I sleep, a scientific explorer and an almost pathological diarist. And miles to go before I sleep. Though I am still rooted in my origins — I am fascinated by the Indian storytelling tradition, which is ancient and rich and My family moved from India to Canada when I was a teen- deep — these days I’m dreaming more about where I live now. ager, and I came to America as a graduate student. The film Many of the stories I’m writing are set here in America, and school at the University of Southern California was supposedly the characters in them are people like you and me — the new the best of its kind, and soon I was up to my neck in coursework. citizens in this auditorium. Still, the images that stick with me from those years are of a I still have many miles to go, but now I feel that where I’m tree-lined campus where I could walk and think about life, and coming from is right here. I think this moment will change the The author resting of long drives to Northern California that sometimes ended in way I tell stories. I hope that, as I at the Summit of hiking and camping in Yosemite. I can’t say exactly when try to interpret America’s wild Cloud’s Rest in Yosemite National it happened, but I began to fall in love with this coun- spaces, I will make the Park, left, and in try. At 21, of course, it’s easy to fall in love. ghosts of Teddy Roo- Big Basin Redwoods But many years later, despite the chal- sevelt and Robert State Park, below. lenges I’ve faced as an artist, I still feel the Frost smile. CouRTesy pRiyanka kuMaR same way. My position has nothing to do with politics. Recently, I got to visit Robert Frost’s cabin in Ripton, Vermont. As I gazed at his bookshelves, his Modern Library editions, I pinched myself; it felt like a dream. The solitary cabin and a glorious field that stretched out past it echoed the aspect of Frost’s work that appeals to me most — his fusion of the isolation and exhilaration of the road “less travelled.” For me, America is a country where I can dream. This is a place where I can fail and try again. It’s a place where I’ve been able to grow. I’ve grown partly because of my experience of American wilderness — its mountains, rivers, national parks, even its visitor centers. In Yosemite, on the knife’s edge of Clouds Rest, I realized that one wrong move could mean death. Still, over the years, I kept returning. On a trail in Kings Canyon National Park, I encountered a mother bear with three cubs; I turned around, only to startle another bear off the trail. At that point, I began to run. In such moments, I’ve felt like I was pushing my physical limits, but looking back, I think I was stretching my sense of who I am and who I can be. In nature, it’s still possible to have that rare thing: an origi- Priyanka Kumar is the author of the novel nal experience. The experience of deep wilderness is rarer still: Take Wing and Fly Here, and she is the In Europe, it’s almost nonexistent; in India, though there are writer/director/producer of the feature still some wild places, a lone woman hiking — even a woman documentary The Song of the Little Road, with a companion — faces scrutiny, if not harassment. starring Martin Scorsese and Peter .

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

HeARD AROuND THe WeST | BY BeTSY mARSTON

idaHo ColoRado “I guess when you gotta go, you gotta go,” Crested Butte in western Colorado is being BLM spokeswoman Carrie Bilbao told loved to death. According to an impas- KTVB. She was talking about the moun- sioned editorial in the Crested Butte tain biker who started a 73-acre wildfire News, a flood of visitors to the beautiful in the Boise foothills by burning his toilet backcountry around the mountain town paper in a dry ravine. The biker, who is causing “chaos” and “disaster.” As the was not identified, came forward to tell head of the Rocky Mountain Biological the Bureau of Land Management what Laboratory put it, “We’re losing meadows happened; apparently, he tried to burn to illegal roads, illegal parking and illegal and bury his waste to avoid littering, “but camping. It’s not good for anybody — visi- an ember spread to nearby dry grass,” tors, scientists or ranchers.” The agency in reports The Associated Press. Occasionally, charge of the increasingly trashed public environmentally minded recreationists try land near town is the Forest Service, and to dispose of their waste in this fashion, sadly, it hasn’t done much because it is said Bilbao, but burning anything in a fire- “overwhelmed.” Editorial writer Mark prone area is never a smart idea — and alaska Gulled-eagle sandwich. Reaman compared the high-elevation that’s the latest poop. daVid Canales/u.s. depaRTMenT oF THe inTeRioR overcrowding to a spreading rash, and worried that Crested Butte might find itself in MonTana bankruptcy.” Left holding the bag, the state has “an abusive relationship” with its visitors. Then there’s starting fires by deliberately pouring taken possession of 2,300 of the company’s coal- The values that make the wild so wonderful are gasoline down gopher holes and tossing matches bed methane wells, and the Wyoming Oil and disappearing, he warned, especially respect for in afterward. That’s what a landowner did south Gas Conservation Commission plans to “plug the backcountry. He wants the Forest Service to of Billings, Montana, but his scorched-burrows the derelict gas wells.” post signs telling tourists how to behave and to War on Gophers quickly became a grass fire that consider adding buses to cut down the number burned 21 acres. “No one was injured,” reports yelloWsTone of cars on dirt roads. kpax.com — except, of course, for the gophers, Yellowstone National Park bison, those formi- who lost their homes in the blaze. dable animals that can weigh 2,000 pounds, CaliFoRnia and neVada appear to value their privacy. In particular, they It’s always been assumed that Lake Tahoe’s WyoMing seem to detest having tourists take selfies and intense cobalt-blue color was linked to the lake’s Is the Interior Department much too forbearing post them on Facebook without their permis- clarity — the bluer the lake, the cleaner the when it comes to policing oil and gas companies? sion. Wielding their massive shaggy heads like water — but now, scientists from the Univer- A recent Associated Press story would appear to battering rams, bison recently tossed three too- sity of California, Davis, have found that the answer “yes.” For several years, High Plains Gas intrusive visitors into the air. Each encounter lake’s blue color is caused by the presence of never bothered to report how much gas it was occurred as a tourist tried to pose for a picture algae. Environment & Energy Daily reports that extracting from the Powder River Basin, until with a nearby bison. Two other people were at- researchers also found a surprising benefit from finally, the Interior Department fined it $4.2 mil- tacked for moving too close, including a teenager the ongoing drought: Reduced snowmelt and lion. More recently, Interior fined the company from Taiwan who was gored near Old Faithful. precipitation meant that fewer sediments flowed an additional $6.9 million for not even keep- The Park Service has posted signs that warn into the lake, increasing its clarity to a depth ing track of its gas production, a civil penalty tourists about charging bison, but somehow, of 77.8 feet last year, 7.6 feet more than 2013’s that’s said to rank among the most severe ever people remain convinced that the huge animals levels. The iconic lake is the country’s second assessed by the department’s Office of Natural are tranquil and slow-moving. Park officials deepest, at 1,645 feet. Resources Revenue. But it’s doubtful that the warn that annoyed bison can suddenly erupt, company will ever pay up: High Plains Gas has sprinting “three times faster than humans can WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see been out of existence for more than a year. It has run and are unpredictable and dangerous.” The hcn.org. no working phone, and this April, its CEO, Ed best idea is to stay at least 25 yards away from Presley, told the Casper Star-Tribune that “the Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and a bison, and until 75-foot-long selfie sticks are often shared in this column. Write [email protected]. company didn’t even have the money to file for invented, just keep yourself out of the picture.

28 High Country News August 17, 2015