Where the West Is Moving — and Why CONTENTS

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High Country ForN people whoews care about the West August 20, 2018 | $5 | Vol. 50 No. 14 | www.hcn.org 14 50 No. | $5 Vol. August 20, 2018 Where the West is Moving — and Why CONTENTS

High Country News Executive director/Publisher Where the West is Moving Paul Larmer Editor-in-Chief Brian Calvert — and Why Art director Cindy Wehling DIgital Editor FEATURES Gretchen King Associate EDITORs 14 Tristan Ahtone Heat Casualties Maya L. Kapoor California’s farmworkers face increased dangers Kate Schimel Tay Wiles as the climate warms By Ruxandra Guidi Associate PHOTO EDITOR Luna Anna Archey 24 Estranged in America Assistant EDITORS Emily Benson In rural Colorado, an immigrant family faces Paige Blankenbuehler an uncertain future By Sarah Tory Anna V. Smith WRITERS ON THE RANGE editor Betsy Marston INSIDE Copy editOR Diane Sylvain 4 Is it time for assisted migration? As climate change Contributing editorS overtakes species, scientists seek safer ground Graham Brewer Cally Carswell 6 The record-breaking journey of Deer 255 Scientists Ruxandra Guidi Michelle Nijhuis are uncovering new secrets in mule deer migrations Jodi Peterson Jonathan Thompson 8 St. George sprawl In southwestern Utah, unceasing CorrespondentS growth means increased tension Krista Langlois, Sarah Tory, Joshua Zaffos 10 Truckers against trafficking An unlikely alliance Editorial FELLOWS Carl Segerstrom is fighting a pervasive human rights abuse Jessica Kutz Editorial intern Elena Saavedra Buckley DEPARTMENTS Development Director Laurie Milford 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG Philanthropy Advisor Alyssa Pinkerton 12 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends Development Assistant Christine List 8 1 EDUCATION MARKETPLACE Digital Marketer Chris King 30 MARKETPLACE Events & Business Partner Coordinator Laura Dixon 33 BOOKS Web Application Developer The House of Broken Angels By Luis Alberto Urrea Eric Strebel IT Manager Reviewed by Sarah Tory Alan Wells IT Support Technician 43 PERSPECTIVE Josh McIntire This land is their land, too Accountant Erica Howard Immigrants aren’t the real threat to public lands Accounts Assistant Analysis by Ruxandra Guidi Mary Zachman Customer Service Manager 36 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston Christie Cantrell Customer Service Kathy Martinez (Circ. Contributors Systems Administrator), Rebecca Hemer, Debra Muzikar, Pam Peters, Doris Teel, Tammy York GrantWriter Janet Reasoner [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] FOUNDER Tom Bell Board of Directors John Belkin, Colo. Beth Conover, Colo. Jay Dean, Calif. Bob Fulkerson, Nev. Emily Benson is an Ruxandra Guidi is Maya L. Kapoor is Jessica Kutz is an Carl Segerstrom is Sarah Tory is a Anastasia Greene, Wash. assistant editor at a contributing editor an associate editor at editorial fellow at an editorial fellow at correspondent for Wayne Hare, Colo. High Country News. at HCN. She writes High Country News. High Country News. High Country News. HCN. She writes from Laura Helmuth, Md.  from Los Angeles,    Carbondale, Colorado. John Heyneman, Wyo. @erbenson1 @kapoor_ml @jkutzie @carlschirps Osvel Hinojosa, Mexico California.  @tory_sarah Samaria Jaffe, Calif.  @homelandsprod Nicole Lampe, Ore. Marla Painter, N.M. Bryan Pollard, Ark. Raynelle Rino, Calif. High Country News is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) independent 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post Estee Rivera Murdock, Colo. media organization that covers the issues that define the offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Rick Tallman, Colo. High American West. Its mission is to inform and inspire people Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All rights to publication of articles Luis Torres, N.M. to act on behalf of the region’s diverse natural and human in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Andy Wiessner, Colo. Country communities. (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: Florence Williams, D.C. News times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Ave., Paonia, CO 800-905-1155 | hcn.org 2 High Country News August 20, 2018 From our website: HCN.ORG

Editor’s note Photos The myth of American progress

In 1872, a publisher named George Crofutt hired a German-born, Brooklyn-based painter to illustrate his Western World magazine. John Gast’s American Progress was painted just seven years after the end of the Civil War and 24 years after t Farmworkers harvest the U.S. government acquired 525,000 square peaches at one of miles of “the West” from Mexico in the Treaty Abundant Harvest Organics’ orchards in of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It depicts an angelic Kingsburg, California, Columbia (the feminine spirit of the United States) floating over the where, as temperatures continent, carrying a book in one hand and a string of telegraph wire continue rising, in the other, the vanguard of an advancing empire of trains, coaches, An air tanker flies over a vineyard in the path awareness about heat- wagons, farmers, miners and horsemen. A bear, a herd of bison and of the Mendocino Complex Fire in Lakeport, related illness is critical numerous Indigenous Americans all flee in terror at her approach California. Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images to farmworker safety. R oberTO (Bear) Guerra for — all things wild and other to the minds of the 19th-century Anglo- High Country News Americans now barreling in from the East. The painting has become ‘We’re stretched to our limits’ one of the most enduring images of Manifest Destiny. Vast and relentless wildfires are ravaging California t Lucia Gaspar at Today, most of us understand the dangers of Manifest Destiny and beyond, and more ignite each week. From the work in Ortega Middle and the fantasy it represented to would-be Westerners. But consider, Carr Fire, which has now killed at least seven people, School’s special needs too, the myth of progress to massive blazes in Idaho and Oregon, over 100 large fires have covered more than 1 million acres classroom in Alamosa, it encouraged. Nearly 150 more than the year-to-date average. The forecast isn’t Colorado. She got the years after Gast’s painting job after she became looking good, either. According to Ed Delgado of the eligible for the program was printed, we know that National Interagency Fire Center, the West Coast will called Deferred Action the coal smoke those trains likely continue getting hit. California, the Northern for Childhood Arrivals, spewed helped heat up the Rockies and the Great Basin will see above-average known as DACA. The planet’s atmosphere, as fire conditions in the months to come, according to Trump administration would the cars, trucks and Delgado’s predictions, with higher temperatures and discontinued the buses that replaced the lower moisture. Elena Saavedra Buckley program, but courts More: hcne.ws/region-ablaze have ordered that it be coaches and wagons. One restarted. might regard those farmers, Corey Robinson for American Progress, 1872. miners and other “pioneers” High Country News Source: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. as the shock troops of an American policy of This business is based on displacement and supremacy, one that ruthlessly tore other people human suffering. from their land, homes and families. And those telegraph lines? Those were the precursor of the “Information Age,” the promise of a “ —Roberto de Jesús González, speaking future never delivered, that now bind us with hateful tweets, endless in a legislative hearing in Santa Fe, New Mexico, about his experience” being held emails, and a “social” platform for Russian agents to sow discontent for three months in New Mexico’s Otero across our democratic system. County Processing Center, one of the private And so, for this issue’s cover, we’ve decided to give American detention centers used by Immigration and Progress an update. The issue itself is dedicated to the idea Customs Enforcement to hold asylum-seekers On the cover of migration and the myriad ways it continues to reshape the and other non-criminal detainees. Jessica American West — through the movement of people, plants, Kutz More: hcne.ws/investigating-ICE animals and ideas. The West may not represent progress, but it does represent constant flux. And these days, the biggest driver of change is not the desire for progress, but the challenge of a chaotic climate and the movement of people, from communities ignored or Percent of the power provided by Arizona50 utilities that must come from renewable Original maligned by Gast’s work. The West is becoming a place of heat and illustration sources by 2030, if a clean energy ballot measure by Grace cruelty, where families are torn apart and farmworkers wither in the passes. Russell, fields, even as researchers desperately seek ways to save diminishing inspired by ecosystems. It doesn’t have to be, however. A better West is up John Gast’s to us. $1,200 American After commissioning Gast’s painting, Crofutt described it as Amount Arizona Public Service says customers’ Progress. a “beautiful and charming” depiction of America, floatingW est, annual utility bills will go up, if it passes. “bearing on her forehead the ‘Star of Empire,’ ” and bringing with Environmental groups dispute the figure. her the means to “flash intelligence throughout the land.” If only In Arizona, a renewable energy ballot measure she’d brought decency, instead of progress. has stoked a legal battle between utilities and —Brian Calvert, editor-in-chief environmentalists. The measure would up the state’s commitment to carbon-free energy, but it doesn’t include nuclear in the equation. Some Complete access to subscriber-only content wonder whether that spells the shutdown of HCN’s website hcn.org | Digital edition hcne.ws/digi-5014 the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, the country’s largest power producer.  @highcountrynews Printed on recycled paper. Elena Saavedra Buckley More: hcne.ws/arizona-nuclear www.hcn.org High Country News 3 Is it time for assisted migration? As climate change overtakes species, scientists seek safer ground By Maya L. Kapoor

Above, Edith Juno ike many Westerners, giant sequoias stressful conditions. Instead, whole popu- the parent stood. In order to outpace hot- plants the cuttings of L came recently from farther east. Of lations shift, as individuals in one part of ter conditions, this gradual process may a 2,500 year-old coast course, “recent” is a relative term. “You’re the range die out and saplings in other need a human nudge. redwood. Clippings talking millions of years (ago),” William places grow. But ecosystems are changing While Westerners already relocate were taken from the Libby said. The retired University of on a human timescale now. That’s a prob- plants and animals — for species reintro- very top of the tree, California, Berkeley, plant geneticist has lem for the West’s iconic giant trees. ductions, hunting, agriculture and more 350 feet up, and been studying the West Coast’s tower- Coast redwoods, which are the world’s — there is still no consensus on rescuing overnighted to a lab in ing trees for more than half a century. tallest trees, and sequoias, which are organisms from climate change this way. Copemish, Michigan. courtesy of archangel Needing cooler, wetter climates, the tree the most massive, are exceptionally In a 2006 opinion piece, two well-known ancient tree archive species arrived at their current loca- adaptable: The oldest living trees have ecologists, Anthony and David Simberloff, tions some 4,500 years ago — about two withstood cold spells, drought and fire. dismissed assisted migration as “planned generations. “They left behind all kinds But today’s extraordinary rate of climate invasions,” a “new bandwagon,” and “eco- of Eastern species that did not make it change — along with habitat destruction logical gambling.” The risks that intro- with them, and encountered all kinds of and fire suppression — may be too duced species might pose to plants and new things in their environment,” Libby much for them to survive. “If we expect animals already living in a region are too said. Today, sequoias grow on the western them to make a big migration in one unknown, hard to predict, and potentially slopes of California’s Sierra Nevada. century, that’s asking a lot,” Libby said. disastrous to be worth it, they said. They Now, it may be up to humans to move Populations of both sequoias and coast concluded that conservation biologists sequoias and their close relatives, coast redwoods are dwindling, and the trees should focus on breeding rare species in redwoods, to new homes. As tempera- are already considered endangered by captivity, restoring habitat and ending tures rise and the world’s climate rapidly the International Union for Conservation human-caused climate change. changes, many plants and animals may of Nature. Scientists fear climate change Past experiences with introductions not be able to relocate fast enough on their could drive them to extinction. gone awry make scientists nervous. In the own — including the Klamath Mountains’ These trees are among the slow- 1940s, the federal government introduced Brewer spruce, which grows on windswept est travelers in North America, in part buffelgrass, a drought-hardy African for- peaks, and the New Mexico ridge-nosed because of how they reproduce. Coast age, to Arizona to help cattle survive dry rattlesnake, which can be found marooned redwood seeds are moved by wind or rain, spells. The grass spread, filling in the on just a few isolated mountaintops. But while insects and rodents move sequoia spaces between desert plants, replac- the prospect of mixing and moving spe- seeds. But few seeds germinate success- ing natural firebreaks with ready fuel cies alarms scientists, because of the risks fully. Instead, for the most part, clonal and turning swaths of desert across the involved — both to the new ecosystem, sprouts grow up from the shallow, stretch- Southwest into fire-prone grasslands. In and to the species themselves. ing roots of a mature tree. In the case 2010, the National Park Service warned Plants often move on the geologic of coast redwoods, deceased elders can that buffelgrass covered about 2 percent of time scale of landforms. After all, trees leave behind a “fairy ring” of surrounding Saguaro National Park and was increas- don’t simply uproot and stroll away from younger trees, just a few feet from where ing by 35 percent annually.

4 High Country News August 20, 2018 A “fairy ring” of young coast redwoods sprouted around the spot where an elderly tree used to grow in Redwood National Park. Mario Vaden

the planet love those trees.” Now in his 80s, Milarch dedicated himself to saving these species — and many other imperiled trees — a quarter- century ago, after his own near-death experience. Milarch recalled an archangel turning him back from the gates of heaven because he still had work to do on Earth: He had to save tree species. So Milarch focused his fourth-generation nursery business on trying to conserve many of the world’s disappearing tree species through assisted migration. In many ways, this Noah’s Ark approach to conservation flies in the face of scientific understanding: In addition to planting trees far from their current range, Archangel also chooses the oldest, biggest trees — which Milarch calls “champions” — to clone, a sensible-seem- ing approach that actually masks assump- tions about how those trees got that way. Sometimes, seedlings grow into strapping “We don’t Few U.S. scientists have tried experi- mountain ecosystems are responding to adults because of dumb luck: Maybe they have to be mental assisted migrations, and in Canada climate change, recommends mixing the dug into particularly rich soil, or it rained and Mexico, the results of experiments have gene pools of the trees used for assisted buckets during their first decade, or they saddled with been mixed. In 2015, Canadian researchers migration projects by collecting seeds and happened to germinate near a gap in such a dubious studied Douglas fir trees that were moved clones from different locations. “Then, the forest canopy that let in lots of light. more than 40 years previously throughout natural selection 50 years in the future Clones of those trees may wither without future for our coastal British Columbia for reforestation can sort it out, and we don’t have to pre- the same help in a new location. Archangel children, our research. They found that transferred trees dict (survivors), which we’re very bad at tries to take genetic diversity into account sometimes did not grow as well as local doing,” she said. by growing genetically diverse seedlings grandchildren, trees, because they didn’t form symbiotic Agencies in the U.S. have toyed with as well as sprouts cut from “champion” if we all would relationships as effectively with local soil the idea of assisted migration, but no tree clones, but its collection overall still and root fungi, which help trees absorb projects are currently in the works. To lacks the diversity of a natural population. plant two or nutrients. Mexican researchers found that make tree transplants work, federal agen- Still, Archangel inspires volunteers four trees.” when they moved three species of Mexican cies would have to find the money for the around the world. Perhaps that’s because pines to higher elevations and colder tem- prolonged follow-up work needed to keep it offers hope, pulling believers into the —Archangel Ancient peratures, two species struggled to survive them alive: artificial watering, fertilizer boughs of ancient sequoias on climbing Trees Archive founder in locations more than a few hundred feet feedings, protective fencing to keep out expeditions and insisting that concerned David Milarch above their current ranges. hungry deer. “Just like in a garden, when people can do their part to end climate These findings speak to one broad con- you transplant, there’s usually transplant change simply by planting trees. cern about moving species around to save shock,” Millar said. “It takes a while for Milarch likes to point out that them: It can cause unnecessary suffering, roots to get down. ... It’s not like they’re Archangel has been able to grow cut- eat up limited conservation funding, and happy all of a sudden.” Similar constraints tings from trees thousands of years old, ultimately fail. In one recent example, 11 would limit animal introductions. In many something he says scientists told him was black rhinos were relocated in Kenya. All cases, for agencies, shifting species would impossible. Driven by his faith, Milarch 11 perished from salt poisoning, dehydra- also require new regulations, such as offers a solution to climate change that tion and, in one case, a lion attack on a those that govern post-wildfire replanting. doesn’t require watershed changes in poli- weakened animal, according to the Daily The biggest unknown about assisted tics — or in how people use fossil fuels. Nation. Mary Williams, an ecologist who migration may come down to human “Climate change can be reversed,” he said, has researched assisted migration as a behavior: Without knowing how much noting the carbon-storing capacity of the climate adaptation strategy, cautioned fossil fuel people will keep burning, West’s giant trees. “We don’t have to be against the “extreme” movement of plants. researchers can’t say for sure how much the saddled with such a dubious future for She recommended instead that seeds be climate will change, or where a particular our children, our grandchildren, if we all taken from the warmer parts of a plant’s organism’s optimal neighborhood will be would plant two or four trees.” existing range, to be grown in cooler parts in the year 2100. Particularly for beloved species such of its range. Then, when those cooler areas As scientists fret, some members of the as coast redwoods and sequoias, there may warmed, the plants would already be general public are already forging ahead. be more rogue rescue efforts in the future. adapted to the new conditions. Michigan-based Archangel Ancient Trees And while scientists worry about unin- Because a species’ resilience comes Archive is attempting to plant thousands tended consequences, Williams sees the from its genetic diversity, spreading the of nursery-grown coast redwoods and advantages of shaking off political drag. clones or seeds of too few plants could sequoias in the West, without waiting for “Sometimes, in situations like this, there also doom an assisted migration project. more scientific research. Sequoias and may be some really great things that come Connie Millar, a senior scientist with coast redwoods, founder David Milarch out of it,” she said. “You just need to take a the U.S. Forest Service who studies how said, are “magical” trees. “People all over risk and see what happens.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 The record-breaking journey of Deer 255 Even now, scientists are uncovering new secrets in mule deer migrations By Emily Benson

tanding in a thick patch of pine and fir, like to eat so they could compare Deer Researchers first collared Deer 255 in S mosquitoes swarming her face, Anna 255’s destination to other summer ranges. March 2016. That spring, they noted her Ortega lifted a radio receiver into the air, But only after they found the doe herself. propensity for long-distance travel, but angling it back and forth as she listened Ortega pointed to a fawn-shaped slash of they weren’t sure whether she was making for the blip, blip, blip of a mule deer col- tan among the tree trunks. We trained our a true migration, which requires a round lar. A zoology graduate student at the binoculars and cameras in that direction, trip. They waited for autumn to see if the University of Wyoming, Ortega was track- and — “false alarm,” Ortega murmured, doe, nicknamed Island Park Girl, would ing Deer 255, a doe that had braved road as the contours of a fallen log became return to Wyoming. But in early August, crossings, fences, wolves and other haz- clear. She switched on the radio receiver, her collar malfunctioned. When Ortega’s ards to get here. Somewhere in this for- lofted it, and followed the blips deeper into colleagues asked where the adventurous est near Island Park, Idaho, a dozen miles the woods. deer was, she had to tell them she didn’t west of Yellowstone National Park, Deer While not all mule deer migrate, some know; she wasn’t even sure if Deer 255 255 was laying over for the summer. travel a hundred miles or more between was still alive. Armed with bear spray, binoculars their summer and winter ranges. With Then, this year, early in the after- and datasheets, Ortega and two field a one-way migration of 242 miles, Deer noon on a sunny March day, Ortega and Anna Ortega, assistants followed the blips among trees 255 holds the record for the longest- her field crew were studying Deer 255’s a University of dappled with early July sun. They picked documented land migration in the Lower herd in the Red Desert outside Superior, Wyoming doctoral their way through knee-high grass and 48, traveling even farther than her herd- Wyoming. Deer were netted from a heli- student, processes shrubs, the occasional snap of a twig mates, all of which winter in the Red copter, then ferried to the researchers, who a blood sample underfoot as startling as a slamming door. Desert of southwest Wyoming. Her trek to collected samples before releasing them. A collected from a The blips were strong and clear: Deer 255 Idaho from the Red Desert exemplifies the deer wearing a collar with a broken GPS mule deer doe. was close. Ortega knelt, peered through a surprises scientists are still encountering was captured, and, because she had mem- Ortega uses the spotting scope and silently waved the rest with this well-studied ungulate. And as orized its identification frequency, Ortega blood to gain insight into hormone of us closer. “I think I see a fawn bedded mule deer populations throughout the West recognized Deer 255. It had been nearly concentrations, down,” she whispered, smiling. remain below target levels, it underscores a year and a half since the doe was last genetics and disease. Later, Ortega and her crew planned to the need to protect the wide tracts of located. “Everyone was crowding around Ben Kraushaar collect samples of plants that mule deer landscape that sustain migrating wildlife. and just so excited to see that this was Island Park Girl,” Ortega told me later. Deer 255 was pregnant, with twins. She had made a round-trip migration nearly 100 miles longer, each way, than the longest recorded migrations of her herd- mates, some of which hadn’t migrated at all. But why? Ortega and her colleagues don’t know, but they do know that deer from the same herd often split up and head to different summer ranges, typically returning year after year to the same spot. Ortega explains this as a diversified stock portfo- lio for the herd: If catastrophe befalls one route or destination, others can ensure the group’s overall success. Deer 255’s migration “adds just a little more complexity to it all,” Ortega said. “This is another massive movement that we can add to our knowledge of migrations across the American West.” Deer 255 is part of a well-studied group. Wyoming is a good place to research mule deer movement, says Matthew Kauffman, the director of the Wyoming Migration Initiative and Ortega’s doctoral advisor at the University of Wyoming. Partly that’s because the state’s varied landscape — from the high desert scrub of the Red Desert to the foothills of mountain ranges like the Wind Rivers and the Gros Ventres — means migration is a particularly fruitful strategy, allowing animals to follow green-up in the spring and escape the harshest extremes of

6 High Country News August 20, 2018 Anna Ortega and Brett Jesmer release a mule deer doe in the Red Desert of Wyoming. Prior to A mapping of Deer 255’s migration shows that her journey from the release, biologists collect blood, fecal and body size measurements, and determine whether the Red Desert in Wyoming to her summer range in Idaho took almost animal is pregnant. Ben Kraushaar three months. Wyoming Migration initiative both winter and summer. “These animals money hunters and wildlife watchers Fish Department had requested those have figured out these solutions of how spent on gas, motel rooms, guides and changes in a June 5 letter to the Bureau to have the best of both worlds and how other goods and services. of Land Management. to sort of stitch it all together with the But that economic windfall is dwarfed But the Interior Department’s actions seasons,” Kauffman says. “To me, that’s by another source of revenue: fossil fuel don’t go far enough to protect mule deer, the exciting part of 255. She’s showing us development. According to the think tank says Julia Stuble, a Wyoming-based public yet another way to make a living on this Resources for the Future, oil and gas land and energy expert for The Wilderness landscape.” There’s a broader significance brought Wyoming about $1.8 billion in Society. “They are coming under the cover to her journey, too, he told me. “Here 2013. Research shows that building well of saying, ‘Well, it’s what the state wanted,’ we are in 2018, and big game species pads and roads, drilling, and maintain- (but) they can do plenty more,” Stuble told like mule deer and elk are some of the ing energy infrastructure is disruptive me. “If they can defer three parcels, they best-studied animals on the plant. And to mule deer. In one 17-year study, sci- can defer all of them.” yet, we’re still discovering these sort of entists from the University of Wyoming “Big game species secret ways they have of exploiting these and Western Ecosystems Technology, an Back on Deer 255’s summer range, landscapes.” environmental consulting firm, found that Ortega led us deeper into the forest, her like mule deer Humans, of course, are exploiting deer never became habituated to the pres- skin now dotted with blood and welts left and elk are some the very same places. Fences, roads and ence of natural gas wells, despite restora- by mosquitoes. In a small clearing, she development — both urban growth and tion efforts. The number of deer wintering dropped behind a rotting log and, throw- of the best- energy expansion — all infringe on mule in the affected area dropped by more than ing her hands above her head, motioned studied animals deer habitat and migration corridors. a third — even as hunting declined over to the rest of us in victory — or perhaps In 2016, the most recent year for which the same period. frustration. As we hurried over, mindful of on the plant. And information is available, officials estimate That makes for potentially competing cracking twigs, she whispered that she’d yet, we’re still Wyoming’s mule deer population was goals for the Interior Department. It must gotten a good look at Deer 255’s distinc- about 396,000, about 28 percent below the follow President Donald Trump’s explicit tive collar, but the doe had spooked. In low, discovering these target population. Still, the state has seen prioritization of energy development on quiet voices, we were discussing our next sort of secret modest improvements in fawn survival public land. And it must adhere to an move — should we circle around and try and population increases since 2014, says initiative announced earlier this year by for another look? give up and collect the ways they have of Daryl Lutz, the Lander region wildlife Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to work plant samples? — when one of the assis- exploiting these management coordinator for the Wyoming with Western states to improve habitat for tants, gazing into the woods, murmured: Game and Fish Department. That’s mule deer, elk and pronghorn, including “I see her.” landscapes.” thanks to well-timed spring and summer migration corridors. Given Zinke’s energy- A swatch of tawny fur flashed through -Matthew Kauffman, the rain, which nourish the plants mule deer boosting track record, it’s unclear which the evergreens, and then it was gone. We director of the Wyoming eat. On-the-ground improvements like priority will prevail. grinned at each other, muffling our excite- Migration Initiative retrofitted fences and protected habitat From Zinke’s point of view, however, ment, until Ortega and her assistants likely played a role, too. “I guess we’ll wait “it’s not an either-or,” says Casey Stemler, turned to more mundane measurements. and see how long we get to ride this wave,” the Fish and Wildlife employee leading the They began identifying plants and collect- Lutz says, “but we’re hopeful.” order’s implementation. Federal efforts, ing samples — sticky geranium, heart-leaf And while mule deer are an iconic while allowing for oil and gas drilling, will arnica — studying the destination that feature of Western ecology, they’re also follow state priorities for habitat protec- Deer 255 had traveled so far to reach. “I important economically. In 2016, between tions. That’s what happened in late July, feel like I would be missing a part of the hunting license and application fees, when the Interior Department deferred oil story to not be actually on the ground look- conservation stamps and other sources, and gas leases on three parcels that over- ing at her summer range,” Ortega said, no Wyoming brought in more than $15 mil- lap with the migration route of Deer 255 longer whispering. “It was great to get a lion to manage its mule deer program, a and her herd, and restricted development fleeting glimpse of her. She remains elu- sum that doesn’t include the additional on several others; the Wyoming Game and sive to us, but that’s OK.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 Department of Workforce Services. “We’ve got growth pervasively across all age St. George sprawl groups, mostly fed through migration,” said Pamela Perlich, director of demo- In southwestern Utah, unceasing growth means increased tension graphic research at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. The city is also preparing By Jessica Kutz to become the state’s next high-tech hub, with the creation of Tech Ridge, a mixed- n 1861, Mormon Church leaders dis- mountainous wilderness to national parks use development designed to attract com- I patched 309 families from Salt Lake and monuments — has become a migra- panies from across the country. City to the arid southwestern corner of tion magnet. This trend is playing out in County-to-county migration-flow data Utah, telling them to grow cotton. The communities across the region, according from 2015 show that nearly 30 percent of plan to settle this inhospitable desert to John Shepard, director of programs for new residents come from Utah’s crowded region was part of a larger church-led the Sonoran Institute. In the Old West, Wasatch Front, according to a report effort to colonize the southern part of the people’s migratory patterns were driven from the institute. The highest numbers state. The water-intensive crop never took by jobs created by mining, timber and of out-of-state residents are coming from off, but the community of St. George did, other resource-based economies, but today, California and Nevada, largely because and today it is one of the fastest-growing people are moving because of the region’s they can take advantage of St. George’s metropolitan areas in the country. In the “natural amenities, great outdoors, open lower cost of living. “The dynamic of being past two years, St. George has added space and wild lands,” he said. It’s no sur- able to cash in your equity in California nearly 12,000 new residents to a popu- prise that Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Oregon and move into other places … St. George lation of approximately 153,000 people, and Nevada are all seeing a spike in the has definitely been a beneficiary of that many of them drawn by the city’s mild cli- number of new residents. type of migration,” Perlich said. If this mate and access to public lands. But all While retirees still make up a large keeps up, the county is expected to house this growth has stoked some rising ten- percentage of new arrivals, St. George’s more than half a million people by 2065. sion over water and land in this former diversified economy is also attracting a That’s a lot of people struggling over lim- farm town. new workforce, with employment in con- ited resources of water and land — to say And many of the resulting problems struction, hospitality, health care and nothing of the preservation of the area’s will land right in the lap of Adam Lenhard, manufacturing seeing the biggest upticks, agricultural heritage. Not surprisingly, the new city manager, who started his job according to a report compiled by the Utah this has added to the tension. in February. On a warm summer day not long ago, he gazed over a seemingly endless expanse of newly shingled rooftops. “In some ways, St. George is just being discovered,” he told me. “A lot of us have been coming here for decades, and now it really feels like there is this spotlight and people are really just moving in.” We were overlooking the community of Little Valley, where, as in many of St. George’s neighborhoods, rapid development is one of the challenges facing Lenhard. Alfalfa fields have been dug up for baseball diamonds and pickle-ball courts, and former ranchland is now covered by new tract homes. One of these homes, Lenhard said, was being built for his family, which will be moving soon from Layton, Utah. Lenhard said he’d thought about relocating to St. George ever since he spent several vaca- tions exploring nearby Zion National Park — one of Utah’s “Mighty Five” — and the red rock formations of Snow Canyon State Park, just 23 miles from the city center. Such places are a big draw here, in a county that is 75 percent public land, and, as a newcomer himself, Lenhard is deeply sympathetic to the motivations of many of his constituents. “Growth is a two-edged sword,” he said. “It brings jobs, quality of life, better amenities. But we have to preserve what has brought people. … We have to find the right balance as we grow.” While amenity-driven growth in the West is most often associated with ski towns like Telluride, Colorado, or Jackson Hole, Wyoming, places like St. George have discovered that access to public lands — from slickrock deserts to New homes under construction in St. George, Utah, an area experiencing one of the fastest rates of growth in the country. George Frey/Getty Images 8 High Country News August 20, 2018 O n a late afternoon in June, parents this one water source, which is really vari- Utah statewide population change, 1940-2030 watched as their children splashed in a able,” said Karry Rathje, the district’s pub- moat-like water feature in St. George’s lic information manager. Town Square Park, wading through Opponents of the project point out 2020-2030* Net migration channels and jumping between jets of that even as the city’s population has water. Amid the watery revelry, one could grown, water use has actually gone down. 2010-2020 Natural increase almost forget that St. George is located According to figures released in June, the 2000-2010 in one of the driest states of the country; county decreased its consumption of pota- *Projected growth Washington County has an annual rain- ble water by over 1 billion gallons between 1990-2000 fall of just 16 inches per year. A major- 2010 and 2015, thanks to conservation 1980-1990 ity of the county’s water comes from the measures and the conversion of irrigated university of utah Virgin River. Now, with droves of new agricultural land into housing develop- 1970-1980 policy institute compiled with residents moving in, long-term residents ments. Groups like Conserve Southwest data from u.s. are worried that this precious and vulner- Utah, a local nonprofit, say even more can 1960-1970 census bureau, utah population able resource could be drained, leading to be done. That includes raising the coun- 1950-1960 estimates committee and water shortages. ty’s water rates, which remain some of the utah population That’s why in 2006, the Washington lowest in the United States. 1940-1950 committee County Water Conservancy District All this growth is having a serious announced plans to pursue a controver- impact on land use. The region’s post-set- -100 0 100 500400300200 700600 sial pipeline connecting Lake Powell to tlement character is rooted in an agricul- Thousands southwest Utah. The nearly $1.5 billion tural tradition, but agrarian outposts like project would divert 86,000 acre-feet of Little Valley are rapidly being erased. In water from Lake Powell over 140 miles response, local resident Nicole Hancock, of desert into the county. The pipeline, who grew up in what she calls her “beloved which has yet to be approved, would pro- fields,” started the Washington County vide security for the community’s future, Agricultural Development Committee. said Ron Thompson, the district’s general The county committee, which will be com- manager. Supporters say the county needs posed of 18 to 20 members, was approved to diversify its water sources. “Right now, for funding in May, with its mission to pre- our growing population is dependent on serve farmland and promote agriculture education. Eventually, it might help people like Sherrie Staheli, a fourth-generation farmer from Washington Fields who has seen her farm, once 1,500 acres, encroached on by subdivisions and retire- ment communities. “Never in a million years would I think we’d have houses this close to us,” said Staheli. Yet the pressure to sell the land has been unrelenting; Staheli’s own family sold some parcels for profit and others because more and more road easements through the prop- Farm Security Administration members pose on a cooperative pipeline erty were being approved. “People built used for irrigation in St. George in 1940. library of congress out here because of the beauty of these fields,” Staheli said, “but they don’t like what comes with it.” Even where it isn’t directly overtak- ing habitat, St. George’s sprawl puts Even more developments are being pressure on wildlife. The 62,000-acre Red planned in other parts of the county. One Cliffs Desert Reserve, for example, was of them, called Desert Color, will eventu- established in 1996 to protect the Mojave ally house an estimated 30,000 residents Desert tortoise, a federally listed threat- on state trust lands. The plans include a ened species. The reserve is governed lot of “smart-growth principles,” such as by a county conservation plan, part of a xeriscaping and walkable amenities to compromise that unlocked over 300,000 reduce driving needs, said Jane Whalen, acres of protected habitat for the develop- a resident of nearby Hurricane and a com- ment of housing, freeways and shopping munity organizer. centers. In 2006, Whalen and other residents In another sign of the times, state worked with officials to create a set of lawmakers are now reviewing that agree- principals to guide the region’s growth. ment. A new bill, the so-called “Desert Other master-planned communities being Tortoise Habitat Conservation Plan built by the new St. George Airport, south Expansion Act,” was introduced by Utah of the city, will eventually run up to the Republican Rep. Chris Stewart in April. Arizona state border, site of some of the If passed, that “conservation” bill could last developable land within city limits. transform the tortoise’s habitat — a stark Such developments mean less open space landscape of lava flows, cinder cones and for wildlife migration corridors and frag- desert brush — into a five-lane highway. mented habitat for mule deer, quail and No one doubts that if it’s built, more traffic pheasants. will come. New homes under construction in St. George, Utah, an area experiencing one of the fastest rates of growth in the country. George Frey/Getty Images www.hcn.org High Country News 9 Truckers against trafficking An unlikely alliance is fighting a pervasive human rights abuse By Carl Segerstrom

With their plethora onrad Hoke has been crisscrossing along a popular trucking corridor in Texas, to avoid arrest, and they turn to websites of potential clients, C the country as a trucker for 44 years. and the family remembered the relation- and fake businesses fronts like massage overnight truck stops On his last hitch, he hauled a dump truck ships they’d formed with truckers over the parlors. The diffuse nature of human traf- are a common spot for from Denver to Salt Lake City and back. years. They decided that targeting truck- ficking and the increasingly digitized tac- sex trafficking. But on the day we met, in the two-street ers was a better way to combat trafficking. tics make it more difficult to recognize and luna anna archey/ high country news casino town of Blackhawk, Colorado, Hoke In 2009, they founded Truckers Against prosecute traffickers. had volunteered to tow a very different Trafficking, because “they always found Law enforcement statistics are frag- cargo — a semi-trailer exhibiting the hor- girls and women trafficked at truck stops” mented and don’t capture the true extent rors of sex trafficking and telling the sto- said Lanier, who pointed out that people of human or sex trafficking. The National ries of truckers who stepped up on behalf are also trafficked in less visible areas. Human Trafficking Hotline, a project of survivors. “What has propelled Truckers Against of the Polaris Project, generated nearly When I arrived at the Freedom Drivers Trafficking was targeting that culture.” 9,000 trafficking cases in 2017 with more Project, Hoke invited me into the exhibit, Truckers cover practically every cor- than 10,000 likely victims. But that is only and I stepped from bright high-mountain ner of the nation, and with about 3.5 mil- a small fraction of the actual number: The sunlight into a much darker scene. A small lion employed nationwide, they outnum- organization estimates that hundreds of pair of flip flops, dog tags issued to a vic- ber law enforcement by more than three thousands of people are trafficked in the tim by a trafficker, and poker chips paid to one. While some people see buying sex United States each year. to a girl too young to cash them in hung as a victimless crime, studies have shown The areas with the most trafficking in cases on the trailer’s walls. There was a that the commercial sex industry depends are along busy highway corridors and pair of large elastic jail-issued pants, worn on coercion. Anti-trafficking advocates in big cities. California’s urban areas by a trafficked woman forced to give birth like Lanier want to change a culture that and major highway corridors have more behind bars. has long haunted the trucking community reported cases than anywhere else in the Hoke is one of more than half a million and society as a whole. nation, although human and sex traffick- truckers trained to spot and report human “(Truckers Against Trafficking) helped ing occur throughout the West. trafficking through Truckers Against the trucking community see this isn’t a While the term trafficking often evokes Trafficking. The Denver-based nonprofit choice,” said Tajuan McCarty, a survi- images of immigrants being smuggled targets an industry uniquely positioned to vor and advocate who leads trainings for across the border, the majority of victims fight the exploitation of women: Truckers Truckers Against Trafficking. “Stopping in the United States are domestic. And sex travel to nearly every corner of the country human trafficking requires a cultural trafficking is more prevalent than labor and are a target market for sex trafficking. shift in how we think, and that’s what this trafficking: According to 2017 data from “Our idea was to turn a passive audi- is doing.” the National Human Trafficking Hotline, ence into a disruptive force,” said Kylla Sex trafficking was an out-in-the- two-thirds of trafficking cases reported Lanier, one of the co-founders of the open part of trucking culture when Hoke nationwide involved people being sold for organization. started driving. “Back in the ’70s, it was all commercial sexual exploitation. Data from Lanier, her mother, Lyn Leeburg, over the place.” Hoke said. “You couldn’t survivor surveys show intimate partners and three sisters were running a non- hardly drive in some place without get- and family members are the most likely to profit aimed at stopping human traffick- ting your truck door banged on. It’s hidden traffic victims. ing when they realized there was a way now. Without training, if you don’t know, In order to build understanding of the to make a bigger impact. When she was you’re not going to see it.” realities of modern trafficking, Truckers young, Leeburg’s parents ran a motel Now, traffickers maintain a low profile Against Trafficking trains drivers through

10 High Country News August 20, 2018 a video tutorial. The training video pairs the story of a trafficked teen with insight from an FBI special agent and anti-human trafficking experts. Truckers must also pass a 15-question quiz. The video offers tips for identifying people, and especially girls, who are being prostituted or appear to be held against their will, and it explains how reporting trafficking-related chatter over social media and trucking communica- tion lines like CB radios can help lead to arrests. “Even the smallest little details that (truckers) have, that you can provide us with, can help and have helped to recover girls,” FBI Special Agent Evan Nicholas says in the video. Eight states, including Washington and Colorado, require the training for driver certification, and parts of the program are implemented in nearly 40 states. Truckers have made more than 2,000 calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, and the cases generated by these calls have identified more than 1,000 trafficking victims, according to hotline reports. Since learning about Truckers Against Trafficking and taking their flagship training course, Hoke has hauled the Freedom Drivers Project twice and testified in front of the Colorado Legislature, asking lawmakers to make anti-trafficking training a requirement for state trucking schools. “You get woke up to what’s going on,” Hoke said. Conrad Hoke stands for a portrait outside his tractor. Stickers on each of his doors identify him as a Trucker Against The bill passed with bipartisan support in Trafficking and provide the phone number to report possible trafficking. L una anna archey/high country news April. Building off successes in the trucking industry, Truckers Against Trafficking is branching out into other industries with high levels of exposure to trafficking. Two initiatives launched earlier this year seek to train transit and oil-and-gas employees to spot and report trafficking. Long-distance bus lines like Greyhound are known target areas for traffickers to pick up runaways, and the predominantly male workforce of oil and gas boomtowns often harbors the sex trafficking industry. Arian Taylor is one of hundreds of truckers who have called the National Human Trafficking Hotline since being trained by the organization. Around 3 or 4 in the morning in an urban area of California, Taylor heard screams. A car door slammed shut and tires squealed. A young woman, shiver- ing from the cold night air, knocked on the door of his truck and “asked if I could get her home,” Taylor said. with a situation like this,” Taylor said. “It Kendis Paris, co-founder and Hoke keeps informational The young woman had come to the city was hard to process it all at once, but they executive director of Truckers TAT cards handy to give to with a friend and her friend’s boyfriend. kept things calm and easy for us.” Hotline Against Trafficking, speaks during other truck drivers. a 2016 press conference in San luna anna archey/ When money started to run out, her friend’s representatives arranged for the girl to high country news boyfriend tried to force her into commercial be picked up by a taxicab and taken to a Antonio, Texas, about efforts to sex. After an argument, she was left alone in local shelter. A few days later, Taylor got a combat human trafficking. Darren Abate/Texas Tribune a bad part of town. call from Truckers Against Trafficking to The girl knocked on Taylor’s window, let him know the young woman was home which had a Truckers Against Trafficking safely. decal in the corner. Taylor gave the girl “I have a daughter a few years older, and water and let her warm up in his truck while I would hope someone would do the same he called the National Human Trafficking thing for her,” Taylor said. “I just knew I Hotline. “It’s not every day you have to deal wanted to get her home.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 11 THE HCN COMMUNITY

RESEARCH FUND Thank you, Research Fund donors, for helping us journey across the West

12 High Country News August 20, 2018 DEAR FRIENDS

Migrants packed into their automobile near Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 1939. russell lee/library of congress New tour hours for our Paonia visitors

Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and We would like to describe the of the Northwestern states, New Deal Documentary Photography weather in Paonia, but some of while Gretchen King, our former By James R. Swensen. us don’t really know what it’s engagement director, takes over 272 pages, hardcover: $34.95 like, now that much of our edito- as the new digital editor. University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. rial department has moved to Other staff members spread James R. Swensen’s new book, Picturing Migrants, takes a long look at a our experimental satellite office across the country this sum- legendary but short-lived photography project for the New Deal’s Farm in Gunnison, Colorado. One mer. Associate Editor Tay Wiles Security Administration, an agency created to combat rural poverty during thing’s true in both places, and and Executive Director Paul the Great Depression. The book is filled with iconic images — destitute throughout much of the West: It Larmer participated in the Rural mothers serving food scraps to their children, broken-down automobiles is warm out there. Sociological Society’s annual abandoned by the California highway — that illuminate the struggles of the In Paonia, we’ve welcomed meeting in Portland, Oregon. era. Luna Anna Archey as our new Associate Editor Maya L. Kapoor Swensen masterfully brings to life the harsh reality of life during one associate photo editor. Luna, wrapped up a fellowship at of America’s darkest times, coupling the story behind the photographs with who is from Eaton Rapids, Vermont Law School, where a historical analysis of John Steinbeck’s best-selling novel The Grapes of Michigan, came to the Western she took a food and agriculture Wrath, and revealing how the photographs helped inspire it. Author Susan Shillinglaw, formerly the director of the National Steinbeck Center, calls Slope in June, having flown policy class and gave a talk on Swensen’s book a “fascinating and scrupulously researched account of how to the U.S. from Uttarakhand, rare species protections. several FSA photographers and John Steinbeck worked in sync, ‘walking in India, where she worked at a Janet and Bill Hunt, two each other’s paths.’ ” jessica kutz non-governmental organization. Deadheads from June Lake, Luna discovered photography California, drove through as a possible career path at the Paonia on their way to Kearney, University of Michigan, where, Nebraska. They had dinner Susanne A. Haffner | Clovis, CA James W. Nollenberger | Hotchkiss, CO as a member of the crew team, with Executive Director Paul David H. Hall | Chico, CA Rick Olcott | Albuquerque, NM she had to choose between Larmer, Director of Development Dick Hall | Grand Junction, CO William Old | Boulder, CO photography and rowing. We’re Laurie Milford and Assistant W.B. Harrington | Scottsdale, AZ Charles Petit | Berkeley, CA selfishly glad she ditched oar Editor Emily Benson. The din- David Harrod | Baldwin Park, CA Robert Polk | Snowflake, AZ for camera, serving as a senior ner was in part to thank the Charles & Bonnie Hash | Bozeman, MT Doug Powell | Idaho Falls, ID photo editor for The Statement Hunts for their donation to our Alexander M. Hathaway | Chicago, IL Paul W. Power | Westminster, CO magazine, part of the univer- American West(s) documentary Catherine Heising | Eugene, OR Eric Pratt | Las Cruces, NM sity’s newspaper. “It’s so good series, scheduled to come out working with people who are William E. Hine Jr. | Catawissa, PA Carol Raitt | Seattle, WA later this year. unimaginably passionate and We also welcomed a group Chris Holdhusen & Kathy Neff | Whitefish, MT Mary Randall | Boulder, CO talented at what they do,” she of instructors and students Diana Howison | Burbank, CA Rebecca Reed | Holladay, UT said. We agree! from Texas Tech University Mary K. Jenkins | Reno, NV Paula Reynosa | San Luis Obispo, CA Meanwhile, this summer, in Lubbock, Texas, who were John Jones | Albuquerque, NM Judith Roberts | West Linn, OR our editor-in-chief, Brian Calvert, in town to attend a workshop Roy G. Jones | Addison, TX Karen Robinson | Buena Vista, CO graduated with an M.F.A. in at Elsewhere Studios. Carol Larry Kallemeyn | Spearfish, SD Ann Rogers | Traverse City, MI creative writing from Western Flueckiger, who will be back in Richard E. Kanner M.D. | Salt Lake City, UT Bruce Rogers | Sun Valley, ID State Colorado University. For Paonia to lead a solar-powered Eileen Keimig | Estes Park, CO Edward Romero | Santa Fe, NM his final project, Brian wrote a painting symposium, led the Dianne Kelso | Seattle, WA Tom Ronning | Arvada, CO wildfire-themed, one-act opera trip. Tim King | Providence, UT Don Samdahl | Kirkland, WA libretto. We’re proud of him — We’d love to see you come Janet Knach | Wilmette, IL Patty Schille | Albuquerque, NM but happy to have our editor visit us, too. We’re arranging Raymon Kranches | Spokane, WA Harold Sears & Peggy Riedesel | back. new tour hours for our Paonia Yvonne Kuperberg | Vashon, WA Salt Lake City, UT In staff changes: Kate office: Monday through Friday, Dean Kurath | Winthrop, WA Wayne Shanks | Boulder, CO Schimel, who expertly filled the 1:30-3:30 p.m. daily. But you’re J.C. Kuxhausen | Tulelake, CA M.F. Shore | White Hall, MD role of deputy editor-digital for welcome any time if you call Tom La Point | Fort Collins, CO Bill Sims | Winnemucca, NV almost two years, has transi- ahead (1-800-905-1155). See you Lynn Larkin | Loveland, CO Ellie Slothower | Colorado Springs, CO tioned to being an associate here! Lori Lauriano | Bernalillo, NM Benjamin & Kathleen Smith | Aiken, SC editor. She’ll be moving soon to —Elena Saavedra Buckley, Richard Alan Liroff | Arlington, VA Jeff Snyder | Divide, CO Seattle, to head up our coverage for the staff Susan Localio | Port Townsend, WA James Sorenson | Las Cruces, NM Manfred Luehne | Centennial, CO Steven Sorensen, Kansas Wildlife Federation|Valley Center, KS Donald Macalady | Golden, CO Richard Speegle | Durango, CO Brandt Mannchen | Humble, TX Janet Sperry | Helena, MT Warren Marr | Santa Fe, NM Douglas H. Sphar | Cocoa, FL Brett Matzke | Gridley, CA Donald Steuter | Phoenix, AZ Michael & Patricia McCoy | Imperial Beach, CA Muriel Strand | Sacramento, CA Doug Melton | Miles City, MT Kathryn Stromme | Brooklyn, NY Joe & Erick Meyer | Golden, CO Steven Strong | Bend, OR Stuart Miner & Mary Hashem | Denver, CO Wayne Thompson | Tucson, AZ Mel Mooers | Victor, MT Brian & Mary Thornburgh | San Diego, CA Barbara & John Morrison | Evanston, IL Sandra Thorne-Brown | Pocatello, ID Joel Moss | Los Alamos, NM Lucy Thulin | Centennial, CO Larry & Sharon Nall | Joseph, OR Tommy Tomlin | Las Cruces, NM Tina Nappe | Reno, NV Norma L. Van Nostrand | Granby, CO Peter Neal | Palo Alto, CA Derk Wadas | McKinney, TX Dave Nelson | Aspen, CO Erik Wahlstrom | Sammamish, WA Robert D. Nelson | Tucson, AZ Steven Weaver | Jacksonville, OR Joanne Nissen | Soledad, CA Luna Anna Archey, our new associate photo editor, hoping to spot moose at Grand Teton National Park. evant bol www.hcn.org High Country News 13 Heat Casualties California’s farmworkers face increased dangers as the climate warms

aniel Castellanos stood His boss, Vernon Peterson, ensures that It’s for crazy people, as I’ve heard some between two nectarine trees the mayordomos enforce labor laws. youngsters say.” that were two feet apart and Peterson’s family has owned Abundant These days, the men and women don’t just about his height. He Harvest Organics, a stone fruit farm spend more than eight hours a day work- shook their branches, work- in Kingsburg, California, since 1893. ing in the fields, but that work is done ingD his way from bottom to top, trying to Over 6 feet tall and with light blue eyes, in increasingly warm temperatures. The FEATURE By find out how much fruit they were carry- Peterson towers over his 100 workers, impacts of climate change are being felt Ruxandra ing this close to harvest. It wasn’t much: addressing them in Spanish whenever he not just in the quality of the harvest, but Guidi There were only one or two nectarines crosses paths with them in the field. in the economy and the daily lives of the per branch. Castellanos looks every bit like an people who labor in the fields. It used to Photographs “These are trees that should be giv- American’s idea of a typical Mexican be that exposure to pesticides was the top ing us lots of fruit by now,” he told me in farmer, with his little charro mustache, health concern for farmworkers; today, by Roberto Spanish. But a few weeks before my visit wide-brimmed straw hat and plaid cotton heat exposure is. (Bear) to the farm, it froze overnight. Then, the shirt buttoned almost to the neck. He For the people who pick the country’s Guerra next afternoon, the temperature rose into got his start as a farmworker in his late fruits and vegetables — an estimated the 90s, ruining a lot of the crop. teens, working for minimum wage in 800,000 during peak season, about half Castellanos is what’s known here as California’s Central Valley. of them in California alone — higher a mayordomo, a crew supervisor who “We used to work 10 to 12 hours a temperatures mean uncomfortable work- monitors the work done at the farm and day and during the hottest time of day,” ing conditions, a risk of serious illness addresses the farmworkers’ concerns. he told me. “This is very difficult work. and even the possibility of death. In

14 High Country News August 20, 2018 California, there are already strict laws and regulations on the books to prevent some of the worst consequences. But as the future keeps warming, those may not be enough.

Seventeen-year-old Maria Isabel Vásquez Jiménez was pruning grape vines in a Central Valley vineyard late one morning in May 2008 when the temperature reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Her fiancé, 19-year-old Florentino Bautista, was working beside her when she collapsed. “When she fell, she looked bad,” Bautista later told a local media outlet, describing how he cradled her in his arms. “She didn’t regain conscious- ness. She just fell down and didn’t react. I told her to be strong so we could see each other again.” There was a water cooler a 10-minute walk away from where the workers stood, but according to Bautista, the mayordomo wouldn’t let them take a break. Even after Vásquez Jiménez collapsed, farm management didn’t immediately take her to the hospital. By the time a doctor finally treated her, she was in a coma, with a 108-degree fever. Two days later, she died. “The life of a farmworker isn’t important to people,” Arturo Rodríguez, president of the United Farm Workers Union, told a crowd of fieldworkers who p A farmworker marched to the state Capitol only days removes protective after Vásquez Jiménez died. “The reality netting from a row is that the machinery of growers is taken of peach trees before better care of than the lives of farmwork- harvesting the fruit. ers. You wouldn’t take a machine out into the field without putting oil in it. How t Abundant can you take the life of a person and not Harvest Organics even give them the basics?” owner Vernon Vásquez Jiménez’s employer, Merced Peterson Farm Labor, was fined $262,700,and sorts through questionnaires the company was eventually forced to testing his close its doors. California’s Labor and employees’ Workforce Development Agency later awareness of heat- found that the farm had had its business related illness, application renewed, despite its failure to following a monthly follow heat illness guidelines. Elsewhere safety training in California, state labor inspectors found session. that more than half of the farms they audited did not follow the rules. Over tt Covered the past decade, at least 24 farmwork- from head to toe ers have died from heat-related causes, to protect himself including Maria Isabel Vásquez Jiménez. from the sun and Still, when it comes to labor protec- dust, a farmworker tions, California and Washington are picks peaches in an ahead of the federal government and valued at more than $50 billion a year — degrees during this century. Extreme Abundant Harvest most other states. Many states, including $6 billion in the Central Valley alone. The high temperatures are expected to last Organics orchard Oregon, issue heat exposure recommen- state produces more than two-thirds of from June to September (twice as long on a typically warm dations for vulnerable populations like the fruits and nuts and about one-third of as they do today), with heat waves that June day in fieldworkers but do not enforce them. the vegetables consumed in the country. will be longer, more intense and more Kingsburg, California passed the nation’s first heat Whether the crops are conventionally frequent than they were a decade or two California. illness law in 2005. It requires farms to grown in gigantic industrial farms or ago. Add to that the powerful drought-to- conduct training on prevention and write come from small organic operations like flood swings, or “precipitation whiplash emergency plans in case workers get sick. Peterson’s, the current level of produc- events,” such as the heavy rains last win- Farmers must supply water and shade tivity will become unsustainable, if not ter that are partly to blame for Abundant for employees during their breaks, or face obsolete, by 2060. Harvest Organic’s less-than-abundant stiff fines. A recent paper published in the jour- yield this spring. But the state also exemplifies the nal Agronomy by University of California challenges posed by climate change amid researchers shows that the average It was a pleasant 85 degrees in the our culture’s endless pursuit of produc- annual temperature in the Central Valley shade in early June when Peterson, tivity. Today, California’s agriculture is region is projected to increase by 5 to 6 Castellanos and a crew of about a dozen

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 workers sat for 10 minutes to listen to “The data that we’ve collected is a little he told me, making a minimum of $11.50 Marbella Cruz, a former fieldworker who bit biased,” explained Javier Castro, a field an hour, and as much a $19 an hour in now works for Gar Tootelian Inc. Known supervisor with the yet-to-be-published the summer, depending on the weight of locally simply as Gar, the company has a California Heat Illness Prevention Study his harvest. There is a lot of fruit to pick contract with California’s Occupational (CHIPS). “We asked the farmers if we (though not as much as the spring har- Safety and Health Administration could go into their field, so all the farms vest) from July to October. Unfortunately, (Cal/OSHA) to oversee farmers in the that we went into had enough shade and that is when the heat is at its worst. “This is very Central Valley. Cruz trains workers water and complied with the regulations.” “Peterson is a good person to work and their managers on the prevention They measured the workers’ heart for,” Aguayo explained. “He looks after the difficult of heatstroke, and about once a month, rates with the help of monitors strapped workers to make sure they’re safe, and he she makes the rounds to enforce labor around their chests, and tracked the doesn’t try to cut corners by paying less work. It’s for policies designed to prevent injury and intensity of their physical activity or by pushing them beyond what they crazy people, illness. In the past 10 years, she has not using accelerometers attached to their can physically deliver.” But he’s heard witnessed a single heatstroke incident at belts. They also monitored how hydrated stories about other farmers in the area as I’ve any of the more than a dozen midsized — or dehydrated — the workers were at who fail to comply with safety regula- farms she oversees in the Central Valley. the start and end of their shifts, by draw- tions, or refuse to pay workers a decent heard some “It’s about trust,” she told me. “We all ing a few drops of blood. CHIPS is also wage. He knows farmworkers who would youngsters have to work hard under hotter tempera- recording the variations in how heat ill- be happy to find a steady gig at a place tures, but we want workers to have a ness is perceived by different genders and like Abundant Harvest. say.” good relationship with their mayordomo. cultures, while considering ways in which Farmworkers here are paid what’s We want them to not feel shy or afraid any gaps in information and communica- called a piece-rate wage for every bin of —Daniel Castellanos, about needing to take a break.” tion can be bridged. fruit or vegetables they harvest over the mayordomo at Her monthly worker safety and com- Even when it’s completed, the study course of their shift. This means that the Abundant Harvest Organics pliance training begins with a handout may not be able to give us a full sense more breaks the workers take, the lower — a list of six multiple-choice questions of how well the heat illness law is being their wages will be. Yet one of the first in Spanish, asking things like, “When enforced. But it will help researchers recommendations for people experiencing you work on a hot day, how much water understand the combined impacts that heat exhaustion is to find shade and take should you drink?” A couple of the work- physical labor, weather and crop type a break, for at least an hour or two. If an ers shout out the right answer: a cup can have on the health of farmwork- employer fails to enforce the heat-illness every 15 minutes, or about eight cone- ers. Historically, farmworkers have law, piece-rate workers are likely to hesi- shaped paper cups an hour. Don’t wait been neglected in public-health circles, tate to complain or slow down their pace until you’re thirsty to drink, another says. especially outside California. Most stud- for fear of losing their jobs. Marbella Cruz, a Researchers from the Western Center ies of the physiological effects of working former fieldworker for Agricultural Health and Safety at the in hot conditions have concerned military By noon, the temperature had reached who now works University of California at Davis regu- personnel or firefighters. 90 degrees. We climbed on Peterson’s for a Cal/OSHA larly visit farms like Abundant Harvest When Cruz’s training session ended, pickup truck and drove past the rows of contractor, leads Organics, trying to develop the best everyone took a quick lunch break next peach, plum, pluot, nectarine and almond monthly safety training for fieldworkers. They have been to the orchard. Gilberto Aguayo sat on his trees that his family has tended here for trainings at one of the Abundant gathering evidence of the physiologi- cooler and turned on a hot plate, warm- over a century. Back when the Petersons Harvest Organics cal responses to heat and physical work ing up homemade corn tortillas he then started farming, the Central Valley was a peach orchards in among Central Valley fieldworkers since filled with a bean and tomato stew. He’s bucolic landscape dominated by orchards. Kingsburg. 2014. been at this farm for about eight years, The region had perfect growing weather and rich soils, and the land was split into smaller parcels than you’d find today. But by the time of the Great Depression, agriculture in the valley had become increasingly intensive, and therefore more dependent on migrant labor, as well as on irrigation using water from canals and aqueducts from the northern part of the state. Typically, every spring, Peterson found extra help among high school students on summer break or the sons and daughters of longtime fieldworkers. In years past, there would also be migrant workers here from Mexico — people who’d crossed the border with a guest- worker visa or without papers, eager to send some money back home. But now, he said, it’s hard to find either type of worker: Students are increasingly looking for better-paid work inside offices or in internships in cities, while migrant workers can no longer cross the border as easily as they used to. And once they’re here, they’re afraid of being caught and deported. In the future, labor shortages will likely continue to be a serious concern for farms like Abundant Harvest Organics. As Peterson said, that means that running a small operation like his will no longer be as financially or logistically sustainable.

16 High Country News August 20, 2018 Vernon Peterson (in light-green shirt), fills out a questionnaire during a heat-related illness training inside the Abundant Harvest Organics sorting facility. California passed the nation’s first heat-related illness law over a decade ago, requiring farmers to make water and shade available to fieldworkers.

Back in Peterson’s air-conditioned about people, that they’re just an eco- become too regulated during the past 15 office, our conversation shifted to the nomic unit of production. If you get one years. That translates to higher costs of challenges of growing food today as a death on your compliance record, I don’t doing business for him, he said — around small or medium-sized farmer, in an care how big you are, that is costing you $5,000 extra a year for a farm his size. era of man-made climate change and several hundred thousand dollars.” “Farm owners now have to dedicate industrial agriculture. Despite the recent Ever since Vásquez Jiménez’s death, so many resources to prove we’re good weather problems, Peterson remains the United Farm Warmers Union has guys,” he said. “In our case, we must have skeptical of climate change. pushed for tougher enforcement of regu- two full-time employees just documenting “When I was in college, 45 years ago, lations on farms like Peterson’s. In 2015, that we’re following procedures. We have everyone talked about ‘global freezing,’ ” Cal/OSHA settled two lawsuits brought to pay them to keep a paper trail, in order he told me, with a chuckle. “They would on by the UFW on behalf of five farm- to prove to Cal/OSHA that we’re follow- tell us that we were going to end up with workers, winning, among other things, ing the law.” polar bears in New York City. And people the right to help update the agency’s But even though Peterson would believed that, just like I believe that guidelines. That led to stronger protec- prefer fewer state rules, Abundant Jesus is coming back — with that same tions: Employers now must keep water Harvest Organics’ mayordomos continue fervor.” closer to the workers and give them 10 to faithfully follow the updated directives. Peterson doesn’t regard climate minutes of break for every two hours And the farm has an important rule of change as settled science, and he believes of work, as well as shade as needed its own, one that it will be enforcing this that it conflicts with his religious views. throughout their workday. And most summer as the temperatures rise. In fact, he won’t even utter the words, recently, Cal/OSHA has begun to enforce “We just go home when it’s 100 preferring instead to just use the term a law that requires employers to pay degrees Fahrenheit,” said Castellanos, “weather” to refer to the environmental their piece-rate employees for their rest trying to find some shade between the shifts affecting his farm these days, from breaks, too. nectarine trees. Back when he was the rising temperatures and drought to the According to Peterson, most farmers one picking fruit, he didn’t worry about increasing problems with pests. Still, in the Central Valley aren’t “bad actors” the heat, he told me. But now people take he takes the health threats faced by his and would follow state worker protections, it very seriously. “These days, I’m the first workers very seriously. with or without the threat of stiff fines. to tell the workers, ‘If you’re not feeling This story was funded “What kind of a moron is going to While he believes in treating his work- well, or with enough strength, please stop with reader donations put his people out there and let them get ers with respect and care, Peterson also working. I’d rather you do that than have to the High Country hurt?” he asked. “Let’s say you don’t care says that California’s farm industry has to deliver the bad news to your family.’ ” News Research Fund.

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18 High Country News August 20, 2018 www.hcn.org High Country News 19 2018 EDUCATION MARKETPLACE 1st place Coyotes and concepts

Winning reader stories The coyote moved at a trot. Constantly arc from the mountains through the plains from our migration checking her surroundings, she glanced to the city, through public lands and toxic contest. To see more over her shoulder and continued across threats and human impacts. visit hcn.org/ the road, darted under a fence, and Our own migration was moving West migration-stories disappeared. to East. Reverse homesteaders, spreading Across the West, similar scenes play an idea: the idea that your personal out regularly. The sight of a coyote seems choices, your personal ethic, matter when it mundane to many — perhaps brings comes to protecting the environment. excitement to travelers from back East, or It’s hard to make an idea migrate. But rouses disdain among those who vilify this that was our goal, telling people that a and other predators. single choice you make as an individual Yet this particular coyote caught my still means something despite staggering eye. Not for anything she did, but for the climate and land-use changes — adapting road she happened to cross. Halstead a concept born in Western wilderness to Street. In Lincoln Park. In Chicago. resonate with people who might never Our own route had started back in climb a fourteener or land a cutthroat Boulder, Colorado. We were on the road as trout or carry bear spray. traveling trainers for the Leave No Trace Migration is about crossing lines. Center for Outdoor Ethics, talking about But those lines have blurred, faded and backcountry ethics, recreational impacts disappeared. The frontier closed well and protecting the places where people over a century ago. The wildland-urban play. We were in a permanent state of interface is an intermingling of worlds, the motion and migration, camping or crashing place where wildfire can transform from on couches, always moving on to the next friend to foe. And technology obliterates event, the next talk, the next adventure. urban-rural divides. On that particular stretch, we had We should be more like that coyote. As traveled from Colorado into the Dakotas divisions melt away, we must encourage to talk about minimizing impacts at Minot ideas to migrate. Our wilderness ethics Air Force Base (home to nukes), ventured must become our everyday lives. Our into the Boundary Waters of Minnesota frontier myths must meet our modern (an inspiration for the Wilderness Act), and realities. It’s time to check over our eventually arrived in the urban heart of the shoulders, think about all we know and Great Lakes. have learned, and move on to what’s next. That coyote we saw, or rather her —Frank Sturges, Boulder, Colorado, and ancestors, might have traveled a similar Chicago, Illinois

20 High Country News August 20, 2018 3rd place 2nd place enough to soothe him. Autumn waned, shadows of the grullas seen from my Grullas window as they fed in the terrenos nearby. Migration and my The grullas did not notice my slip Each year, the grullas — Spanish for into depression. No, this migration into accidental ancestry “cranes“ — arrive by the hundreds, settling motherhood was not easy. over the valley’s farm fields, seeking shelter Cranes are members of the family Modern interest in personal ancestry Missourian or Californian — more like “fate on vegetated islands of the Rio Grande. But Gruidae, long-legged, long-necked birds, rarely investigates the reasons behind of circumstances” than carefully planned the year my boy was born, I missed their consistent and familiar visitors to this this ancestry. As I look back at the destiny. lone, throaty calls, sitting instead inside valley, wintering in my father’s fields since I circumstances surrounding my ancestry, it I believe that many family lines dark rooms, trying to bond with a new life was a child. has become clear that fate played a bigger are determined by fate or accident. brought into the world. The fall I migrated from “biologist” role than “relationships made in heaven.” Circumstances set the stage for my Santiago was born on a Friday; after 17 to “mother,” the grullas arrived as always, The migration of many early Americans did grandfather and grandmother to meet hours, they had to cut him out of me, my but my relationship to this place had not always go as planned, and so traveling in an “accidental” restaurant, as neither petite frame too small for his entrance into changed, priorities had shifted. My boy and families were placed in “accidental” branch of my family planned to settle in this world. I struggled to know one another. locations and set the foundation for many Pueblo. My migration into motherhood was not In November, two months after the ancestral lineages. Growing up, I benefited from the an easy one. birth, I was driving down Highway 47. The Evans family was located in stories of migrating by covered wagon The year my boy was born I was There, in her roadside yard, bundled up Missouri until the Civil War, when some from Kansas City to Pueblo. My great- not a witness to the grullas’ with beanies and coats, I witnessed as of the family joined Quantrill’s Raiders to grandmother said she rarely rode in the autumn arrival. Instead, I Leah Berry twirled her infant daughter, plunder and murder Jayhawks across the wagon; rather, she virtually walked across was confined indoors, outside, child and mother in a joyous and border in Kansas. Thus, when the war was the Great Plains. She told stories of trading and my newborn generous ballet. Am I seeing things? Is over, some of my ancestors were run out oxen milk for water at the few ranches they and I fought with this real? I slowed the car, did a double- of Missouri. My great-great-grandfather encountered. She delighted in the “little one another. He take. Leah twirled her baby in her arms, migrated west to Pueblo, Colorado, and bird with the yellow breast” that sang cried for milk; a winter afternoon, lovingly confident, became a Pueblo County employee. “hotter than hell today” as the wagons I lacked sleep. strangely stunning. And at their back were When my great-grandmother was a passed. I can still hear those “words” in the He struggled to the grullas, gray-coated cranes feeding in teenager, her family traveled by covered song of the Western meadowlark. gain weight; I the field beside the house. I thought: Will wagon, pulled by oxen, westward across As I look through my genealogy at struggled to hum I ever reach a similar place of acceptance? the Great Plains. When they reached names like Kremsbow, Brainard, McGiven, a song Will the grullas’ presence ever calm me into Pueblo, an early snowstorm had closed Kenton, Hammond and Evans, I am proud soft such a motherly stance? the mountain pass, and their plans to that this particular migration became part The migration into motherhood is not migrate to California were changed. They of the great American “melting pot.” easy for some of us — an unspoken truth. had to do something to survive the winter —Keith Evans, Pueblo, Colorado But the grullas return, always, a constant, in Colorado, so they opened a restaurant. a reminder, as calm and consistent By the time of the spring snowmelt, the as love itself, from fall to early spring, restaurant was thriving, and many of the feeding in fields we pass again and again, people returning from the California gold unknowingly, even unwillingly, until at last mines were talking about their terrible it’s migration time once again. experiences. This is how the stage was —Leeanna Torres, Tomé, New Mexico set for me to be a Coloradan instead of a tinace van /cc flickr

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22 High Country News August 20, 2018 www.hcn.org High Country News 23 Estranged in America In rural Colorado, an immigrant family faces an uncertain future

ucia Gaspar was 14 years old — people who had committed no crime, when the thing that she and her but who were, under the law, unwelcome family dreaded occurred. Lucia, in America. her mother and two siblings were driving home from church Lucia Gaspar is now 27 and married. Lone night in Alamosa, Colorado, when She has long glossy hair, a beaming FEATURE By the red-and-blue lights of a police car smile, and a small scar on her upper lip Sarah Tory began flashing in the darkness behind where a dog bit her when she was a little them, and a siren started wailing. Lucia’s girl. Growing up undocumented in south- PHotographs mother, Eulalia Pedro, pulled over. The ern Colorado, she never talked about her by Corey two officers ordered everyone out of the status with her family. Her mother, who vehicle and asked for identification. had limited education, worked constantly Robinson When no one in the family could pro- to support them, so Lucia learned about duce any, the police said they would call her situation in a haphazard fashion. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, During middle school, when her teacher or ICE. took the class to McDonald’s to practice In 1999, three years after applying for jobs, Lucia couldn’t com- Guatemala’s civil war ended, Pedro, a plete the mock application; she had to single mother, left her village in rural leave the space for her Social Security Guatemala with her four children, and number blank. She learned the anxiety crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. She sent that comes with never knowing where or Lucia, the youngest, by bus with an aunt when ICE might find you or your fam- and uncle, while she and the other three ily — at work, maybe, or driving to the journeyed on foot through the West Texas grocery store. Even at home, there was desert. no sanctuary; they could show up at your That night, as she stood with her door at any moment. family on the side of the road, Lucia was A few years ago, however, those filled with fear. One cop watched them fears began to subside. Then-President closely, eyeing them up and down, while Barack Obama created a program called the other returned to the police car. All Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, those, like Javier, who may have entered Lucia could think about was deportation. or DACA, which gave young people who’d the country illegally or overstayed their “We were so scared,” Lucia told me been brought to the country without visas, but had longtime jobs and families recently — frightened of losing the life papers temporary legal status, a work in America. they had fought so hard to build, of losing permit and — crucially — a reprieve from Then came the 2016 election. their home, or even worse, each other. the threat of deportation. Even Lucia’s President Donald Trump was eager to But that night, at least, they were husband, Javier, who is also undocu- fulfill his campaign promise to deport safe. The police officer told the family mented but ineligible for DACA because all undocumented immigrants — even if that the immigration agents were “too he never finished high school, began to they had been law-abiding residents for busy to come get them,” Lucia said. Later, feel safer: Although Obama deported decades. Last September, Trump went she wondered if maybe the police had more than 2.8 million people during his even further, canceling the DACA pro- never actually called ICE — if they were tenure — a record number, far surpass- gram. Lucia felt her old fear return. But just trying to intimidate the family. If ing his predecessor, George W. Bush — in now her situation was worse: Lucia and perhaps they didn’t know what else to do his final years he prioritized deporting Javier now had three U.S.-born children. about this single mother and her children people with criminal records, instead of What would happen to their kids if they

24 High Country News August 20, 2018 were deported? become an integral part of this rural land is sparse and sweeping — an ideal Lucia Gaspar at In the wake of the administration’s community — a place shaped by the very home for the “Blue Sky People,” the Utes Ortega Middle immigration crackdown, people across people the government is trying to expel. who originally lived here. School, where she the West are grappling with similar Now, as fear and uncertainty spread The Utes, too, were the descendants works as a teacher’s aide for special questions. They live in places where the through Alamosa’s immigrants, a deeper of migrants. Thousands of years ago, needs students. She line between “legal” and “illegal” cuts not threat is emerging: What happens to a their ancestors migrated to the San Luis got the job after just through families, but also through community when its people’s sense of Valley from what is now southern Mexico she applied for entire neighborhoods, schools, churches, belonging begins to unravel? and Guatemala, traveling north across and was accepted workplaces and communities. Alamosa the mountains and deserts that formed by the program has felt this anxiety more acutely than Alamosa lies in the middle of southern the undivided Americas. With the arrival Deferred Action for most. More than half of the town’s Colorado’s San Luis Valley, a 125-mile- of European colonists, new actors would Childhood Arrivals, roughly 9,000 residents are Hispanic, long strip of sagebrush sandwiched claim control: Spain, Mexico, and finally, known as DACA. many of them first- or second-generation between two mountain ranges, a five- the United States, which annexed the immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala. hour drive from Denver. One of the larg- valley from its southern neighbor in 1848. Regardless of their legal status, they’ve est high-desert valleys in the world, the As settlers arrived — Hispanic farmers,

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 Downtown and then Anglos, and later, Dutch and consequences were Lucia Gaspar, her survived the genocide, the end of the Alamosa, Colorado, Japanese — the Utes were forced from family, and hundreds of thousands of war did not end the poverty that would population 9,000, their homeland. Mayan people displaced, widowed, or eventually compel them to leave. Some where almost half If colonization and conquest deter- orphaned during Guatemala’s 36-year of Pedro’s relatives had found jobs and the residents are mined the fate of the valley’s earliest civil war. With the support of U.S. mili- a better life in a small town in rural Hispanic, many inhabitants, more recently, America’s tary aid and training, the Guatemalan Colorado. And so in 1999, Pedro left of them first- or second-generation immigration laws — dictated by labor armed forces carried out assassinations Guatemala with four kids in tow, hoping immigrants needs and race discrimination — have of suspected militants and large-scale to join them. from Mexico and determined who belongs and who gets massacres in Indigenous communities Today, more than 400 Mayans live in Guatemala. expelled. Laws like the Immigration Act thought to support guerrilla forces. One Alamosa, and their culture and language of 1917 were intended to permanently day, soldiers came to Santa Eulalia, the are woven into the town. On Main Street, restrict immigrants from “undesirable” town where Lucia was born, telling vil- a Guatemalan grocery store sits across areas, and Operation Wetback, a series lagers to go into a local school where food from a microbrewery; in the community of immigration raids in 1954, sought to would be served. Gaspar’s mother stayed garden, Spanish and Q’anjob’al mingle deport as many Mexicans as possible home — she didn’t trust the soldiers — with English; and every February, the if they couldn’t prove their citizenship, but many others went. Once the villag- town hosts a traditional Mayan cel- often without regard for due process. ers were inside, the soldiers locked the ebration honoring Santa Eulalia, the Yet even as the U.S. reinforced the door and set fire to the building, killing patron saint of Gaspar’s birthplace — a sanctity of its own borders, it was busily everyone in it. reminder of the long road they took to get crossing others, helping stage coups and As the atrocities mounted in the mid- here. propping up foreign leaders favorable 1980s, many of Eulalia Pedro’s family to U.S. interests. The same year that members fled to Mexico or the United Back in Guatemala, Lucia and her Operation Wetback was launched, the States, where the Reagan administration family had imagined Alamosa as a big CIA overthrew Guatemala’s democrati- considered them “economic migrants” city, but when they arrived, they found cally elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, rather than refugees fleeing political the opposite: a small town surrounded part of a series of U.S. interventions in violence. The vast majority were denied by a vast desert. They moved into an Central America throughout the 20th asylum. A few years later, though, after a apartment complex for migrant workers century that sparked civil wars and a lawsuit forced the government to rehear called Tierra Nueva — in English, “New migration crisis that continues to this their cases, many Mayans were finally Land.” Everything felt unfamiliar, from day. granted asylum. the water faucets and the modern kitchen Among those forced to live with the Though Pedro and her children had appliances to the indoor toilets. School

26 High Country News August 20, 2018 was filled with yet more unknowns. Lucia Dreamers like Lucia who were enrolled future for DACA, the family began to was used to eating just tortillas and a few in school and met certain other require- plan for the worst. vegetables — no meat — and she found ments to obtain valid driver’s licenses Lucia reached out to Flora Archuleta, the school lunches too strange to eat. and a work permit — and, crucially, a the director of the San Luis Valley Speaking only her native Q’anjob’al, she reprieve from the nagging anxiety that Immigrant Resource Center, for help understood little in the classroom and had dogged her for so long. arranging guardianship for Erick, relied on her cousin to translate. Lucia applied and was accepted as Alexandra and Anna, in the event that Within a few years, though, Alamosa soon as the program launched in 2012. she and Javier were deported. They began to feel like home. Lucia learned Now she could do the kind of work she signed a power of attorney form, mak- English and eventually Spanish, too. The had always dreamed about. She got a job ing Javier’s uncle, a U.S. citizen, the hardest part would come later, when as in a nursing home and then at an educa- children’s legal guardian. Previously, a teenager, she realized that despite all tion nonprofit, helping migrant families. Archuleta told me, she’d processed her efforts to adapt, she could never fully Later, she worked as a teacher’s aide in power of attorney requests sparingly — belong. She dreamed of going to college the local middle school, and, in June, she roughly 10 per year. Since the election, and helping others, but as an undocu- got a new job, helping young adults with that number has more than doubled, as mented student, she was ineligible for disabilities further their education or undocumented parents grow increasingly the financial aid and grants she needed. start careers. The freedom was empower- anxious that their children could end Instead, she graduated from high school ing. With DACA, Lucia saw a future for up in U.S. foster care if the parents are resigned to the same life her mother had herself and her family in Alamosa. taken away by ICE. led: picking mushrooms on a farm for up By September 2015, Lucia and Javier From her office just off Alamosa’s to 16 hours a day. had saved enough for a down payment on main street, Archuleta is trying keep up Meanwhile, she lived in perpetual a four-bedroom house. They moved out of with the new demands for advice and uncertainty, feeling as if her own life was the Tierra Nueva apartments and onto a support from local immigrants. She esti- outside her control. In 2007, ICE raided quiet street near the Rio Grande, into a mates that paperwork for visa applica- a potato-processing plant near Alamosa. light-blue home, with a fenced backyard tions has tripled, if not quadrupled, and News of the arrests spread through- filled with bicycles and a trampoline. the center has been flooded with calls out the San Luis Valley, prompting Inside, the rooms are spacious and clean, from immigrants who are confused and her mother to quickly move the family the kids’ beds neatly made and in the liv- frightened about the administration’s into an aunt’s apartment, in case ICE ing room there are portraits of the couple, new policies. The Colorado agents came looking for them. Even back taken just after they started dating. Here One man, who’s in the process of get- Mushroom Farm then, Lucia told me, “I knew what could in the new house, looking out over the ting his GED, keeps phoning the center to on the edge of happen.” same river she crossed as a young girl, find out if he’ll still be eligible for DACA. Alamosa, where A year later, her 19-year-old brother, Lucia envisioned a stable, safe place to “He calls me at least once a month,” up to 80 percent Juan, was driving to work with a friend raise her kids — where they each had Archuleta said. That’s on top of the five of workers are when a police officer pulled them over. their own bedroom and a place to play to 10 other calls she gets every day from immigrants. Owner Since neither Juan nor his friend could outside. people wondering about DACA. She Don Clair says he’s show identification, the officer called ICE. They had lived there for just over now spends much of her day just talk- hired American- born workers in the Juan spent 10 months in a detention a year when Donald Trump became ing to people, trying to comfort them and past, but most have center in Denver before he was deported president. Suddenly, with the rise in give advice without really knowing the walked off after the to Guatemala. Lucia never got to say anti-immigrant rhetoric and an uncertain answers herself. first day of work. goodbye. With the birth of Lucia’s first son, Erick, in 2008, the precariousness of her life grew more intense. Erick was a U.S. citizen, while his parents remained undocumented; they had separate legal statuses but intertwined fates. Two years later, Alexandra was born and a year later, Anna. Both Lucia and Javier worked the same long hours at the mushroom farm, leaving little flexibility for the demands of parenting. They had to wake their young children in the middle of the night and take them to a babysit- ter when their work shifts started at 3 a.m. Meanwhile, the threat of deportation loomed over them, leaving them with an impossible choice: Would they keep the family together and take their children back to Javier’s native Mexico? Or leave them behind in the U.S., where they would have a far better education and more opportunities?

In the years before DACA, Lucia and Javier often thought about relocating to a city with better-paying work. As in many remote, rural communities, wages in Alamosa were low, and many young people were leaving. DACA, however, changed everything. The program did not offer a path to citizenship or even legal permanent residency, but it did allow

www.hcn.org High Country News 27 “We’re really struggling,” she told me, when I saw her in February. With so many people unable to pay for the center’s services, lately Flora and her staff have been doing a lot of work for free.

The San Luis Valley Immigrant Resource Center was started by three volunteer lawyers out of Boulder, Colorado, in 1987. The year before, President Ronald Reagan had signed an amnesty law giving legal status to 3 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., at a time when tens of thousands of Central Americans were seeking asylum from the civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador. When Archuleta took over as director 17 years ago, there were still deep cultural divisions between the new arrivals and long-term residents. Richard Jackson, the Alamosa County sheriff and a longtime police officer, recalled that the first Guatemalans who arrived in the 1980s were mostly men who came alone. There were problems with alcohol abuse and domestic violence, which Jackson attributes to the “rub” of two very different cultures, but things improved when the migrants’ families arrived. Today, that tension has largely disappeared, helped in part by efforts like the Integration Grant provided by the Colorado Trust, a nonprofit aimed at reducing social inequalities. The grant money helped immigrant parents get more involved in their children’s schools, improved access to English classes for both adults and kids, and developed mentoring opportunities among foreign and native-born families. Another grant has funded trips to Guatemala for Alamosa’s public school teachers, to help them better understand their Mayan students. One of the sheriff’s deputies has partnered with a local immigrant to offer free driving lessons for Spanish and Q’anjob’al speakers. “Things are different now,” said Francisco Lucas, a Mayan immigrant who came to Alamosa 33 years ago, fleeing Guatemala’s civil war. “In the begin- ning, nobody spoke English,” he told me. “But as new generations are born and progress, there’s less separation between immigrants and nonimmigrants — the line between them blurs.”

That interdependence has grown in other ways as well. Farms in the San Luis Valley grow 90 percent of Colorado’s potatoes and form the backbone of the regional economy. Although mechaniza- tion has reduced labor needs, immigrant workers still do essential jobs, from picking and packing produce to man- ning conveyor belts and operating heavy machinery. More than one in three hired farmworkers in Colorado was born abroad. Lucia Gaspar stands on the back porch of her house in Alamosa, Colorado, with her three kids, Anna (standing), Erick One of those places is a sprawling and Alexandra. In rural areas like Alamosa, 22 percent of DACA recipients, Gaspar among them, have been able to buy 440-acre farm on the edge of Alamosa, a house for the first time after being approved for the program. where the smell of compost seeps outside

28 High Country News August 20, 2018 the windowless bunkers. Lucia worked before reopening under new ownership. garden to help lock in the moisture — here before she had DACA protections. To him, it seemed like the local Catholic because of the drought, the town had The Colorado Mushroom Farm produces Church helped the Guatemalan immi- implemented water restrictions, and she Immigrants 120,000 pounds of white and brown grants who were out of work, while he worried the crops might not survive. in Colorado, mushrooms every week — mushrooms and the other more senior managers were Meanwhile, America’s political land- that are sold in grocery stores across just “let go.” scape seemed harsher than ever. Under by the numbers Colorado. “I get a little upset,” he added, “that Trump’s now-reversed “zero tolerance” Each crop requires 20 semi trucks of we have people living under the bridge, policy of prosecuting everyone caught 10 straw, three of chicken waste and one of and we don’t seem to be worried nearly crossing the border unlawfully, young Percent of Colorado cottonseed mill — just to make the com- as much about them as we are about the children had been taken away from their residents born abroad post the mushrooms need to grow. Like immigrants.” parents. (532,903 people) cows, mushrooms require daily attention, “Imagine if that was happening to 8.6 year-round, so the real key to a successful Last May, as spring painted the San us,” she said to Javier one night. When Percent growth of crop is finding enough people willing to Luis Valley shades of green, I visited Lucia told her own kids about the family immigrant population work for an average of $12 per hour, 365 Lucia and found her alternately hopeful separations, they wanted to know why, in Colorado between days a year, including Christmas. “There’s and afraid. Her DACA permit expires in but she had no answers for them. 2010 and 2014 not a day off at the farm here,” Don Clair, February — less than six months away Then, a few weeks ago, Lucia learned 83,794 the farm’s business manager, told me, — and attempts to create a permanent that her sister-in-law’s brother had been Number of people when I visited in May. version of the program keep failing in caught crossing the border from Mexico who are employed The farm opened in the early 1980s, Congress. The uncertainty was wear- and put in a detention center in Arizona. by firms owned by when the first Mayans began arriving. ing on her. “It’s frustrating, not knowing He was 16 years old. Lucia’s sister, who immigrants “We’ve been real fortunate,” Clair said, what’s going to happen,” she told me. has legal status, drove through the night referring to the immigrants that still Meanwhile, she struggled to explain from Colorado all the way to Arizona to 1 in 3 make up the majority of his workforce. In concepts like ICE detention and deporta- see him, but she wasn’t allowed inside. Proportion of Fortune 500 the past, he has tried to branch out and tion to her children. “Sometimes I don’t “They must have lost their heart,” companies based hire nonimmigrants, with little success. want to tell them,” she said, wishing she was all Javier could think. At least, he in Colorado that After a few hours, most of the new hires could protect them from the fear she thought, he and Lucia had a place to go if were founded by walk off the job, he said. “They want to knows so well. they were deported. Recently, he had fin- immigrants or their work six hours or eight hours and then One day, Erick asked her, “What if the ished building a house on the outskirts of children they want to go home.” police take Dadda?” The fourth-grader, Mexico City, paid for in installments over Clair estimates that 75 to 80 percent who loves fishing with his father in the the 19 years he had lived in America, and $20.8 billion Annual revenue of the workers at the mushroom farm mountains east of Alamosa, was anxious. he had begun thinking about the pos- generated by those are immigrants, but he doesn’t know how “I don’t want him to go to jail. I don’t sibility of returning to the country he left firms many have legal status and how many do want to live in Mexico.” as a 14-year-old by himself. When Javier not: “We check their paperwork and leave More recently, Erick has suffered crossed the border then, he thought he $1 billion it at that.” Colorado law does not require some disappointment as well. For over a would only stay a year or two — time to Amount immigrants him to enroll in E-Verify, a federal pro- year, Lucia and Javier had been saving earn enough money so he could build a paid in state and local gram that can confirm whether a person up for a family trip to Disneyland. But house in Mexico. But he kept finding jobs, taxes has work authorization in the U.S. all the talk about increased ICE activ- and then he met Lucia, and then their 73 There are no available data on how ity had them worried. What if they got children were born. If he had wanted Percent of foreign-born many of Alamosa’s immigrants are work- pulled over? Erick’s father could end up to leave, he no longer felt like he had population that is ing without authorization, but statewide deported. So they canceled the trip they’d a choice. “I have three kids who need working age Colorado is home to more than 189,000 planned for this summer. me,” he told me. It was like getting on a undocumented immigrants. They In the kitchen one day after school, 52 highway without knowing where the next Percent of native-born contribute over $227 million to Social Lucia was chopping up shrimp and vege- exit was. population that is Security and $55 million to Medicare — tables for the kids’ favorite meal, ceviche. “Life is like that sometimes,” he said. working age entitlements they cannot receive them- Alexandra worked in her coloring book, Despite everything, their main prior- selves. But as immigration enforcement while Anna played with a toy dragon, ity was to give the kids a normal summer. 41 tightens and the number of workers who flying it in circles around the living room, After her work in the garden was fin- Percent of immigrants cross the border plummets, agricultural her long braids swinging behind her. ished, Lucia took the kids to Splashland, in Colorado who are citizens operations like the Colorado Mushroom At the dining room table, Erick, who the local pool, crowded on a hot Saturday Farm face a dwindling pool of potential was supposed to be doing his reading afternoon. Wearing goggles and clutching 4 employees. homework, overheard us talking about blow-up toys, they splashed and bobbed Percent of Colorado’s There are other reasons, too. After the trip. “I want to go on the rides,” he among all the bodies moving through the population that two or three generations in Alamosa, said. Lucia reminded him that it was too turquoise water. Lucia watched Erick and is made up of immigrants resemble other Americans risky, especially for his dad. At 10, Erick Alexandra climb the steps that lead to undocumented in the kind of life they hope to live. “Like is thoughtful and inquisitive, with a mis- the top of the waterslide. And then she immigrants anybody, generation number four is not chievous streak. Now he looked worried. lost them. 87 real excited about becoming a picker,” “Some people,” he told me, “are getting “I can’t see them,” she said, her eyes Percent of Clair told me. sent back where they came from if they widening, searching for them in the undocumented He could try to make the work more don’t have papers,” he said. He was silent crowded pool. immigrants who have attractive by offering higher wages. But for a moment, his brow furrowing. A minute later, she spotted the two been in the U.S. for then, he said, “We’d have to raise our “They might send back my parents,” swimming toward her together, grinning. five years or more. prices. The whole country would have to he said. Lucia relaxed, leaning back in her chair Figures are for Colorado get used to that.” beneath the shade of an awning, breath- from 2014. Source: The Contributions of New Without immigrants, the farm would In early July, on my last visit to ing in the chlorinated air. For now, at Americans in Colorado not exist, but sometimes Clair has felt report, August 2016, Alamosa, the air was hazy from the least, they were together, a family indis- published by the New slightly resentful. “Whether they’re Spring Creek Fire, 25 miles east, and tinguishable from all the rest. American Economy, a nonprofit organization documented or undocumented, they seem the normally stark outline of nearby comprised of mayors and to have all the rights that an American Blanca Peak appeared smudged. Lucia This coverage is supported by business leaders who support immigration citizen has,” he said. He recalled how, in was laying straw around the rows of zuc- contributors to the reforms 2012, the mushroom farm ran into finan- chini, fava beans and cucumbers that her High Country News Enterprise cial trouble and shut down for two years mother had planted in the community Journalism Fund.

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32 High Country News August 20, 2018 books

Tragedy and comedy on the border

Last winter, at a talk in Aspen, Colo- thor describes the often-arbitrary cruelty he says, “that people are funny. Especially rado, the author Luis Alberto Urrea of the border that has shaped the charac- in dire circumstances.” described his childhood in a rough San ters’ lives. Technically, Big Angel and his Recounting a memory from his own Diego neighborhood near the border, wife, Perla, are undocumented, having childhood, fictionalized in a chapter of the where his family moved from Tijuana entered the U.S. as teenagers. Urrea, book, Urrea describes how his “gangster during a tuberculosis outbreak. Born to a however, does not dwell on legal status, granny” almost became a border smug- Mexican father and an American mother, focusing instead on the ever-changing gler — of a green parrot. Had one bird not the blue-eyed, blond child spoke Spanish politics of America’s immigration laws, awoken from its tequila-induced slumber before he spoke English and spent his which have alternately embraced Mexi- at the very moment that grandmother early years buffeted by the cultural ten- cans for their labor and expelled them as and grandsons were about to drive across sions between his parents. soon as they were no longer needed. the border, she might have succeeded. Urrea’s mother yearned for him to be In Big Angel, we see another side Instead, the parrot erupted from her “Louis Woodward,” the idealized offspring of the story, too: the tale of those immi- dress in a burst of green feathers, while The House of of her own East Coast origins. His father, grants who manage to ascend to the mid- the elderly woman calmly rolled down Broken Angels who wanted his son to be more Mexican, dle and working classes. After years of her passenger window. At that moment, By Luis Alberto Urrea affectionately called him cabrón (in Eng- working multiple jobs, Big Angel is able Urrea writes, “two Mexican boys, a Mexi- 336 pages, lish, “dude,” or a more friendly rendition to buy a home in San Diego. He finally can grandma, and a U.S. federal agent hardcover: $27. of “dumbass”). “I was raised twice and lands a position running computers for a watched as one as the bird entered the Little, Brown and this was very hard, but I thank God for gas and electric company, even though he U.S. illegally.” Company, 2018. it,” Urrea said. never liked computers. “A Mexican doing The author’s humor does not dimin- That complicated family dynamic is what these rich Americanos couldn’t do ish the daily horrors on America’s border; the inspiration for his latest novel, The was the point.” it merely reveals the awfulness more House of Broken Angels, a multigenera- Other family members have not been clearly. In Aspen, Urrea explained his tional saga about a Mexican-American so lucky. A stepson, Braulio, was killed choice: “Laughter is the virus that infects family, much like his own, in San Diego. in a gang shooting. Big Angel’s own son, humanity. And if we laugh together, how It is also a border story, a genre for which Lalo, struggles with drug addiction and can we walk away and say that person is he is well-known: Ever since the success his undocumented status, which even an animal?” of his 2004 nonfiction book, The Devil’s his U.S. military service in Iraq cannot At a time when the language of Highway, which recounted the struggle resolve. borders is more chilling than ever before, for survival among 26 men who crossed In the De la Cruz family, these trag- with mass deportations and children kept the border in 2001, Urrea has been called edies live next to the frequent bouts of in cages, Urrea hopes more of us will the “literary conscience of the border.” absurdity that Urrea evokes, a reminder, consider this question. Sarah Tory But his latest book is less about the physical border than it is about the familial relationships that both challenge and transcend it — the small moments that, as one of his characters puts it, allow each of us to see our own human lives “reflected in the other.”

Drawing on the final days of Urrea’s older half-brother, Juan, who died in 2016, the narrative revolves around Big Angel, the patriarch of the sprawling De la Cruz clan, a raucous cast of characters who encapsulate a variety of American experiences — veterans, academics, undocumented immigrants, a singer in a black-metal band called Satanic Hispanic and a “non-cisgendered, non-heteronor- mative cultural liberation warrior.” Sick with cancer, Big Angel decides to throw a final fiesta for his 71st birthday with all his friends and relatives — and not even his mother’s sudden death will stop him. The party is scheduled for the day after her funeral, and in the lead-up to it, we glimpse the melodrama of daily life amid vivid flashbacks of the past. Like the De la Cruz family, Urrea’s writing is exuberant, unruly and sometimes profane, filled with splashes of Spanglish and sensual imagery, from Big Angel’s San Diego bedroom to his memories of La Paz: “the creeping smell of the desert going wet.” The writing is political, too, as the au- A U.S. immigration officer watches as a car crosses the border in 1964. Warren K. Leffler/library of congress www.hcn.org High Country News 33 PERSPECTIVE

This land is their land, too Immigrants aren’t the real threat to public lands

One day back in 2010, I sat in a foldout camp- spells out the impacts of development on our region, ing chair next to a volunteer for Border Angels, including the U.S.-Mexico border deserts, as well as a nonprofit group that advocates for humane our forests, grasslands and wetlands. Today, human border enforcement. We were on Bureau of Land settlements and their associated infrastructure cover Management land in a nondescript part of the more than 165,000 square miles, or “the size of 6 Southern California desert, less than a mile away million superstore parking lots,” though the authors from the border but far from the port of entry and don’t specifically link the development to population the beefed-up infrastructure and security. We sat growth. waiting for hours, just in case any border-crossers The modern American West is the most urban- appeared — but no one passed by. ized region in the country (and also the whitest, Analysis BY Not far from where we were, however, dozens ethnically speaking). This is the latest chapter in a Ruxandra of people had crossed recently: Scattered piles of history that began in the early 19th century with the Guidi trash, old clothes and even a rusty bicycle littered a arrival of Anglo-American settlers, who killed and nearby path. This is fairly common along some parts displaced Native populations and set the stage for of the Southwestern border — especially the more resource extraction and development in the pursuit remote, sparsely populated stretches where migrants of progress. typically make their way through shrubs and cacti, Few qualified researchers are eager to wade sometimes with the help of a coyote, or smuggler, into the controversial topic sometimes unaided. of immigration and the For many champions of stricter border enforce- environment. In fact, the ment, the trash and haphazard trails left behind available evidence suggests Immigrant shaming is merely hint at a much bigger problem: the environ- it’s not immigrants but the mental impacts of unauthorized immigration. This is American lifestyle and economy not new. Immigrants an argument that has been made for years by people that are responsible for the have long been an easy ranging from the environmental activist and author loss of habitat. “Each person Edward Abbey to Jim Gilchrist, the California-based in the U.S. contributes more target in America, blamed founder of the Minutemen Project. “It’s a network of to the global phenomenon (of for population growth, ground-pounded vegetation,” Gilchrist told an inter- natural resource consumption) viewer back in 2007. “If we were to cure the literal than other people,” said Victoria violent crime and the loss lack of immigration law enforcement, we would cure Markham, author of the U.S. of American values, with the environmental problem.” National Report on Population A couple of months ago, I received a message and Environment. According to established settlers always on social media from a self-described “disgruntled Conservation Science Partners, rejecting the ones who environmentalist” and population activist based in agriculture and forestry have Colorado. “Why don’t you write about the environ- caused the greatest damage come after them. mental damage due to mass immigration-driven to ecosystems, followed by oil, WHY BUILD WHAT Dyneema content more population growth in the West?” he asked, saying gas, coal and other energy than doubles the fabric’s that a football-field’s-worth of wild lands was lost to development. Meanwhile, WON’T LAST? tear strength, and the organic human development every 2.5 minutes and that 86 housing and commercial sprawl are responsible for cotton is Texas-grown percent of projected U.S. population growth is due to about half of the open space that was lost in the West immigration. between 2001 and 2011. Yes, demographic changes In response, I looked into his claim, which are partly to blame, but the West has urbanized To make the most durable work denim possible, we turned to Hammer loop and large echoes Gilchrist’s and is often repeated today, amid due to a more complex mix of economic and cultural the strongest lightweight fi ber in the world. drop-in utility pockets hold small tools and President Donald Trump’s loud calls for a border shifts driven by society as a whole. The newest addition to the Patagonia Workwear line, our Steel larger phones wall and stepped-up deportations. Immigrant shaming is not new. Immigrants ® According to the Pew Research Center, the have long been an easy target in America, blamed Forge Denim blends 92% organic cotton with 8% Dyneema , a fi ber that’s light enough to fl oat on water but 15 times stronger numbers don’t hold up. Pew estimates that for population growth, violent crime and the loss of Double-fabric knees immigrants and their descendants will make up 30 American values, with established settlers always than steel. It’s used in crane slings, tow ropes and anchor cables, accommodate knee pads, percent of U.S. population growth by 2065. The rest rejecting the ones who come after them, whether and now it’s helping us fuse a traditional fabric with advanced tech- with bottom openings of the growth will come from native-born Americans. they’re Italian and Irish immigrants or today’s nology to build a more durable material that will withstand years that allow easy cleanout (Of course, most Americans are, by definition, undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans. of demanding work. originally from somewhere else, regardless of their But these accusations typically rest on shoddy data. race or ethnicity.) About one in three Americans will Behind them lies a much simpler and uglier senti- Dyed with natural indigo grown in Tennessee, most likely be a recently arrived immigrant or the Timber framer Bodie Johansson chisels out fl oor joist housings in the Handcrafted Log ment that goes back generations, to the time when & Timber yard in Ridgway, Colorado. BLAKE GORDON © 2018 Patagonia, Inc. replacing petroleum- child of one, compared with one in four today. At this white people first settled the American frontier and derived synthetic dyes rate, it is inaccurate at best to blame immigrants sought to establish supremacy over Native peoples WEB EXTRA and their kin for most population growth and the and nature itself. Perhaps the real fear has less to do Read more from urban and other development that is destroying with the trash left behind by migrants than with the Ruxandra Guidi public lands. loss of supremacy that might accompany a future, and all our I wrote back to my disgruntled environmental- not too far off, when those migrants’ children and Men’s commentators at ist, who pointed to a report by the liberal Center for grandchildren go to college, get jobs and move into Steel Forge Denim Pants www.hcn.org American Progress, The Disappearing West, which your neighborhood.

34 High Country News August 20, 2018

PAT_F18_HighCountry-Denim-FP.indd 1 8/2/18 3:32 PM WHY BUILD WHAT Dyneema content more than doubles the fabric’s WON’T LAST? tear strength, and the organic cotton is Texas-grown

To make the most durable work denim possible, we turned to Hammer loop and large the strongest lightweight fi ber in the world. drop-in utility pockets hold small tools and The newest addition to the Patagonia Workwear line, our Steel larger phones Forge Denim blends 92% organic cotton with 8% Dyneema®, a fi ber that’s light enough to fl oat on water but 15 times stronger Double-fabric knees than steel. It’s used in crane slings, tow ropes and anchor cables, accommodate knee pads, and now it’s helping us fuse a traditional fabric with advanced tech- with bottom openings nology to build a more durable material that will withstand years that allow easy cleanout of demanding work.

Dyed with natural indigo Timber framer Bodie Johansson chisels out ﬂ oor joist housings in the Handcrafted Log grown in Tennessee, & Timber yard in Ridgway, Colorado. BLAKE GORDON © 2018 Patagonia, Inc. replacing petroleum- derived synthetic dyes

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PAT_F18_HighCountry-Denim-FP.indd 1 8/2/18 3:32 PM U.S. $5 | Canada $6

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY Betsy Marston

oregon to leave quickly, then notify the Park Service at Lauren Taylor lives in Ashland, Oregon, in a house 760-786-2330. whose living room looks a lot like the outdoors, with plants and tree branches built around the wyoming stairs, says the Oregonian. So perhaps it was The last grizzly bear hunt in Wyoming was 44 not surprising that a mountain lion in need of a years ago, but “unless it gets slowed or blocked nap strolled through a door she’d left open, and by lawsuits,” reports Mountain Town News, the once inside, flopped down for a six-hour snooze big bears will be hunted again starting Sept. behind a couch. But Taylor, who says she has 15. Altogether, 3,500 Wyoming residents and extensive experience working with animals, 2,327 out-of-staters applied for a hunting license remained remarkably unflustered. She recorded to kill a grizzly. But only 10 won, and one of some of the lion’s visit and posted it on Facebook them — photographer Thomas Mangelsen — is — where a million or so viewers have seen it — approaching the hunt with a very different ethic, focusing especially on the time that the large and trophy, in mind. Known for his large-format long-tailed cat woke up. “Cats are psychic and pictures of grizzlies in the wild, he says the only perceptive of energy,” she wrote, “so I consciously way he’ll ever shoot one of the bears is with a raised my frequency, gazed lovingly, and then camera. slow-blinked, which is feline-speak for express- ing trust and goodwill, and she did it back!” washington After some more back-and-forth eye batting, the Three cheers for John Yokoyama, 78, who recently lion slumped back down and “showed no inclina- sold his Pike Place Fish Market to the four fish- tion to leave.” So what do you do when a sleepy throwing employees who had worked for him for lion is determined to crash in your living room? decades at the Seattle landmark. “He worked all Taylor’s solution was telepathy, sending the of us like sons,” said Jaison Scott, 45, one of the animal “pictures of the routes out of the house.” new co-owners. He told the Seattle Times that She also opened all the doors and asked a friend IDAHO Just put away the bare spray. Jolie Kaytes when he was a 7-year-old, Yokoyama taught him to begin drumming in order to call in support “how to pick out the freshest fish, how to spit from “Native ancestors.” Right before dawn, her and how to curse.” Scott and his fellow mongers, video shows the lion walking out from behind hikers noticed three men installing irrigation Ryan Reese, Samuel Samson and Anders Miller, the couch, being briefly startled by its reflection hoses near a spring and asked them what park became equal partners this July, signing a deal in a mirror and then calmly walking out a door. project they were working on. One of the men that Yokoyama described as working with “the Taylor called it a perfect ending to a “blessed responded with unexpected honesty: “Growing kids” to make it possible. Yokoyama also talked encounter that could have been dangerous if ap- marijuana. You won’t tell the cops, will you?” about how the tradition started of making fish proached from a lower frequency.” The hikers did tell the cops, however, in this “fly” — tossed from the icy displays in the front case the National Park Service and Bureau of to scales at the back: “It took me 100 steps. So california Land Management, which raided the grow site one day I just said ‘Here kid, catch!’ and threw For the second year in a row, Death Valley July 3. The rangers found over 4,000 pot plants the fish. He caught it and I said ‘Man, I just National Park snagged the award for the in four garden sites where native vegetation saved 100 steps.’ ” Once freed of 12-hour days hottest month ever. In July, the park’s aptly had been scraped away. There was also evidence at the fish market, Yokoyama said he plans to named Furnace Creek weather station recorded that the pesticide carbofuran, which is highly do some things he’s never had a chance to do: average daily temperatures of 108.1 degrees toxic to both wildlife and humans, had been travel, play golf, and yes, go fishing. Fahrenheit. “Congratulations to this national used. What’s more, with each plant using up treasure that is truly an unstoppable inferno,” to six gallons of water a day, the illegal plants WEB EXTRA F or more from Heard around the West, see said Live Science. The breath-stopping heat, had been sucking up a huge amount of water hcn.org. however, did not deter a group of hikers from from desert springs, reports the Park Service’s Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and exploring Hanaupah Canyon, a remote area Abby Wines. She advises any hikers who come often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag of the park. According to the Park Service, the upon secret marijuana farms in Death Valley photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram.

High If you live in rural, red America, shouldn’t you be Country willing to stand up and fight for the help you News “ For people who care about the West. need to work the land? High Country News covers the important issues and George Wallace, in his essay, “Farmers should stand up for the immigrants they depend on,” stories that are unique to the American West with a from Writers” on the Range, hcn.org/wotr magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

36 High Country News August 20, 2018