COAL IN FREE FALL | LABOR TRAFFICKING | THOREAU VS. LANDLORDS High Country ForN people whoews care about the West FROM PRISON TO FIRELINE In one of the West’s harshest penal systems, incarcerated wildfire fighters learn to see themselves anew By Maya L. Kapoor August 5, 2019 | $5 | Vol. 51 No. 13 | www.hcn.org 13 No. 51 | $5 Vol. August 5, 2019 CONTENTS Editor’s note Is this the best we can do? The United States incarcerates about 2.3 million people per year, more per capita than any other country, a full quarter of the world’s total prison population. For every 100,000 people living in the U.S., 698 are in jail. We as a nation have chosen to deprive thousands upon thousands upon thousands of men and women of their liberty — one of our highest ideals — with little reflection or remorse. Imprisoned men and women suffer mental and physical breakdowns inside and the disintegration of family outside. Their children do worse in school, and their partners suffer emotionally and financially. Once they are free, most former inmates can’t vote (yet another ideal taken from them), and many have trouble finding meaningful work. America’s prison system represents a deep moral failure, but we appear mostly fine with Cebolla Lane in Vado, New Mexico, is among the worst of the roads the colonia residents try to maintain on it, and with the $80 billion per year we spend on their own, without the help of Doña Ana County. JOEL ANGEL JUÁREZ FOR HIGH COUNTRY NEWS corrections. FEATURES The problem is just as dispiriting in the West, if not more so. Montana, Idaho, Nevada, New 10 A Bumpy Road in the Borderlands Mexico, Wyoming and Arizona have even higher Vado, New Mexico, is another kind of small-town America By Jessica Kutz per capita incarceration rates than the nation as a whole, with Arizona at the top. Nearly 43,000 14 From Prison to Fireline people are imprisoned in Arizona, in a system that On the cover In one of the West’s harshest penal systems, incarcerated wildfire fighters is notoriously cruel, negligent and understaffed. In By Maya L. Kapoor Crewmembers learn to see themselves anew May, Democratic lawmakers called for the firing of from an Arizona Chuck Ryan, the director of the state’s Department Department of CURRENTS of Corrections. Corrections fire Yet amid all this comes a surprising opportunity: crew look out from a 3 The Latest: Military flights over Olympic National Park wildland firefighting. As Associate Editor Maya L. community bonfire, 5 where they managed With coal in free fall, Wyoming faces an uncertain future Kapoor writes in this issue, Arizona prisoners who As demand shrinks and the industry retracts, counties and the state are in the flames. are allowed to fight fires come to see themselves in LINDSEY RAISA FELDMAN an untenable situation a new way. Though they are severely underpaid for 6 Lessons in rural politics New Mexico Rep. Xochitl Torres Small won their work (yet another moral failure), prisoners find a conservative region by talking about concerns all Westerners share a new sense of self on Arizona’s firelines. The work 7 A win against labor injustice in Colorado A community stands up they do is important, and, because there is no prison to the human traffickers among them garb in firefighting, the public views them as heroes. Even their children look at them differently. DEPARTMENTS Maya’s story forces us to rethink our assumptions about prisons and those who are 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG kept behind their walls. But it also asks that we 4 LETTERS confront a glaring paradox: While the chance to do 8 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends meaningful work may be good for the prisoners, the low pay they receive is inexcusable. Yet if prisoners Complete access 91 MARKETPLACE to subscriber-only were paid fair wages, the entire prison system would content 22 PHOTOS In California, fireline aspirations By Christian Monterrosa collapse. The only ethical response is a review of HCN’s website 24 BOOKS the entire system, one of the worst in the world, hcn.org Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. Reviewed by Jenny Shank and a stain on American ideals. The next time you Digital edition 25 ESSAY see news of a fire, or, worse, the glow of one on the hcne.ws/digi-5113 horizon, think about the men and women fighting By Kevin J. Kelley Dreaming of Thoreau, but dealing with landlords that fire. Ask yourself: How many prisoners are up Follow us 26 PERSPECTIVE there in the heat and dirt, dust and smoke, caught How partisan politics can make ballot measures undemocratic in a system so cruel that this is the best they can News commentary by Alexander Simon and Steven C. Clark hope for? Then ask yourself: Can we not do better? @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Brian Calvert, editor-in-chief 2 High Country News August 5, 2019 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG Trending Federal and tribal coalitions Can wolves challenge Canadian mining help stave The Stikine River, which flows southwest from off chronic British Columbia to Wrangell, Alaska, has wasting tribal leadership and at least eight U.S. sena- disease? tors concerned for public health. Upstream hardrock and coal-mining operations are The spread of chronic at the center of a decades-long struggle to wasting disease in Growlers. regulate international contaminants that deer, elk and moose is U.S. NAVY flow downstream and across the international dividing both hunters border. This is one of the first times state and conservationists. senators have elevated the B.C. contamina- Some argue that if THE LATEST tion concerns to the federal level, according to wolves are reintro- Michael Jamison, a senior program manager duced, then they can Backstory with the National Parks Conservation As- pick off the sick ani- For over a decade, mals, but others aren’t acoustic ecologist sociation. Meanwhile, the Southeast Alaska Transboundary Commission filed a human convinced. See Gordon Hempton “Can wolf reintroduc- has been fighting rights petition to the Inter-American Commis- sion, alleging that the mining sites release tion help stave off for natural quiet in chronic wasting dis- Washington’s Olympic harmful pollution that affects the health of Native communities, as well as the Stikine, Taku among Indigenous governments in the USA and A tailings dam at ease?” SAM BRASCH, National Park amid CPR NEWS the roar of U.S. Navy and Unuk rivers. In March 2018, representa- Canada” and agreement to protect their transna- the Red Chris mine fighter jets. Research tives from 21 Indigenous tribes and organiza- tional river environments. in the Stikine River has shown that tions met in Washington state to sign a unity LIZ WEBER watershed. You say noise pollution statement, affirming “ancestral relationships Read more online: hcne.ws/tribal-river-mining KRISTA LANGLOIS MONIQUE VIDAL: can significantly “The wolf is an disrupt wildlife’s apex predator that ability to navigate, Photos belongs in the locate food and system. I would bet avoid predators. “It’s such a huge that CWD wouldn’t Noise pollution is be the epidemic it is even associated with step for a small if humans had not shorter lifespans. tribe in the Four eradicated wolves In 2018, Hempton Corners to make from the ecosystem in founded Quiet Parks this leap. We the first place. It will International, a be interesting to see campaign to promote give back to our how this all plays out.” noise pollution people through awareness. The Sockeye salmon in the Bristol Bay region. this project, but STEVE ADLER: “Recent Navy has tried to JASON SATOSHI CHING/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON this is not just for studies have proven minimize the jets’ that coyotes are disturbances, though us, this is for the spreading CWD, so their thundering can generations to why wouldn’t wolves? still be heard in the come.” Wolves travel greater park (“The roar of 62.3 million —Denise Lenahan, right, Approximate number of salmon that made distances and spread military jets triggers who is helping her Ute every other type of their way to Bristol Bay in 2018. Mountain Ute Tribe install a crusade for quiet,” solar panels in their quest disease. It’s tragic HCN, 5/13/19). for 100% renewable the state and federal energy — and energy wildlife agencies who sovereignty. Followup are extreme wolf In July 2019, 31 percent AVERY WHITE advocates avoid this Washington Portion of the world’s harvest of sockeye Read more online: like the plague!” Attorney General salmon that comes from the watershed. hcne.ws/ute- Bob Ferguson filed mountain-solar The Pebble Mine, a controversial gold and DAVE JONES: “Wolves a lawsuit against are native to Colorado. the U.S. Navy for copper mine proposed three decades ago for the headwaters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay, We should bring expanding flight them home and let operations over has finally made some progress toward a permit. The permitting decision, which the complexity of the Whidbey Island, just natural world play east of the national hit a roadblock in 2014 under President Barack Obama because of Clean Water Act out. It’s not all about park. The Navy’s shopping malls, cars, environmental review restrictions, is set to be made in mid-2020. Conservationists say a mine will harm roads, cows, and for this expansion, tourists.” the lawsuit asserts, salmon returning to Bristol Bay’s clean “unlawfully” failed waters. “We do not believe the impacts and risks to fish and fish habitat have been SCOTT DAVIES: “I to account for the have an idea ..