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COAL PLANT CLOSING | GRIZZLY TRANSPLANTS? | SOUTHWEST RIVER RETURNS High Country ForN people whoews care about the West THE TREE RING March 20, 2017 | $5 | Vol. 49 No. 5 | www.hcn.org 49 No. | $5 Vol. March 20, 2017 How a landmark investigation stopped a Washington timber-poaching gang | By Ben Goldfarb CONTENTS Editor’s note Barbecues, large and small Whenever I feel a bit down about the fact that, after electing a billionaire president who campaigned on promises to help the working class, we are now fighting a breathtakingly brazen attempt to enact the agenda of corporate America, I find it helpful to remember that we’ve seen all of this — or at least some of it — before. Mark Twain called the late 1800s the “Gilded Age.” Historian Vernon Parrington, however, preferred the more cynical term “The Great Barbecue,” referring to the government’s brutal seizure of the West’s lands and their subsequent giveaway to white settlers, land speculators, and railroad, mining and timber barons. “Congress had rich gifts to bestow — in lands, tariffs, subsidies, favors of all sorts,” wrote Parrington, “and when influential citizens made their wishes known to the reigning statesmen, the sympathetic A bigleaf maple tree in Capitol Forest near Olympia, Washington. Tree poachers have scraped bark politicians were quick to turn the government into from its surface to reveal the quilted figure they covet, leading investigators to suspect the fairy godmother the voters wanted it to be. A COURTESY ANNE MINDEN it might have been the poachers’ next target. huge barbecue was spread to which all presumably were invited.” FEATURE One hundred years later, in the 1980s, the next course was served by the Reagan Revolution. As 12 The Tree Ring By Ben Goldfarb Contributing Editor Cally Carswell reports on page 9, Reagan’s pick to head the Environmental Protection How a landmark investigation busted Agency, Anne Gorsuch (the mother of Neil Gorsuch, a Washington timber-poaching gang Donald Trump’s current Supreme Court nominee) led the charge to slash her own agency’s budget and On the cover CURRENTS relax pollution standards. Scott Pruitt, the Trump administration’s new EPA administrator, has staked Conservation scientist 5 The West’s coal giant is going down Arizona power plant closure Shiloh Halsey makes out an eerily similar path. his way across the will leave cleaner air and wounded economies As this administration scuttles regulations on downed logs and 7 Where the wild things swim — again In a borderlands river, everything from the oil and gas industry to drug abandoned chunks of improved water quality allows an endangered fish to return manufacturers and bankers, and pushes a budget bigleaf maple in the that would bloat the military while starving programs 7 Slaughterhouse in The Latest: Nevada rancher Wayne Hage designed to help people and the environment, it is clear the Gifford Pinchot 8 National Forest, site Return of the grizzly? Feds consider transplanting bears that the Big Barbecue never really ended. Many of our of a timber theft to Washington’s North Cascades fellow citizens are still eagerly begging for scraps. investigation. 9 Reagan-era redux? Pruitt isn’t the first EPA administrator The people illegally cutting valuable bigleaf TERRAY SYLVESTER who appears to be hostile to its very mission maple and selling the wood to small mills in the Pacific Northwest, featured in Ben Goldfarb’s cover 9 The Latest: Idaho megaloads story, are a far cry from the timber barons of yore. Many are locals working to feed their families or their DEPARTMENTS drug habits, living in rural communities where the good-paying timber jobs have long since dried up. It’s 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG hard to feel too angry at them, but there has to be a 4 LETTERS better way to get by. Will President Trump honor his commitment to Complete access 10 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends help people like this? So far, the prospects appear to subscriber-only dim. There’s been a lot more focus on reducing content 20 MARKETPLACE constraints on Big Business than there has been HCN’s website 24 WRITERS ON THE RANGE on rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure or, for that hcn.org Montana deals with its antiquated laws on rape By Gabriel Furshong matter, providing rural people with jobs restoring Digital edition 25 BOOKS our forests and waterways. In the meantime, we still hcne.ws/digi-4905 have laws that rein in the excesses of capitalism and The Naturalist: Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of American Natural affirm our rights to a clean environment and equal History by Darrin Lunde and Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Follow us treatment. Judging by the mounting protests and the Land of America, by Douglas Brinkley. Reviewed by Barbara Basbanes Richter lawsuits, and the news media’s renewed vigor, those 26 ESSAY Arctic owling By Krista Langlois laws won’t be easily undone. @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Paul Larmer, executive director/publisher 2 High Country News March 20, 2017 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG Can Western governors Trending get what they want from Farmers say Scott Pruitt? Clean Water Just a few days in office, Rule goes Scott Pruitt, the new administrator of the too far Environmental Protection In an opinion piece for Agency, hosted an The Conversation, an early Sunday morning HCN partner, Reagan breakfast for 11 Western Waskom and David J. governors. He told Cooper from Colo- them that, under his rado State University leadership, the EPA will EPA take stock of which defer to states far more Administrator waters the Clean than it has in the past. Scott Pruitt. Water Rule protects. That message resonated In February, President with the Western governors, across political Donald Trump issued lines. Western governors from both parties an executive order to felt the Obama administration’s EPA failed revise the rule. With or to adequately consult the states as it crafted without it, ambiguities some important environmental regulations, in the Clean Water such as the 2015 Clean Water Rule. “We Rule have created Data mosaics show brightness and artificial light measurements taken from Ashurst Lake in believe (Pruitt’s EPA) will partner with states regulatory uncertainty Arizona’s Coconino National Forest and northeastern Colorado’s Soapstone Prairie Natural Area. in a way that’s meaningful,” says Nephi Cole, for farmers, ranchers NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead’s policy advisor, and developers. If the “in a way that, quite frankly, the previous Trump administration Chasing clear skies administration did not.” While the Western withdraws or weakens In some less-populated places, the Milky Way’s are making an effort to limit light pollution. governors break out of the hyper-partisanship the rule, regulators are glow can be seen on any clear night. But for many “Everything has its time and place, and the same is and see a partner in Pruitt, potential major likely to interpret case- of us, seeing the splendors of the night sky means true of light and darkness,” astronomy author Bob budget cuts to the EPA may give Pruitt less by-case whether tribu- traveling far outside city limits to a place away Berman recently told NBC. “There is a place for leeway to respond to state needs. taries and adjacent from streetlights and other artificial illumination. darkness, and, I think that is slowly being realized.” ELIZABETH SHOGREN waters are covered, Now, many national parks and Western cities JODI PETERSON MORE: hcne.ws/dimmer-switch MORE: hcne.ws/partnering-pruitt as they have since 2006. Repealing the rule won’t answer the underlying question: Audio We did start the fire Human and natural wildfire ignitions How far upstream By studying Forest Service records, University of in the U.S. (1992-2012) federal protection Colorado-Boulder researchers found that 84 percent extends. of the 1.5 million wildfires that burned nationally from 1992 to 2012 were lit by humans, not You say including controlled burns intentionally lit for fire RUTHANNE ISBELL: management. In total, humans started more than “Farmers are 1.2 million fires. Even in parts of the country where concerned with the lightning strikes cause the most fires — such as environment, too, the Intermountain West — humans have increased and not all think the number and size of fires, and the length of the the (Environmental BROOKE WARREN/HCN season, by three months on average. Fires primarily Protection Agency) ignite in areas where humans butt up against the # of fires should be abolished.” wild: roads, encroaching cities and the edges of “When there’s no 0-25 agricultural fields. Each year, most ignitions happen MICHAEL STIEHL: 26-100 rehab facilities, on July 4, with 7,762 fires burning in 21 years. “The implications 101-300 what happens is MAYA L. KAPOOR Percent human ignitions 0 250 500 could have dramatic MORE: hcne.ws/longer-fireseason 301-700 effects on interstate people get arrested, km 0 50 100 >700 BETHANY BRADLEY/UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST and that’s their first compacts, such as the Colorado River respite of sobriety. Compact, which sup- … As a result, Craig From flake to flow plies water from the is having to expand The Western snowpack is an icy natural headwaters states its jail for people reservoir that delivers most of the region’s to such population centers as Los Angeles that are there more water. But the amount of moisture in snow varies. Monitoring how wet snow is across an and also the Imperial increasingly for drug entire landscape — information essential for Valley, not to mention crimes.” forecasting water supplies and flood potential Phoenix.“ —Paige Blankenbuehler, — is difficult.