Profit and Politics How Public Lands Fare in State Hands a Special Report November 27, 2017 | $5 | Vol

High Country ForN people whoews care about the West

Profit and Politics How public lands fare in state hands A Special Report November 27, 2017 | $5 | Vol. 49 No. 20 | www.hcn.org 49 No. | $5 Vol. 2017 27, November CONTENTS

Editor’s note Land’s true worth

One of the planks in the Republican platform calls for the transfer of an undisclosed number of acres of federal public lands to Western states. This land transfer, the party argues, would benefit states “and the nation as a whole,” because “residents of state and local communities know best how to protect the land where they work and live.” It is unclear how the transfer of public lands would benefit the entire country, but it seems to me that such a transfer on any scale would change the character of the American West. Given that, and given that the GOP holds the Oval Office and both chambers of Congress, the so-called “land-transfer movement” is worthy The not-so-grand entrance to Little Missouri State Park in North Dakota, where a saltwater disposal facility of a hard look. Over the last nine months, this is a sign of the oil wells that can be seen within the park. Andrew Cullen magazine set out to learn what it could about how states treat the lands they already have, in SPECIAL REPORT: Profit and Politics order to see whether the public would benefit from a transfer. Writer and former HCN intern Emily Guerin went to North Dakota to see what 16 Pump Jack Park How the Bakken boom transformed happens to state and federal parks under an oil On the cover one of North Dakota’s most special landscapes By Emily Guerin boom, while Contributing Editor Cally Carswell A well pad complex is constructed 20 Plant Blind in New Mexico Politics, land ownership investigated how rare plants are treated on just outside Little and the protection of imperiled plants By Cally Carswell different lands in New Mexico. And we spent Missouri State many long hours analyzing the policies of 23 How States Generate Money from Trust Lands Park, its lights Western states when it comes to land use. flooding the park By Anna V. Smith campground. The bottom line is that land generally fares Andrew Cullen 24 Pay to Play In Utah, public access to state trust lands worse under state management. And even if local comes at an increasing cost By Emily Benson constituencies do know best how to protect the land, they ultimately have less say in how state land is used. I come from two families of High Plains homesteaders, and I understand the value CURRENTS of public lands, where we hunted, fished, gathered 5 The Navajos’ wild horse problem wood and camped. I’d hate to see them leased, 5 Lessons from the Holocene sold or otherwise lost to the highest bidder. Federal lands belong to all of us, but they 6 Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke faces investigations came at a high price. They were the product of 7 Interior’s lonely whistleblower the expansion of the United States, much to the 7 The Latest: Escalade project on Navajo Nation disadvantage of Indigenous populations who had no say in how the lands were disposed. The West DEPARTMENTS was seized through war, treachery and a doctrine of greed, and then divvied out to a mostly white 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG population, who gained tremendous capital from 4 LETTERS its resources. That’s why any decision we make about the public lands now should be made with Complete access 8 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends to subscriber-only the greatest good in mind, not the continued content 10 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE financial benefit of a single class of people. HCN’s website 25 MARKETPLACE The West’s vast landscapes are more than hcn.org 29 PERSPECTIVE Letter from California: A rise in hate crimes, just a source of wealth. They are a place for Digital edition in the eyes of a former white nationalist By Ruxandra Guidi contemplation and beauty, of restoration and hcne.ws/digi-4920 bounty. They are the last vestige of the American 30 BOOKS Reviewed by Alex Trimble Young Village by Stanley Crawford. frontier, a reminder of our brutal, bloody past as Follow us 31 ESSAY well as a sign of our hope for a healthy future. Remembering Katie Lee: The ‘Grande Dame of the West’ passes on And they are not to be taken — or given away —  By Craig Childs lightly. @highcountrynews 32 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Brian Calvert, editor-in-chief 2 High Country News November 27, 2017 From our website: HCN.ORG

The big Bundy trial Trending gets underway The Park In mid-November, the federal trial of Nevada Service needs rancher Cliven Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan, and Ryan Payne of Montana got off to to connect a tumultuous start. The men face decades in August Franzen, an in- prison for charges including threats against tern at Klondike Gold federal officers and obstructing justice for Rush National Historic their parts in the 2014 armed standoff with Park in Seattle, Wash- federal land managers over Bundy’s illegally ington, reflects on the grazing cattle. The trial was delayed twice — National Park Service first in response to the Oct. 1 mass shooting he knows and loves. in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead After growing up and could have prejudiced jurors against camping and hiking Second Amendment court arguments. The in places like Yosemite judge delayed trial again when information and Yellowstone, Fran- surfaced that the government had used zen finds it hard to camera surveillance of the Bundy property, explain why parks mat- days before the standoff. In opening ter when talking with statements, defense attorneys portrayed the people who haven’t events as a peaceful protest. “The escalation experienced them. His has always been by the government,” own difficulty in effec- said Cliven Bundy’s lawyer, Bret Whipple. tive outreach, Franzen Prosecutors depicted a starkly different says, is pervasive in an Buttons with images of Cliven Bundy’s son Ammon Bundy and Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum, scenario, in which the Bundys forced federal agency that has got- who was killed during the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff in Oregon in 2016, are shown outside officers to leave under threat of violence. ten complacent. “The the federal courthouse in Las Vegas in November. REUTERS/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus Tay Wiles More: hcne.ws/bundy-delayed parks have worked so hard to appeal to people who look like me — white, male and A ‘war on the ARIZONA Sen. Jeff Flake, who has clashed comfortable in hiking Republican establishment’ with Trump since his campaign, is not seeking re- boots — that they Amount$375 of Westlands million Water District debt that election. “Mr. President, I will not be complicit or have trouble going would have been forgiven, had a rider to a President Donald Trump promised to drain the silent,” Flake said in a Senate speech. “We were any further,” Franzen defense bill succeeded. swamp, but to one of his most controversial not made great as a country by indulging in or writes. His internship political allies, that morass has only deepened even exalting our worst impulses.” is meant to address — to now encompass the Republican Party. Percent by which Westlands’ water Nevada Sen. Dean Heller is one of the that gap in outreach, contract25 deliveries from the Central Valley Project Appearing on Fox News’ Hannity and help spark a wider show in October, former White most vulnerable Republican senators up for would be reduced under that agreement, which election, and is behind in the polls against his interest in national requires congressional approval. House strategist Steve Bannon parks. called the GOP a “globalist primary challenger, Danny Tarkanian, whom clique.” Bannon, who is Bannon supports. Lawmakers finalized an annual, must-pass You say military policy bill in early November. They executive chair of the far- WYOMING Sen. John Barrasso considered — but ultimately dropped — a rider, right Breitbart News Network, is considered a safe incumbent, though Kathy Dimont: “In my the San Luis Unit Drainage Resolution Act, promised to use his media Bannon has reportedly encouraged Erik personal experience, that would have confirmed a 2015 settlement platform and funding connections Prince, founder of the controversial security the NPS has been transferring federal responsibility for dealing to challenge Republican incumbents contractor Blackwater and the brother of attempting various with contaminated water in Southern California’s with his own “coalition” of candidates for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, to run ways to reach wider Westlands Water District to the district. the 2018 midterm elections. against Barrasso. audiences since 1970.” In exchange, the government agreed to “We are declaring war on the Republican R obert STEWart: establishment that does not back the agenda UTAH Sen. Orrin Hatch is also on forgive millions in debt. The settlement, which Bannon’s list, though he has been an ally of “No, the Park Service critics see as a bid for control by Westlands, that Donald Trump ran on,” Bannon said, adding should focus on pre- that it would be a long-term effort to first replace Trump, supporting his Supreme Court pick and would make the district’s federal water supply his administration’s review of Utah’s national serving the quality of contract permanent in addition to cutting it. But Republican incumbents, and then Democrats. the parks. Marketing That has put some Western Republicans who monuments. Hatch has also been critical at times the future of the agreement is now in limbo — and has not announced whether he’s running for and ‘connecting’ are another example of the often-convoluted nature have been either tepid in their support, or not valid functions of outright critical of Trump, in Bannon’s crosshairs. re-election. Anna V. Smith of Western water policy. Emily Benson the Park Service.” Here’s a list of potential targets. More: hcne.ws/water-deferred More: hcne.ws/republican-infighting Brooke McDonald: “I think a class lens explains the lack of What In November, the government released the Climate Projected changes in how much water winter snow will hold diversity better than a new Science Special Report, the first part of the 2018 Historical Mid-century End-century a race lens. ... I’d like National Climate Assessment. Here are some to see the parks rent climate highlights from the report, released every four years, out tents, sleeping report which looked at current and future climate change bags, and so forth portends impacts of our current trajectory: The West has so that working-class warmed by 1.5 degrees and lost two weeks of cool people don’t feel like nights in the past century. The Northwest’s warmest day of the they have to shell out year will be 6 degrees warmer by midcentury than it was a decade hundreds of dollars for ago. Alaska will be 12 degrees warmer by the end of the century. an activity they may By 2100, snowpack in the West’s southernmost mountains will not enjoy.” have virtually disappeared. The report also shows the lessened More: hcne.ws/ effects of climate change if we reduce our emissions to meet the millimeters broader-connection standards set by the 2015 U.N. Paris Climate Agreement, something and Facebook.com/ that West Coast states are eager to support. 80 160 240 highcountrynews Maya L. Kapoor More: hcne.ws/west-warming Figure source: H. Krishnan, LBNL, Adapted from the Climate Science Special Report, Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume I Never miss a story. Sign up for the HCN newsletter at hcn.org/enewsletter. 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 The best job in the West com

Executive director/Publisher . s

Paul Larmer Thank you, Hal Herring, from the n a Editor-in-Chief bottom of my tree-planting heart. z Brian Calvert You presented the situation for for- rti SENIOR EDITOR /A

ay Jodi Peterson est workers that many of us have K Art director been trying to address for the last 20 ac

Cindy Wehling years (“The Changing Face of Woods e M m Deputy editor, digital Work,” HCN, 10/30/17). You connect- e ra Kate Schimel ed the dots in just the right way. You G Associate EDITORs Tay Wiles didn’t blame the victims (guest and Maya L. Kapoor local forest workers) for the greed Assistant EDITORS and worker abuse of unscrupulous Paige Blankenbuehler Anna V. Smith contractors and the complicity of the D.C. Correspondent Forest Service in awarding below- Elizabeth Shogren cost bids and refusing to enforce WRITERS ON THE RANGE labor laws or its own contract speci- editor Betsy Marston fications. Like you and others in the Associate PHOTO EDITOR Brooke Warren story, I had the good fortune of being Copy editOR a forest worker. For all of my 35-plus Diane Sylvain years in the woods, I always thought Contributing editorS of it as the best job in the West! Tristan Ahtone, Graham Brewer, Cally Carswell, Sarah Gilman, Ruxandra Cece Headley Guidi, Michelle Nijhuis, Eugene, Oregon Jonathan Thompson CorrespondentS Krista Langlois, Sarah Turning Americans away from public lands Tory, Joshua Zaffos has now been brainwashed by right- choices because she presents the only Editorial FellowS Emily Benson, Toward the end of his excellent essay wing radio, books, and TV “news.” choices as killing them or letting them Rebecca Worby “The Changing Face of Woods Work,” The latest salvo is to raise the freeze to death during the winter. Has Development Director Hal Herring gets to the core issues of admission prices to our national parks this Neanderthal never heard of spaying Laurie Milford Philanthropy Advisor what is — yes, Hal — a “vast right- so high that Americans become dis- and neutering? That is the third and Alyssa Pinkerton wing conspiracy” (HCN, 10/30/17). The gusted and stop visiting them. When only moral choice. Ms. Hasselstrom has Development Assistant goal is to create, in the minds of as they no longer visit the parks, they no soul, conscience or moral compass. Christine List many people as possible, a distaste for will stop caring about them and won’t Some people are just like that, but it’s Marketing & Promotions anything associated with the federal fight when they are taken away. Many Manager JoAnn Kalenak both galling and insulting that she and Events & Business Partner government, while impoverishing them folks who live around Olympic National you attempt to glorify it and pretend Coordinator Laura Dixon and forcing them into helplessness. It’s Park would love to get their chainsaws that amorality and the lack of common WEB DEVELOPER Eric Strebel an incredibly simple principle at its into those thousand-year-old trees. I human decency are integral parts of Database/IT administrator core: Steal, or buy at fire-sale prices, know this; I just visited the area and Westerners’ lives. Alan Wells the vast natural and human resources spoke to people about that. There are so DIRECTOR OF ENGAGEMENT Claire Vinet of the United States for use by corpora- many things for me to be sad about, but Gretchen King Santa Fe, New Mexico A ccountant tions, so that a few people can become watching as Americans turn against the Erica Howard almost infinitely wealthy and powerful. idea of federal public lands and allow Heard Around the West A ccounts Receivable Placate the masses at the same time them to be sold off, clear-cut, fall into Jan Hoffman Editor Betsy Marston replies: Customer Service Manager you slowly erode all their safety nets, disrepair, or be fouled by mining, drill- Christie Cantrell take away their rights via the judiciary, ing, etc., breaks my heart as nothing Yes, killing the kittens was cold-blooded, Customer Service and make education and health care too else. Americans, especially Westerners, but it is something that Linda Hassel- Kathy Martinez (Circ. Systems Administrator), expensive to afford, until the masses have been given so much in terms of strom learned from her rancher father Lisa Delaney, Pam Peters, become beaten-down and compliant. this beautiful and rich land and its wild- decades ago, as horrifying as it sounds. Doris Teel, Tammy York This conspiracy was hatched decades life, and now we are just giving it away. Hasselstrom’s point in the poem was GrantWriter Janet Reasoner ago by folks like the Koch brothers, that as she was growing up on the Crista V. Worthy [email protected] Dick Cheney, etc. Right-wing talk radio ranch, finding the animals frozen in the Hidden Springs, Idaho [email protected] hosts like Rush Limbaugh were paid to dead of winter was worse — and ulti- [email protected] essentially brainwash, slowly through mately more cruel — than ending their [email protected] Soulless choices [email protected] the years, millions of Americans, so they lives quickly, by killing them herself and FOUNDER Tom Bell would vote for politicians who would I was appalled by Linda Hasselstrom’s thereby taking responsibility for the act. Board of Directors carry out the marching orders of the poem “Spring” and your newspaper’s What she wrote was shocking, perhaps, John Belkin, Colo. bigwigs who bribe those officials with commentary on it (“Heard Around the but it’s the way she saw her life on the Beth Conover, Colo. campaign contributions. Think tanks West,” HCN, 10/30/17). Hasselstrom cat- land in South Dakota, a place of tough Jay Dean, Calif. Bob Fulkerson, Nev. like the American Legislative Exchange egorizes drowning kittens and bashing choices every day. I admire Hasselstrom Wayne Hare, Colo. Council literally write the legislation for them with a wrench as “taking respon- for her honesty, and I wanted to reveal Laura Helmuth, Md. the politicians. It’s pretty blatant now sibility.” What she calls “taking respon- just how tough she is, even though some John Heyneman, Wyo. Osvel Hinojosa, Mexico with Donald Trump. In past decades, sibility” is really a grotesque and wholly might find her choices offensive. There Samaria Jaffe, Calif. we could have fought against him, but unjustifiable lack of responsibility. Her are certainly much better methods of Nicole Lampe, Ore. a large enough chunk of the population “stark choices” are no more than false controlling feral cat populations today. Marla Painter, N.M. Bryan Pollard, Ark. Raynelle Rino, Calif. Estee Rivera Murdock, D.C. High Country News is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) independent 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post Dan Stonington, Wash. media organization that covers the issues that define the offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Rick Tallman, Colo. High American West. Its mission is to inform and inspire people Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All rights to publication of articles Luis Torres, N.M. to act on behalf of the region’s diverse natural and human in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Andy Wiessner, Colo. Country communities. (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: Florence Williams, D.C. News times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Ave., Paonia, CO 800-905-1155 | hcn.org Printed on recycled paper. 4 High Country News November 27, 2017 CURRENTS The Navajos’ wild horse problem The tribe doesn’t have funding to manage exploding population By Kim Baca

p to 40,000 wild horses wander the Court of Appeals upheld Texas and Illinois UNavajo Nation, according to the laws that prohibited horse slaughter and Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the popu- the sale or possession of horsemeat. Mean- lation is expected to double in five years. while, the economic downturn caused hay Already, feral horses compete with do- prices to soar. Many people, unable to care mestic animals and wildlife for water and for their horses, let them go. sparse vegetation. Yet a tribal oversight In 2013, then-Navajo President Ben committee recently denied an $800,000 Shelly publicly supported a slaughter funding request from the Navajo Fish and operation in Roswell, New Mexico, and Wildlife Department to help reduce the approved $1.4 million to allow Chapter population. Those dollars were needed, Houses, a form of local government on the warned Leo Watchman, Navajo Nation reservation, to inspect and process horses Agriculture Department director, adding, for selling. The 1971 Wild Free-Roaming “The issue will come up again.” and Burros Act prohibits sending feral Out-of-control horses present a unique horses to slaughter, but tribes are sover- quandary for tribes: What do you do about eign nations. ing to studies of urban deer populations, Navajo horse a creature that is an integral part of your In March, Gloria Tom, Navajo Fish and feral horses could become infertile after breakers tame a culture but that wreaks havoc on land, Wildlife Department director, broached the five years of annual PZP injections. Some mustang at La Tinaja water, traditional foods and wildlife? idea of a hunt, telling The Navajo Times Chapter Houses have held roundups, bor- in Ramah, The Navajo Nation has long grappled that “previous attempts to trap, round up, rowing temporary pens and other equip- New Mexico. with the problem. Tribal officials say the or allow horses to be adopted had not made ment from the Navajo Agriculture Depart- Aaron Millar population burgeoned when the last U.S. a large enough impact.” But that proposal ment to trap horses or unclaimed livestock. horse slaughterhouses closed and Con- was derailed by critics. In May, horse en- Any solution — roundup, birth control, gress pulled funding for meat processing thusiasts and advocacy organizations met horse hunt or adoption — will cost money, and banned new plants. In 2007, the U.S. with the tribal Wildlife Department to however. Tribal officials planned to ad- promote a more humane way of managing dress the problem again at the Navajo Na- Kim Baca is a freelance journalist based in herds, such as the use of the contracep- tion’s annual Natural Resource Summit, Albuquerque, New Mexico.  @kjbaca tive PZP (porcine zona pellucida). Accord- which was underway at press time.

likely more than once. “Native Americans t Lisbeth have managed the potato for thousands Louderback holds Lessons from of years,” Louderback says. “It still exists Solanum jamesii because of them. This is their resource.” with tuber attached the Holocene Connecting its current distribution to to the plant. An ancient potato survived ancestral history has profound meaning q Multihued for contemporary Navajo, Hopi and Zuni, Solanum jamesii tubers, known in climate shifts, and could again some of whom still grow Solanum jamesii, the Navajo language By Maya L. Kapoor though others lost traditional food prac- as “rolling around tices during forced relocations. under the soil.” etween 7,000 and 9,000 years ago — For Wilson, the potato is yet another Photos by Lisbeth during the Middle Holocene — the Louderback and Bruce B example of the traditional knowledge pre- Pavlik, Natural History Four Corners area endured a slow but served at Bears Ears National Monument, Museum of Utah dramatic climatic shift. As the region stones, archaeologist Lisbeth Louder- along with petroglyphs, potsherds and an- became hotter and drier, game animals back made a surprising discovery: Almost cestral structures. Wilson’s grandfather grew scarce, and Indigenous communities 11,000 years ago, people ate Solanum taught her about the tuber — called “leeyi’ turned to less nutritious foods like grass jamesii, a variety of potato different from naa’ mááz,” or “rolling around under the seeds and quinoa-like chenopodium seeds. Solanum tuberosum, the kind found in soil,” in the Diné language. Today, the Recently, however, archaeologists work- grocery stores today. Solanum jamesii monument may help local tribes to once ing with local tribes discovered an un- grows in the piñon-juniper and oak forests again access traditional — and nutritious expected addition to the menu: a unique of the Mogollon Plateau in central Arizona — food sources. Solanum jamesii species of potato, harvested by people at and New Mexico, though it’s not common has twice the amount of protein the North Creek Shelter, a rock overhang in Utah. and calcium and three times the in southern Utah’s Escalante Valley. The Louderback teamed up with Bruce zinc, iron and manganese found nutritious tuber apparently helped com- Pavlik, conservation director at the Uni- in most potatoes today. And, ac- munities survive when other food sources versity of Utah’s Red Butte Garden, and cording to Louderback’s own less disappeared. It’s the earliest known use of Cynthia Wilson, traditional foods pro- scientific experiments, the har- potatoes in North America. gram director at Utah Diné Bikéyah, a dy spud is delicious roasted in By analyzing residues on grinding nonprofit organization that supports the butter and served with salt and Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, to learn pepper. “It was kind of nutty and Associate Editor Maya L. Kapoor writes from more. The evidence suggests that ancient earthy, and it was really fluffy on the in- Tucson, Arizona.  @Kapoor_ML peoples introduced potatoes to the region, side and crispy on the outside,” she says.

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 Interior Secretary misuse of funds and other ethical viola- Ryan Zinke enters a tions. After investigations — which can celebration for the take weeks, months or even years — the 100th anniversary Inspector General is required to issue pub- of U.S. control of the lic reports. Historically, though, Interior’s Virgin Islands. He OIG has published only a “small fraction” visited the islands in March on a taxpayer- of these, says Jeff Ruch, executive director funded trip related of Public Employees for Environmental to the Interior Responsibility. In 2014, for instance, the Department’s role department released reports on just three overseeing the U.S. out of 40 cases. territory. On the same In light of this, some watchdog groups trip, he attended a worry that any findings about Zinke’s con- Republican Party duct will simply pass unnoticed without fundraiser. Department of Interior outside pressure. Investigations are only effective “because of people’s reaction,” Ruch says. The Interior Department has faced scandals before. In 2008, the OIG found that Interior was riddled with them under the George W. Bush administration, including substance abuse, sexual miscon- duct and conflicts of interest with oil and gas companies. In 2012, an investigation found an Interior report was edited to suggest that the Obama administration’s pro- Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke posed drilling moratorium after the Deep- water Horizon oil spill was peer-reviewed by scientific experts. faces investigations But the Trump administration is “unusual” because of the number of com- Legal and ethical questions have triggered scrutiny plaints, says Stevens. The OIG and other By Lyndsey Gilpin agency watchdogs have yet to respond to some of the allegations, including whether David Bernhardt, deputy secretary of In- nterior Secretary Ryan Zinke has employees to new positions within the terior, violated lobbying laws. I brushed off criticism over his expensive Interior Department, after a whistle- A month after it launched the inves- use of private and military planes for blower said he was transferred because tigation into Zinke’s call to the Alaska travel, telling conservative supporters of his work on climate change. (See story senators, the Interior OIG dropped it. The that the whole issue is just “a little B.S.” page 7.) In October, the Campaign for Ac- senators declined to be interviewed, ac- But several watchdog agencies, con- countability asked the Office of Govern- cording to Deputy Inspector General Mary gressional Democrats and legal experts ment Ethics to look into the millions of Kendall, acting head of the agency since believe it’s more than that. After only dollars Zinke has funneled into conserva- 2009, so “the OIG does not believe that eight months in office, Zinke’s taxpayer- tive “scam PACs” accused of misleading it could meaningfully investigate.” Inte- funded travel, meetings with political do- donors. Additionally, the Office of Special rior OIG spokeswoman Nancy DiPaolo nors and other actions have led to several Counsel is examining Zinke’s appear- declined to comment on the other, ongo- official probes. “We’ve been tracking Zinke ances at political fundraisers during gov- ing investigations, and Interior did not and what he’s been doing at the Depart- ernment trips, and the Interior OIG and respond to requests for comment. ment of Interior,” says Daniel Stevens, ex- Government Accountability Office are Other federal agencies may later weigh ecutive director of the nonprofit, nonpar- scrutinizing his $12,000 flight from Las in. The independent Office of Special tisan Campaign for Accountability. “It led Vegas to Montana in a plane owned by Counsel, for instance, is determining us to look into whether he’s violated any oil and gas executives, following an event whether Zinke violated the Hatch Act, rules or laws.” with political donors. which prevents employees from engaging In August, Interior’s Office of Inspector Though the investigations are serious, in political activity, by allegedly attend- General — which investigates reports watchdog agencies and legal experts say ing political fundraisers while on duty. of government corruption — opened a they’re unlikely to result in criminal The Government Accountability Office is preliminary investigation into phone charges or impede Zinke’s plans to remake also expected to release a legal opinion on calls Zinke made to Alaskan Republican Interior. “This situation with the Interior Zinke’s call to the Alaskan senators. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, secretary is abnormal,” says Kathleen It could be months before the inves- in which he allegedly threatened to Clark, law professor at Washington Uni- tigations yield results, but congressional block energy projects in their state after versity in St. Louis. “But it could be likely Democrats vow to prioritize the issue. Murkowski voted against the GOP health- he will have more of a political price rath- “Secretary Zinke deserves a chance to care bill. er than any specific legal price to pay.” explain himself, so we’ll be patient and The OIG is also investigating Zinke’s Meanwhile, the barrage of charges and let the investigations take place,” says decision to move 50 senior federal countercharges further erodes trust in the Congressman Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz. federal government. “But if the investigation finds viola- tions of the law or waste, fraud or abuse, Lyndsey Gilpin is a former HCN fellow and ongress has established OIG offices then I can promise you that we’ll raise the editor of Southerly, a newsletter for the C in most government agencies hell until everyone involved is held American South.  @lyndseygilpin to investigate potential abuses of power, accountable.”

6 High Country News November 27, 2017 tions to Zinke’s September speech, Clem- ent went to the cafeteria at Interior’s D.C. Interior’s lonely whistleblower headquarters. “Everyone was super ticked Before he quit, climate change official Joel Clement was one of the off. What they were saying was they were offended. The refrain was, ‘We are really few staffers to openly resist Zinke’s priorities good at our jobs; we are dedicated to the By Elizabeth Shogren mission of this organization.’ ” A rendering of the tram Zinke’s comments are “ludicrous and that would shuttle deeply insulting,” according to a state- people in and out of any of the Interior Department’s of the department. Clement said that, as a ment signed by leaders of various groups the Grand Canyon. M 70,000 employees were outraged longtime Navy Seal, Zinke should under- that represent retired Interior officials, in- Gilmore Parson/Grand when Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke stand the serious connotation of his words. cluding the Coalition to Protect America’s Canyon Escalade — speaking to the National Petroleum “I think he is so arrogant that he thinks National Parks, the Public Lands Founda- THE LATEST Council, an Energy Department advisory his special interest agenda is the same as tion and the Association of Retired Fish group composed largely of industry rep- what’s best for America. He is bought and and Wildlife Service Employees. Clement Backstory resentatives — complained in September paid for by oil and gas and political ambi- was the only current employee to speak In 2011, a developer that 30 percent of his staffers were “not tion.” out, however — perhaps because he had proposed building loyal to the flag.” But while the vast major- Clement, who resigned in early Octo- less to lose than his colleagues. After all, hotels, restaurants ity suffered in silence, Joel Clement, then ber, was, at least for a few months, one of he says, Zinke already had stripped him and shops on Navajo the department’s top climate change offi- a rare breed: A vocal dissident inside a of the job he loved. As director of Interior’s land on the Grand cial, took to Twitter. “Civil servants are loy- Cabinet agency in the Trump administra- office of policy analysis, Clement advised Canyon’s remote al to the flag and also know a demagogue tion. He was among the dozens of senior top Interior officials on climate change and East Rim, with a when they see one,” he tweeted. Clement executives at the Interior Department led department efforts to aid Native Alas- tram shuttling up also retweeted negative comments from that Zinke reassigned this summer in an kan villages at risk of being swept into the to 10,000 visitors others about Zinke’s speech. unprecedented shakeup of top career staff. sea because of rising sea levels. Clement, per day down to the confluence of Current and former federal employees In July, Clement started publicly criticiz- who has a background as a field biologist, the Colorado and and others interpreted Zinke’s comment in ing the new administration and filed a worked for a philanthropist supporting Little Colorado two ways: Some thought he meant the U.S. whistleblower complaint. Before he left, climate adaptation and conservation before rivers. Supporters flag, while others believed the “flag” rep- he urged other civil servants to join him joining Interior in 2011. But Zinke moved said the Escalade resented Zinke himself and his leadership in exposing the ways the administration him to the Office of Natural Resource Rev- development would is betraying the core missions of federal enue to oversee the staff collecting oil and provide 2,500 jobs Correspondent Elizabeth Shogren writes HCN’s agencies. gas payments. “I’m a scientist and policy in an impoverished DC Dispatches from Washington.  @shogrene To get a feel for his colleagues’ reac- Please see Whistleblower, page 28 region. Opponents, including Hopi and Navajo people, Grand Canyon park officials and conservationists, cited religious rights, tribal sovereignty and environmental impacts — plus the $65 million cost to the Navajo for roads and infrastructure (“Will Navajos approve a Grand Canyon megadevelopment?” HCN, 12/10/12). Followup At the end of October, after years of controversy, the Navajo Nation Council voted 16-2 against authorizing the project. Navajo President Russell Begaye said the council opposed it from the start and is seeking other economic development projects, such as a manufacturing plant. “Thankfully, the legislation was defeated,” Navajo activist Renae Yellowhorse told NBC News. “But, for certain, Children play next to a water storage tank — one of the only places to get fresh water in Newtok, Alaska. The village is one of many that has to the idea won’t go relocate due to melting permafrost and rapid erosion of its landmass. Joel Clement had been urging the Department of the Interior to respond to away.” the climate threats in Alaskan villages and believes that it was part of the reason he was reassigned. Andrew Burton/Getty Images Jodi Peterson

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 THE HCN COMMUNITY

REH SEARC FUND Thank you, Research Fund donors, for helping us track the West

Yellowstone Migrations Joe Riis; 176 pages, hardcover: $29.95. Mountaineers Books, 2017. A Bears Ears trip, holiday open Pronghorn, mule deer, elk, bison, moose, bighorn sheep: All of these ungulates migrate seasonally through the landscape surrounding Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. house and new staffers They spend the summer foraging in high-elevation areas, then move to milder, low-elevation regions to survive the winter, all within the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. After reading, writing and courts and crime for The Oklaho- In Yellowstone Migrations, photojournalist and former wildlife biologist Joe Riis docu- thinking so much about Bears man. “I’m really excited to be ments the movement of pronghorn, mule deer and elk through the region. His images show Ears National Monument in here to help HCN tell the stories the many obstacles the animals face — from fast-moving rivers to fences, highways, homes Utah, several members of High of Native peoples,” Graham and other development. Riis, who grew up on the Northern Plains, has spent close to 10 years Country News’ editorial staff says. “Accurately representing following the migrations, using motion-activated camera traps to document the animals took a field trip to see the place Indigenous communities is some- without disturbing them. “Every step of the way,” writes Wyoming-based author Gretel Ehrlich in the introduction, “we ponder what it will take for humans to exist in this vast territory such in person in mid-November. thing we really care about, and that the herds can move through.” Rebecca Worby We spent an afternoon soaking I’m thrilled to be a part of this in the sun on a hike through effort.” We’ve had the pleasure of A pronghorn migrating south for the winter, caught in a wire fence. The photographer was piñon-juniper forests below the hosting him for two weeks here able to pull the fence apart, setting the animal free. Joe Riis buttes that inspired the monu- in Paonia as he settles into the ment’s moniker. At sunset, we job — welcome, Graham! stood atop Muley Point, on the Lisa McManigal Delaney edge of Bears Ears, and gazed is our new customer service Mike & Leanne Daz | Ogden, UT Caroline Malde | Boulder, CO out over the twisting canyon assistant. She’s been reading Richard & Linda DeMoss | Logan, UT Piero & Jill Martinucci | Berkeley, CA of the San Juan River and the HCN for more than 20 years, Norman DeWeaver | Casa Grande, AZ Jane Marx | Albuquerque, NM red- and gold-painted cliffs of since coming across the maga- Anne Diekema | Cedar City, UT James & Miriam Maslanik | Lafayette, CO Cedar Mesa. We came back zine while working at the Rocky Fred Dowsett | Lakewood, CO Kendra & Charles McDaniel | Grand Junction, CO refreshed and inspired anew to Mountain Institute in Basalt, Sandy Eastoak | Sebastopol, CA Eric Meyer | Providence, UT write about the landscapes and Colorado, in the mid-1990s. Karen Elfering | Smith, NV Paul Miller | Montrose, CO communities of the West. Lisa says she always tried Bill & Shirley Elliot | Nevada City, CA Susan Mintz & Peter Schmitz | St. Louis, MO If you’ll be in Paonia, to snag the office copy before Kirk Ellis | Santa Fe, NM Bill Mitchem | Rangely, CO Colorado, HCN’s hometown, on anyone else could take it. “It Mima & Don Falk | Tucson, AZ JoAnne Monday | Montrose, CO Dec. 7, please join us for our an- just connected everything I was Adam Fernley | Oak Creek, CO Michael W. Murray | Augusta, GA nual holiday celebration. We’ll interested in,” she says. It also Larry Foster | Arlington, VA Marcus D. Novacheck | Westlake, TX be hosting an open house at our put Paonia on her radar; she Charles Max Fry & Jo Anne Fry | Parker, CO James Odling | Los Angeles, CA office from 5 to 7 p.m. We’d love and her family moved to town to see you there; otherwise, con- about four years ago. “Ever Colleen Fullbright | Fort Collins, CO David Ostergren | Wolf Lake, IN sider dropping by any time, as since I moved here, I thought, Peter Gang | Petaluma, CA Jerry Packard | Seattle, WA subscribers JoAnne and Richard ‘Oh, I want to work there some- Rudy Garcia | Blackhawk, CO Ann Petersen | Burien, WA Petersen of Longmont, Colorado, day,’ ” she says. We’re so glad to Gregg Garfin | Tucson, AZ Zoe Plakias | Columbus, OH recently did. The pair brought have you, Lisa! Brian & Teresa Garrett | Salt Lake City, UT Steve Planchon | Portland, OR along their canine companion, Finally, we have a clarifica- Brian Gentner | Newport Beach, CA Ronnie Podolefsky | Lyons, CO Tess, who promptly charmed tion to make. In a recent story William Gerety | Trinidad, CO Stella Portillo | Sandy, UT the entire office. Thanks for about the Glen Canyon Dam Maria Globus | Albuquerque, NM Brian Priddy | Beaverton, OR stopping by, Petersens! (“Busting the Big One” HCN, Beverly Glover | Boise, ID Lindsay Putnam & Brian Kunz | Norwich, VT We’d like to welcome two new 9/4/17), Jack Schmidt, the former Susan Gordon | Santa Fe, NM Stephen Record | Block Island, RI staff members to the HCN team. chief of the U.S. Geological Thomas Gottlieb | Arvada, CO Thomas Riggs | Sandpoint, ID Graham Lee Brewer, as our newest Survey’s Grand Canyon Monitor- Lanny Goyn | Fort Collins, CO Andy Robinson & Jan Waterman | Plainfield, VT contributing editor, is helping ing and Research Center, should Malcolm & Julie Graham | Sisters, OR Rickie Rosen | Denver, CO steer our coverage of tribal af- have been described as being one Jack Greene | Smithfield, UT Jay Rowland | Boulder, CO fairs. Graham is a board member among a group of scientists who Sharon Grovert | Littleton, CO Tom & Katie Rubel | Glenwood Springs, CO of the Native American Journal- came up with plans for experi- Seth Haines | Boulder, CO Steve Basch | Denver, CO ists Association and a member of mental pulse flows through the Olga Harbour | Tucson, AZ Charles Ryan | Poulsbo, WA the Cherokee Nation. He’s based canyon; he was not the sole Norma Heinz | Denver, CO Joseph Satrom | Bismarck, ND in Norman, Oklahoma, where originator of the plans. Mary Higdem | Kimberly, ID Charles Savaiano | Aspen, CO until recently he covered cops, —Emily Benson, for the staff Matt Higgins | Hammond, OR Peter Scanlon | Woodland Park, CO Ronald Homenick | Lyons, OR Barbara & Bud Shark | Lyons, CO Elizabeth Ilem | Troutdale, OR Jack W. Sites Jr. | Provo, UT Robina E. Ingram Rich | Lake Oswego, OR Robert Smythe | Chevy Chase, MD Justin Johnson | Sacramento, CA Julie Anne Sprinkle | Colorado Springs, CO Alan Joslyn | Highlands Ranch, CO Ted & Marilyn Stevens | Eugene, OR Bob Kiesling | Helena, MT Amelia Symonds | Albuquerque, NM Linn Kincannon | Hailey, ID Nancy Tamarisk | Napa, CA Trude Kleess | Boulder, CO Paul Tate | Newport, OR Cheryl Kleinbart | Florence, OR Stephen Trimble & Joanne Slotnik | Chris Kramer | Dolores, CO Salt Lake City, UT Asenath LaRue | Santa Rosa, CA Don Wall | Ames, IA Joseph Leahy | Lakewood, CO Dave Wallace | Colleyville, TX Ed & Julianne Ward Lehner | Durango, CO Margaret Watkins | Atlanta, GA Marc Levesque & Susan Porter | Silver City, NM John & Helen Whitbeck | Boulder, CO Charles Macquarie | Berkeley, CA Richard D. Wolber | Lakewood, CO Thomas & Teri Mader | Cooper Landing, AK Meghan Wolf | Reno, NV Robert Magill | Golden, CO Phillip Yates | Niwot, CO Graham Brewer, second from right, with editorial staff members Larry & Jane Yazzie | Craig, CO watching the sunset in Bears Ears. Anna V. SMith

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12 High Country News November 27, 2017 photo // justin talbot

www.hcn.org High Country News 13 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

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www.hcn.org High Country News 15 Pump Jack Park

Profit and Politics Right-wing efforts to transfer federal public lands to the states are gaining prominence, with the movement finding purchase with counties and state legislatures across the West. Transfer on the scale envisioned by its most fervent advocates would change the region’s very nature, so it’s worth asking: How do states manage the lands they already control? And how do their approaches to issues like energy development, endangered species and recreational access differ from those of federal agencies? How the Bakken boom transformed one of North Dakota’s most special landscapes State lands aren’t perfect analogues to federal lands, but they are the best indication moved to North Dakota for the for me, too: On its public lands I could same reason everyone else did: be- retreat from the oilfield’s manic energy we have of how public lands might change cause oil was selling for over $100 and the monotonous squares of wheat under local control. The stories that follow a barrel, and there was work to do. and sunflowers. Grassy plateaus — the I drove in from the south on June largest remaining swaths of native short- show how significant those changes could 8, 2014, on highways crowded grass prairie — gave way to wildly eroded be: State lands are generally less regulated Iwith semis hauling oil, saltwater, pipes buttes, ridges and coulees that were bushy and gravel. I bottomed out my Honda with juniper and aspen. Along the unde- and more open to development; public ac- Civic turning into a rutted gas station in veloped Little Missouri River plain, the cess to them is less secure; and citizens have Belfield, where men in coveralls waited cottonwood lowlands meandered for miles. to use the bathroom while a sign on the Out here, I could breathe more deeply. less influence over how they are developed empty ladies’ room announced: “No Men!” During my two years in North Da- or preserved. I drove on to Bismarck, where I moved kota, I regularly visited two parts of the into the spare bedroom of a 20-something Badlands: Theodore Roosevelt National car salesman from Washington. Once a Park and Little Missouri State Park. Al- 20 Plant Blind in New Mexico month, I went to the oilfield to report though they encompass nearly identical Politics, land ownership and the stories. I interviewed a farmer whose terrain, the parks feel distinctly different. protection of imperiled plants soybean fields were ruined by saltwater The national park is an oasis from the oil spills; an RV park owner who got rich boom. Little Missouri State Park, mean- renting sites to oil workers for $800 a while, has been engulfed by it. There are 23 State Lands month; a woman who sold pepper spray even oil wells within park boundaries. How states generate money and stun guns to other women. Every- When I first discovered this, I was where I drove, I saw drilling rigs. There shocked. A state park should be a refuge from trust lands were almost 200 then, and oil production from the grind of industry, I thought, not was at its peak. Over a million barrels a its host. So what happened? Who decided 24 Pay to Play day flowed from the Bakken shale. to open this state park for business? The oil boom also overlapped with the And what were the consequences of that In Utah, public access to state’s most beautiful and rugged region: choice? I also wondered if, once I looked state trust lands comes at the Badlands. It was to these Badlands into it, my perspective would change. “En- an increasing cost that a young Theodore Roosevelt fled gulfed,” after all, is a matter of opinion. in 1884 to mourn the death of his wife and mother. In the wide-open spaces of I met Jim Fuglie at the Rough Riders western North Dakota, Roosevelt became Hotel in Medora last Labor Day weekend a conservationist. to talk about Little Missouri State Park. The Badlands became an escape Fuglie is the former head of the state

16 High Country News November 27, 2017 Energy Development The differences in how a national park and a state park responded to the Bakken oil boom reflect the Pump Jack Park region’s laws, culture, history and politics. Natural gas flares from oil pads cast an apocalyptic glow in the night sky, when seen from the campground at Little Missouri State Park in North Dakota. Andrew Cullen

How the Bakken boom transformed one of North Dakota’s most special landscapes FEATURE By Emily Guerin

Democratic Party, and when I worked discussed an unusual arrangement that ted to North Dakota, but a sustained in North Dakota, he was my go-to angry would allow ConocoPhillips to drill wells commitment will depend largely upon the conservationist. When I interviewed him wherever it wanted inside a 50-mile area policy decisions being made today,” Harold about oil development in the Badlands, in and around the park, instead of within Hamm, CEO of one of the largest oil com- his voice rose so frequently that I used to two-square-mile units, as the state usually panies in the Bakken and a major political think he was mad at me. required. This arrangement, state oil and donor, threatened in a letter. “The Bakken Fuglie was there on Labor Day gas staff said, would allow the company to is not the only attractive play in America.” celebrating his 70th birthday with his cluster its wells, minimizing the number Stenehjem backed off. His watered- siblings. He probably would have gone to inside the park while also allowing it to down proposal applied only to public lands. Little Missouri State Park, if not for the oil extract even more oil from the rugged And as it turns out, that does not actually boom. “Literally, I don’t go there anymore,” terrain. One option not discussed at the include Little Missouri State Park. Fuglie said loudly. “They’ve trashed it.” meeting was leaving the park alone — There’s some evidence that Fuglie is not whether it might be too special to drill. The event that continues to influence alone in his opinion: Visitation to the state Two years later, though, Stenehjem everything is the creation of the park in park has fallen by almost a third since brought up that issue with what he called 1971. In the late 1960s, state officials the oil boom began, in 2007. At Theodore his “extraordinary places” proposal. It decided that the people of North Dakota Roosevelt National Park, by contrast, came after a state parks employee was deserved a park in the Badlands. They where officials have worked to shelter the driving around Theodore Roosevelt’s Elk- approached local ranchers and asked park from the boom, there were 65 percent horn Ranch, now part of the national park, them to sell land to the state. One couple more visitors in 2016 than in 2007. and noticed flags in the ground. The oil agreed to part with just over 1,000 acres. As Fuglie sees it, the fate of Little Mis- company XTO had staked out a well pad Depending on who you ask, there either souri State Park was sealed on Dec. 20, about 100 feet from the park’s border. The wasn’t enough money left to buy more 2011, in the basement of the State Capitol public outcry was fierce, and Stenehjem land, or nobody else was interested in in Bismarck. There, three men — then- was surprised. So he proposed creating selling to the government. “What could Gov. Jack Dalrymple, Attorney General a buffer zone around 18 “extraordinary” the state do to protect the place that we Wayne Stenehjem and Agriculture Com- places in western North Dakota, including couldn’t?” one local landowner told me. missioner Doug Goehring — agreed to al- Little Missouri State Park, where drilling So the state opted for long-term leases low ConocoPhillips to extract up to 43 mil- permit applications on private or public with three families. The leases allow lion barrels of oil from land in and around lands would undergo extra review. public access, and the state built and the state park. The three elected officials “There are some areas we need to let maintains the trails, but 80 percent of sit on the North Dakota Industrial Com- everybody know we are paying particular the park remains private property. The mission, which regulates the oil industry. attention to,” he told me in July 2014. state has even less control of the mineral They also accept campaign contributions Oil companies, however, hated the idea rights; it owns less than 7 percent in the from the companies they regulate. and responded forcefully. “For the moment, area ConocoPhillips developed. That mat- At the meeting, the commission Continental Resources remains commit- ters, because in North Dakota, mineral

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 Ruthmarie Lawson, host at the Little Missouri State Park campground, can see oil wells on land adjacent to the campground. Martin Eberlen, From the documentary project Our Land and (s)Oil., martineberlen.com/ our-land-soil/

owners have a constitutional right to legendary “mailbox money” that had sees a mosaic of state, federal and private “Literally, develop their property. transformed the lives of so many western land. Your experience in the park is thus I don’t “We do the best we can to balance the North Dakotans. Still, they received nomi- affected by what happens outside of it. interests of people who want to recreate nal payments for an oil road lease, and The park is renowned for its dark, go there against the right of people to develop for the loss of farmable land due to five starry skies, but when the boom began, their own minerals,” Stenehjem told me. well pads on their property. They rented rangers noticed a creeping glow on the anymore. “I think on balance, we’ve done a pretty spots in their RV park to workers, and let horizon. When a team of researchers in- They’ve good job.” a drilling company store its rig in their vestigated, they found that between 2010 By the time I first visited Little Mis- field. Overall, they were financially better and 2013, the amount of manmade light trashed it.” souri State Park in August 2014, a wide off. “I don’t think I’m emotionally better visible in the North Unit had jumped by oil road had just been constructed across off!” the wife said, and they both laughed. 500 percent — faster than at any other —Jim Fuglie, a high grassy ridge where a horse trail Although they agreed to an interview, national park in the country. former head of the Democratic Party used to be. Below the ridge, ConocoPhil- they asked me later not to use their names. So in 2011, when a facility to load in North Dakota, lips had carved a well pad out of the side They feared appearing to criticize how the crude oil onto rail cars was proposed less speaking of Little of a butte. The scoria was still fresh, the state handled oil development, of looking than three miles from the park bound- Missouri State Park color of undercooked beef. The drill rigs, like they disagreed with their neighbors, ary, national park staff sat down with the with their piercing white lights, were just and of publicly disclosing that they got developers and asked them for a simple across the river. The wells were coming. some oil money. “We have to live within all favor: Would you mind pointing your flood- When I returned this fall, two salt- this and don’t need a lot of people banging lights down? The company didn’t have to water disposal wells marked the turnoff down our doors or calling us because we agree — the Park Service has no regula- to the park. ConocoPhillips had built six didn’t do the right thing, in their mind, to tory authority — but it did. Small adjust- well pads in the park, and new horse protect the land, to allow oil development, ments like this can make a big difference. trails switchbacked around them. At etc.,” the wife wrote me later. “We find both In a video two rangers made on an August night, I counted 28 flares from the camp- good and bad with the changes.” night in 2015, they stand just outside a ground, some so bright and close they facility with downward facing lights. Their looked like bonfires. Most people I spoke to about the chang- faces are dark, and the northern lights I visited with a husband and wife es seemed to view them as inevitable, a are visible in the background, streaks of who lease land to the state park. The march of progress they were powerless green against the expansive, prairie sky. development had been mixed for them. to impede. But just 40 miles west, at In a second shot, they’re outside a truck The quality of their everyday life had Theodore Roosevelt National Park, it was yard with floodlights that hadn’t been diminished in small but significant ways. a different story. redirected, and they look as if they’re on a The view of the Badlands from their home It was always clear that drilling would professionally lit film shoot. was obstructed by pump jacks, and they’d not be allowed inside the national park, but “You can affect change outside that lost their sense of privacy. The main road that didn’t mean the park was protected boundary by asking,” Superintendent to town was choked with trucks, and at from the boom. Teddy Roosevelt National Wendy Ross told me in September, as we night, they could hear the roar of flares Park is 70,000 acres, but because it is split sat in her office in Medora. Ross grew and the moan of pump jacks. Not being into three units, each section of it feels up in the National Park Service. She mineral owners, they didn’t receive the small. A visitor standing atop a high butte was born at Mount Rainier, where her

18 High Country News November 27, 2017 The view looking over the Little Missouri River from the rim of the Badlands, left, in Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s north unit in North Dakota. Wells aren’t allowed in the park, although some are visible beyond the fence line, below. Andrew Cullen

father was a climbing ranger, and she efficient. It’s a place where officials were “Sometimes I felt inadequate,” Zimmer- lived in the Tetons, Yosemite and the so desperate to reverse the population loss man admitted. “I would have liked to Great Smoky Mountains. In 1990, her that they considered changing their state’s have seen no development around Little dad became superintendent of Theodore name to “Dakota” in 2001, because “North” Missouri State Park. But I don’t have the Roosevelt National Park. Ross took the sounded too cold and forbidding. right to say that to a private landowner.” same job in 2015. I’ve talked to Attorney General Wayne Zimmerman confessed that he often Ross wants the views from the park Stenehjem about this a lot. He is a tall felt envious when he went to conferences to look the way they did when her father man with big hands and a throaty laugh, for state park directors. North Dakota oversaw it. “We don’t try to talk the com- like he’s constantly getting over a cold. has fewer park acres than any state panies into anything,” she explained. “We Stenehjem grew up in Williston, at the besides Rhode Island. But he also envied say, ‘If you put your well right here, you’re heart of today’s oil boom. As the state’s the attitude he saw in places like Maine not going to see it from the park. There’s top law enforcement officer, he is acutely and New York, where well-to-do families no impact whatsoever.’ ” Most companies aware of the rise in violent crime, drugs will donate their estates for public enjoy- have been responsive. XTO moved its and sex trafficking during the oil boom. ment, in perpetuity. “Just the mindset of well pad back from the Elkhorn Ranch. But he also remembers what life was North Dakotans to set aside land. … ” He Companies have painted their tanks beige like before. “Those towns and cities were trailed off. “The culture is not there yet.” to blend into the landscape, relocated well dying,” he told me. “On balance, (oil) has pads to avoid building new roads, and been a good thing for us.” ConocoPhillips clustered its wells in hooked up to power lines in order to forego There’s also a deep reluctance here the eastern portion of Little Missouri diesel generators, whose sputtering and to taking working land out of production. State Park, so over Labor Day weekend, backfiring echo throughout the Badlands. In order for land to have value, at least I set out west on an early morning hike, Ross still has to assure some visitors among the white, non-Native population, seeking a more pristine experience. The that there are no oil wells in the park. You it must produce something. This attitude trail traversed narrow ridges sprouting can see some pumpers from a 1980s boom is so deeply ingrained that, by law, the prickly pear and sage, and plateaued from the scenic drive in the South Unit. governor must personally approve the in a grassy valley. I stopped, listening. I There are wells visible from the North sale of private property to any nonprofit heard the engine brakes of a semi going Unit, too, but they’re far away, fuzzy in conservation organization. down the long grade towards the Little summer heat, best seen through a camera’s Energy development in Little Mis- Missouri River, and could see clear to the zoom lens. The campgrounds are dark and souri State Park may have been seen as a Fort Berthold Reservation, where flares quiet, and when you turn into the North way of extracting value, once again, from flickered on a butte. Unit from Highway 85, you regularly see a place that had not been productive for I recalled something Zimmerman had bison grazing alongside the fee booth. decades. At an Interstate 94 rest stop told me about hiking in the state park. “I overlooking Theodore Roosevelt National don’t want to sound like a jerk,” he said. Park Service staff felt empowered by Park, I asked a man how he felt about oil “But I gotta put gas in my truck to go out their agency’s culture to take action — to development encroaching on the park. there. If I look over and see a pumper, look outside the park to preserve what’s He stared at me with wide eyes. “I think well, OK. I look the other way.” inside it. “You have that national park we should see oil wells all along the fence There is a pragmatism here that I brand,” Ross told me, “an arrowhead that line!” he yelled. “It’s about time we used respect. More than anywhere else I have is recognized for natural and cultural our natural resources!” lived, North Dakotans are willing, even resource preservation throughout the Even minor government efforts to eager, to live alongside the production of United States.” State officials, for cultural lessen the impact of oil development are the natural resources they — and all of and political reasons, didn’t share that sometimes met with resistance. Mark us — consume. Yet I couldn’t help feeling Emily Guerin sense of empowerment. Zimmerman, the former head of the State that they had gone too far. If no land- previously reported North Dakota is a place whose Parks and Recreation Department, told scape was too special not to drill, what on energy in North population peaked at 682,000 in 1930. It me many people thought Wendy Ross would the West become? I was grateful Dakota and is now would not surpass that for 80 years, until went too far. “There were a lot of local that there was at least one place in the based in Los Angeles. 2011, when horizontal drilling, hydraulic folks who thought she was too tough, too Badlands — a national park named for  @guerinemily fracturing and high oil prices unleashed strong on the oil companies,” he said. Teddy Roosevelt — that had been spared. This story was funded a rush on hydrocarbons. North Dakota Because of the local politics, and Here, though, the wells had arrived. with reader donations is a place whose other major industry, because industry is viewed as an eco- So I took Zimmerman’s advice: I pulled to the High Country agriculture, cannibalizes itself, requiring nomic lifeboat, the state parks depart- my hat over my ears, turned my back to News Research Fund. fewer and fewer people as it becomes more ment didn’t ask much from oil companies. the flares, and hiked on.

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 Endangered Species The Endangered Species Act is already under attack in the U.S. Congress, but federal land transfers could also have big consequences for rare species — especially plants. Plant Blind in New Mexico Politics, land ownership and the protection of imperiled plants

ast January, Will Barnes and cal survey and erosion-control plan. But plants,” she added. “Which is a serious re- a few colleagues from the on Jan. 23, before he could get feedback sponsibility, because we have rare plants New Mexico State Land Office and finalize the memo, he got a call from that are so rare.” fanned out across a small ridge the land office’s man in Carlsbad. The It’s also nearly impossible, because in the Chihuahuan Desert well pad had already been built. Roth has so few tools to wield. She’s a near the Black River, south of carpenter without a hammer, saw, nails FEATURE LCarlsbad. It was a clear winter day, and Plants don’t get a lot of respect, and or wood glue. There’s little money for on- By they walked slowly, heads down, scruti- certainly not what’s lavished on mam- the-ground conservation, and her agency nizing the soil. They were responding to a mals, fish and birds. Botanists call the in- has no regulatory authority over how Cally rancher’s complaint about erosion issues ability to appreciate, or even notice, flora plants are managed on state lands. Those Carswell that could result from a planned oil well “plant blindness.” It’s the tendency to see decisions fall to the State Land Office, pad. But Barnes, a biologist and the Land botanical life as a mere stage set for life and more specifically to its elected com- Office’s deputy director of field opera- forms more like us — the things with missioner, who has sweeping authority tions, was also concerned about a rare eyes, ears, mouths and feet. New Mexico over the 9 million acres held in trust for wild buckwheat — a diminutive, waxy- is the fourth most botanically diverse New Mexicans and managed to optimize leafed plant found nowhere else in the state in the nation, with over 4,000 native revenue to help fund public schools. world but on 234 acres in Eddy County, species. But “most people just see green,” The only thing the state’s endangered New Mexico. says state botanist Daniela Roth, a view plant law explicitly prohibits is the col- Murchison Oil and Gas planned to of the world she calls “pretty flat.” lection of listed plants without a permit. build the well pad on a lease on state- Even the Endangered Species Act It is illegal to drive down to Carlsbad, co- owned land, right on the boundary where suffers from plant blindness. Though 57 vertly dig up a gypsum wild buckwheat, it meets federal land. The company would percent of listed species are plants, they and plant it in your garden. But it is not cut a 37-foot-deep incision through the get only 4 percent of the money spent illegal to buy an oil lease and bulldoze it, middle of a gypsum ridge, the remains under the law, according to one recent killing plants in the process. And in the of an ancient sea that once covered this study. And while legal protections for midst of the hottest onshore oil play in desert. Not many plants thrive in gypsum listed animals apply to federal, state and the U.S., bulldozers are undoubtedly the soils, but this wild buckwheat requires private lands, plants are protected only more formidable threat. them. on federal land. The side of the ridge under federal That means it is up to states to pass The Chihuahuan Desert doesn’t loudly Bureau of Land Management jurisdic- laws to protect rare plants everywhere advertise its botanical riches. From a dis- tion is managed to protect the plant, else. “There are some states that do have tance, it can look pretty bleak — rubble which is listed as threatened under the strong endangered species laws,” says hills, lanky shrubs and dry bunchgrass, Endangered Species Act. On the federal Alejandro Camacho, a law professor at blending together into a dull Army green. side, you can’t build oil pads, new roads, the University of California-Irvine. “But It takes time and patience to appreci- pipelines or anything else within the they tend to be significantly less protec- ate this place. You have to walk slowly, buckwheat’s habitat. On the state side, tive.” And sometimes they’re nonexis- look carefully, get closer. It helps to get though, no such rules apply. tent: Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, down on your knees, bring your nose Still, Barnes thought state officials Washington and Wyoming provide no within inches of the soil. Beauty lies in might be able to work with the company protection to threatened and endangered the details: The fist-sized cactus grow- to move the pad if they found any plants. plants, according to Camacho’s research. ing at a 90-degree angle from a rock On the federal side, they spotted dozens New Mexico has good intentions, but ledge. Black and red lichen crusted to the — small and partially desiccated in their spotty execution. In 1978, the Legislature surface of the soil. The delicate, reflective dormant state, their leaves red, dappled ordered the Energy, Minerals and Natu- hairs on the gypsum wild buckwheat, with green. On the state side, “there ral Resources Department to study the which help deflect the oppressive sum- weren’t tons,” Barnes says. “But there state’s native flora, create an endangered mer heat. were some” — three, as far as they could list, and figure out how to keep the plants “This one is beautiful,” says Jaclyn tell. on it alive. “Under the state law, I’m in Adams, crouching down beside a 4-inch- Two days later, back in his office in charge of all 4,000 species in New Mexico, wide buckwheat in a BLM research plot Santa Fe, Barnes began typing out a and I’m supposed to make sure none of close to the Murchison well pad. It’s a memo, outlining the erosion risks and them go extinct,” Roth told me, when I cloudy October morning, just after a nice threats to the buckwheat. He planned to visited her at her office in late September. rain, and she bends one of its smooth suggest relocating the pad — to some- She gave me a look that seemed to say, leaves like a soft taco. They’re succulent where with less fragile soils and no listed That sounds crazy to you, too, right? and flexible. “This guy’s pretty healthy.” species — or at least completing a biologi- “I’m the only one who speaks for rare Adams spent the field season as an

20 High Country News November 27, 2017 “I’m the only one who speaks for rare plants. Which is a serious responsibility, because we have rare plants that are so rare.” —Daniela Roth, New Mexico state botanist

Gypsum wild buckwheat (Eriogonum gypsophilum) is found only on a small tract of land in southeast New Mexico. It’s protected as a threatened species on federal land, but can be destroyed by development on adjacent state land. Mike Howard/ BLM New Mexico www.hcn.org High Country News 21 he says, “We only find out about stuff when things go wrong. So a series of well pads built in a floodplain get washed away. Well, we didn’t know they were there until the flood happened.” The narrow nature of the review helps explain why the state takes only 10 days to process drilling permits, com- pared to an industry-reported average of 250 days for the BLM in Carlsbad. And it also explains why the buckwheat plants on state land were plowed under, while next door — on BLM land — they’re scarcely disturbed. “There’s no infrastructure for protecting plants,” Barnes says. “The state statute is pretty ambiguous, and it doesn’t give anyone any particular authority to stop anything from happening,” he says. “In my mind, the land office could be more assertive about habitat and species protections. But that’s a political choice.”

In April of 1995, David Deardorff, a The Murchison intern with the BLM, setting up long- neglect — the biological impacts of devel- biologist with the State Land Office, well pad, set in term research plots in the three locations opment. The feds have a framework for sent a seven-page memo up the chain gypsum wild in Eddy County where the buckwheat flagging issues such as sensitive plants of command, analyzing the arguments buckwheat habitat grows. Trained as a wildlife biologist, she when companies want to drill. When for and against protecting gypsum wild near Carlsbad, New expected the work to be simple. “I would conflicts arise, they have a legal obliga- buckwheat. Mexico. Cally Carswell think, ‘Oh, plants, they don’t move, that’s tion to try to mitigate impacts before Deardorff cautioned that if all the going to be easy,’ ” she explains. But des- construction. Black River plants on state land were ert plants are opportunistic and can be The state, for the most part, does not lost, the population would fragment into surprisingly squirrelly. “We’ll have them impose this level of planning and review. two, leaving small, isolated islands on all tagged in a plot, and then depending For certain types of infrastructure — federal land, which might eventually die on the monsoon, all of a sudden you’ll see pipelines, for example — companies do out. Since the plants occupy less than 30 a bunch more. And you’re like, where did submit plans to the State Land Office for acres here, it would be relatively easy these come from overnight?” approval. In those cases, a biologist who for oil and gas producers to work around Adams and Katie Sandbom, the works under Barnes checks the location them. Still, the politics were delicate: The Carlsbad field office’s resident botanist, of the proposed development against oil and gas industry, he wrote, appeared show me around the buckwheat’s haunts. GIS data on rare species, and may make “skittish and frightened that their in- Of the three populations, the Black River mitigation recommendations. dustry will be shut down to protect some one is the hardest to manage. Its popula- Exactly how biological issues are han- weed.” He recommended navigating these tion runs across both state, federal and dled at any given time is influenced by choppy waters by protecting species on a private land in an area that’s booming the priorities of the elected commissioner. case-by-case basis. with new energy development. This part The last commissioner, Ray Powell, a At the time, gypsum wild buckwheat of southeastern New Mexico lies in the Democrat, had no formal policy for how was the only imperiled plant that had Permian Basin, which currently produces the land office should deal with impacts been inventoried on state lands. So Ray roughly as much oil as all other onshore to rare plants. But the office did, at least Powell, then a couple years into his first plays in the U.S. combined, from a mix of in some cases, work with companies to stint as land commissioner, had hired bot- federal, state and private lands. transplant rare cacti in northwest New anist Bob Sivinski to survey trust lands We scramble down and up a draw and Mexico’s San Juan Basin out of the path throughout the state for rare plants. traverse a ridge to the Murchison well of pipelines. The current commissioner, “This is a weird office with a lot of pad. Sandbom points out that the well Republican Aubrey Dunn, instituted a autonomy, and if you don’t pay attention, pad on the state side is close enough to formal policy to bring clarity and consis- bad things can happen,” Powell explains. buckwheat plants that, if it were BLM tency to the process. It requires the land “If you do pay attention, you can be really land, the agency wouldn’t have permitted office to notify companies of the presence creative and do good things.” His goal, it there, whether or not the pad impacted of state and federally listed plants on he says, was to figure out “what the heck plants directly. their leases. It’s then up to the companies was out there,” and eventually, to do more As it turns out, Murchison owns a to decide how to address any impacts. to protect the health of the land. lease on the BLM side, too. Earlier this And for run-of-the-mill leases for oil In the absence of real legal protec- year, before even applying for federal and gas wells, there’s no biological review tions, however, the impact of any one drilling permits, company representatives whatsoever. The terms of these leases are commissioner can be limited, for better visited the site with BLM staff to look at specified by a state statute, and after a or worse. When I met him this fall for options for locating wells away from the company buys one, it applies for drilling lunch, Sivinski told me his 1990s surveys plants and minimizing disturbance. If permits through another state agency. had revealed new rare plant populations Contributing Editor and when they do apply to drill, the BLM The Oil Conservation Division scrutinizes on state land, including a dense colony Cally Carswell writes would formally review the plans, as man- drilling plans for potential impacts to of Tharp’s bluestar, listed as endangered from Santa Fe, New dated by the National Environmental groundwater, but does not look at issues under state law, in the Permian Basin. I Mexico. Policy Act, looking for impacts to endan- aboveground, including the possible pres- asked him how the land office had used @callycarswell gered species, archaeology, and sensitive ence of rare plants, or hazards like wells that information. He shrugged, unsure. This story was funded soils, as well as potential hazards like and tanks sited in floodplains. “The site I did locate, the next land com- with reader donations floodplains. “We don’t do any field review before missioner built a well pad right on top of to the High Country This points to a major difference in the sales happen,” Barnes explains. “It it,” Sivinski said. “So it didn’t really do News Research Fund. how the feds and the state address — or just hasn’t ever been done.” As a result, much good knowing it was there.”

22 High Country News November 27, 2017 REVENUE A gift from the feds, with strings attached.

How states generate money from trust lands hen Western states joined the Union, the federal government Mexico received their trust lands, the federal government, and sometimes W granted them parcels of land in order to provide sustained revenue the states themselves, placed restrictions on sales, such as minimum prices. for public institutions, primarily schools, and to spread democratic ideals Today, these states retain much of their original acreage, and generate in the growing region. Older states, such as California and Oregon, have money primarily by leasing parcels to developers and the extractive little acreage left today because they quickly sold off their “trust lands” industry. There are 46 million acres of state trust land in the U.S., most of it to generate money — a move that clashed with the federal government’s in the West. Here’s a look at the different approaches Western state take to long-term vision for those lands. So when newer states like Arizona and New these lands. Anna V. Smith

Timber Western counties with state trust lands In the Pacific Northwest, timber is the main source of revenue from state lands. But Oregon is beginning to take a broader approach: Instead of focusing only on logging, it’s managing its lands for conservation and recreation, too. The transition hasn’t been easy. Last year, the Elliott State Forest, which shelters endangered species and is popular with hunters and hikers, was put up for sale. Timber revenue was low, and managing the forest cost the state money rather than enriching it. After intense public outcry, the state resolved to find a way to keep the forest in public hands. Now, it’s planning to buy out tracts of its own forest. That way, schools would get money, while areas occupied by endangered species would be relieved from the pressure to be profitable.O ther parts of the forest would still be logged, however. Oil and Gas New Mexico makes by far the most money of the Western states from its trust lands, many of which are in booming oil and gas-producing basins. An analysis by the Property and Environmental Research Center found that from 2009 to 2013, the state made $69 in revenue per acre of Old growth in Elliott State Forest. Percentage of state trust state trust land. Montana’s C. Griffin photo courtesy of Cascadia Wildlands land in county timberlands, by contrast, brought in only $20 an acre. 10% 35% The biggest revenue Het adwa ers Economics generator on Utah’s state R eal Estate lands is also fossil fuel Before the 2008 recession, Arizona raised huge sums leasing. Of the $700 million by selling or leasing land to real estate developers. in gross revenues generated In 2007, the state raked in over $600 million this by the state’s oil and gas way, with bids from developers coming in as high sector since 1994, around 20 as 15 percent above the lands’ appraised value, and Privatization percent has come from one one 26-acre parcel in northeast Phoenix selling for Teton County, Idaho, which borders Grand Teton National Park, 127,000-acre unit in Carbon $28.5 million. Overall, however, Arizona has sold received 39,740 acres at statehood, but now has just 1,158 acres. County. The state has also about 10 percent of its state lands. It retains 9.2 (Overall, the state has retained 67 percent of its original lands.) The permitted tar sands mines million of the 10.2 million acres it was originally sale of state lands to Teton County farmers, initially intended to and oil shale operations on granted. increase the county’s tax base, ultimately expanded the amount 32,000 acres of trust lands. of land open to residential development. Starting around Though environmentalists 2000, tourism, new home construction and personal fiercely opposed these income skyrocketed, and many farmers sold their land for developments, which are development. After the recession, though, half-finished even more carbon-intensive housing and abandoned commercial developments than conventional oil, they became a blight on the landscape. had limited legal options to stop them on state lands. Idaho Department of Lands The tar sands industry is still Endowment ownership, and Teton struggling, however, and County, below, where there’s commercial production has little state yet to begin. land left.

Construction underway at a new development in northeast Phoenix, purchased from the Arizona State Land Department. Brooke Warren

Idaho DepaRtment of Lands

www.hcn.org High Country News 23 Public Access The cost and quality of public access to state lands varies widely around the West. Pay to Play In Utah, public access to state trust lands comes at an increasing cost

ow much is hunting and fishing access to state lands shouldn’t be reserved with little say in whether certain parcels access to 3.4 million acres of for the highest bidders. And SITLA’s are put up for sale, threatened with de- land in Utah worth? Last year, demands underscored his fears about velopment or closed to the public. the answer was $776,000. That what could happen should federal lands be Colorado’s interagency agreement, Hwas the amount the Utah Department transferred to state control: privatization for instance, only allows public access of Natural Resources paid another state and loss of access. “I have been very con- to about 20 percent of state trust lands. agency, the School and Institutional Trust cerned about how greedy SITLA has been Another 8 percent is leased for private Lands Administration (SITLA), to secure in recent years,” Christensen says. recreation, mostly to individuals or outfit- public access to state trust lands, granted ters for hunting or fishing. “They go out to Western states by the federal govern- State trust lands are owned by public to the highest bidder,” says Tim Brass, ment to generate money for schools and entities, but they aren’t “public” the way director for state policies for Backcountry other public institutions. federal lands are. Most states don’t have Hunters and Anglers. This fall, however, the deal between to manage them for multiple uses, so Utah’s interagency agreements have the Natural Resources Department there’s no guarantee of public access for so far prevented the state from priva- and SITLA expired. In negotiating its hunting, hiking and camping. Instead, tizing hunting access. The money the renewal, SITLA wanted to raise its fee to these lands are managed to make money, Department of Natural Resources pays market rates, estimated at $1.8 to $3.9 traditionally by leasing them for grazing, SITLA ensures access to any trust lands million a year for the 1 million acres that mining, timber or energy development. that are “unencumbered” by potentially have commercial hunting value. If the Sometimes the land is sold outright. dangerous activities, like an active mine department didn’t pay up, SITLA seemed “The mandate that states have is often or oil well. ready to lease exclusive access to beloved interpreted as this really rigid thing,” As on federal lands, energy develop- places like the Book Cliffs — a vast says Shawn Regan, a research fellow at ment can also threaten the integrity of wilderness of rugged bluffs and forested the Property and Environment Research wild places and cause conflict, even when valleys teeming with elk, mule deer and Center, a Montana-based free-market access isn’t lost. In 2013, for instance, cutthroat trout — to wealthy hunters. think tank. But hunting, especially, can SITLA leased almost 100,000 acres in Access to prime areas would be scooped be a source of revenue for state trusts. the Book Cliffs to Anadarko for oil and up mainly by customers willing to pay “There are ways to allow access or provide gas development. Following outcry from thousands of dollars for a single hunt, conservation benefits while still meeting powerful politicians and hunters, who Bison roam Winter with only a handful of permits issued the requirement to benefit the trust.” value the vast, game-rich roadless area, Ridge, which through a public lottery. Public access to trust lands varies the company agreed not to drill the most includes a large Kim Christy, SITLA’s deputy director, widely from state to state. Idaho and ecologically sensitive portion of the leased parcel of SITLA land argued that the agency was merely fulfill- Wyoming allow free access, while New area for a few years. That meant that the in the Book Cliffs, ing its obligation under the state Constitu- Mexico and Colorado have interagency public could still hunt there — at least about 60 miles south of Vernal, Utah. tion to optimize revenue. But many sports- payment schemes similar to Utah’s. Still, as long as SITLA got its fees to preserve Utah Division of Wildlife men saw it differently. Bill Christensen of access is provided primarily at the discre- public access. Resources the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation says tion of state agencies, leaving the public In October, the two agencies settled on a new agreement: The Natural Resources Department will pay SITLA nearly $800,000 this year, with the fee increasing annually to almost $1.3 million in 2031 to account for inflation. Utah’s Legi- slature will contribute another $1 million in taxpayer money each year. The department’s money comes from federal taxes on bows, guns and ammunition, which are passed on to states to manage wildlife and restore habitat. This year’s SITLA fee amounts to 5 to 6 percent of this revenue, a relatively small chunk. But if the fee skyrockets, “it will mean less wildlife habitat projects will happen, and fewer acres will be improved, enhanced or conserved,” Christensen says. SITLA’s Christy calls the deal a “win- win outcome,” that benefits both the state trust beneficiaries and sportsmen and women. But for Christensen, the ever-increasing annual fee is a lingering worry. “I look at my kids and my grandkids, and I’m concerned,” he says. “Are we going to price future generations out of the opportunity to access lands?” Emily Benson

Emily Benson is an editorial fellow at High Country News.  @erbenson1

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www.hcn.org High Country News 27 Whistleblower continued from page 7 adequately fulfilling its trust responsibili- ecutive authority by political appointees. ties to Indians and Native Alaskans, un- “The alleged treatment of Mr. Clement expert. I have no skills in auditing and less it responds to the problem. contravenes Congress’s design and illus- accounting,” Clement said in his whistle- When he finally quit, Clement sent trates the danger to the healthy function- blower disclosure. He believes that Zinke’s his resignation to Zinke, accusing him ing of our Federal Government of senior goal was to get him and other reassigned and the president of being “shackled” to executives subjected to undue political senior executives, especially those with special interests like oil, gas and mining: influence,” the professors wrote. Eight backgrounds in science and natural re- “You and President Trump have waged Democratic senators called on the Inspec- sources, to quit, so they would no longer be an all-out assault on the civil service by tor General to look into the reassignments, in position to question his policies, and so muzzling scientists and policy experts like and more than 170,000 people have signed he could replace them with staffers whose myself.” And before he departed, Clement an online petition demanding an investi- thinking reflects his own. urged other civil servants to join him in gation. The Senior Executives Association In his whistleblower complaint, Clem- documenting examples of the administra- chimed in: “There is great concern about ent charges that he was reassigned be- tion violating laws and abandoning agen- the reassignments and their corrosive ef- cause of his efforts to get Interior and cies’ missions. Clement recommended fect on morale and leadership effective- “Every one of the the White House to relocate four Alaskan they pass incriminating documents to the ness at affected agencies.” coastal villages — Newtok, a Yu’pik com- Capitol Hill or file complaints with the In- In November, Clement sued Interior bureaus is going munity, and the Iñupiat villages of Kiva- spector General. demanding the release of documents re- to have mission lina, Shishmaref and Shaktoolik. These Veterans of Interior say it’s not surpris- lated to Zinke’s transfer of Clement and Native Alaskan settlements, and dozens of ing that Clement had to make his stand the other career senior executive service failure if we don’t others, face imminent danger from erosion alone; the department’s culture doesn’t employees. and storm surge caused by melting sea ice. tolerate dissent. “I think that’s a hard Meanwhile, Clement became a mini- pay attention to Clement’s complaint is being considered thing to ask of career employees. I think celebrity in Washington. Stories about him climate change.” by the Office of Special Counsel, an inde- they’re afraid for their jobs,” says Maureen appeared in major newspapers and web- — Joel Clement, pendent agency charged with protecting Finnerty, president of the Coalition to Pro- sites, and he was interviewed on NPR’s on the need for the federal workers. Meanwhile, the Interior tect National Parks, who spent 31 years Morning Edition, the PBS News Hour and Department of the Interior Department’s Inspector General is investi- as a National Park Service manager. “I MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “It doesn’t matter to take climate change seriously gating the reassignments of all the senior understand why they don’t want to stick what administration you’re in, you have to Interior staff shuffled around by Zinke, their necks out.” be discreet talking to the press and talk- including Clement. Still, Finnerty wholeheartedly agrees ing to the Hill,” Clement said. “I only wish Clement didn’t quit right away, he says, with Clement’s assessment of how the there were more civil servants who felt the because of the “very slim chance” he could Trump administration is changing Inte- freedom to do it. It’s a commentary on our return to his previous position, which re- rior. “Here’s the trends we see coming out Big Brother mentality at the Department mains unfilled, and push his agency to take of Zinke: Everything he’s done is skewed of Interior that nobody does.” climate change seriously. “Every one of the towards industry and development and But Clement never got to speak his bureaus is going to have mission failure if allowing private companies to profit off of mind directly to Zinke. Before he left, he we don’t pay attention to climate change,” public resources.” fantasized about how he might achieve he warns. For instance, the U.S. Geologi- And Clement has received a lot of sup- that. Zinke, who wants to encourage a cal Survey can’t be a world-class scientific port. Eleven law professors wrote a letter hunting ethic among his staff, had in- agency if it ignores climate change. The to the Office of Special Counsel asking for stalled an arcade game called “Big Buck U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service won’t be his reinstatement if his allegations are Hunter Pro” in the department’s cafeteria able to protect rare species if it ignores confirmed. Clement had been one of 225 and offered a reward: The employee with the risks posed by sea-level rise, increased Interior employees in the senior execu- the best score gets to visit with Zinke in wildfire and other consequences of climate tive service, a group of career managers person. The chance of winning, Clement change. And the Bureau of Indian Affairs created by Congress to provide consistent said with a smile, “made me really want to cannot assist the Interior Department in leadership and guard against abuse of ex- learn how to play this game.”

A house in Shishmaref, Alaska, in 2006 that was damaged by erosion. Joel Clement, far right, former climate change official for the Department of the Interior, resigned in October and has filed complaints about how the agency has been ignoring its core mission and efforts to respond to climate change. The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images; Courtesy of PBS Newshour

28 High Country News November 27, 2017 PERSPECTIVE

Former neo-Nazi Timothy Zaal poses in front of a newspaper article about his past involvement in hate crimes, part of his presentation about his personal experience as a skinhead, at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, California. There, he gives talks about his personal experiences with white supremacist groups. ROBYN BECK/ AFP/Getty Images

Zaal reached out to the national leader of White Aryan Resistance (founded by California, state of hate former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Tom A rise in hate crimes, in the eyes of a former white nationalist Metzger), who put him in touch with a local chapter. Zaal wasn’t interested in proselytizing. He was the “boots on the he red spray paint appeared one been “feeling overwhelmed.” At 6-foot-3, ground,” the guy known among his peers T late October morning at the site of a he remains intimidating, with his strong for brutally beating a young homeless gay future state park in Los Angeles. Sloppily build and shaved head, even at the age of teen in the streets of Hollywood in 1981, written slogans, including “Trump rulez,” 52. Zaal is a former skinhead, and though leaving him for dead. “Hail the Aryans” and other messages he hasn’t been active in three decades, In 1990, Zaal was sentenced to one encouraging violence against Jews and the old feelings rise again whenever he year in jail for his involvement in an blacks covered a couple port-a-potties sees footage of racist attacks like the ones attack on an Iranian couple. State hate and benches. Known as the Bowtie, the he used to commit. “I would compare it crime laws were lax back then; today, 18-acre open lot is frequently host to to relapsing as a drug addict, or to going Zaal would likely face a much lengthier the colorful work of LA graffiti artists, into a bar when you’re an alcoholic,” he sentence. A proposed bill, if passed, Letter from because police rarely venture there and said. In the past year, such attacks have would further expand those laws by pun- California the city doesn’t bother to destroy the ishing similar crimes committed by white work. But the new graffiti was different: supremacists as acts of terrorism. Ruxandra Guidi It was a disturbing visual reminder of the Anger and grief acted on him Southern California’s racial and current rise in hate speech and crimes ethnic diversity only aggravated Zaal’s throughout the state. like a call to arms and racism. “We’d say, ‘Multiculturalism is California has been known for hate taking over, we have these illegal, undoc- activity since the Chinese Exclusion Act became his way of umented people coming into the country, of 1882 opened the gates to coordinated making sense through and we’re being outbred.’ ” Similar rheto- attacks against Chinese immigrants ric is galvanizing much of the alt-right in Los Angeles. These days, it has the perpetuating the violence. today, but the landscape is much more highest number of active groups in the fractured, though thriving online. It’s country — 79, with nearly half of them not just skinheads, neo-Nazis and white based in or around Los Angeles, according been in the news, most notably the one nationalists; there are also Holocaust de- to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The committed last summer by white nation- niers, neo-Confederates, and anti-LGBT, SPLC began to keep a tally in 1999, when alists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups. demographic projections noted that the Virginia. Zaal has to remind himself that Many of these groups piggybacked on growing Latino and Asian population was the adrenaline rush he still feels is “a lie, Donald Trump’s rise to power to bring expected to challenge whites’ nationwide because I know I’ve been conditioned and their ideology into the mainstream. majority status by the middle of the 21st indoctrinated,” he said. Not all these groups are as violent in century. In California, that demographic As a teenager growing in a working- real life as they appear online. But that is prediction is already nearly a reality. class suburb of Los Angeles, Zaal sought no consolation to Zaal, who recognizes the With it has come a rise in hate crimes: out neo-Nazis. It started when his psychological impact of hateful speech According to the latest annual report by parents, feeling outnumbered by their and now dedicates himself to helping the California Department of Justice, new Latino neighbors, decided to move “formers” change, just as he did. It can there was an 11.2 percent rise last year out of his childhood home. Around that take months or even years to help reform in crimes committed against people based time, a black gang member shot Zaal’s a neo-Nazi, and even then, the shame of on their race or ethnicity, with attacks older brother, whom he had looked up having belonged to a hate group lingers. against African-Americans coming in first to, on the street. Zaal’s anger and grief Or rather, it comes back to haunt you and Latinos second. acted on him like a call to arms and every time you see yourself reflected in Faced with those numbers, Timothy became his way of making sense through the day’s news, or in the graffiti scrawled Zaal told me over the phone that he’s perpetuating the violence. Before long, on a port-a-potty.

www.hcn.org High Country News 29 BOOKS Stanley Crawford’s lesson

Dixon, New Mexico-based author Stanley Crawford defies most of the stereotypes of a “Western American Writer.” He’s more likely to wear sandals than cowboy boots. He owns a pickup truck, but his automo- tive passion is for working on impractical yet dapper vintage European cars; his most recent project was the restoration of a 1984 Citroen Deux Chevaux. His latest aspiration is to compete in the 2018 Brompton World Championship, a decorous folding-bike race held every summer in St. James Park, London, at which gentlemen are required to wear a jacket, shirt and tie. Despite, or perhaps because of, the glee he takes in flouting the usual image of a Western writer, Crawford has earned a reputation as one of the most original and incisive authors writing about the region today. His memoirs Mayordomo and A Garlic Testament are celebrated for their droll yet humane reflections on how their author’s quixotic notions of the independence involved in a part- time agricultural career were upended by the complex reality he encountered: the communal modes of life and farming still practiced in his largely Hispanic community. But Crawford stayed on and Village adapted, and he has written and farmed Stanley Crawford, with his dogs Tesoro and Tippie on his El Bosque Garlic Farm Stanley Crawford in Dixon for nearly five decades now. His in Dixon, New Mexico. Don Usner 256 pages, most recent novel, Village, chronicles a hardcover: $26. day in the life of San Marcos, a fictional Leaf Storm Press, 2017. village that resonates with Dixon as enous inhabitants who preceded them, cause la gente had stopped taking care of surely as Thomas McGuane’s creation and Village pulls no punches in exploring their gardens.” “Deadrock” echoes the real town of Liv- that rift. This matter-of-fact response to ingston, Montana. “Part of living in a multicultural apocalyptic thinking carries a lesson in Village marks a departure in Craw- society is the necessity of imagining who its apparent non sequitur. “Anglos who ford’s career as a novelist. Eclectic in your neighbors are,” Crawford told me, move here have to learn something,” theme, style and setting, Crawford’s first acknowledging the risks inherent in the says Crawford, adding wryly, “though eight novels deliver intimate portraits attempt. In taking those imaginative some don’t.” of a series of doomed but lovable mis- risks, and narrating the inner lives of his The “something” that must be learned fits as they try to negotiate a space for Chicana/o characters, Crawford tells a is perhaps what Lázaro has to teach: that themselves in a world that refuses to story that confronts the ongoing histories we can only hope to survive the calami- conform to their vision. With Village, that divide us without regarding them as ties of our history and future if we attend Crawford weaves the bifurcated themes insurmountable. to the often unseen and unpaid labor of his fiction and nonfiction into a quiet The thread that literally and figura- we do for each other. The chores that masterpiece. tively connects the lives of these charac- provide a village with water, the care The story of San Marcos is narrated ters is the Acequia de los Hermanos, the of our elders and children, our devotion by a cast of dysfunctional loners: a Spanish-era irrigation ditch that makes to small things, vital and beautiful, like Chicano postmaster intent on sabotag- life in San Marcos possible while serv- gardens — this is the work necessary to ing the employer he regards as a hostile ing as its most reliable source of anxiety build and maintain a community that occupying power, an Anglo toymaker and strife. Over the course of the spring might endure. who has been trying to eke out an day narrated in the novel, the acequia When the sun sets on San Marcos at existence without paying taxes (or even is nursed back to life for the season by the conclusion of Village, nothing has re- having a Social Security card) follow- Lázaro Quintana, the aging mayor- ally been settled; we are left with neither ing his failure as a 1960s radical, and domo who oversees its maintenance and a happy ending nor a tragic but dramati- a ne’er-do-well with an almost erotic operation. cally satisfying conclusion. Crawford is desire to be in car accidents, among As Lázaro coaxes the water down- not a writer who peddles easy fixes, others. Haunted by violent histories and stream, clearing errant roots, beaver falls either for his village or the world beyond. Alex Trimble Young is troubled by visions of future apocalypse, and human detritus, some local evangeli- Instead, he provides us with something a scholar of American these characters nevertheless manage cals interrupt his work. These proselytiz- far more valuable: the humor and grace literature and culture. to carve out an anarchic communal life ers paint a lurid picture of the disasters to face the absurdities and catastrophes He teaches in the in the present. occurring in the world, insisting that they of a new day with the knowledge that we Honors College Northern New Mexico is a place with foretell the end times. Pondering these do not face them alone. at Arizona State a palpable divide between recent Anglo calamities, Lázaro silently concludes, University. interlopers and the Chicana/o and Indig- “They were probably happening … be- By Alex Trimble Young

30 High Country News November 27, 2017 Eyssa Remembering Katie Lee The ‘Grande Dame of the West’ passes on

By Craig Childs

I’ve been writing about my old friend Katie Lee, the ink still drying on two Lately, recent books. Foul-mouthed, unforgiv- ing foe of Glen Canyon Dam, guitar player, singer-songwriter, author and dauntless conservationist, she brought color to more than my writing, electrifying everything she touched. Trying to describe a slickrock Utah landscape, I called it “as curved and defined as Katie Lee perched like a goddess in Glen Canyon’s cathedrals. What paper map could ever compare?” I thought Katie Lee would live forever. It never crossed my mind she wouldn’t be here to read the words I wrote. Katie died Nov. 1, 2017, in Jerome, Arizona, at 98. She died in the bed of the house she shared with Joey van Leeuwen, a weathered, lanky Dutchman she met in western Australia. She was 59, he was 12 years younger, and it was love at first sight for both: He came out to meet her, she said, wearing only shorts, his viney body sun-browned by the Outback. The memory of that moment still made her flush. In old age, the two leaned on each other like ancient trees, saying they could not live without each other. The day after she died, Joey took his own life. To reach their home, you followed the narrow, winding highway that switchbacks through Jerome. A big wooden sign over the door of the light blue house urged you, boldly, to SING. And the house sang — filled with the life-size wooden birds Joey carved and painted, some perched on bookshelves, some hang- ing from the ceiling, turning slowly in the air. A performer till the end, Katie Lee swore at her audiences, then ensnared them by singing, her guitar around her neck like a troubadour. I knew what she’d do when I saw her — throw her old bony arms around me, then grab my face with her open palms for a kiss. If we had the time, we would sit and talk about Ben Moon the shape of rock and canyons in the country that stole her heart. Once, a decade and a half ago, Katie Lee spread pre-1963 Born in Tucson in 1919, Katie graduated from the Univer- topo maps across her living room floor, reassembling the broken sity of Arizona with a fine arts degree, and moved to Hollywood bones of Glen Canyon. She had a story about every bend, and in 1948 to pursue a career as a stage and screen actress. She began to cry, putting her hand to her mouth. After so many turned to cabaret performances, appearing at the old Gate of years, it still hurt that her beloved canyons were drowned below Horn Club in Chicago, New York’s Blue Angel, and San Fran- Powell, hundreds of miles of side-canyons buried. She refused cisco’s historic “hungry i” nightclub. She took her first river trip to use the word “lake.” Lake Powell, she said, is an abomina- on June 15, 1953, through the Grand Canyon, which at the time tion. The license plate on her Prius reads DAM DAM. Her maps flowed free, no dam at the mouth of Glen Canyon. She returned resurrected the world before the dam flooded the Colorado and many times over the years to run the elegant, calm-water its tributaries. No 250-square-mile reservoir, the only blue on stretch of Glen Canyon just upstream of Grand Canyon. In the the paper the course of the river as it wriggled around sandbars, 1960s and 1970s, she was the jewel of the Colorado mountain falling into canyon shadow below alcoves perched high up in the ski towns, performing as a folksinger. She lived for a while in Navajo sandstone. Aspen — “a glamour puss with a vintage Thunderbird,” in the Talking about the dam, she’d growl, schooling you with her words of local writer Su Lum. She stayed until the place got voice. The rest of the world, its interstates and smokestacks, she too damn rich; pissed at all that gentrifying glitz, she left with flicked away with her hand. When she wasn’t angry, she had a her usual panache, trailing strings of cuss words and goodbye sweet, squeaky drawl, and she spoke as if she were dreaming. kisses. At the age of 59, Katie spent a year vagabonding around Her hands rose in the air, outlining bays and elegant troughs in the world. That’s how she met Joey, a bird-lover who worked the rock. Craig Childs is an at a furniture factory in Perth. In 1978, they settled in Jerome, With both of them gone, a day apart, I search the November author and long-time contributor to High Joey with his long arborist’s fingers and a smile that used every night sky. There ought to be a new constellation, tall Joey hold- Country News. He lives muscle in his face, fierce Katie Lee with her singsong voice and ing Katie as she leans into him, their stars burning overhead as outside of Norwood, careless gift for enchantment. they float the river of the Milky Way. Colorado.

www.hcn.org High Country News 31 U.S. $5 | Canada $6

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY Betsy Marston

ALASKA ARIZONA It’s better not to mess with a macho moose when Facts have found a fan in Susan Bolton, a senior he’s in the mood to make whoopee. As Alberta U.S. District Court judge for Arizona. In a recent Laktonen watched from across the street, a rut- ruling, she said that despite receiving a pardon ting bull moose head-butted her Toyota Prius from President Donald Trump, former Maricopa and then turned its attention to her mailbox, County Sheriff Joe Arpaio may not tell the world whirling around to crash its antlers against the that he was never criminally convicted. Arpaio metal. Both targets remained standing, though had been charged with illegally ordering his the car suffered an estimated $5,600 in damage, department to target and arrest anyone who reports The Week magazine. This is actually looked Mexican-American, and despite being or- typical behavior for a young bull seeking a mate, dered by a judge to stop, he continued his “racial said a spokesman for Alaska’s Department of profiling,” reports the Arizona Star. But Bolton, Fish and Game. “Basically, it means their hor- whom a colleague describes as an “impeccable mones are raging.” judge,” said that a presidential pardon does WYOMING We hope it’s big enough. Don Crecelius not mean that Arpaio can expunge his criminal COLORADO record. “The power to pardon is an executive For Katelyn Zak, 29, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and prerogative of mercy, not of judicial record- Beth Rittenhouse, 28, from Boulder, Colorado, the culprit: Call 800-972-TIPS or go online at keeping,” Bolton wrote, and a pardon does not a day hike had unintended consequences. The TipSubmit.com. “revise the historical facts of this case.” Arpaio, women, who had never met, were each hik- On the other hand, Gail Binkley, editor of who served no time in jail because of Trump’s ing solo on the Dark Canyon loop not far from the Four Corners Free Press, learned a lot about pardon, has said he will sue to have Bolton’s Crested Butte. They ran into each other on the neighborliness after a sudden squall swept decision overturned. trail as the sun was setting and the night was through Cortez. She and her husband were at getting cooler. And that’s when they realized home, when suddenly “there was a loud crack!” THE WEST they were in a fix: They were miles from their close by: A microburst had ripped a 50-foot-tall Is a live bobcat worth a thousand times more than destination and thought they might be lost. But blue spruce completely out of the ground, yank- a dead one? Absolutely, says Biodiversity and they got lucky, says Colorado Central Magazine: ing the tree’s roots up from under the concrete Conservation, an international science journal. “They stumbled upon an outfitter’s drop camp, driveway. The fallen giant completely enveloped True, a hunter or trapper in Wyoming pays complete with a tent, firewood, cots, food and her car and blocked the front door. Binkley $130.53 for a license, and might earn $184.64 a lighter, where they spent the night.” And the barely managed to squeeze out, only to find by selling the pelt. But a bobcat living freely for next morning, they met two locals who gave the porch filled with broken limbs and bristly a year in Yellowstone National Park is such a them food and directed them back to the trail- needles. Then something wonderful happened: valuable tourist attraction that it has a value head, where, by another coincidence, they found “People started appearing” — not her immediate of $308,105. This analysis of the economic their cars parked side by side. “It was bizarre, neighbors but folks from blocks away. “Everyone impact of wildlife came from two nonprofits, absolutely bizarre,” commented Mount Crested oohed and aahed over the giant tree. And then Wyominguntrapped.org and the international Butte police officer Matt Halverson, in the Gun- they set to work.” In short order the volunteers Panthera.org, dedicated to preserving wild cats. nison Country Times. chain-sawed the tree’s strewn limbs while other A hunter near Vail, Colorado, was less people she’d never met arrived in pickups to fortunate in October. He’d spent several days carry off the wood, destined for the landfill the WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see in the backcountry before successfully bagging next day. Before long, her car was freed, she hcn.org. could open her front door and the tree had been a large 6x6 bull — meaning one with a total of Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and reduced to a stump. Says a grateful Binkley: 12 antler points. He’d made several trips to his often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag truck to pack out the elk, says the Vail Daily, “They didn’t know me, what religion I was, or photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram. but on the final one, he discovered that a thief what political affiliation I might have. They had made off with his trophy elk’s antlered asked nothing in return. They simply saw an head. There’s a $1,000 reward for helping to find opportunity to help, and took it.”

High Arby’s might put a piece of meat between Country two pieces of bread and call it venison, but News “ For people who care about the West. I don’t think that piece of meat High Country News covers the important issues and stories that are unique to the American West with a deserves the name. magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, Brian Sexton, in his essay, “The fast food industry is co-opting venison,” hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write from Writers” on the Range, hcn.org/wotr High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

32 High Country News November 27, 2017