THE TREE RING March 20, 2017 | $5 | Vol

COAL PLANT CLOSING | GRIZZLY TRANSPLANTS? | SOUTHWEST RIVER RETURNS

High Country ForN people whoews care about the West

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 7 that would bloat the military while starving programs 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. To figure out how to do it, about IRENE HAMILTON: speaking on the “West a hundred researchers converged on snowy, “Hope farmers aren’t Obsessed” podcast flat-topped Grand Mesa, in western Colorado, getting scapegoated. about how she for an ambitious scientific treasure hunt in Where does the puzzle investigated opioid February. They took measurements and tested piece of fracking fit in addiction in rural dozens of instruments, looking for the optimum this ruling? Or does it?” Colorado for her Feb. 20 suite of sensors to survey “the holy grail” of MORE: hcne.ws/ cover story “Overdosed.” snow-sensing research: the amount of water water-regs and KATE SCHIMEL held within the snow. Facebook.com/ MORE: hcne.ws/ Hydrology technician Andrew Hedrick cuts wedges of snow from a EMILY BENSON highcountrynews opioid-podcast pit on Grand Mesa in western Colorado. BROOKE WARREN/HIGH COUNTRY NEWS MORE: hcne.ws/know-your-snow

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 REHAB FOR PROFIT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER Paul Larmer Your article “Overdosed” in the Feb. 20 EDITOR IN CHIEF issue was accurate and well-researched, Brian Calvert and it is a story that has played out SENIOR EDITOR across the nation. As a recently retired Jodi Peterson general practitioner in Palmer, Alaska, ART DIRECTOR Cindy Wehling I had 41 years of practice to witness the DEPUTY EDITOR, DIGITAL formation of our addicted, chronic-pain Kate Schimel and disability culture. More and more ASSOCIATE EDITORS Tay Wiles, patients require huge amounts of opi- Maya L. Kapoor ASSISTANT EDITOR oids for pain control following surgery Paige Blankenbuehler due to their extremely high tolerance to D.C. CORRESPONDENT painkillers. Elizabeth Shogren Back in 1974, when I started WRITERS ON THE RANGE EDITOR Betsy Marston practice in the then-mostly rural and ASSOCIATE DESIGNER agricultural community of Palmer, we Brooke Warren saw our occasional Valium, Quaalude, COPY EDITOR Demerol and amphetamine diet-pill Diane Sylvain CONTRIBUTING EDITORS seekers, but nothing of the magnitude

Cally Carswell, Sarah seen today. Pain as the “fifth vital sign” BAGLEY PAT Gilman, Ruxandra Guidi, came into existence along with the Glenn Nelson, Michelle Nijhuis, expectation of reducing all pain, usually lenges. The program I created for the As their livelihoods suffer, I suspect they Jonathan Thompson with opioids. In the ’70s, there weren’t Forest Service is called “Lead Forward,” would complain to their representatives CORRESPONDENTS the megadose pain-clinic pill mills, just and we recruit veterans and place them about the negative consequences their Krista Langlois, Sarah Tory, Joshua Zaffos a few doctors with the reputation of be- in seasonal jobs for the Forest Service policy positions have on the Utah tour- EDITORIAL FELLOW ing loose prescribers. that include wildland firefighting as ist industry. It may not change things Anna V. Smith Unethical doctors have seen good well as recreation and biology. It has overnight, but history (South Africa) has INTERNS Emily Benson, money in pill-mill storefront pain clinics been a very successful program, and we shown that it is one of the few things that Rebecca Worby DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR with their “pain contracts,” urine drug have placed over 100 veterans, many gets the attention of the so-called leaders. Laurie Milford tests and monthly clinic visits. Little po- with disabilities, into jobs over the last Although I have spent many won- PHILANTHROPY ADVISOR licing has been done by the DEA or our three years. In this era of politics and derful days traipsing through southern Alyssa Pinkerton state medical board, except in severely government, when most of what the gov- Utah, I will defer any future trips to DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT Christine List egregious cases. Perhaps the best solu- ernment does is viewed negatively, this this beautiful part of the country until SUBSCRIPTIONS MARKETER tion given our present pro-business and is a positive example of the federal gov- the Utah delegation backs off from its JoAnn Kalenak anti-consumer protection administration ernment doing great things to protect extreme policy positions on public lands. WEB DEVELOPER Eric Strebel is for Big Pharma and the associated our wildlands while also helping veter- And if I have to drive through Utah to DATABASE/IT ADMINISTRATOR enabling organizations to face the indi- ans. In particular, wildland firefighting get to other states, I will fill my tank at Alan Wells DIRECTOR OF ENGAGEMENT vidual and class action suits that Big To- jobs have proven to be a great fit for the Colorado border so as not to have to Gretchen King bacco experienced. Awards may help the many veterans who were drifting before spend one cent in Utah. FINANCE MANAGER already addicted with detox and rehab, they came to us. They’re tapping into John Scahill Beckie Avera but those facilities are in short supply. skills such as leadership, team cohesion ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Pagosa Springs, Colorado Jan Hoffman I’m willing to bet that these facilities and rapid decision-making — skills that CIRCULATION MANAGER will become the next big money-making they learned in the military that also Tammy York project for a new for-profit industry, with have very real applications for wildland URBAN ECOSYSTEMS ARE CIRCULATION SYSTEMS ADMIN. enough desperate families with financial firefighting. DIMINISHED ECOSYSTEMS Kathy Martinez means or insurance coverage wanting to CIRCULATION Dan Cottrell, Director, Lead Forward Being trained in plant ecology, I enjoy help their addicted loved ones. Of course, Kati Johnson, Pam Peters, Veterans Hiring Program HCN’s well-balanced reporting of issues Doris Teel prescribing habits of all providers need Missoula, Montana relating to that subject. The inclusion ADVERTISING DIRECTOR to be reined in. We’ve contributed to the David J. Anderson of Emma Marris’ review of Nathanael problem, knowingly or not, with our own GRANTWRITER Janet Reasoner BOYCOTT UTAH Johnson’s Unseen City in the Feb. 20 prescription pads. [email protected] issue is an example. I agree that urban I applaud and support key recreational [email protected] David P. Werner, MD wildlife systems are ecosystems in [email protected] industry leaders who have pulled out Palmer, Alaska their own right, and they contain many [email protected] of the Outdoor Retailer shows in Salt beautiful wonders, if we are willing to [email protected] Lake City (“Outdoor rec industry defends VETERANS ON THE LAND look for them. Yet at the same time we FOUNDER Tom Bell public lands,” HCN, 2/20/17). As an indi- might want to remember that these BOARD OF DIRECTORS Regarding the article “River of Healing” vidual, I can also play a role in swaying John Belkin, Colo. urban ecosystems are simple, much less in the Feb. 6 issue, as a Forest Service the policy opinions of the Utah delega- Chad Brown, Ore. diverse, much more unstable, and far Beth Conover, Colo. smokejumper and wildland firefighter tion regarding protection of public lands. less productive of the so-called “services” Jay Dean, Calif. who runs a veterans’ hiring program, I And that role is to spend my recreational Bob Fulkerson, Nev. upon which humans rely, than the rela- can attest to the fact that many veter- dollars in states other than Utah. If Wayne Hare, Colo. tively undisturbed ecosystems we find Laura Helmuth, Md. ans thrive in pursuits that bring them enough outdoor recreationists adopted in our national parks, for example. John Heyneman, Wyo. close to nature and replicate aspects of this position, they would collectively have Osvel Hinojosa, Mexico Samaria Jaffe, Calif. their military careers, such as team- a negative financial impact on local com- Stephen Fischer Nicole Lampe, Ore. work, shared goals and physical chal- munities adjacent to these public lands. Los Angeles, California Marla Painter, N.M. Bryan Pollard, Ark. Raynelle Rino, Calif. Estee Rivera Murdock, D.C. High Country News is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Printed on Dan Stonington, Wash. recycled paper. Rick Tallman, Colo. High independent media organization that covers the Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post offices. Luis Torres, N.M. Country issues that define the American West. Its mission is POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All Andy Wiessner, Colo. to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Florence Williams, D.C. News region’s diverse natural and human communities. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155 | hcn.org 4 High Country News March 20, 2017 CURRENTS The West’s coal giant is going down Arizona power plant closure will leave cleaner air and wounded economies

BY JONATHAN THOMPSON

he smokestacks of the Navajo T Generation Station rise 775 feet from the sere landscape of the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona, just three miles away from the serpentine, stagnant blue wound in sandstone known as Lake Powell. Red- rock cliffs and the dark hump of Navajo Mountain loom in the background. Since construction began in 1969, the coal plant and its associated mine on Black Mesa have provided millions of dollars to the Navajo and Hopi tribes and hundreds of jobs to local communities, as well as electricity to keep the lights on and air condi- tioners humming in the metastasizing cit- a severe beating. Both tribes got the short and mine. Those royalties, bonus pay- The Navajo Generating ies of Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas and Los end of the stick — a royalty rate of just ments and water-use fees amounted to Station, a 2250 Angeles. Yet they also stand as symbols of 3.3 percent — when Peabody Coal first $54 million in 2015, paid to the Hopi Tribe megawatt coal-fired the exploitation of Native Americans, of obtained the leases to mine Black Mesa and the Navajo Nation by the owners of power plant on the destruction of the land and the sully- in the 1960s. The attorney representing both the Navajo Generating Station and the Navajo Indian ing of the air, all to provide cheap power to the Hopi Tribe, John Boyden, was actu- the Kayenta Coal Mine. Reservation near Page, the Southwest. Arizona, is scheduled ally on Peabody’s payroll at the time, and Peabody Western Coal Company and But coal power is no longer the best to shut down in 2019. managed to get a sham tribal government the Salt River Project — the plant’s ope- energy bargain. And in mid-February, JANICE AND NOLAN BRAUD / to sign over mining rights against the ob- rator — donate around $1.7 million each the plant’s four private utility owners, led ALAMY jections of traditional Hopis, as has been year to local scholarships and charity. by the Salt River Project, voted to shut it thoroughly chronicled by Colorado writer The Kayenta Coal Mine buys $9.9 million down at the end of 2019, some 25 years and law professor Charles Wilkinson. The dollars worth of electricity yearly from the ahead of schedule. When the giant tur- mines — Black Mesa and Kayenta — Navajo Tribal Utility Authority. Before bines come to a halt and the towers topple forced families to relocate, destroyed graz- the closure announcement, the plant’s in the coming years, the plant will become ing land, dried up springs and wrecked owners and the Navajo Nation had been a new symbol, this time of a transforming ancestral Hopi shrines and other sites. renegotiating the lease, which runs out energy economy and an evolving electrical The tribes fought back and eventu- in 2019, to make it more favorable for the grid that is slowly rendering these soot- ally negotiated better terms. Both tribes tribe. Peabody also hoped to expand the stained mechanical megaliths obsolete. now rely heavily on royalty and lease pay- mine. The closure will deeply wound local ments from the mine and the power plant, Yet without the Navajo Generating economies, particularly in Page, LeChee, even as tribal members fight against the Station, one of the biggest polluters in Kaibeto and Kayenta. Employment num- polluting and water-gulping ways of plant the West, the air, water and land of the bers fluctuate, but according to an environmental impact statement prepared to analyze the previously planned 2019 The Desert Southwest’s changing energy mix renewal of the plant’s lease, the Navajo 100% Generating Station, the Kayenta Coal Mine on Black Mesa and the 78-mile electric railroad that carries coal from the 75% 3% mine to the plant employed 935 workers 10% 29% in 2014. Ninety percent of them are Na- 50% tive American. The average payroll ex- penditure per employee (wages, salaries, et generation 25% benefits, etc.) is $141,500. 53% 40% The operating budgets of the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe will also take Share of n Share 0% 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 Jonathan Thompson is a contributing editor at High Country News. He is currently writing a Coal Combined cycle natural gas Geothermal/solar/wind All other (includes hydro, book about the Gold King Mine spill. other natural gas  @jonnypeace SOURCE: EIA; NREL REPORT ON NAVAJO GENERATING STATION AND FEDERAL RESOURCE PLANNING, 2016. generation)

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 Colorado Plateau will be far cleaner. Each which delivers Colorado River water to integrated utilities that own huge, cen- year, the plant and the mine emit nearly Arizona cities. To move about 1.6 million tralized power stations and their own bal- 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, acre-feet of water annually, the pumps use kanized grids are giving way to a new era methane and other greenhouse gases. The about 3 million megawatt-hours of juice, in which utilities purchase power gener- plant also spews sulfur dioxide, nitrous enough to power about 240,000 Arizona ated by smaller plants that are connected oxides and thousands of pounds of mercu- homes. to larger, regional grids. ry, selenium and arsenic. These elements, Navajo Nation President Russell California’s independent grid opera- which are toxic to humans and wildlife, Begaye pleaded with President Donald tor has already joined up with NV Energy, have shown up in relatively high con- Trump to do something to keep the plant PacifiCorp and other Western utilities to centrations in fish in the Grand Canyon open, but apart from purchasing the en- form an energy imbalance market, which and the San Juan River upstream from tire plant and operating it at a loss, there’s allows the utilities to share generators — Lake Powell, as well as in precipitation little the federal government can do. whether wind, solar, natural gas or coal at Mesa Verde National Park. Meanwhile, That’s because economics, not regulations, — to “balance” their grids in real time, the plant produces about 1.3 million tons are driving the plant’s closure. Salt River rather than having to rely only on their of solid waste, most of which is dumped Project officials note that it’s now cheaper own generators. These utilities are hoping nearby. for them to buy power for their 1 million to expand this market and then take it to Natural gas burns far more cleanly customers from other sources than it is to the next level of a regional, integrated grid than coal, so if all of the lost power gen- generate power at Navajo, thanks mostly in coming years. The closure of the Navajo eration is replaced with natural gas-gen- to low natural gas prices. A November Generating Station adds new urgency to erated electricity, then greenhouse gases 2016 study by the National Renewable this effort, and a more integrated grid will would be cut in half and the particulates Energy Laboratory found that the Cen- ease the utilities’ transition away from the and other emissions cut to almost zero. tral Arizona Project pays about 15 percent plant. Natural gas production, however, like coal more for electricity from the power plant The decision to close the plant came as production, emits methane, a powerful than it would if it bought power wholesale a surprise. The plant’s owners had been greenhouse gas, along with other poten- from the Mead trading hub located near negotiating a new lease with the Navajo tially harmful hydrocarbons. Las Vegas. Nation and considering shutting one of The plant also plays a huge role in None of this will change even if Trump three units and replacing it with other the Southwest’s water-energy nexus. The rolls back regulations put in place by the energy sources. Meanwhile, the mine was Kayenta Coal Mine draws about 1,200 Obama administration. In fact, if a drill- looking to expand. Outright closure this acre-feet of groundwater annually from heavy energy policy goes into effect, it soon was not on anyone’s radar, so there the Navajo Aquifer for various uses. The will increase natural gas supplies, thus is no firm transition plan in place. Both People collect hunks Navajo Generating Station, meanwhile, further increasing the spread between the Bureau of Reclamation and Peabody of free coal at the pulls about 28,000 acre-feet — or 9 billion natural gas and coal. Still, environmental have expressed a desire to keep the plant Kayenta Mine, a coal gallons — of water from Lake Powell each protections do play a role, albeit a smaller running beyond 2019, but they’d have to mine that provides raw year, for steam generating and cooling. one than the economics does: California’s do it without the other owners and against material for the Navajo Some coal plants return some of the wa- move away from coal power lowers the economic headwinds. Generating Station. ter to the source; the Navajo Generating value of the plant’s power, and the re- When the Mohave Generating Station Many tribal members rely on the free coal Station does not. The Bureau of Reclama- quirement that the plant install nitrous and the Black Mesa Mine closed in 2005, to heat their homes tion owns a large fraction of the plant and oxide-reducing equipment increases costs. environmentalists and tribes pushed the during winter. uses most of its share of electricity to run The electrical landscape is evolving in California Public Utilities Commission to BRIAN LEDDY the pumps for the Central Arizona Project, other ways, as well. The days of vertically create a revolving “just transition” fund with money earned from the sale of sulfur dioxide credits from the shuttered plant. The fund, the value of which dwindled as sulfur credit prices fell, is supposed to help develop renewable energy on the reservations. There are few or no such credits available for the Navajo Generating Station, however, so that approach won’t work here. A coalition of Navajo groups that have been resisting the plant and mine for years want the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe to demand a full remediation and reclamation of the plant and mine; to push the plant owners to replace lost electricity generation by building new solar, wind or other plants on the reservations; and to take over the two high-voltage transmis- sion lines and secure the substantial water rights held by mine and plant. “I am very happy and relieved that Black Mesa Trust’s struggle to save sacred waters on Black Mesa will finally end in 2019,” said Black Mesa Trust Executive Director Vernon Masayesva in a statement. Masayesva, a former Hopi tribal chairman, has battled the mines on Black Mesa for years. “It is time to begin healing the ecological-cultural landscape.”

6 High Country News March 20, 2017 Gila topminnow. Where the wild things swim — BRUCE TAUBERT/AZGDF

again suffered from unex- THE LATEST plained skin and skeletal abnormalities. In a borderlands river, improved water quality In 2001, the Grand Canyon Chapter Backstory allows an endangered fish to return of the Sierra Club sued the EPA for fail- Starting in the ing to take action against the plant, which mid-1990s, Nevada MAYA L. KAPOOR by then served nearly 200,000 residents rancher Wayne Hage but was operating under an expired per- grazed his cows on ne clear November morning in 2015, in the cleaned-up upper Santa Cruz, along mit that it had violated 128 times in five public land without the necessary O Arizona Department of Game and with western mosquitofish. years. The 9th Circuit of Appeals ruled permits, saying his Fish biologist Ross Timmons struggled to For Claire Zugmeyer, an ecologist with against the Sierra Club, finding that the rights predated federal match the morphology of a fish that he’d the Sonoran Institute, finding an endan- EPA could decide which cases it wanted ownership. Hage, an caught in the shin-deep Santa Cruz River gered fish in clean effluent says some- to prosecute or prioritize. outspoken government with that of the western mosquitofish, an thing important for water in the West: In 2005, an 8-mile stretch of plants critic, passed away exotic species that flourishes in Arizona’s “We can stack functions,” Zugmeyer said. shading the upper Santa Cruz River died. in 2006, but his waterways. “All of a sudden I realized: “The upper Santa Cruz River, so long seen Alarmed, volunteers from Friends of the son Wayne N. Hage My God, we’ve got a Gila topminnow,” as part of a sewage system, can also be Santa Cruz River and researchers from continued the fight, Timmons said. He’d caught a federally wildlife habitat and a clean water source the University of Arizona investigated. illegally adding more cows annually — up to endangered fish, an exciting — and long- for many people.” The cause for the plants’ distress? In a 648 by 2011. In 2016, awaited — find. From its headwaters in the grasslands word, schmutzdecke. after the Supreme For almost two decades, aquatic sur- of Arizona’s San Rafael Valley, the 184- German for “dirt layer,” schmutzdecke Court declined to hear veys in southern Arizona’s upper Santa mile Santa Cruz loops into Mexico, then describes a film of bacteria and other mi- the case, an appeals croscopic life that forms in nitrogen-rich court judge ruled that water. Schmutzdecke in the Santa Cruz the Hages did indeed prevented water from percolating down need permits (“One into the soil, and plants right next to the Sagebrush Rebellion channel were dying of dehydration. flickers out — or does it?” HCN, 9/12/12). But since the treatment plant’s reno- vation, phosphorous, nitrogen and cad- Followup mium levels have decreased. Dissolved In late February, oxygen levels have increased. Groundwa- a federal district ter infiltration has improved. And fish are judge in Nevada surviving in the upper Santa Cruz again. ended the saga, Gila topminnow, 2-inch-long silvery ordering the Hages fish, once swam creeks throughout the to pay $587,294 for low deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, and “repeated willful Northern Mexico. When they were listed unauthorized as endangered in 1967, topminnow had grazing.” Chief Judge been decimated by groundwater depletion Gloria Navarro said the Hages’ livestock and by the introduced western mosquito- must be removed by fish, which eat topminnow and compete the end of March and with them for resources. cannot graze on public Ironically, the human-use history of lands within Nevada the upper Santa Cruz may now give Gila again without written Biologists and researchers conduct an annual fish survey in the Lower Santa Cruz River to topminnow an advantage over mosquito- permission from the determine which species of fish are living in the river. RANDY METCALF/PIMA COUNTY COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE fish and other non-natives. “Development federal government. and urbanized areas shed a lot more wa- Judge Navarro is also ter than wild areas,” Duncan said. “Half presiding over Cliven Cruz River had yielded grim results. Most crosses back into the United States just our rain comes in three or four storms. Bundy’s trial for the armed standoff with of the river’s water comes from binational east of Ambos Nogales (Nogales, Arizona, And there’s not a lot of vegetation holding the Bureau of Land effluent from the Nogales International and Nogales, Sonora), where it is mostly back the big floods.” Management on his Wastewater Treatment Plant. With toxic dry. More than a century of groundwater Native fish may be better adapted to Bunkerville, Nevada, levels of nitrogen, phosphorous, fecal con- pumping for irrigation and homes has con- handle those big flow pulses. In laborato- ranch in 2014. taminants and the heavy metal cadmium, verted a network of lagoons, marshes and ry studies, topminnow moved to the side ANNA V. SMITH the river was too polluted for most life. In ciénegas into a largely waterless channel of structures and turned to face artificial 2008, only two fish turned up. “Not two that fills only during rainstorms. floods, while mosquitofish, which evolved fish species,” clarified Doug Duncan, a bi- In 1972, the Nogales International in less episodic streams, tried to stay mid- ologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service. Wastewater Treatment Plant began re- flow and were washed downstream. “Two fish.” leasing treated effluent into the river Though not wild, the upper Santa In 2009, the plant completed renova- channel, creating 19 miles of perennial Cruz is key to Arizona wildlife, since tions financed by the Environmental Pro- river flanked by riparian forest. But the many species use riparian areas at least tection Agency, and in 2015, Timmons and facility struggled to keep up with increas- part of their lives. Rural communities others found eight Gila topminnow. The fol- ing amounts of wastewater. While cotton- also depend on well water from the Santa lowing year, biologists found 135. Another woods, willows and mesquite flourished Cruz. As climate change creates a hot- native species, longfin dace, has reappeared on the river’s banks, fish, invertebrates ter, drier Southwest, prioritizing uses for and amphibians dwindled in the toxic ef- clean effluent could become one of Arizo- Maya L. Kapoor is an associate editor with HCN. fluent. Fish downstream from the plant na’s growing challenges.

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 day they’ll see a viable grizzly population in the Cascades.

he draft plan offers four alternatives T for recovery, with the aim of one day achieving a population of 200 grizzlies. They range from taking no action to augmenting the population with transplanted bears from northwestern Montana and/ or south-central British Columbia. One would see the initial translocation of 10 closely monitored bears with the intention of reaching 200 within 60 to 100 years. Another would move in five to seven bears per year for up to a decade. And an expe- dited approach could lead to 200 bears in a mere 25 years. If the North Cascades bears are ever going to bounce back, says Wayne Kas- worm, acting grizzly recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it will take that kind of intervention. Though a small population has long existed on the British Columbia side of the Cascades, major river valleys, human development and railways have prevented those grizzlies from moving south across the border, says Kasworm. But trapping and moving bears can be difficult. Not all survive the stressful journey. Some slip their radio collars and wander off. Others attack Return of the grizzly? livestock or pets. Transplanting grizzlies to restore a population isn’t entirely new, Feds consider transplanting bears though — and it’s worked before. into Washington’s North Cascades In 1987, Kasworm was one of the first to propose augmenting the population in GLORIA DICKIE the Cabinet-Yaak zone, in northwestern Montana and northern Idaho, with bears from British Columbia’s Flathead Valley. A grizzly bear in n the summer of 1993, Bill Gaines, a Wildlife Service identified the North Cas- Eventually, residents and officials agreed the North Cascades I young wildlife biologist with the U.S. cades and five other areas — Yellowstone, to give it a chance, and in 1993, biologists Ecosystem, a few Forest Service in Washington state, took Selkirk, Cabinet-Yaak, Bitterroot and the captured a young female, fitted her with miles north of the U.S. a break from field work to climb in the Northern Continental Divide — as griz- a radio collar, and drove her 150 miles border in Manning Glacier Peaks Wilderness in the North zly recovery zones. Since then, most zones through the night to the Cabinet Moun- Provincial Park, Cascades. As he trekked through the re- have seen steady bear population growth tains. It was the first time a grizzly bear British Columbia. Photographed by mote, subalpine Napeequa Valley, Gaines thanks to strong state and federal man- had ever been translocated in the United remote camera in April spotted a furry face peering at him from agement and financial investment in re- States. Since then, the Fish and Wildlife 2010. behind a log some 40 feet away. It looked covery initiatives. In 1997, a recovery plan Service has introduced a total of 19 bears, B.C. MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT like a bear — cinnamon-colored, round was developed for the North Cascades and the Cabinet-Yaak population has suc- face, small ears. But was that a shoulder zone, and 10 years later, the Washington cessfully grown to over 45 individuals. hump? Gaines dropped his pack (“rather Legislature appropriated funding for an But some fear that grizzlies might stupidly,” he recalls) and tried to get a environmental analysis of grizzly restora- harm hikers, horseback riders or moun- closer look. But the creature spun around tion. But state and federal agencies were tain bikers in the North Cascades. Steve and disappeared. unable to begin work quickly, and when Darwood, a local outfitter, has been lead- “(That’s) the only time I’ve seen a bear the recession hit the following year, the ing pack trips through the Pasayten and in the Cascades where I could not say state withdrew funding for the project. Sawtooth Wilderness for 47 years. “The with certainty that it was a black bear,” The recovery plan languished, and the people I service, they don’t want to see griz- says Gaines. Although five to 10 grizzlies North Cascades grizzly seemed destined zlies here — they have a good experience supposedly roam the mountains of north- to disappear completely. without them,” he says. People should have west Washington, Gaines has snagged But in 2014, things turned around. a choice, he says; if they want to view griz- more than 700 bear hair samples with- This time, when National Park Service zlies, they can visit Yellowstone or Canada. out finding a single one. But that could and the Skagit Environmental Endow- The draft plan was open for comment change. ment Commission offered funding for through March 14, and eight open houses Following the listing of the Lower 48 an assessment, national, state and local were held across Washington in February. grizzly population under the Endangered agencies were ready. This January, the Gaines, who retired from the Forest Ser- Species Act in 1975, the U.S. Fish and environmental impact statement was re- vice in 2011, remains hopeful that these leased, along with a draft plan to return efforts will bring grizzlies to the North Gloria Dickie is a freelance science and environ- the bears to the 6.3-million-acre North Cascades. “This area is so, so wild,” he mental journalist based in Boulder, Colorado. Cascades ecosystem. Now, biologists and says, “and yet we don’t have that symbol  @GloriaDickie advocates have renewed hope that one of wilderness.”

8 High Country News March 20, 2017 his is how The New York Times de- Reagan-era redux? T scribed the EPA shortly before Gorsuch resigned: “Once noted for its efficiency and Scott Pruitt isn’t the first EPA administrator esprit, the agency is now demoralized and who appears to be hostile to its very mission virtually inert.” Gorsuch and Reagan cut the agency’s CALLY CARSWELL budget by about a quarter and its work- A “megaload” in force by nearly 20 percent. Gorsuch also Idaho. JESSICA ROBINSON / adopted a relaxed attitude toward en- NORTHWEST NEWS NETWORK n March 25, 1983, business was thinks the EPA needs to relinquish more forcement: When a New Mexico oil refin- O booming at Harry’s Liquor, Wine power to the states. ery complained in a private meeting that & Cheese, near the Environmental Some pro-environment Republicans it couldn’t afford to comply with regula- THE LATEST Protection Agency’s Washington, D.C., agree, and hope Pruitt can empower the tions requiring it to produce gasoline with headquarters. EPA employees were states to come up with innovative solu- lower lead levels, Gorsuch told the com- Backstory in the mood to party. The agency’s top tions to environmental problems. But pany it wouldn’t be penalized for flouting In 2010, energy companies planned lawyer had just resigned, the latest ca- many in the environmental community the rules. The White House declined to to send “megaloads” sualty in a purge of political appointees. regard Pruitt’s arrival at the EPA as a discipline Gorsuch, but the incident con- — shipments of oil Weeks earlier, EPA Administrator Anne hostile takeover, and fear that the Trump tributed to the perception that Gorsuch refinery equipment Gorsuch Burford had also resigned amid administration’s real goal is to dismantle was too cozy with polluters. about three times the a ballooning controversy over her man- the agency. Donald Trump said as much The issue came to a head over the size of a semi-truck — agement of the Superfund program. during the campaign, and in early March, Superfund program. Gorsuch took charge along Idaho’s Highway Agency staff celebrated by springing for the White House reportedly drafted a pro- shortly after Superfund was created to 12, a winding two-lane eight cases of champagne and six ounc- posal to cut the EPA’s staff by 20 percent clean up dangerously polluted places such road that parallels two es of Russian caviar from Harry’s. One and its budget by 25 percent. as Love Canal, New York, a community federally protected employee even took vacation time to “For someone like myself, it’s like, built on top of a toxic waste dump whose wild and scenic rivers through a national sell commemorative T-shirts to his col- ‘Oh my God, do we really have to do this residents suffered unusual illnesses and forest. Megaload leagues. They read: “I Survived the Ice again?’ ” says Pat Parenteau, a Vermont high rates of birth defects and miscarriag- opponents worried Queen’s Acid Reign.” Law School professor who was an envi- es. The agency was supposed to develop that widening the The EPA was only a decade old when ronmental advocate in D.C. in the early a priority list of polluted sites and either road and allowing the Gorsuch, as she was then known — she 1980s. Trump’s budget proposal mirrors force companies to clean them up or use shipments, headed for married Bureau of Land Management Di- the approach Gorsuch and the White money from the fund to do so itself. Alberta’s oil sands, rector Robert Burford in 1983 — became House took during President Ronald Environmentalists and congressional would obstruct traffic, its first female administrator. Gorsuch, a Reagan’s first years in office. Ultimately, Democrats believed that the cleanup prog- dump sediment into conservative state legislator from Colo- they failed to dramatically transform the ress was inexcusably slow, with penalties the rivers and turn the picturesque byway into rado, promptly embroiled the agency in a EPA, and federal environmental laws on polluters too light. At a defunct chemi- an “industrial corridor” political fight for its life. Even though have mostly survived subsequent at- cal waste processing facility in Indiana, (“Monstertruck alley,” Congress had recently expanded the tacks. But the political winds have shift- for instance, Gorsuch’s EPA allowed a HCN, 8/16/10). EPA’s workload, Gorsuch and the Rea- ed since Reagan’s time, in Congress as company to pay only a third of the cost of In 2013, the Nez gan White House cut its budget and staff. well as within the Republican Party. As cleaning up aboveground pollution, and Perce Tribe and Gorsuch derided the agency’s approach to Pruitt told the Conservation Political Ac- then granted it immunity from liability environmental environmental protection as “bean count- tion Conference last month, “The future for belowground waste. A couple years in, groups sued the U.S. ing,” saying it measured success by the ain’t what it used to be.” Please see EPA admin, page 23 Forest Service to number of enforcement actions it took block the megaloads, or regulations it issued rather than by prompting a federal judge to temporarily what they achieved. She claimed that the halt the deliveries. agency could do more for the environment with fewer resources by giving states Followup broader autonomy to decide how to curb In late January, the pollution. But many career employees, Forest Service and environmentalists and congressional the plaintiffs agreed representatives didn’t buy it, seeing Gor- on a settlement that such’s philosophy as window dressing for effectively prohibits an industry-friendly agenda to neuter future megaloads. environmental laws. In a letter to the The debate surrounding the EPA’s Idaho Transportation future is strikingly similar today as Department, the agency laid out Scott Pruitt assumes command. The for- size restrictions for mer Oklahoma attorney general made oversized shipments a name for himself by fighting what he on Highway 12 that termed the “activist agenda” of former allow for hauling President Barack Obama’s EPA. Pruitt things like logs and filed 14 lawsuits against the agency, in- farm equipment, but cluding suits to block its efforts to clear prohibit the more smog from national parks and wilder- massive megaloads. ness areas and to cut carbon emissions EMILY BENSON from power plants. Like Gorsuch, Pruitt

Anne Gorsuch Burford, pictured with her husband, Robert Burford, who was director of Contributing editor Cally Carswell writes from the Bureau of Land Management, resigned March 9, 1983, as the head of the Environmental Santa Fe, New Mexico.  @callycarswell Protection Agency because “I became the issue.” BETTMANN /GETTY IMAGES

www.hcn.org High Country News 9 THE HCN COMMUNITY

Jeff Lukas | Louisville, CO Harold C. Roth | Columbus, MT Robert Lupe | Denver, CO David Sabold | Winthrop, WA Crocus sightings, and Linda Malm | Taos, NM Andrew Scarborough | Durango, CO Richard Mandel | San Jose, CA Daniel Schaffrick | Steamboat Springs, CO Wm. M. Martin | Concord, VT Angie Schmidt | Cheyenne, WY HCN gets an editor-in-chief Clara & Roy Mason | Farmington, NM Susan Schoch | Idledale, CO Jeff Mattson & Peggy Hodgkins | Moab, UT Steve Schoenig | Davis, CA Richard Mauntel | Tucson, AZ Jerry Smith | San Jose, CA The winter weather here in Lon McCarter | Cahone, CO Robert Smith | Salt Lake City, UT Colorado continues to throw John Middleton & Susan McRory | Boulder, CO Tom Smith | Huntsville, AL us for a loop, with a generally Wayne Mollhoff | Ashland, NE Bob & Pat Smythe | Corvallis, OR snowless and unusually warm Mia Monroe & Steve Meyer | Mill Valley, CA Martha L. Somers | Flagstaff, AZ February. Signs of an early spring are popping up: tenta- Cliff & Joan Montagne | Bozeman, MT Carol Spinelli | Grand Junction, CO tive buds and a crocus or two. Mary Mumford | Santa Fe, NM Amy Stasch | Ajo, AZ Another frost is likely, though, Carroll Munz | Paradise Valley, AZ Richard Stipes & Cecilia Galindo-Stipes | so we hope the fruit trees stay Damie Nelson | Pinos Altos, NM Felton, CA dormant a while longer. Espe- Frank Nelson Jr. | Olympia, WA Marcus Taylor | Central Valley, UT William Taylor | Sacramento, CA cially the apricot tree in HCN’s Nancy R. Newman | Minneapolis, MN backyard: Slow down so we can Clayton Nichols | Ocean Park, WA Bruce & Kathleen Thompson | Arlington, WA Mark & Bonnie Thompson | Custer, SD have fruit this year! Nick & Ann Novich | Sheridan, MT Reader Dick Riger dropped Peg Thompson | Centennial, CO William Old | Boulder, CO by the office on the only snowy Forest Tilley | Fort Bragg, CA Jan & Peter Perlman | Monte Rio, CA day in February. Paonia, HCN’s Gary Upton | Evergreen, CO Joel Peterson | Mesa, AZ hometown, was a convenient Teresa Urbanowski | Wheat Ridge, CO Phil Peterson | Albuquerque, NM stop on his tour around north- Frank & Deborah Popper | Highland Park, NJ Nancy VanDamme | Fort Collins, CO ern New Mexico and southwest- Merton Preston | Santa Rosa, CA William Vandenburgh | Springfield, OR ern Colorado, where he visited Jacek Purat | Oakland, CA Jill Walton | Hamilton, TX friends, downhill skied and at- HCN’s new editor-in-chief talks Randall & Susan Putnam | Aurora, CO Alan R. Weisbrod | Friday Harbor, WA tended contra dance camp, ac- during an editorial meeting about Richard Quackenbush | Oregon City, OR Grant Wiegert | Luray, VA tivities he’s had plenty of time the best way to tell deep stories about the West while staying on top Ted A. Raczek | San Jose, CA Walter & Joan Willis | Onalaska, WI to enjoy since retiring from of the news. BROOKE WARREN Richard Ramirez | Coleville, CA Adam Woods & Laurie Kenyon | Durham, NC his job at a fire department in Louis Regnerus | Bozeman, MT Kon Wyatt & Barbara Griswold | Golden, CO Albuquerque, New Mexico, 24 Ken Rischer | Bishop, CA Susan Abbe Yates | Seattle, WA years ago. Enjoy the slopes and Tom Robinson & Joan Wellman | Mazama, WA Laurence Yorgason | Ogden, UT do-si-dos! And as if helping us Calvin Wipf | Spearfish, SD Behind the scenes, some churn out a magazine every members of the HCN team are two weeks isn’t enough, our moving up and around. Board far-flung contributors have President Dan Stonington been busy with other projects. recently joined the Washington Contributing Editor Sarah State Department of Natural Gilman’s HCN travel essay, Resources as its policy direc- “Claustrophilia” (9/14/15), will tor in Olympia, Washington. be included in the anthology Board member Esther Rivera The Best Women’s Travel Writ- Murdock is taking the helm of ing, Volume 11, to be published Rocky Mountain Conservancy later this year. In “Claustro- as its new executive director philia,” Sarah describes parallel — moving from Washington, experiences — life in a small D.C., to northern Colorado, mountain town and an adven- closer to our neck of the woods. ture in Mongolia — finding that And Brian Calvert is also step- wide-open spaces bring people ping into a new role, accepting closer together. And frequent a promotion from managing HCN contributor Laura Pritch- editor to editor-in-chief. “Brian ett’s new novel, The Blue Hour,

PHOTOS: JOHN NICHOLS has done a tremendous job came out in February. Laura assembling, managing and writes for HCN’s syndicated MY HEART BELONGS TO NATURE: leading an extraordinary edito- opinion service, Writers on the A MEMOIR IN PHOTOGRAPHS AND PROSE rial team that is producing Range. By John Nichols. 160 pages, hardcover: $29.95. great stories every day online And, lastly, we have a University of New Mexico Press, 2017. and continuing to improve our correction from our Jan. 23 My Heart Belongs to Nature offers readers a window into writer and flagship magazine,” Execu- issue. In our story “Duty and photographer John Nichols’ decades-long love affair with the mountain tive Director Paul Larmer says. #NoDAPL,” we incorrectly slopes, hidden fishing spots and backyard pastures of the Taos, New “He has also displayed vision characterized the amount of Mexico, area — as well as the family and friends with whom he shares for what HCN can be in the oil the Dakota Access Pipeline these places. He moved to New Mexico as a young man and has been national media environment. could carry. It would be able to photographing and writing about the landscape ever since. The collection I look forward to seeing where transport 570,000 barrels, not of 108 photographs includes an essay by Nichols, the irreverent author of Brian and the team take us gallons. HCN regrets the error. several works of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel The Milagro next.” Beanfield War. Extended captions accompany each image. On the cover, We do, too. Congratulations —Anna V. Smith, a blizzard of neon-yellow aspen leaves cascades through a high mountain clearing in late September. “No, this isn’t a great picture, but it’s a fabu- to all three of you on your new for the staff lous moment,” Nichols writes of the photograph. In fact, as one could say positions! of each of the book’s images, it is both. EMILY BENSON www.hcn.org High Country News 11 FEATURE | BY BEN GOLDFARB

THEHow aTREE landmark RING investigation busted a Washington timber-poaching gang

he clearing that tree poachers call the Slaugh- terhouse lies in the northwest corner of Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest, T concealed behind the wall of hemlock and cedar that edges Forest Road 25. Ron Malamphy first visited the Slaughterhouse on a damp day near the end of winter in 2012. When he pushed into the glade, he found the scene matched the moniker. A jumble of felled bigleaf maple, chain-sawed into rough chunks, littered the forest floor, heartwood exposed to the chilly air. The most valuable wedges had been crudely hacked out, the rest left to rot. A patina of sawdust coated the moss and ferns. It looked, a federal prosecutor would say later, like a bomb had gone off. Cutting bigleaf maple is generally legal, with the right permits, on private and state land in Washington. In national forests, however, protections on old growth keep the tree strictly off-limits. But in Gifford Pinchot, the law’s arm didn’t reach too far. Malamphy, who’d served as an officer with the U.S. Forest Service since 2000, patrolled the Cowlitz Valley Ranger District, a rough tri- angle formed by Mount Adams, Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens. His jurisdiction covered 575,000 acres — one cop, responsible for an area almost twice the size of Los Angeles. He cruised the woods alone in a Dodge pickup, inspecting meth paraphernalia dumps, checking hunting licenses, conducting traffic stops. In some ways, the job has changed little since the early 20th century, when Pin- chot himself dispatched a ragged band of recruits to help a strange new agency called the Forest Service wrangle illegal loggers and miners. Everyone Malamphy met in the woods carried a gun or a knife, and usually both. Backup was hours away. In 2008, a Forest Service officer was murdered by a tree-trimmer down a remote road on the Olympic Peninsula. Malamphy was a tough customer — he had an offensive lineman’s physique, and hands that could crack walnuts. Still, he kept his Glock .40 close.

A recently poached bigleaf maple tree in Capitol Forest near Olympia, Washington. After cutting a tree, poachers sometimes try to conceal their work by covering the stumps with moss. COURTESY ANNE MINDEN

12 High Country News March 20, 2017 THE TREE RING

www.hcn.org High Country News 13 The tree poachers began showing up soil, sequestered carbon. Now they were Products Permit, the form that Washing- in 2001. Malamphy came to recognize all dead, and for what? A few boards, tonians must possess to gather evergreen their M.O. — the way they stripped bark heisted from land named after the Forest boughs, Christmas trees, mushrooms with an axe to search for premier wood, Service’s founder. Now, Malamphy knew, and other wild goods. The paper trail, in the telltale teeth marks left by certain he had a case. theory, would make the trade easier to chain saws when they pillaged maple monitor. But the law was easily side- stands. But he lagged one step behind n some ways, the story of stepped, and poaching continued. his quarry. He set up motion-triggered bigleaf maple poaching starts Some of the thieves, says Freed, are cameras and staked out fresh-cut sites. with Carlos Santana. Yes, Vietnam vets who have renounced society Nothing. The perps were like ghosts, I that Carlos Santana — the and eke out a meager living from the if ghosts needed money to buy meth. guitar player. woods. The most prolific, though, are They’d cruise past Malamphy’s house at For 160 years after the Hudson’s Bay addicts looking to make a quick buck off 2 a.m. to make sure his truck was in the Company established the Northwest’s so-called “meth maple.” Although poach- driveway before hitting the woods. Once, first sawmill in 1828, bigleaf maple was ers haven’t dented maple populations, they messed with his brakes; another mostly neglected. Loggers coveted the the environmental impacts can be severe: time, they loosened his lug nuts. stately conifers that blanketed the Pacific Thieves carve out elaborate road net- But now Malamphy had a lead, a Coast: Douglas fir, spruce, hemlock, cedar works that fragment forest habitat, and good one. A tip led him to an informant, — straight and strong, ideal for ships’ careless logging demolishes riparian ar- a member of the gang who had run into masts and the homes springing up in San eas, including sensitive salmon streams. unrelated legal trouble and hoped to cut Francisco. No one paid much attention “The people with the gold rush mentality, a deal. The first time they met, the infor- to the scrappy, broad-canopied deciduous those are the ones that are causing the mant pointed out the cut sites on a map. tree that crouched along coastal streams big problems,” Freed says. “They’re not Malamphy roamed the woods for a whole from California to British Columbia. just finding a tree or two while hunting damn day without seeing a stump. You Bigleaf maples are pretty, sure, with pal- deer — they’re businesses. Whenever must be blind, the informant said, before mate leaves the size of dinner plates that they catch those guys, I smile.” agreeing to personally lead Malamphy turn fiery gold each fall. But their wood and Forest Service special agent Phil isn’t especially durable, and their boughs hrough the spring of 2012, Huff to the site. shade out more conventionally valuable Malamphy’s informant fed the Poaching is not a problem that species. “Bigleaf maple was a weed tree,” officer information. At first, Americans generally associate with their says Jim Freed, an emeritus professor of T Malamphy and Huff were own backyards. The word conjures natural resources at Washington State skeptical; their source had a mile-long militiamen hacking off elephant University. “Landowners used to say, ‘Oh, rap sheet. But the tips proved accurate. tusks, woodsmen slaying you found a bigleaf maple on my prop- The informant showed them how the tigers in Russian wilderness. erty? Well, can you get rid of it for me?’ ” gang laid moss over stumps to camou- But natural resource crime is But Acer macrophyllum would not re- flage exposed wood, and even predicted rampant in the American West, main a weed forever. Around one in every what trash they’d find befouling one too. Caviar traders target Co- 20 bigleaf maples contains “figure,” gor- clearing: empty cans of Miller beer. lumbia River sturgeon, Arizona geous three-dimensional patterns etched Malamphy and Huff worked 12- snake-nappers snatch rattlers in its grain. There are two primary varia- hour days, seven days a week, grilling a for the pet trade, and hunt- tions: Quilted maple looks like ripples on widening circle of suspects. Each witness ers gun down bighorn sheep water; flame maple resembles an aerial snowballed into another, all of them eager for their prized headgear. view of a rugged mountain range. No one to rat. There was no honor among thieves, And it’s not only fauna that is quite certain why figure occurs; the Malamphy thought. It was a rough crowd falls prey. Illegal loggers best guess is that it’s genetic, or pro- — one uncooperative cutter, they heard, have lopped off so many duced by environmental factors such as had been punched in the face, another redwood burls — woody moisture and temperature. In the 1980s, choked. Some couldn’t read or write. protuberances that get woodworkers began to realize that fig- Three names came up over and over carved into furniture — that ured maple looked stunning in furniture, again: Jimmy Miller, Ryan Justice and desperate authorities shut veneer and, particularly, musical instru- Kevin “Moose” Mullins. The loggers, the down some California roads ments. The wood’s staunchest champion informant said, would stow contraband in 2014 to deter them. The next was Santana, whose custom-made Paul in their trunks and drive to a sawmill in A PRS Custom year, a Montana man was convicted of Reed Smith guitars were topped with Winlock, a scrappy town of 1,300, where 22 guitar made of smuggling over a thousand trees out of figured bigleaf. When Santana performed they’d show up at first light, still pow- figured maple like the Flathead National Forest. Oregon’s his hit “Smooth” at the 2000 Grammys, dered in sawdust. The mill, called J&L that found in the Malheur, Rogue River and Willamette he bent wailing quarter-notes on a PRS Tonewoods, was owned by a man named Pacific Northwest. national forests have all been victims of whose luminous wood came from the Harold Clause Kupers. On April 11, Huff Spokeswoman timber poaching. Forest Service docu- Olympic Peninsula. and Malamphy paid Kupers a visit. Jeanne Nooney says: ments suggest that tree thievery costs Before long, bigleaf maple — at least When they pulled into the driveway, “PRS Guitars has the agency up to $100 million each year. those trees boasting precious figure — the proprietor emerged to shake hands. “I worked closely with governing agencies And no region, perhaps, is more afflicted became one of the most valuable species was wondering when you guys were going and legal counsel than western Washington. in the Northwest’s forests. A two-foot-long to get here,” Kupers said. to create a robust Malamphy and Huff wandered the block could reap $500. Classified ads “Why would you say that?” Huff compliance program Slaughterhouse, snapping photos and seeking maple cutters ran in local news- asked. for sourcing wood jotting notes. Malamphy felt his anger papers. Landowners hired consultants to “Just because of the business I am in,” and shipping surge. These damn people. No respect for prospect on their land. Boutique sawmills Kupers replied. finished goods.” the resource. Some of the leafy casualties arose in logging towns. The mill owner welcomed the cops COURTESY PRS GUITARS predated the arrival of Lewis and Clark. Inevitably, the burgeoning legal trade into his workshop, a garage filled with They’d provided food and shelter for gen- was supplemented by the black market. maple blocks. He seemed agreeable and erations of flying squirrels and martens, Maples vanished from federal, state and friendly. The cops asked Kupers if he was finches and grosbeaks, elk and deer, even county land; vacationing homeowners re- buying stolen wood; Kupers acknowl- the imperiled Puget Oregonian snail turned to find backyard trees mutilated. edged that he probably was. (Later, J&L — just about everything that walked, Private timber companies paid local cops Tonewoods’ shop manager would esti- crawled or flew in Gifford Pinchot. They’d to patrol their forests. In 2005, the state mate that about eight in 10 loads were shaded streams, nourished and stabilized added maple to its Specialized Forest bootlegged.) But, Kupers added, he’d

14 High Country News March 20, 2017 developed a system to trace his supply chains: Loggers had to submit a consent form, crafted by Kupers’ wife, signed by the landowner whose trees the cutter had harvested. The documents had no legal validity, however, and they were easily falsified. Mal- amphy later traced the address on one form to a maple-less farm. The name on another belonged to a local drifter. Malamphy and Huff leafed through a three-ring binder filled with Kupers’ custom-made slips. The binder contained just one official state forest products permit. You need to receive a state-sanctioned form from your sellers every time you buy a load, Malamphy told Kupers. Later that week, on Friday the 13th, the mill owner emailed Phil Huff. “I do not condone theft and do what I can to not be involved with it,” Kupers told the agent. He’d lost sleep over their conversation. He didn’t want to keep buying stolen wood, he said, but he’d do it to help. “I need to know in writing that you want me to continue to purchase product from these people,” he added. “I will keep our communication confidential. If for some reason you can not (sic) do that I will stop any dealings with them.” When he got Kupers’ email, Huff swiftly called J&L Tonewoods. He couldn’t give Kupers legal advice, he said, nor could he tell him from whom he should or shouldn’t buy wood. The case was still under investigation, and he was an agent, not a lawyer. The conversation ended, and Kupers went on dealing stolen maple.

n enterprising poacher could hardly design a friendlier environment than western A Washington. Dense forests and crenellated coastline afford cover to outlaws. In the state’s rural corners, people live close to the land, cutting firewood and harvesting salmon, deer and shellfish. The line between subsistence and theft is sometimes blurry. It’s hard to find above-board work in the woods. In 2001, over 90 sawmills operated in Forest Service until January 2014, when really satisfying about that.” Chunks of maple, Washington; by 2013, just 23 still hung on. she retired to open a private firm from The agency eventually installed her top, left as waste at “We’re seeing theft from out-of-work her home in Winthrop, on the east side in Okanogan National Forest (today the the Slaughterhouse locals, people who are living hand-to- of the Cascades. Golden eagles nest Okanogan-Wenatchee), 1.7 million acres site in the Gifford Pinchot National mouth, sometimes feeding a drug habit,” in her backyard; cougars loiter on her of mountains and glacial lakes. Tree theft Forest. Above, says Larry Raedel, chief of enforcement porch. Minden, a Portland native, grew was rampant, particularly by private Ron Malamphy for the Washington Department of Natu- up hiking in the Columbia Gorge. Her landowners who transgressed boundar- inspects blocks of ral Resources. Raedel’s 11 officers patrol desire to work outdoors nudged her into ies and extended cuts onto federal land wood believed to an area larger than Connecticut. Every the Forest Service. Her first paid job with — sometimes unwittingly, sometimes be poached at the year, it seems, thieves find some odd new the agency, in 1984, entailed patrolling deliberately. “I think that people feel Slaughterhouse, and plant to purloin. A shrub called salal campgrounds at the Ochoco National entitled, like it’s not really stealing — it’s found in the garage is big in the European flower industry; Forest in Oregon, watching for campers just trees,” Minden says. “But these trees of Ryan Justice’s dried cascara bark is used as a laxative. who cut unlawful firewood, shirked their belong to you, me, all of us. The public grandmother’s house. No sooner do agents penetrate one black fees and tossed garbage in the forest. “I’d deserves to have its resources protected.” U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, market than up pops another. “It’s like dig through the trash and find scraps of In the mid-1990s, as cedar and maple TOP; U.S. FOREST SERVICE squeezing a balloon,” Raedel sighs. paper with the names of the people who theft swept western Washington, Min- PHOTO COURTESY PHIL HUFF Anne Minden has spent her career dumped it,” Minden recalls. “Then I’d den’s jurisdiction spread to encompass trying to puncture the balloon. Minden hand it off to law enforcement and they’d the coastal rainforest of the Olympic worked as a special agent for the U.S. go write a ticket. There was something Peninsula. Soon she was doing stakeouts,

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 (Raedel, the state enforcement chief, hasn’t brought a single case against a mill owner in his 11 years on the job.) The most crucial battle in the maple wars, Minden knew, would happen in a sawmill.

arold Kupers is not the sort of mill owner you’d peg for a thief. Kupers grew up in H Forks, Washington, a Penin- sula town known only for lumber until Twilight linked it forever with teen vampires. Kupers is a law enforcement blueblood: His father was a lifelong employee of the Washington Department of Corrections, his father-in-law was a state patrolman, and his wife, Melinda, has worked for Corrections for a quarter- century. Kupers himself worked in a state prison for a decade; he so cherished the job that he’d occasionally be turned away for showing up too early. The bureaucracy wore him down, though, and he quit to fell trees. When Corrections promoted Melinda to a job in Vancouver, Washing- ton, their family of five relocated to nearby Winlock. Kupers got involved in the community, lecturing at-risk youth in local schools, drawing on his Corrections experience to keep kids on the straight- and-narrow. As Kupers gained timber experience, he grew acquainted with figured maple, and in the late 1990s he began cutting and selling legal blocks. Compared to his meager earnings as a logger, he realized, the mills were raking it in. He started a couple of businesses, selling wood online and, with a partner, directly to guitar- makers. When the partnership dissolved, he opened J&L Tonewoods with a friend named Tim. They named the company after their daughters’ first initials. J&L Tonewoods ran a simple operation. Sellers brought 24-inch blocks of figured wood, which Kupers scanned for defects: stains, knots, woodpecker holes. He paid with checks, typically a few hundred bucks per block. Then he dried the wood in a kiln and sawed it down into book- matched sets, mirror-image pieces that, in the hands of an instrument manufacturer, would become guitar bodies fit for the stage. It was steady business: Profit margins, Kupers would say later, ran around 200 percent. In December 2011, Former U.S. Forest planting tracking devices on cars and forest, received 18 months in prison when though, the partnership split up. Kupers Service special collaborating with Customs agents on he was caught teaching a gang of teenag- said he wanted to grow the business too agent Anne Minden fly-overs. She learned that loggers cut ers to steal trees. Reid Johnston, who was quickly for Tim’s taste; for his part, Tim and measurement quilt maple across the grain and flame nailed cutting maple — and a 340-year- told investigators he was tired of buying specialist Jeff maple with the grain; that stolen wood old Doug fir — in Olympic National For- dubious wood from “crackheads.” Penman at a poaching site in sometimes became dashboards in luxury est, got a year and a day. Throughout 2012 and 2013, Mul- Capitol Forest cars; that nocturnal thieves ran their But arresting rogue loggers remained lins, Justice and Miller continued to sell near Olympia, chain-saw exhaust into water buckets to a long-term losing strategy. As long as maple to J&L Tonewoods. Kupers seemed Washington. muffle the roar. She crossed the Cascades mills could traffic stolen maple without to remain convinced that he was aiding COURTESY ANNE MINDEN so frequently that she developed ankle consequence, cutters would always ma- the investigation, occasionally emailing tendonitis in her pedal foot. terialize to meet demand. Ending maple Malamphy and Huff when the suspects By her own estimation, Minden theft required snapping a link further appeared at his shop. Once he even investigated around 35 timber theft cases along the supply chain. The problem was inspected clearings with the agents, and during her Forest Service career — more that prosecuting mill owners required identified grease pencil marks scrawled than any agent in the Northwest. Along proving that they knowingly bought on stumps as Ryan Justice’s handiwork. the way, she racked up busts: Fifty-year- stolen goods — and it was usually impos- The noose began to close around the old John Mark Randall, a Fagin of the sible to disprove their pleas of ignorance. cutters. Mullins had a couple of close

16 High Country News March 20, 2017 scrapes: Officers tracked his bootprints to maple trees with freshly peeled bark in Gifford Pinchot and narrowly missed catching him in the act. Now it was only a matter of time. Kupers, meanwhile, kept buying wood. In December 2013, Phil Huff trav- eled to Winlock to interview the mill owner again. This time, Anne Minden led the conversation. Kupers was warier than before, and seemed defensive. Minden prodded him to open up. Huff took notes, transcribing Kupers’ words as the mill owner explained again how J&L Tone- woods operated. Rarely has an interview subject done more damage to his cause. According to Forest Service reports, Kupers de- t Eleanor Dormontt scribed himself as “kind of a rebel,” told of the University of the agents that he “didn’t believe in” the Adelaide inspects a maple-permitting laws, and said that he’d chunk of quilted bigleaf deliberately avoided learning the rules maple left at the theft so that he could claim ignorance. Min- site in the Gifford den gave him just enough rope to hang Pinchot National Forest. himself. Later that day, with the details COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE still fresh in their minds, the two agents retreated to a motel, plugged in their computers, and wrote a memorandum q A surveillance describing the conversation. When Huff photograph of the J&L next visited Kupers, he served him an Tonewoods mill in indictment. Winlock, Washington. U.S. FOREST SERVICE PHOTO he prosecution of Harold COURTESY PHIL HUFF Clause Kupers has its legal roots at the turn of the 20th T century, when wildlife traffick- ing forced America to confront the finitude of its natural resources. Beaver and bison had been virtually exterminated, and rapacious plume hunters were plundering egrets and other birds for the hat industry. In 1900, Rep. John Lacey of Iowa introduced a bill that outlawed trading illegally harvested animals across state lines; President William McKinley signed the Lacey Act into law on May 25. A year later, the act claimed its first major victory, when 48 Illinois men were arrested for shipping over 22,000 ducks, quail and grouse. No longer did you have to pull the trigger to be prosecuted for wildlife crime. The Lacey Act evolved over the years. In 1935, it was expanded to forbid trading animals taken illegally overseas. Fishermen who landed undersized Hon- duran lobsters, trophy hunters peddling elephant tusks, and shark fin smugglers in Guam have been prosecuted for Lacey violations. In 2008, the law received another tweak, this time to include illegally harvested wood. The next year, federal agents raided the Nashville offices of Gibson Guitars, where they seized a shipment of Madagascar ebony. In 2015, markets, the groundwork was being laid gies. Might it be possible, he the flooring giant Lumber Liquida- for their application at home. The J&L wondered, to match genetic material from tors pleaded guilty to purchasing wood Tonewoods case took an important turn wood in Kupers’ shop with stumps in Gif- poached from Russia. Environmentalists in the summer of 2012, when Ron Mal- ford Pinchot, to prove the maple had been and lumber unions have hailed the law’s amphy made a crucial discovery — not in stolen? Indeed it might. When scientists expansion, which appears to have cur- the forest, but in the pages of TimberWest at Australia’s University of Adelaide com- tailed illegal logging in some forests and Magazine, a trade journal that ran an ar- pared the samples, they found the pieces coaxed American companies to patronize ticle about extracting DNA from lumber. contained the same genes. The odds that reliable domestic mills. Malamphy contacted the firm mentioned the match was merely a coincidence were While the Lacey Act’s new provisions in the story, a Singapore-based company infinitesimal. were reshaping international timber called Double Helix Tracking Technolo- Such DNA technology isn’t merely

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 Caption. CREDIT

Conservation significant in the J&L Tonewoods case; it bill to “asking your dentist to do gallblad- rectional Institution in Sheridan, Oregon, scientist Shiloh also suggests the value of genetics in pro- der surgery.” Minden shares those fears. followed by six months of home detention Halsey makes his tecting timber supply chains. The Lacey “What you’re going to end up with,” she and three years of supervision. He also way across the Act requires companies to exercise “due says, “is little to no enforcement of natural owed the government restitution for the downed logs and care” to ensure they’re purchasing legal resource law on public lands.” stolen wood, to the tune of $159,692. abandoned chunks of maple in the wood, but the phrase has no specific legal The cutters faced time, too: Ryan Justice Slaughterhouse in definition. “That used to just mean doing n November 2015, nearly four received 15 months in prison; Miller got 6 the Gifford Pinchot the right thing: Don’t take shipments in years after Malamphy’s months; and Mullins got 30 days. “Those National Forest. cash on a dock at midnight, that kind of informant led him to the guys got off pretty damn easy, is all I can TERRAY SYLVESTER thing,” says Chip Barber, director of the I Slaughterhouse, Harold say,” gripes Malamphy, who retired soon Forest Legality Initiative at the World Clause Kupers pleaded guilty to breaking after the case closed. Resources Institute. In the Gibson and the Lacey Act — the first mill owner ever It didn’t feel that way to Kupers. Lumber Liquidators cases, however, due found to have violated the act by shipping When I called the erstwhile mill owner care was defined more narrowly; among illegal wood across state lines. The this past December, he’d been back home other stipulations, the companies were purloined maple had gone to two compa- in Winlock for a month. He spoke clearly enjoined to keep more meticulous records nies, both of which professed ignorance: and deliberately, in a Pacific Coast accent and gather better information about their North American Wood Products, an that rounded his vowels. Kupers’ version suppliers. As genetic testing becomes Oregon-based purveyor, and PRS Guitars, of the case diverged in several significant more sophisticated, it’s not far-fetched to the Maryland manufacturer that supplies ways from the official account. He’d been imagine companies routinely using DNA Carlos Santana. Kupers had earned an equal partner in the investigation to confirm the origins of their timber. $499,414 after Huff and Malamphy’s first from the get-go, he told me, and his most “This is something that’s going to be used visit. The case raised eyebrows not only incriminating remarks had been taken a lot more in the future,” predicts Barber. within Northwestern woodworking out of context. “I assisted them 100 per- Whether it will be used by the Forest networks, but in international lumber cent, and it totally backfired on me,” he Service remains an open question. In markets. “This shows our trading insisted. “Before they met me, they had January, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, in- partners that adding wood to Lacey no knowledge of maple.” troduced H.R. 622, a bill that would strip wasn’t a protectionist move to exclude Harold Kupers had broken the law, it the agency, along with the Bureau of Land tropical timber in favor of American was true, and profited handsomely. But it Management, of its policing powers and timber,” says WRI’s Barber. “It’s also a was also possible to understand why he replace them with block grants to local law that’s being enforced domestically.” felt like he’d been sacrificed to advance sheriff’s departments. The bill has been Federal prosecutors sought a two-year the righteous cause of forest conservation. blasted by sportsmen and former federal sentence, comparing Kupers, in his will- Compared to, say, Lumber Liquidators, officers, who doubt that county sheriffs ingness to deal with obvious poachers, to J&L Tonewoods was a featherweight have the inclination or the expertise to a gun-shop owner who sold firearms to operation; that executives at the country’s patrol federal acres. Land Tawney, presi- convicted felons without performing back- largest hardwood flooring company could dent and CEO of Backcountry Hunters ground checks. Ultimately, he was sen- escape with mere fines for breaking the & Anglers, recently compared Chaffetz’s tenced to six months at the Federal Cor- same law as Kupers seemed an asymmet-

18 High Country News March 20, 2017 rical dispensation of justice — especially eses: It’s a wilt disease; no, it’s a canker- tor at the Cascade Forest Conservancy. We considering that global demand for build- causing fungus; no, it’s heart-rot. Then, in parked near a beat-up campground sign ing materials represents a far greater 2015, drought settled over the Northwest, and wandered into the woods, squeez- threat than the niche music-wood market. and the die-off intensified. That lent ing through thickets of devil’s club and I asked Kupers if he would work with credence to the most alarming theory of vaulting logs. Soon the canopy opened, as maple again. The terms of his probation all. “We’re wondering if they’re the canary though the woods had been slammed by forbid him from owning a mill, he said. in the coal mine for forest change in the a windstorm. The maple chunks looked These days, he’s making furniture, wine face of climate change,” Ramsey says. In darker and more rotten than they’d been racks and urns in his shop. He spends a century, how much bigleaf maple will four years ago, but they were otherwise a few hours a week at a tavern he owns remain to steal? identical to pictures in the Forest Service in Winlock. Most of the community, he Or perhaps the maple black market reports I’d browsed. This was it, or part of claimed, agreed that he’d gotten a raw will become obsolete, its contraband it: the Slaughterhouse. deal. “But still, there’s a percentage of the replaced by reputable tree farms. Steve Halsey and I picked through the population that walks on the other side of McMinn, founder of a Skagit Valley-based clearing, stooping to inspect scattered the sidewalk,” he said. “And it kills me. It mill called Pacific Rim Tonewoods, re- blocks and the odd snails. “These are kills me.” cently teamed with Canadian researchers some old trees,” he murmured, examin- to plant cuttings from eight lines of maple, ing the widest stump. Five years ago the lthough bigleaf maple is in hopes that the beautiful patterns are, hardwood would have been prime habitat abundant today, it faces a in fact, genetic. When the trees reach for owls, woodpeckers, fishers. The stump threat greater than poachers. around five inches in diameter, McMinn’s had sprouted a new cluster of head-high A In 2010, Amy Ramsey, a forest team should be able to tell whether figure shoots, though Halsey doubted that any pathologist at the Washington Depart- is heritable; if it is, growing music-wood would grow into a robust tree. ment of Natural Resources, received a could someday be as simple as farming to- Surviving maples ringed the arena wave of anxious calls from landowners matoes. “Our goal is that this valley, in 30 like sentinels, twisted and mossy. It was whose maples were succumbing to a years, is the region that people come to for hard to know how to feel: The carnage mysterious disease. Ramsey found the well-tended figured maple,” McMinn says. was deplorable, but we’d seen authorized same symptoms over and over again: Sick For now, though, the illegal trade clearcuts on the way in whose scale Correspondent Ben maples grew smaller leaves that turned chugs along, fueled by the twinned mo- dwarfed this disturbance. If you squinted, Goldfarb writes reddish-yellow around their withered tives of profit and addiction. “It’s defi- you could imagine the site in 10 years, or from New Haven, Connecticut. margins, and ailing trees dumped nitely still going on,” Malamphy says. 200 — the decomposing blocks melting  enormous seed crops in a last-ditch “There’s too much money in it.” into the soil, the prickly shrubs ceding to @ben_a_goldfarb attempt to spread their progeny. This was On a gloomy February afternoon, I Doug firs, the canopy resealing itself, the This coverage dieback, an arboreal affliction that begins drove the winding, climbing road from forest whole. On this day, though, all we is supported by in a tree’s peripheral limbs and creeps Randle into Gifford Pinchot National saw overhead was low sky and swirl- contributors to the toward the crown’s center, like a blood Forest. Dime-sized snowflakes danced ing flakes, falling with a hiss on the wet High Country News clot traveling to the heart. through the cedars. I’d come with a guide: mulch of maple leaves that blanketed the Enterprise Journalism Ramsey tested and rejected hypoth- Shiloh Halsey, conservation science direc- clearing. n Fund.

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 MARKETPLACE

Notice to our advertisers: You can CONFERENCES AND EVENTS Senior Director for Development – Rivers Water Fund, Urban/Cities program place classified ads with our online classi- The Senior Director for Development is and other strategic initiatives to support fied system. Visit hcn.org/classifieds. April Fiction Writing Workshop in Torrey, part of CLF’s senior leadership team and building capacity and scaling up nature 3 is the deadline to place your print ad in Utah – Join author Kent Nelson and Torrey works collaboratively with the Board of -based solutions to challenges facing people the May 1 issue. Call 800-311-5852, or House Press publisher Kirsten Allen for a two- Directors, Executive Director and colleagues and nature. For more information and to e-mail [email protected] for help or in- and-a-half-day workshop April 21-23 in red- to develop and implement fundraising apply, please visit www.nature.org/careers formation. For more information about our rock country. Register today at: https://www. strategies to achieve annual income and and search for job ID#45225 in the keyword current rates and display ad options, visit torreyhouse.org/red-rock-writing-workshops. programmatic goals. The Senior Director search. This position will be open until hcn.org/advertising. for Development supervises and mentors filled. The Nature Conservancy is an Equal EMPLOYMENT the Director of Foundation and Corporate Opportunity Employer. Women, minorities, Advertising Policy: We accept advertising Giving, Director of Major Gifts (new position) people with disabilities and veterans are because it helps pay the costs of publishing Executive Director – Rural restoration and Associate Director for Development. The encouraged to apply. nature.org/careers a high-quality, full-color magazine, where executive, professional staff. 541-421-3018. ideal candidate is an experienced fundraiser [email protected], nfjdwc.org. topics are well-researched and reported in with a proven record of accomplishment Executive Director – Friends of Saguaro an in-depth manner. The percentage of the managing successful campaigns, cultivating General manager for Hawaiian ranch National Park seeks an Executive Director magazine’s income that is derived from relationships with donors, securing major to lead an established National Park Service advertising is modest, and the number of Experienced Ranch Manager wanted for gifts from foundations and individuals, and complex ranch, organic farm, eco-lodge Friends group in Tucson, Ariz. A full job advertising pages will not exceed one-third managing a high performing team. The description and required qualifications of our printed pages annually. operation on Molokai, Hawaii. Business- candidate is committed to CLF’s mission, is minded, experience with semi-tropical can be found at www.friendsofsaguaro. a dynamic leader and emotionally intelligent. org. Résumé and letter of interest must be ecosystems and holistic, sustainable land The candidate has outstanding written BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES management necessary. Competitive salary submitted to: [email protected]. and oral communications skills, financial Closing date: April 15, 2017. Conservationist? Irrigable land? Stellar and benefits. Send résumé and letter to: capabilities, and possesses an outlook that seed-saving NGO is available to serious part- [email protected]. draws in and inspires others to support ner. Package must include financial support. CLF’s goals. Please see our website for full Teacher/Naturalist: Glacier Institute Details: http://seeds.ojaidigital.net. Executive Director – The Northwest Natural job description. http://conservationlands. Live, work and play in Glacier National Park. Resource Group (NNRG) seeks an Executive org/clf-job-announcement-senior-director-for- Env. education in field sciences for youth & Advertising is a great way to support Director to guide NNRG’s innovative approach development. adults. www.glacierinstitute.org/. Apply by High Country News and get your word to ecological forestry in the Pacific Northwest. 04/01. out – Consider a classified ad in HCN when NNRG uses the marketplace to restore forests Director of Special Projects – The you have a conservation or green technolo- and local economies, with a focus on smaller Nature Conservancy’s Arizona Chapter is Director of Data and Evaluation – DPP gy job to fill, a conference or special event woodlands (less than 5,000 acres). Must be looking for a Director of Special Projects to is seeking candidates to manage data and coming up, a house to sell, unique home passionate about forest conservation, and work closely with the state director, senior program evaluation. www.dpp.org/about- and garden products, professional services a creative thinker with solid experience in program directors, key staff, corporations, us/contractor-opportunities. to promote, travel opportunities or any oth- budgets, grantwriting and management. A city officials and other key partners to er information you would like to get out to full description can be found on NNRG’s provide strategic direction and substantive Associate Director/Senior Mediator like-minded people. Visit http://classifieds. website: www.nnrg.org. operations and project management to needed – Environmental Dispute hcn.org or call 800-311-5852. advance the Conservancy’s Salt and Verde Resolution Program, S.J. Quinney College

20 High Country News March 20, 2017 of Law, University of Utah, https://utah. Public policy research, analysis and REAL ESTATE FOR SALE TOURS AND TRAVEL peopleadmin.com/postings/61527. strategy – Expertise in public lands, water www.GreenHomesForSale.com – The Five-day Colorado resources, mining and environmental policy. AdventureBoundUSA – premium venue for buying and selling green River trips and more. Since 1963. 970-245- Executive Director – The Heart of the Services include original research, policy and energy-efficient homes since 2004. 5428. AdventureBoundUSA.com. Rockies Initiative is looking for a visionary briefs, regulatory assistance with BLM, EPA, state DEQs. [email protected]. leader to take our land trust partnership into EXPERIENCE COPPER CANYON, MEXICO the next decade. Based in Montana. See our www.swbusinesspolicy.com. 602-451-9326. Elegant straw bale – Artisan-built home in sustainable off-grid community 10-day package from Los Mochis Airport. Four full job announcement at www.heart-of- nights hotel, five nights camping/hiking with rockies.org. Cover letter and résumé should offers modern comforts and remarkable PUBLICATIONS AND BOOKS eco-innovation. 575-770-4140. burro support. From $2,000 per person. be submitted to [email protected] www.coppercanyontrails.org, 520-324-0209. by May 1, 2017. Back of Beyond Books – buys rare and [email protected]. collectible books, maps and manuscripts of the American West. Call Andy Nettell at Back 200 acres with clean water – Orangeburg, Experience wilderness through art HOME AND GARDEN of Beyond Books 1-800-700-2859 or e-mail: S.C. Artesian wells, springs; running streams. Camping with professional guides and art instructors. Oct. 2-6, 2017. www. Aquabot High Pressure Water Bottles [email protected]. Ten-acre pond; natural ecosystem. Protected escalantecanyonguides.com, 435-826-4652. Mist, shower and jet. Clean off, cool off, from major storms year-round. Unlimited hydrate and have fun. www.lunatecgear.com. Travels on the Green Highway: An possibilities: solar power income potential, Environmentalist’s Journey by Nathaniel equestrian sports; specialty farming; retreat; AdventureBoundUSA – Five-day Colorado winery; fishing and hunting. Utilities River trips and more. Since 1963. 970-245- USDA 100 percent BioBased AGGRAND Pryor Reed (Available on Amazon.com) available. Close to major cities, horse and 5428. AdventureBoundUSA.com. includes OMRI-certified Organic Series 4-3- Nathaniel Reed, former assistant secretary golf events. Seven miles to nearest airport. 3, for lawn, garden, agriculture. Your safe, of Interior, shares memories of events that Contact Janet Loder, 425-922-5959. Popular vacation responsible, highly effective successor helped shape this nation’s environmental Coming to Tucson? [email protected]. house, everything furnished. Rent by day, to chemical fertilizers. 877-486-7645. laws during a period of environmental week, month. Two-bedroom, one bath. Large www.natural-fertilizers.com. renaissance. Reed’s career has been based on deeply held principles that reflect his love 38 acres, 3/2 passive solar, greenhouse, enclosed yards. Dog-friendly. Contact Lee at [email protected] or 520-791-9246. Western Native Seed – Specializing in of nature. But his success has come from horse barn, vineyard, gardens, fruit trees. native seeds and seed mixes for Western states. solutions that require bi-partisan support. 970-261-6267. PattiKaech.com. 719-942-3935. www.westernnativeseed.com. Anyone who wants to see a path forward for Learning adventures on the Colorado environmentalism should understand how Gila Hot Springs, N.M., riverfront home Plateau – Small group, active, adult seminars the trail got cut in the first place and Reed 3.25 acres. Water rights. 575-654-5943. with guest experts, plus private custom trip PROFESSIONAL SERVICES shares those behind-the-scenes stories. This [email protected]. options for your family tour, or board group. Canyonlands Field Institute, Moab, Utah. Wildland Fire Services — Planning, reviews, book tells us the how and why, and it’s a fun litigation, www.blackbull-wildfire.com. read. His inspiring life story should energize 800-860-5262 www.cfimoab.org. anyone who cares about the air we breathe, Let Expert land steward – Available now for the water we drink and the planet we share. National Geographic Journeys – site conservator, property manager. View Travel Leaders COS help plan your immersive, small-group travel adventure! 800-273-0793 résumé at: http://skills.ojaidigital.net. https://www.TravelLeaders.com/COS. WEST OBSESSED Tune into our new podcast, West Obsessed, where High Country News editors and writers discuss stories critical to the American West. Download and listen to the audio series, produced in collaboration with KVNF community radio in Paonia, Colorado, on your favorite audiocasting platform.

Find out more at: www.hcn.org/west-obsessed

LISTEN ON

www.hcn.org High Country News 21 MARKETPLACE

Guided backpacking in the Escalante Canyons – All gear/food can be provided. Join Escape Goats for a true Adventure! escalantecanyonguides.com, 435-826-4652.

Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center – The landscape of Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico encompasses 21,000 acres of towering rock walls, vivid colors and vast skies. Join us for Georgia O’Keeffe landscape tours and trail rides, archaeology and paleontology museums and tours, hiking trails, lodging and camping. 505-685-1000 www.GhostRanch.org.

Active & Adventure Travel – Let Travel Leaders COS help plan your immersive, small-group travel adventure! 800-273-0793 https://www.TravelLeaders.com/COS.

Bisbee, Ariz. / Copper City Inn / “Deeelightful!” – Three rooms, balcony, five years #1 on TripAdvisor. 520-432-1418. coppercityinn.com.

UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS Get High Country News for FREE in your classroom! Help your students unravel the complex issues facing the American West with this tremendous resource. The HCNU Classroom Program gives FREE magazines and/or digital access to instructors and students. Sign up at hcn.org/edu.

22 High Country News March 20, 2017 EPA admin continued from page 9 the agency still hadn’t set up a registry to track health problems associated with haz- ardous waste pollution, as required by law. Accusations of mismanagement led to multiple congressional investigations, and the FBI also investigated the agency for shredding documents related to the Su- perfund probes. Rita Lavelle, the Gorsuch deputy who headed Superfund, came under fire for accepting expensive dinners from industry and striking sweetheart deals with those companies. She later served time in jail for lying to Congress about a conflict of interest involving a former employer. Gorsuch herself was cited by Congress for contempt after refusing to turn over documents during the investigations. By Gorsuch’s own admission, the resulting political meltdown paralyzed the agency, preventing it from getting any actual work done. Gorsuch resigned in 1983 after learning the Justice Depart- ment wouldn’t defend her on the contempt charge. It was just two years into Reagan’s presidency. “The Reagan people came into office with the same kind of fervor for rolling back environmental regulations that we’re seeing now,” says Richard Ayres, an envi- gan’s Interior secretary until 1983, were clean water rules and carbon regulations, Acting EPA ronmental lawyer who headed the Natu- part of the vanguard of the conservative though he has also promised to promote Administrator ral Resources Defense Council’s air qual- resistance to the landmark environmen- Superfund cleanups, water infrastructure Catherine ity programs at the time. But their success tal laws passed in the 1970s, which vastly improvements and compliance with exist- McCabe attaches was limited, partly due to the Superfund expanded the federal government’s role ing air-quality standards. a lapel pin to EPA controversy, which emerged quickly and in protecting air, water and biodiversity. “The idea that he will just slash and Administrator Scott Pruitt at the agency’s inhibited the administration’s ability Since then, the tactics for undermining burn the agency, I think, is mistaken,” says headquarters to aggressively pursue its deregulation these protections have grown more sophis- Brent Fewell, a D.C. water lawyer and before he addressed agenda. Their efforts also ran up against a ticated and been widely embraced by the philosophical conservative who served in agency employees in moderate Republican Senate and a House Republican Party, Sabin says. Today, a for- the number-two spot in the EPA’s Office of February. Pruitt, a controlled by Democrats, which worked midable network of think tanks and right- Water under George W. Bush. “It’s not that longtime critic of the doggedly to expose industry favoritism at wing media pushes deregulation at the he hates the EPA. He hates overreach.” EPA, was confirmed EPA and keep accusations about misman- state and federal level, and critics attack There are gray areas in the Clean Air and after a contentious agement in the public eye. After Gorsuch the science that underlies environmen- Water acts that the EPA has tried to fill in fight in the Senate. AARON P. BERNSTEIN / left, the White House decided the rewards tal regulation. “A major shift in the party over time, and Fewell thinks Pruitt has a GETTY IMAGES of waging war on environmental laws was with the ’94 election and the Gingrich legitimate point that it’s sometimes gone weren’t worth the political price. revolution,” Sabin says. “That’s when the too far. “Reagan was anti-regulation,” Paren- party gets more purified in its hostility to- Environmentalists tend to hear calls for teau says, “but he didn’t have a deep hos- ward environmental regulation.” state rights as code for fewer constraints tility or resentment about environmental on industry and more pollution. But Fewell laws.” Reagan replaced Gorsuch with Wil- hat hostility has reached an apex in the says those outcomes aren’t inevitable. He’s liam Ruckelshaus, a moderate known for Tcurrent Congress, which is unlikely to optimistic about states assuming an ex- his integrity. Ruckelshaus, who was re- be the check on EPA inaction that it was panded role in environmental protection. spected on both sides of the aisle, helped with Gorsuch, leaving the job primarily to States already shoulder a lot of responsibil- restore the agency’s credibility. environmental attorneys and the courts. ity for implementing federal environmen- The Republican presidents since Rea- Some House Republicans are intent on tal regulations, but Fewell says the EPA gan — George H.W. Bush and George W. pursuing their own deregulatory agenda, tends to micromanage them, not giving Bush — mostly chose EPA administra- with a recently introduced bill to abolish them much freedom to devise their own tors who were experienced environmental the EPA altogether, as well as talk of re- methods of meeting clean air or water stan- professionals, consistent with the Ruck- pealing and replacing the Endangered dards. That breeds resentment: “There’s a elshaus model. Pruitt, on the other hand, Species Act and a recent vote to block EPA lot of fighting. I believe if the states are in- appears to have been selected for his deep rules to protect streams from pollution centivized to be more creative, we could see distrust of the agency. from coal mines. more environmental protection.” In today’s Republican Party, he’s not an Pruitt, for his part, declined to name a Of course, it’s possible that while, in outlier. “It’s probably best to see the Pruitt single EPA regulation he supports during theory, a more restrained EPA could in- EPA not as a special Donald Trump twist his confirmation hearing. He also refused spire states to become more proactive, in on the EPA, but as the latest evolution in a to promise to continue to allow California practice some states will step up and oth- larger conservative attack on the agency,” to enact its own strict clean-car standards, ers will step back. Gorsuch’s tenure didn’t says Paul Sabin, a Yale University envi- despite his stated commitment to states’ last long enough to let that experiment ronmental historian. Gorsuch and her ide- rights. The priorities he’s highlighted play out. If Pruitt’s does, we may soon learn ological brother James Watt, who was Rea- since include rolling back Obama-era how closely theory and practice align.

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

Montana Sen. Diane Sands is leading efforts to update her state’s sexual assault laws. KURT WILSON/MISSOULIAN

of action. “There are times when you can change certain things,” she says, “so as a person who works in the political arena, I’m looking for those moments where we can move forward.” The Montana Legislature meets bi- annually, in odd-numbered years, from January through April. In 2015, Sands wrote and passed a bill requiring the Law and Justice Interim Committee to study sexual violence and recommend updates to Montana’s “antiquated” laws on sexual crimes. Fox supported the bill, and it passed by overwhelming majori- ties in the House and Senate. Sands served as vice chair of the interim committee, which recommended seven bills for the 2017 session, including Senate Bill 29, which would change Montana’s sexual assault laws to com- port with the U.S. Military Code of Conduct. Among other changes, the bill would amend the definition of sexual intercourse without consent, which currently says that a person must be “com- pelled by force,” implying that one must try to physically fight back in order to be considered a victim of rape. The bill also, for the first time, defines consent as “words or overt actions indicating a Montana deals with its freely given agreement to have sexual intercourse or sexual contact” with another antiquated laws on rape person. According to Jennifer Clark, a sexual crimes and domestic violence prosecutor Doubleday published the book, Missoula: awareness about sexual assault and gen- for Missoula County, these changes in Rape and the Justice System in a Col- der discrimination. Montana law would accurately reflect lege Town, in May 2015. Written by Jon Overall, progress has been slow, ac- “the reality of the cases” reported to her Krakauer, it quickly jumped to number cording to Sands. “Women can raise their office. “In most of the cases we see, a vic- three on The New York Times bestseller voices until hell freezes over,” she says. tim will indicate their lack of consent in list in the first week of sales and also “But it’s only when men stand up and many ways, either verbally or nonverbal- helped fuel a national dialogue on the take responsibility for regulating other ly,” she explained in her testimony to the way sexual assault is handled at col- men that change begins to occur.” Senate Law and Justice Committee. But leges. So, when the country’s top cop, At- because consent is not currently defined Missoula focused on the U.S. Depart- torney General Eric Holder, announced in statute, Clark often has to tell victims, OPINION BY ment of Justice’s investigation into the the Justice Department’s investiga- who may have been paralyzed by fear or GABRIEL handling of rape cases by the University tion, Sands wondered whether a larger were otherwise incapacitated, “Yes, you FURSHONG of Montana, the Missoula County Attor- change was finally underway. Her hopes were raped, but legally, you were not.” ney’s Office and the Missoula Police De- were realized two years later when the Sands’ bill seeks to keep painful partment. In May 2012, when the federal agency reached separate agreements conversations like this from happening agency first announced the investigation, with the Missoula City Police Depart- in the future. It passed the Senate 46-0 citing 80 reported rape cases in the last ment, the University of Montana Police on Jan. 19 and is soon expected to pass three years as justification, many resi- Department and the Missoula County the House. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock dents of this liberal college community Attorney’s Office on how to fairly and has made it clear he will approve the were shocked by the news. Others were effectively handle reports of sexual as- measure if given the opportunity. If that not surprised. sault. day comes, Sands will be in the room to “Women have been working on this In addition, Montana Attorney Gen- watch the ink dry on his signature. issue for a hundred years,” says Montana eral Tim Fox, a Republican, agreed to “People aren’t looking the other way Sen. Diane Sands, “and I’ve personally monitor the county’s efforts to imple- anymore,” she says. “It’s a change in the been working on the issue for decades.” ment the agreement, thus adding to a law that has waited a century.” Sands, a Democrat, represents Sen- growing list of men willing to confront ate District 49, which covers western sexual assault. “The fact is that 97 per- Gabriel Furshong writes from Helena, Missoula, in the state Legislature. The cent of victims are women, so it’s impor- Montana. mostly urban district lies just a couple tant for men to step up,” says Fox, who WEB EXTRA miles from the University of Montana, announced the county’s full compliance where Sands studied anthropology from with the agreement in August of last Writers on the Range is a syndicated service of To see all the current High Country News, providing three opinion col- Writers on the Range 1971 to 1974. A determined student year. umns each week to more than 200 media outlets columns, and archives, organizer, she helped found the campus By then, Sands had teamed up with around the West. For more information, contact visit hcn.org Women’s Center and worked to raise Fox to devise and deploy her own plan Betsy Marston, [email protected], 970-527-4898. 24 High Country News March 20, 2017 BOOKS A tale of two Roosevelts At his recent confirmation hearings, acquired a seal skull as his first natu- eled his dreams of life in the country. Had Donald Trump’s new Interior Secre- ral specimen. He championed scientific he been healthy, he would have spent tary, former Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., inquiry, writing books and pamphlets on more time outdoors, less time reading, frequently evoked his admiration for birds and mammals throughout his life- and, Lunde suggests, might not have been Theodore Roosevelt, comparing their time. A trilogy of hunting books penned as passionate about wild places as an shared devotion to wildlife conservation. and published in the 1890s highlights adult. His father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., While what the future holds remains to TR’s ability to articulate conservation was a “muscular Christian” who believed be seen, few presidents are more closely principles, without neglecting the eco- that a righteous life included moral and associated with protecting nature than nomic benefits of properly managing the physical fitness. He was convinced of the Theodore Roosevelt. Until recently, country’s natural resources. “I wanted to curative power of nature and often took though, his cousin, Franklin D. Roos- make a plea for manliness and simplicity his son on “restorative” rides in open evelt, remained relatively unsung as a and delight in a vigorous outdoor life as air-carriages. As an adult, Theodore conservationist. Now, two books examine well as to try to sketch the feeling that advanced from weekend backpacking ex- how these men helped preserve the na- the wilderness, with its great rivers, great cursions to month-long treks in the wild, The Naturalist: tion’s natural treasures and build public mountains, great forests, and great prai- often virtually unassisted. institutions dedicated to the conserva- ries, leaves on one,” he wrote. “The slaugh- After decades spent sailing, fishing Theodore Roosevelt and tion of wildlife and wilderness. The books ter of the game, though necessary in and tree planting, Franklin’s devotion the Rise of American provide an unexpected contrast in heft order to give a needed touch of salt to the to the outdoors only intensified after Natural History, — Darrin Lunde’s The Naturalist weighs affair, is subsidiary after all.” This kind of polio ravaged his limbs at the age of 39. Darrin Lunde in at a reasonable 352 pages, largely thinking placed the 26th president nearly He harnessed the therapeutic powers of 352 pages, hardcover: because it confines itself to exploring 50 years ahead of his peers in conserva- nature, and though bathing in the buoy- $28. Theodore Roosevelt’s work as a private tion theory. His cousin would unite the ant waters of Warm Springs, Georgia, did Crown Publishing, 2016. citizen. Douglas Brinkley, however, tack- two concepts during the Great Depression not bring about a miraculous recovery, his les the entirety of Franklin Roosevelt’s with environmental public works projects improvement helped convince him that all conservation career, starting from his like the Civilian Conservation Corps, also Americans were equally entitled to enjoy childhood, making for an exhaustive 752- known as FDR’s “tree army.” such natural treasures. Ironically, FDR’s page volume, Rightful Heritage. Both Roosevelts loved the great out- own planned super-roads and hydraulic TR’s eight years in the White House doors — Franklin fancied himself a Hud- power plants would cut through the wil- are almost entirely ignored in The Natu- son River silviculturist and farmer, while derness and disturb wildlife populations, ralist, though as president he enacted Theodore built much of his public persona impeding the animals’ abilities to migrate powerful conservation laws and desig- as an outdoorsman. But Brinkley and and repopulate. Yet no president has done nated over 50 national parks. Instead, the Lunde suggest that life-altering illnesses more to protect America’s wilderness; book focuses on the time he spent hunting profoundly shaped their views on preserv- Brinkley’s appendices detail every land and writing — pursuits that were impos- ing the wilderness. Plagued by asthma as parcel he placed under federal protection, sible for him to enjoy as commander-in- a child, young Theodore spent most of his and it takes 100 pages to list them all. chief. Lunde traces Theodore’s love of time indoors, reading adventure tales in “Congress doesn’t pass legislation nature to his youth, when the sickly boy his father’s windowless library, which fu- anymore, they just wave at the bills as they go by,” mused humorist Will Rog- ers on FDR’s frequent use of executive Rightful Heritage: privilege. It seemed there wasn’t an open Franklin D. Roosevelt space or imperiled creature that the and the Land of president didn’t want to protect, and from America, 1933 to 1945, he conserved 118 million Douglas Brinkley acres, caused more than 3 billion trees 752 pages, hardcover: to be planted, and founded hundreds of $35. federal migratory bird sanctuaries. Cedar Harper, 2016. Breaks, Joshua Tree, Aransas and many other jewels of the natural world owe their protection to FDR. These battles weren’t won easily; Brinkley illustrates the resistance the president faced from Congress, and the bureaucratic jiujitsu required to carry out his environmental agenda. Convincing Americans of the value of wilderness preservation was (and remains) an uphill battle. The Roosevelts cleverly invoked practical arguments, noting that conservation and restoration could aid ordinary people by providing long-term solutions to problems like soil erosion and wildlife depletion. They also implored their fellow citizens to think of future generations. Still, in the end, the reader comes away believing that these President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt drive past Mount Hood on their way two presidents fought so hard for wilder- to dedicate Timberline Lodge in 1937. There, Roosevelt said, “I take very great pleasure in ness, simply because they truly loved it. dedicating this Lodge, not only as a new adjunct of our National Forests, but also as a place to play for generations of Americans in the days to come.” BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES BY BARBARA BASBANES RICHTER

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 ESSAY | BY KRISTA LANGLOIS

Discovering the North Arctic owling through its most iconic birds

here are two ways I know to see a snowy owl. fowl in hand. The local game warden was overwhelmed with The first is this: If you’re listening to music and paperwork, and Utqiagvik was granted an exemption to the cleaning the house on a rainy weekend afternoon Migratory Bird Treaty Act. T and the radio station offers the ninth caller tickets Birds aren’t just birds here. Birds are life. to a concert, pick up the phone and dial. The concert My first night in Utqiagvik, under a sky so bright it requires will be in an old barn tucked into a web of back sunglasses, I walk along the shore, following a small songbird roads, and it will snow the night of the concert — soft, fat flakes that flits from one ice floe to the next. Back home the bird would that swirl in the glowing light from the barn windows. On the be unremarkable, a sparrow-looking thing, but here on the ice way home at 2 a.m., your friend will be driving his red truck it’s otherworldly. It leads me to two Iñupiat women sitting in slow down roads draped with lacy branches, dark except for lawn chairs, smoking and drinking sodas, and they invite me the twin beams of his headlights. You’re sleepy; your attention to join them. Their kids are playing in the sand with plastic drifts. And then an owl the color of snow drops in front of the buckets and shovels, looking for all the world like they’re enjoy- windshield. For a fraction of a moment, it hangs in front of you, ing a day at the beach — except that it’s nearly midnight, and its wingspan as wide as the truck. Then, as if someone pulled the ocean is encased in ice. I say something about this being the the puppet strings, it lifts and is gone. summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and the women The second way requires less luck and more money. First, look at me blankly. The longest day of the year means nothing you have to travel to Utqiagvik, Alaska (formerly Barrow), the where the sun never sets. northernmost town in the United States and the only snowy owl breeding ground in the country. If the weather is bad, this he second way I know to see a snowy owl I learn from could take days. The plane from Anchorage to Utqiagvik might, Denver Holt, a biologist who’s been studying them for as mine did, cross the Arctic Circle, dip tantalizingly close to the 25 years. On my last day in Utqiagvik, Holt invites Arctic Ocean, then turn around. Too stormy to land. T me to ride onto the tundra on the back of his four- So we spend the night in Anchorage and try again the next wheeler. He drives me farther from town than I’ve yet day. Many of the passengers are on their way to work at the oil been, revving the engine down a path bogged in mud, rigs of Prudhoe Bay and have flown this route a hundred times. through swarms of mosquitos. At a seemingly random spot, he They doze off or drink rum-and-Cokes, inured to the landscape stops and hands me his binoculars. “Can you see it?” he asks. below, while over in seat 20A, I touch my forehead to the cold I see nothing. Just endless mounds of moss and dwarf Plexiglas, not inured at all. It’s my first visit to the Arctic. shrubs pocked with pools of swampy water. “Look,” he urges. We soar without fanfare across the Arctic Circle and over the “Look for something white.” Brooks Range, treeless mountains that stretch 600 miles east to west. Glaciers run like racetracks through the valleys, and the mountains look like they go on forever — until they don’t. At their northern edge, rivers spool from the mountains and unfurl onto an enormous plain, where they disperse into depressions small and large, oblong and round, each reflecting the sun until the world below is dappled with pools of light. As we near the coast, the mirror-lakes give way to spongy tundra. Just below the surface are walls of ice that divide the tundra into polygons, each several yards across, so that from above it creates a pattern like lizard skin. This feels like a wildly dissonant analogy until you learn that Utqiagvik, Alaska, receives roughly the same precipitation as Tucson, Arizona. The difference is that the scant rain and snow here can’t drain into the earth because of a barrier of ice, so hundreds of years of precipitation lingers on the surface of the land, collecting into ponds and creating a refuge for avian life. Birders from around the world come to look for migrants like the golden plover — a pebble-speckled bird that ar- rives after a 3,000-mile journey from the tropics — and the snowy owl, a true bird of the North. A bird at home in lonely, windswept places. A bird that scoffs at the tropics. I am not a birder. I am a journalist here for other reasons, but I soon learn that it’s impossible to come to the Arctic and ignore its birds. I thought I might see a polar bear, or a walrus, but big mammals are relatively scarce in the North and birds are plentiful. Before the arrival of guns, Iñupiat hunted with bolas — a set of ivory- or bone-carved balls attached to a cord of sinew. The hunter would whirl the bola, gathering momentum, then throw it skyward toward a flock of birds. With luck, the sinew would tangle around a bird’s legs and pull it to the ground. Food. After Alaska became a state, the federal government tried to regulate bird hunting with the same regulations it applied to the Lower 48. But such rules are incompatible with Arctic survival, and after several Iñupiat men were fined for hunting ducks out of season, the residents of Utqiagvik organized a duck-in: 138 residents turned themselves in, illegally harvested

26 High Country News March 20, 2017 Finally, I spot it: a white blur, so pure it appears to be glow- he Iñupiat have a word, piqiut, that describes ing. It’s a male snowy owl, standing guard a few dozen yards compassion for animals. One woman told me this from his mate’s nest. The male is our marker, bright against the extends to not harassing wild creatures or caus- brown tundra. Once we spot him we scan left and right until T ing them undue stress, which made me question we see the female. She’s more mottled, nearly indistinguishable our intrusion on the owls’ nests. Then the woman from the earth. We keep our eyes fixed and walk toward her, explained that there’s one exception: Piqiut is closer and closer until the four-wheeler is lost in the distance permissible if it supports science that will be used to help and we’re two small specks in an enormous, monotonous land- wildlife populations survive, especially in a time when many scape. are threatened from climate change and increased human Closer still, and the male grows concerned. He tries to activity. distract us. He performs what Holt calls a “broken-wing dance,” The concept of piqiut isn’t purely altruistic. Though Utq- heartbreaking and beautiful. He dances to convince us that he’s iagvik is a modern town with a pizzeria, sushi restaurant and hurt, that he’s more enticing than the clutch of eggs beneath his grocery store, its infrastructure is largely maintained with oil partner. When we ignore his efforts and continue toward the money, and some residents consider the oil industry as fleeting nest, he begins circling overhead, furious. and undependable as the whaling industry before it. Most Iñu- The female doesn’t move until we’re 20 feet away, then piat still depend on whales, seals and wild birds for sustenance, silently rises and flies to a nearby mound, watching suspiciously and link their own physical and cultural survival to keeping as we examine the bowl of downy feathers she’s pressed into those populations healthy. the tundra. Inside are five white eggs. Holt checks each to make In other parts of the world, owls are considered harbingers sure it’s intact, then begins cataloguing the array of bones scat- of death: silent wings in the night, deadly talons, the hushed tered around the nest. There’s a freshly killed lemming — the passing from one world to the next. But in the Arctic, they’re owls’ main source of food — and Holt weighs it, writing the synonymous with life. Perhaps it’s because snowy owls, alone details in a yellow field notebook. He’s studying the relationship in the owl family, hunt in the daylight. They show up to hatch between lemmings and owl populations, the latter of which are their eggs around the time that the darkness of winter dissolves declining. The male continues to circle. into the light of spring, and their round, bright faces resemble Suddenly Holt yells — “Duck!” — and I throw myself flat on the sun. In Arctic myth, snowy owls guide weary hunters to the ground, my face buried in moss. Holt is next to me, having safety, inhabit the bodies of shamans, and fly to the spirit world narrowly escaped an attack from the male, who swooped toward to negotiate on behalf of the living. They are protectors — and us, intent on implanting his talons in Holt’s skull. in turn, worthy of protection.

A female snowy owl returns to her nest, where fuzzy owlets wait. PAUL BANNICK

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

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY BETSY MARSTON

COLORADO need the administration to continue protect- Publicity has not been kind to Daniel Suelo, who ing vulnerable and fragile habitats across the was profiled by Mark Sundeen in his 2012 book, United States.” The Man Who Quit Money. Living on remote public land outside Moab, Utah, Suelo never WASHINGTON spent a penny on food, clothes or gadgets, rely- After a propane tanker-truck crashed on I-5 ing instead on our throwaway society and the near Seattle recently, thousands of morning occasional Dumpster-dive. But after the book commuters found themselves trapped. “Epic came out, Suelo found himself sought after by gridlock” reigned for hours and nothing moved, 20-somethings and others who wanted to copy reported eater.com. Then, somebody noticed his “free and unfettered existence,” says the that a stranded taco truck had opened its big Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. His outdoor life window, and drivers and riders were lining up took on a “babysitting” quality until, he says to order lunch. The movable Tacos El Tajin busi- sadly, “It was kind of like Moab spit me out.” He ness made a lot of new friends that day; as one lives now with his 89-year-old mother in Fruita, worker explained, “You got to make the best of Colorado, balancing her bankbook, buying food COLORADO Extreme territorial behavior among it, right?” and living indoors, where he has to hear “the prairie dogs. RICHARD ENGELMANN white noise of the refrigerator humming.” As for THE WEST his own future, Suelo, 55, says he’s realized that Happy birthday, Yellowstone National Park — when the time comes, “I’d rather be in the wild near the highway at Wyoming’s National Elk 145 years old on March 1 — and a big “thank and have natural selection knock me off.” Refuge in Jackson Hole. So he stopped his car at you” to President Ulysses S. Grant, who had the a pullout and launched a drone over the herd. foresight to create the nation’s first national COLORADO This move, unfortunately, turned out to be less park in 1872. Kudos also to Wyoming Wildlife, “It was a bad day on the slopes for three snow- than wise: All 1,500 elk panicked, stampeding the monthly magazine of the Wyoming Game boarders in Aspen’s Maroon Bowl,” reports the through three feet of snow and “burning up and Fish Department. Its annual photo issue Aspen Times. On balance, you could say the day additional energy stores unnecessarily,” said features gorgeous color pictures of everything was wonderful, because everybody — somewhat Doug Brimeyer, deputy wildlife division chief for from a striking prairie rattlesnake to a fox nuz- surprisingly — lived to tell about it. First, the the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. The zling the nose of what appears to be a smiling group “got lazy” and rode down a slope together federal crime of harassing wildlife is punish- female fox, “before he curled up beside her” on — a dangerous thing to do if there’s avalanche able by a fine as much as $5,000, reports The the snow, says photographer Dawn Y. Wilson. danger. As it happened, the trio triggered a Associated Press; an apologetic Smart was only snow slide that carried them several hundred ticketed $280. WASHINGTON feet down the hill. All three survived, but one of How hot is the real estate market in Seattle? them was turning blue by the time his com- THE NATION Last year, a house so dilapidated and toxic that panions reached him. Pinned against a tree, he A tiny, newly discovered species of moth with a prospective buyers couldn’t even peek inside at- suffered a broken rib and a strained back. As if wingspan of less than one centimeter carries tracted 41 offers and a buyer who paid $427,000. that weren’t enough, after the three struggled a big-league name — Neopalpa donaldtrumpi. The Seattle Times reports that the wipeaway, out of the packed snow — and one boarder left Vazrick Nazari, an evolutionary biologist, told now completely rebuilt from the foundation up, to get help — the other two were spotted by a the journal ZooKeys that the “bright yellow just sold for “about $1 million.” territorial and extremely grumpy moose, which scales” on the top of its head were what in- charged them three times. Amazingly, “the duo spired him to name it after President Trump. managed to hold their ground,” and eventually Nazari didn’t find the moth, which also sports WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see all three finally made their way to a hospital, orange-yellow and brown wings, out in the wild; hcn.org. minus the moose. he identified it after poring through material Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and collected by the Bohart Museum of Entomol- often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag WYOMING ogy at the University of California, Davis. “I photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram. David A. Smart, 45, of Washington, D.C., really hope (Trump) takes it with the good spirit it is wanted to get photos of the 1,500 elk gathered intended,” he told the Washington Post. “We

High As we’re called now to address Country planetary imbalances caused by our current lifestyles, News “ For people who care about the West. perhaps we should focus more on Earth’s High Country News covers the important issues and stories that are unique to the American West with a needs, rather than what we perceive as ours. magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, Laurie Lange, in her essay, “Don’t squander your daylight savings,” 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.

28 High Country News March 20, 2017