The Forever War a Federal Agency Called Wildlife Services Has Been Researching Nonlethal Means to Protect Livestock for Decades

COAL CLEANUP | BEHIND THE OREGON OCCUPATION | RE-ENGINEERING THE RANCH

High Country ForN people whoews care about the West The Forever War A federal agency called Wildlife Services has been researching nonlethal means to protect livestock for decades. So why is it still killing so many predators? By Ben Goldfarb January 25, 2016 | $5 | Vol. 48 No. 1 | www.hcn.org 48 No. | $5 Vol. January 25, 2016 CONTENTS

Editor’s note Human and canine coevolution I remember the day, years ago, I first saw them, while wandering through the raggedy wildlands behind our Midwestern neighborhood. Suddenly, they appeared — a pack of dogs at the edge of the woods, looking straight at me. I froze. Surely they would advance, snarling, to take down this slow, weak suburban prey. But they gazed at me without fear and apparently without malice, and then slipped silently into the oaks. Not dogs. Coyotes. I never saw coyotes there again, but decades later, when I moved to the rural West, they became a steady presence in my world. They ran across our fields by day and sang haunting choruses by night. My rancher neighbors were highly attuned to them as well; they routinely shot any coyote they saw. It was the only way, they believed, to keep these wily predators fearful and few. That’s been the attitude of the little-known federal agency that, for nearly a century, has A Wildlife Services’ Predator Research Facility near Logan, Utah. KRISTIN MURPHY “controlled” predators on behalf of ranchers and farmers. As Ben Goldfarb reports in this week’s cover story, Wildlife Services routinely kills tens of thousands FEATURE of coyotes every year — 61,638 in 2014 alone. Yet the coyote has survived, and even expanded 12 The Forever War its range to virtually every ecosystem on the A federal agency called Wildlife Services has been researching continent. Ecologists believe that killing adult coyotes actually encourages early breeding and On the cover nonlethal means to protect livestock for decades. So why is it still killing so many predators? By Ben Goldfarb more successful pup production, yet the agency has Coyotes at the stuck to its guns — and its traps — largely because, Predator Research as Goldfarb reports, its rancher clients, who help pay Facility near Logan, Utah, where non- CURRENTS its bills, want a quick return on their investment. lethal methods The story, though, doesn’t end there. Prodded of predator control 5 Coal company bankruptcies Public at risk of footing cleanup costs on the inside by folks like biologist Julie Young, are studied. Wildlife Services is slowly evolving, just like the KRISTIN MURPHY 6 Photos: At Malheur, a moment behind the limelight other federal natural resource agencies in the West, 8 A tale of BLM mascots From Johnny Horizon to Seymour Antelope and it has begun introducing the nonlethal forms of 9 Re-engineering the ranch Montana rancher prepares for future climate predator control favored by activists, such as guard dogs, fencing, noise and lights. More and more 9 The Latest: Yellowstone bison cull ranchers are willing to give them a try. Though significant barriers to reform remain, DEPARTMENTS especially the agency’s reliance on local funding, it was heartening to hear Young say at a recent Complete access meeting, “I can think of people who hate the fact that to subscriber-only 3 HCN.ORG NEWS IN BRIEF content I work for the agency I work for, but 80 to 90 percent 4 LETTERS of what we’re trying to do is the exact same thing.” HCN’s website And that is to manage these marvelous hcn.org 10 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends lands with ecological intelligence and a sense of Digital edition 21 MARKETPLACE hcne.ws/digi-4801 compassion for all their denizens, whether human, Tablet and mobile apps 25 BOOKS domesticated or wild. As we go to press, a band hcne.ws/HCNmobile-app Unprocessed by Megan Kimble. Reviewed by Katherine E. Standefer of misinformed rogues is occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon’s high 26 WRITERS ON THE RANGE desert. They seem to have forgotten that the West’s Modern sagebrush rebels recycle old Western fantasies By Paul Larmer Follow us public lands belong to all of us, and that there is 27 ESSAY common ground to be found, even with deeply The tree in the river By Ana Maria Spagna entrenched bureaucracies, if we are willing to work for it. @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Paul Larmer, executive director/publisher 2 High Country News January 25, 2016 FROM OUR WEBSI TE: HCN.ORG

Trending $43 trillion Ranchers estimated amount that carbon dioxide and methane released from permafrost thawing could cost the world by 2200. bought out In an opinion piece, conservation advocate percent of Alaska’s permafrost that will Tom Ribe praises disappear by the end of the century. 16 to 24 a new wilderness Until recently, relatively little was known about the repercussions of bill for buying up thawing permafrost. Today, as its role in global carbon cycles grows federal grazing leases more apparent, a slew of studies are transforming our understanding of surrounding Idaho’s the frozen soil. Among the most notable takeaways are U.S. Geological Boulder-White Clouds Survey research that produced an unprecedented map of permafrost Wilderness. The Forest distribution, and studies that found that tundra fires, which are Service would take becoming increasingly common, accelerate permafrost thaw. control of the leases KRISTA LANGLOIS and put them out of MORE: hcne.ws/permafrost-studies production, helping minimize predator- Slow-motion methane disaster cattle conflicts. North of Porter Ranch, California, natural gas has been leaking from a National buyout massive underground storage facility. Additives in the gas have caused programs are rare, due health problems for some local residents, including burning eyes, nausea to opposition from and headaches, but the long-term impacts promise to be even more the ranching industry, devastating. Natural gas is mostly made up of methane, which is much and Ribe lauds the more potent in terms of global warming than carbon dioxide. Although compromise as a sign natural gas burns more cleanly than coal, leaks like this one undermine of progress from a its advantages. The company will begin burning off some of the gridlocked Congress. methane to prevent further damage. JONATHAN THOMPSON Wilderness bills can MORE: hcne.ws/slow-mo-methane make damaging compromises, Ribe MAJOR METHANE EMITTERS IN THE WEST says, but this one 106,224 ConocoPhillips - San Juan Basin benefits both ranchers and environmentalists. 65,928 Southern California Gas - Aliso Canyon Leak KATE SCHIMEL Children play near a pumpjack in a neighborhood in Frederick, 10/23-1/8 Colorado. Colorado citizens can now report health problems potentially related to oil and gas development. DAVID ZALUBOWSKI/AP 53,284 Southern California Gas Co. You say 47,782 San Juan Basin geologic seeps* JACK PRIER: “So Colorado to track fracking-related health problems we can step away Colorado recently became the first state to have a health response program 41,820 BP America - San Juan Basin from an 1800s land for oil and gas operations. Fracking and drilling can release a range of experiment on behalf 33,496 San Juan Mine, NM of the public’s wildlife pollutants that harm human health, but definitive proof of links between oil ecosystem? Good and gas production and health problems is often elusive. The new program will 32,048 BP America - Green River Basin news.” allow citizens to report symptoms they believe may be related to oil and gas activity. Health specialists will also provide information on existing research, 26,049 West Elk Mine, CO DEB HOCHHALTER: track complaints and look for patterns of illness. The program is based on “Not only do the recommendations from the state’s oil and gas task force. But it stems from a 24,432 Encana - Piceance Basin grazers destroy the land, but they, along groundbreaking 2010 study performed in Battlement Mesa, Colorado, which 22,952 PDC Energy - Denver Basin with their friends looked at the health impacts of a proposal to drill some 200 natural gas wells at Wildlife Services, within town limits. Meanwhile, worries linger in the state over wells built too 0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000 are decimating the Metric tons of methane emitted in 2014 close to homes and schools. JODI PETERSON predator populations. MORE: hcne.ws/co-oil-gas-health SOURCE: CALIFORNIA AIR RESOURCES BOARD, EPA, LT ENVIRONMENTAL. *SAN JUAN BASIN Loss of these GEOLOGIC SEEPS ONLY INCLUDE THE PORTION OF THE BASIN IN COLORADO ON NON-UTE LAND. predators and their ability to control the ungulate populations Video are decimating A California housing development dries up ecosystems.”

“It’s imperative that the community continues to grow. If it’s MARK BAILEY: fishers were arbitrarily truncated or cut short, I don’t see how the existing “Nothing is harder on 7released into Washington’s the public lands in the Gifford Pinchot National ratepayers will be able to bear that debt burden on their own. West than livestock Forest on Dec. 3. It was the If we’re not a growing community, we’re a dying community.” grazing. This is such a first time the weasel-like win-win ﬁx.” creature had been seen —Edwin Pattison, general manager of Mountain House, in the South Cascades in a housing development east of San Francisco whose MORE: hcne.ws/ rancher-buyout and more than 70 years. BEN water supply was cut off last year due to drought Facebook.com/ GOLDFARB highcountrynews MORE: hcne.ws/wa-fishers MORE: hcne.ws/drying-up ZOË MEYERS

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High Country News COOPERATING FOR THE COMMON GOOD EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER Paul Larmer Being alone is no way to live, and so hu- MANAGING EDITOR mans, being communal animals, evolved Brian Calvert specific biological reactions to social SENIOR EDITORS threats. Those living on the periphery Jodi Peterson Jonathan Thompson of their tribes faced increased risks of ART DIRECTOR starvation, predation and early death. Cindy Wehling Today, feelings of isolation may re- CARTOONS WOLVERTON,/CAGLE ONLINE EDITOR sult in nervous behavior and unhealthy Tay Wiles physiological responses that cause the ASSISTANT EDITOR Kate Schimel body to produce stress-related bio- D.C. CORRESPONDENT chemicals, leading to inflammation and Elizabeth Shogren reduced ability to fight off infections. WRITERS ON THE RANGE Loneliness also impacts how one EDITOR Betsy Marston sees the world and how one responds ASSOCIATE DESIGNER Brooke Warren to increased risks to his security and COPY EDITOR wellbeing. Diane Sylvain And so the Malpai Borderlands CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Group, recognizing the dangers of living Forrest Whitman writes, but many is to irrigate crops. California’s water Cally Carswell on the periphery of their tribe in our favor lower immigration to stem over- problem is a food problem. The biggest Sarah Gilman Michelle Nijhuis harsh Southwestern deserts, has chosen population (“Western nativism has consumer of water in California is al- CORRESPONDENTS to formalize “neighboring,” taking on the a rotten odor,” HCN, 12/21/15). U.S. falfa. Alfalfa alone is using more water Ben Goldfarb social responsibilities of caring for one population will exceed 400 million by than all the other water uses combined, Krista Langlois Sarah Tory another in the self-interest of each of 2050. If we had maintained the im- and most of it is being shipped overseas Joshua Zaffos them (“Good Neighbors,” HCN, 12/7/15). migration levels of the 1950s and ’60s, for use as feed for dairy cows. So we are EDITORIAL FELLOW Thanks for sharing a wonderful our population would have leveled off exporting California water to the Middle Paige Blankenbuehler lesson about respect, responsibility and by now. Which population future would East and China to make milk.” ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Alexis Halbert restraint. We should welcome more such you prefer, half-a-billion and growing, So, yes, while the possibility of mak- DEVELOPMENT MANAGER examples. or a steady state of 260 million? Some ing LA water independent is tremen- Alyssa Pinkerton informative articles and graphics on the dous, the darts we are throwing are still Hugh Jameson DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT consequences of our permissive immi- missing the bull’s-eye — California al- El Paso, Texas Christine List gration levels are at www.numbersusa. falfa exports — which Gov. Jerry Brown, SUBSCRIPTIONS MARKETER JoAnn Kalenak org, but I am equally swayed by a piece for all his 2016 green energy and water WEB DEVELOPER Eric Strebel BEAVER BELIEVER by HCN’s own Ed Marston in the Feb. policies, has said is “off the table.” 3, 2003, issue (“The son of immigrants DATABASE/IT ADMINISTRATOR Regarding Avery McGaha’s wetland Alan Wells has a change of heart,” at www.hcn.org/ Cynthia Mitchell article (“A desert oasis, lost and found,” COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT issues/243/13710), where he describes Reno, Nevada HCN, 12/21/15): Cattails are considered Gretchen King his thoughtful reaction to a conversation a weed. They overtake ponds and wet- FINANCE MANAGER with a Mexican father of 11. Beckie Avera lands, crowding out native species that RESPECT ALL AROUND ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE are more beneficial. Instead of cattails, Lee Badger I was deeply saddened by the Dec. 7 Jan Ho man the cienega should have native willows CIRCULATION MANAGER Ogden, Utah cover’s display of animal cruelty. The and cottonwoods. Instead of messing Tammy York cover caption states that “neighbors around with logs and dams of his own CIRCULATION SYSTEMS ADMIN. helping neighbors” on branding day Kathy Martinez making, A.T. Cole should import some WATER FOR COWS “is the cultural norm.” Unfortunately, CIRCULATION beavers. The beavers belong in that The Nov. 23 stories “The city as sponge,” inflicting pain appears to be a “cultural Doris Teel, Kati Johnson, ecosystem and would do a much better Stephanie Kyle about Los Angeles possibly designing its norm” in the cowboy culture also. I job of restoring it. They can even take ADVERTISING DIRECTOR way to water independence, the related wonder how many of those “neighbors” David J. Anderson an arroyo, with intermittent water, and story “The Revival of Mono Lake,” and subduing that poor animal would enjoy ADVERTISING SALES make dams with mud and stones and REPRESENTATIVE the cover story, “Water Hustle,” brought being treated like that. Apparently, bring it back to a healthy system. If Mr. Bob Wedemeyer back the July 16, 2015, TED Radio the castration and branding were done Cole would use the help of beavers in- GRANTWRITER Hour: “Finite: Ideas about the Resourc- without pain mitigation. At least I stead of trying to be a human beaver, he Janet Reasoner es We Use and How to Make the Most saw no mention of anesthesia. There wouldn’t have to worry about floods; the of What’s Left.” About 14.5 minutes in, is enough suffering in the world. How FOUNDER Tom Bell beavers would prevent those. The areas John Foley, an ecologist who runs the about HCN covers that inspire awe where beavers are allowed to do their California Academy of Sciences, offers instead of revulsion? My understanding [email protected] thing are amazing. Yeah, beavers! [email protected] this observation (which I paraphrase): of the international and interdisciplin- [email protected] “Just think about the last 50 years. ary field called “compassionate conser- [email protected] Penelope M. Blair Population has more than doubled, our vation” is that we must not only respect [email protected] Moab, Utah use of water for food production has the land on which we and other animals BOARD OF DIRECTORS more than tripled, and our use of fossil live but also the animals themselves. John Belkin, Colo. fuels has more than quadrupled.” Beth Conover, Colo. IMMIGRATION AND POPULATION Jay Dean, Calif. Focus in on water for agriculture, Bob Muth Bob Fulkerson, Nev. I don’t doubt that a lot of opposition Foley continues: “Seventy to 90 percent Kalispell, Montana Wayne Hare, Colo. to immigration is due to nativism, as of all water used around the planet Laura Helmuth, Md. John Heyneman, Wyo. Nicole Lampe, Ore. Marla Painter, N.M. Dan Stonington, Wash. High Country News is a nonprot 501(c)(3) (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Printed on Rick Tallman, Colo. High independent media organization that covers the Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post ofﬁces. recycled paper. Luis Torres, N.M. issues that dene the American West. Its mission is POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All Andy Wiessner, Colo. Country to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Florence Williams, D.C. News region’s diverse natural and human communities. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155 | hcn.org 4 High Country News January 25, 2016 CURRENTS Coal company bankruptcies jeopardize reclamation Public at risk of footing billions in cleanup costs

BY ELIZABETH SHOGREN

Turner gazes across a pit so s long as a mining company meets L.J. massive its size is hard to fath- A financial requirements, states can ac- om. Enormous draglines dredge up shiny cept a self-bond. State conditions vary but black coal. Once, Turner grazed cattle on must be at least as strict as federal stan- 6,000 acres of publicly owned grassland dards. (Similar self-bonding rules apply to here. Then the land was swallowed by hardrock mining, but currently attention Peabody’s North Antelope Rochelle Mine, is focused on coal because of the indus- the world’s largest coal mine. Thirty-some try’s financial crisis.) The total covered years ago, the rancher says, before min- by self-bonds for Western coal mines has ing companies turned Wyoming’s Powder swollen in recent years. Most of it, $2.25 River Basin into the nation’s most pro- billion, is in Wyoming, which produces 40 ductive coal region, they made a promise: percent of the nation’s coal. Colorado and When they finished extracting coal, they New Mexico have much less self-bonding, swamped in debt. And the outlook for coal Belle Ayr mine has the would restore the land. and though Utah also allows it, the state is increasingly dim as electric companies highest production Under federal law, companies must currently has no self-bonds. Montana, the switch to low-cost natural gas and as cli- costs in the Powder reclaim the land they’ve mined. To ensure West’s second-largest coal producer, does mate change policies encourage cleaner River Basin, at $11.81 that cleanup is completed, they must pro- not allow any self-bonding. power sources. per ton in 2013. Alpha vide financial guarantees — bonds, cash Western states that permit it say that The coal industry’s rapid financial de- Natural Resources, which owns the mine, or collateral to cover the entire cost of rec- mining companies are up-to-date on rec- cline caught regulators by surprise, and led for bankruptcy in lamation. That way, even if the company lamation and have yet to default. But its implications for self-bonding remain 2015, and the company goes out of business, the public is protect- Turner and some environmental groups unclear. “We all anticipated that the use may not be able to ed from expensive cleanup bills or aban- have long complained that reclamation of self-bonds and corporate guarantees meet its reclamation doned mines that scar the land, pollute was happening too slowly. Now, they fear was a safe and reliable bonding alterna- obligations. waterways and eliminate rangeland and it may not happen at all. “I’m just very tive for well-positioned mining compa- EVAN ANDERMAN wildlife habitat. These days, for a big Pow- concerned (companies are) going to try to nies,” says Greg Conrad, executive di- der River Basin mine, reclamation costs use bankruptcy to get away from doing rector of the Interstate Mining Compact can reach several hundred million dollars. anything,” Turner says. Commission, which represents state reg- Instead of setting aside cash or getting Arch Coal, which is self-bonded for ulators. Now, he says, that confidence is a financial institution to guarantee that nearly half a billion dollars in Wyoming, gone: “You’ve got an industry on the ropes land will be reclaimed, though, several of filed for bankruptcy in mid-January, fol- here. … There’s a lot of uncertainty about the biggest coal companies, including Pea- lowing Virginia-based Alpha Natural how that’s going to play out.” body, took advantage of a provision of the Resources, which filed in August. These Surface Mining Control and Reclamation bankruptcies leave big question marks yoming’s experience with Alpha illus- Act of 1977 that allows them to self-bond. over whether the companies can or will W trates just how murky the situation That means companies with adequate fi- keep their reclamation commitments. Oth- is. State regulators told Alpha in May that nances can make legally binding promises ers could follow. Alpha, Arch and Peabody it no longer met financial criteria for self- they’ll cover reclamation costs. The com- made huge investments in metallurgical bonding, and gave the company 90 days to panies benefit because they avoid tying up coal before prices tanked, leaving them Please see Coal, page 8 their money or spending it on surety bonds. But recently, after decades as industry stalwarts, some of those companies, in- COAL MINE CLEANUP COSTS cluding Peabody, have seen their finances In top-producing Western states, self-bonds mean that billions aren’t backed up by cash nosedive, and fears about whether they Current Coal Mining Cleanup Obligations (millions of dollars) 2014 Coal Production (million tons) will be able to meet their growing financial obligations to restore the land have Other Bonds Self Bonds reached a crescendo. Wyoming 699 2,250 396 If those self-bonded companies go bankrupt without adequate assets to back their reclamation liability, state and fed- Montana 448 does not allow self-bonding 45 eral taxpayers could find themselves re- sponsible for filling in those massive pits, Colorado 85 117 24 reseeding grasslands and trying to restore damaged streams, springs and aquifers. At a congressional hearing last month, Interi- New Mexico 162 330 22 or Secretary Sally Jewell said self-bonding has become a “big issue,” given coal compa- Utah 64 has no self-bonds, but are allowed 18 nies’ financial fragility. “It does potentially leave the states and the taxpayers at risk.” Alaska 1.5 8.5 1.5 Correspondent Elizabeth Shogren writes HCN’s DC Dispatches from Washington. @ShogrenE DATA: ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION; STATE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY DEPARTMENTS, 2015 | GRAPHIC: JORDAN WIRFS-BROCK /INSIDE ENERGY, BROOKE WARREN www.hcn.org High Country News 5 Rosella Talbot drapes an American ag over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Ammon Bundy, the leader and designated spokesperson of the group Center sign. She brought supplies to the refuge headquarters where the Bundy brothers and that seized the refuge headquarters, before a press conference on Jan. 3. other self-described “patriots” occupied U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service buildings.

Armed men standing guard at the entrance of the road leading to the occupied buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge cut down signs pointing to the “Outlook Trail” and the refuge headquarters with a chainsaw and used them to fuel a re. Occupiers also drove a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service vehicle, saying the “keys were in it.”

6 High Country News January 25, 2016 Photo Essay At Malheur, a moment behind the limelight

efore Malheur National Wildlife Refuge became a media B madhouse, it was occupied by a small group of men deter- mined to make a point about public land. They had left a larger protest in nearby Burns, Oregon, in support of local ranchers Dwight and Stephen Hammond. It was nerve-racking, following heavily armed men into the middle of nowhere, to a 187,757-acre wildlife refuge 30 miles from the nearest town. I arrived at dusk on Jan. 2, the only reporter present. Four armed men stood around a sagebrush fire they’d built behind a white truck, which blocked the road to the occupied buildings. They were “not at liberty to talk to the media,” one said, and they initially refused to be photographed. But when I reminded them that I had a constitutional right to take pictures on public land, they agreed. About a hundred yards down the road, a woman draped an American flag over a visitor’s center sign. She was upset that the Hammonds were going to jail, echoing many people in Burns. Armed men gather around a re to keep warm on Jan. 2, aer they occupied the Malheur “Everything they had has been taken from them,” she said. “If we National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in what they called a “peaceful gathering” to protest don’t stand up for this one family, it’s going to happen to others. federal “ownership” of public land. And it already has.” “How come the mainstream media isn’t covering this?” a camera-shy man asked me. Neither of us knew how strange that question would soon come to seem. As darkness fell, the men took a chainsaw to some refuge signs to feed the fire. Eventually, more occupiers drove up in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service truck, carrying a Dutch oven and some food: beef and rice and chili. “This is Bundy beef,” one of the men told me. The Bundy ranch was far away, in Nevada, but clearly still part of the story. They were short on plastic utensils and paper plates; when Ammon Bundy threw his plate into the fire, others reminded him they had to reuse the limited supplies. They were armed but didn’t seem dangerous. Some laughed and joked, and others reminisced about the wives and children they’d left at home. A Steens Mountain, seen from the occupied space of the wildlife refuge, where about 100,000 acres few kept quiet, peering out sharply from under their balaclavas. are protected from livestock grazing and about 900,000 acres are protected from mining. Sentries watched from a fire tower. In the morning, the group prepared to meet the press. By then, they had put away their guns, at least for the moment. BROOKE WARREN WEB EXTRA Read more than 20 years of coverage on the movement that sparked the Oregon occupation at hcn.org/topics/sagebrush-rebellion.

Occupiers ll their plates for dinner the rst night at the refuge. “We A man carries signs denouncing the Bureau of Land Management. In the background, two were kinda hoping that this place was stocked, and it ain’t,” said one men keep watch from a re tower. e occupiers built a wooden ladder to the second tier of the protester about why they were reusing paper plates and plastic utensils. tower, for easier access.

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 1946 Coal, continued from page 7 Snapshot President Harry Truman come up with another guarantee for the es- merges the U.S. Grazing timated $411 million needed to reclaim its A tale of two mascots Service with the General two Powder River Basin mines. But Alpha 1940s Land Office, creating the From Johnny Horizon to Seymour Antelope — FRANK GATTERI failed to do so before it filed for bankruptcy. Bureau of Land Manage- Wyoming reached an agreement that a shift in BLM priorities ment to administer grazing $61 million for reclamation would get first evelers in Phoenix for the 2015 Super Bowl likely expected to see Blitz, and mineral rights. priority in bankruptcy court. In exchange, the muscular blue bird that is the Seattle Seahawks’ mascot, along 1953 the state is allowing Alpha’s mines to con- R with Pat Patriot, the war-hero symbol of the rival New England Patriots. The BLM's first-ever logo features a rancher, tinue operation, despite the invalid self- But they weren’t prepared for the shorts-wearing pronghorn handing bonds. Kyle Wendtland, administrator of out bookmarks in front of a desert backdrop. miner, engineer, logger and the land-quality division of the Wyoming “People would say: ‘What is this? Who are you?’ We’d say, ‘This is surveyor looking sternly ahead to an industrial- Department of Environmental Quality, Seymour Antelope. He’s the mascot of the Bureau of Land Management,’ “ ized landscape, with raw says that if Alpha emerges from bank- recalls BLM spokesman Dennis Godfrey. 1950s frontier behind them, ruptcy, as the state expects, it will be re- Forty years ago, then-BLM mascot Johnny Horizon was a fairly well- known presence; With his cowboy hat and rugged good looks, Johnny illustrating the agency's quired to post new reclamation bonds and inspired a nationwide litter-cleanup campaign and all manner of consumer reputation as the “Bureau will no longer qualify for self-bonding. goods before quietly retiring in the late ’70s. Seymour emerged in 2008, of Livestock and Mining.” Right before Arch, an even bigger com- when BLM New Mexico adopted him as a local mascot. In 2010, the pany, filed for bankruptcy, environmental agency made the ungulate the face of its youth programs nationwide — 1964 groups pressed Wyoming to revoke its the closest thing to a mascot that it now has. The Classification and Multiple Use Act self-bonds. But the state rebuffed that ef- Johnny Horizon nodded to the BLM’s old guard of miners and directs the BLM to classify its lands according fort, saying a subsidiary of the company ranchers even as the agency entered a new era of environmental concern. Seymour was born in another transitional period, as the BLM was given to various values, including primitive still qualified for self-bonding to guar- character — a first step toward managing for antee the reclamation of 78,000 acres — management of new national monuments, partly to infuse the agency with conservation values. If Seymour sticks around, it may be a clue that non-commodity uses. The following year, the

roughly the size of Utah’s Arches National 1960s those values, too, have stuck — even as the BLM’s multiple-use mission agency releases a new logo, featuring an Park. “Bankruptcy should not be used as becomes more complex than ever. MARSHALL SWEARINGEN idealized natural landscape, still in use today. a haven for the company to escape its obli- 1968 gations,” says Bob LeResche, chairman of 1972 The BLM unveils its first-ever mascot, Johnny the Powder River Basin Resource Council. The Department of Interior Horizon, who asks public-lands visitors to be For now, Conrad thinks that there’s channels Johnny Horizon's careful with fire, leave gates as they find only a minimal risk that big surface mines growing fame into its “Clean Up them, and obey state game and fish laws. in the West will default, though he admits, America” campaign, an anti-litter “If the markets continue to go south, we and environmental awareness 1970 could have a bigger problem on our hands.” program. As the environmental movement builds In the meantime, at least one Western steam, actor and folksinger Burl Ives sings

state is moving away from self-bonding. 1970s Johnny Horizon’s theme song. The Interior “We think it is less secure than other Department collects royalties from Johnny's forms of ﬁnancial assurance such as cor- image, which appears on everything from porate sureties or cash bonds,” says Todd wristwatches to ashtrays. Hartman, spokesman for the Colorado De- partment of Natural Resources. Peabody currently is selling its Colorado mines, FOREST SOCIETY HISTORY and Hartman says the buyer will not be BLM allowed to post self-bonds. Ofﬁcials in 1976 Wyoming and New Mexico, though, say

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act clarifies and secures the PEANUTS WORLDWIDE rethinking self-bonding would require

BLM's multiple-use mission. Interior announces plans to retire Johnny: 1980s lengthy regulatory processes that have 1977 "(He) has served his purpose and will now leave the scene, letting the Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus tells the National not yet begun. At the federal level, the De- people do the job themselves." partment of Interior, which oversees mine Wildlife Federation: “The initials BLM no longer stand for Bureau of Livestock reclamation, recently created a new task 1996 and Mining.” A federal civil force to help states ensure that reclama- President Bill Clinton rights commission lambastes tion continues to be guaranteed despite designates the first-ever Johnny Horizon as a gender- companies’ poor ﬁnances. Bonding for rec- monument to be managed biased stereotype and calls for a lamation was not included in the multi- by the BLM, Utah’s Grand female sidekick displaying “equal year review of the federal coal program Staircase-Escalante familiarity and concern with the terrain of our country.” that Interior launched this month. National Monument, and While the bureaucrats and politicians

goes on to create a dozen 1990s sort out what to do, people like L.J. Turn- other monuments under 2000 er worry about what’s at stake. Even the BLM jurisdiction. The National Landscape Conservation small uranium mines from the 1950s have System bundles BLM's national left lasting scars on his ranch. Nature alone JOHN FOWLER monuments, wild and scenic rivers, won’t quickly reclaim the vast amounts of 2008 wilderness areas and other land, restore the streams or recharge the outstanding lands under a BLM New Mexico adopts Seymour as mascot for a state-wide aquifers damaged by today’s coal mining, new mission to “conserve, restoration program. he says. “It will be a disaster.” protect, and restore.”

This story was reported in collaboration 2014 2010

with Leigh Paterson at Inside Energy, a 2000s BLM launches its Planning 2.0 Initiative, the first major revision of its public media project focusing on America’s The BLM adopts Seymour nation- land-management-plan creation process. The initiative emphasizes wide as mascot for its Youth energy issues. More at insideenergy.org. public input and landscape-scale planning, which could help protect Program. 8 High Country News January 25, 2016 migration corridors used by wildlife — including pronghorn. You go, BLM

Seymour! 2010s THE LATEST Backstory The yearly migration of bison out of Yellowstone National Park to their historic winter range in Montana has Erik Kalsta on created a decades- the ranch along long conflict with Montana’s Big Hole ranchers, who fear River that’s been the animals will in his family for transmit the abortion- generations. e causing disease changing climate, brucellosis to cattle. documented over So the state hazes the decades in bison back into the meticulous ranch park and captures logs, presents new and slaughters challenges for his hundreds each winter; grass-fed cattle and hundreds are also sheep operation. killed by public and SARAH JANE KELLER tribal hunters (“The Killing Fields,” HCN, 2/06/06). tice. Justin Derner, director of the U.S. Followup Department of Agriculture’s Northern Re-engineering the ranch In early January, Plains Regional Climate Hub, says ranch- Yellowstone ofﬁcials A Montana rancher looks to the past ers are keenly aware that climate and announced that 600 to prepare for tomorrow’s climate weather variability makes their business to 900 bison will be riskier, and for some, makes it more likely culled this winter, that they’ll have to sell their land. “I think about 20 percent BY SARAH JANE KELLER the periodic droughts since 2000 have re- of the park’s 4,900 ally hit home,” he says. Ranchers are try- animals. Meanwhile, s a kid on his family’s Montana ranch, his great-grandparents started working ing a variety of things to cope with wild Montana Gov. Steve A Erik Kalsta performed a daily chore: in the 1880s. Most of Kalsta’s property — swings in moisture and grass production, Bullock has released He’d walk 500 paces from his house to a which gets only about 7 inches of moisture he says, including setting aside pasture a plan that takes the first step toward white shed, where an instrument panel per year — is already too dry to support his to “bank” grass for bad years, and using ending the state’s recorded the height of the nearby Big Hole grass-fed cattle and sheep business over new long-term weather-prediction tools to harsh treatment of River. Then he’d march home and call in the long term. Kalsta worries that with- plan stocking rates. “There’s no one-size- bison. If agencies the measurement to a U.S. Geological out management changes, and if climate fits-all answer, where everybody is going and tribes approve Survey hydrologist. Over time, the data change continues to disrupt runoff and to do the same thing.” the plan, up to 600 points created a long-term history of the parch the land, he’ll have to sell. “If I have Kalsta is focusing his efforts on an arid, of the ungulates will river’s ebbs and flows. to leave here, this place is going to make a ancient volcano called McCartney Moun- finally be allowed On a warm day last February, Kalsta, fantastic subdivision,” he says wryly. tain, his property’s dominant landform. to roam year-round now 48, sat in the kitchen of the same Kalsta is trying to adapt by getting Late last winter, the dry gullies on Mc- outside Yellowstone, on 400 square miles home, wearing wire-rim glasses, a silver- his soil to absorb more water. It’s a simple Cartney’s lower flanks looked like some- north and west of ing goatee and a lightweight Patagonia idea, but hard to execute. If he’s successful, thing you’d see in New Mexico. Kalsta the park. Much of the sweater. He pointed out the window at it will help him ride out droughts, keep vi- hopes that by slowing the flow of water, animals’ preferred the stream gauge, which is now auto- olent rains or snowmelt from washing his he can initiate a soil-building scheme that winter range will still mated. Kalsta’s success as a rancher de- soil into the river, improve wildlife habi- will increase plant productivity by 400 to remain off-limits to pends on snow and rain, and 92 years of tat, and ultimately boost grass production. 500 percent. With McCartney’s stubby them, though. stream data tell him that runoff patterns “In general, our watersheds here were grass, rabbitbrush, prickly pear and rock, JODI PETERSON are changing. “This is that early spring much spongier in the past,” says Molly it’s hard to imagine. As his 86-year-old pulse that’s been coming earlier and earli- Cross, a Montana-based Wildlife Conser- neighbor told him, “Son, if I remember my Bison in pens before er,” he says, glancing towards the swollen vation Society climate researcher who math right, five times zero is still zero.” culling for slaughter. river. It’s become normal for snow to begin consults with Kalsta. As snowpack be- The ranch’s history is unusually well JIM PEACO melting into the river in March instead of comes a less reliable natural reservoir, documented; McCartney hosted a weather April. But in 2015, it started rising in Feb- it’s increasingly necessary to recover some station for 60 years and Montana State ruary. That’s a problem, because it means of the capacity for water retention that’s University has grazing research plots on that the water’s availability might be out been lost through floodplain development the property. Kalsta’s family also kept ex- of sync with the growing season or the and overgrazing. To that end, the Wild- ceptionally detailed journals that go back times he can legally draw from the river life Conservation Society is working with to the 1880s; his grandmother’s later en- to irrigate. “This is kind of scary,” Kalsta landowners east of Kalsta to build screen- tries are handmade spreadsheets with admits. “(But) we’ve still got time to turn like structures from willows. These slow weather, river flows, calving dates and this thing around.” the river’s flow, encouraging the water wildlife sightings meticulously lined out He’s talking about the possibility that to spread out and soak in, so streamside on manila folders. spring snow might compensate for the ear- plants can take hold. Those journals serve as a baseline ly melt, but he could just as easily be con- Kalsta hopes to accomplish some- for what he hopes to achieve. One 1896 templating the future of his ranch, which thing similar through different means. entry by his great-grandfather, Horace, And so he’s turning his ranch into a lab- describes the grasses up on McCartney Sarah Jane Keller writes from Bozeman, Montana. oratory for figuring out what “climate as “belly high to a mule.” Kalsta suspects @sjanekeller adaptation” actually looks like in prac- Please see Rancher, page 20 www.hcn.org High Country News 9 THE HCN COMMUNITY

RESEARCH FUND Thank you, Research Fund donors, for protecting the spirit of the West

10 High Country News January 25, 2016 DEAR FRIENDS

ROCK ART: A VISION OF A VANISHING Home a er the holidays CULTURAL LANDSCAPE By Jonathan Bailey After a nice holiday break (with dying breed,” Tom writes, “with 187 pages, softcover: $28.95. some of us taking more time new high-tech cameras ready to Johnson Books, 2016. than others), the High Country take over our jobs, but nothing News editorial staff is finally will replace real eyes and a real Jonathan Bailey’s haunting photographs of Western back to work. Our first order heart to greet visitors at the top pictographs join essays by Lawrence Baca, Greg Child, of business involves correcting of the mountain, not to mention Lorran Meares and others to tell the larger story of an error that squeaked into the finding fires. My friend John a disappearing cultural heritage and the need for last issue of 2015. A neighbor- (Henry) Crawford has been a its conservation. Rock Art: A Vision of a Vanishing hood struggling with an expan- lookout since the ’70s and still Cultural Landscape brings an ancient people to life through their stone-etched images, many of which are sion of Interstate 70 in Denver works as an Idaho lookout.” threatened by development and vandalism. “What (“Eastbound and Down,” HCN Tom even wrote a song for his will the future be for these images?” Bailey asks. The 12/21/15) was misidentified; friend, inspired by the folk clas- passion behind his photographs is apparent — and it was Elyria, not Elysia. We sic, “John Henry”: hard-won. Bailey often climbed, unassisted, to tower- regret the error. ing narrow ledges to view the sites the way the origi- In the midst of the hustle The man who invented that nal artists did, centuries ago. The mysterious pictures and bustle of gift-wrapping tech-camera they left still seem to whisper a hidden meaning. “If news for our readers, we He thought he was we don’t preserve that,” he writes, “we don’t deserve enjoyed a visit from Taya Jae, mighty fine, the land we walk on.” PAIGE BLANKENBUEHLER who grew up here in Paonia, But Johnny spotted 14 Colorado, and is currently go- lightning fires A petroglyph of a human gure etched into a wall in Utah. JONATHAN BAILEY ing to college in Vermont. Josh While the camera only spotted Banyard, a filmmaker who lives nine, Lord, Lord in Portland, also came by HCN The camera only spotted nine. headquarters to get a glimpse William A. Molini | Reno, NV Larry Shore | Albuquerque, NM behind the pages of a magazine Sadly, we recently lost a Bob & Sue Naymik | Medford, OR Dave Shreffler & Ann Soule | Sequim, WA his father has subscribed to for couple of remarkable friends. Anne Nelson | St. Cloud, MN Robert Simmons | Colorado Springs, CO decades. Thanks for stopping Jay Kirkpatrick, 75, who gener- Nick & Ann Novich | Sheridan, MT Michelle Slattery | Colorado Springs, CO by, Taya and Josh! ously shared his knowledge of Jenelle Ortiz | Leadville, CO Patricia Smith | Berkeley, CA While many of us were wild horses with HCN reporters Michael Pease | Ellensburg, WA Doug & Joanne Smith | Steamboat Springs, CO buried in snow out West, editor over the years, passed away in Jennifer Pemberton | Logan, UT David Smith | Sandy, UT Betsy Marston was basking in December. Jay helped pioneer Sonia L. Perillo | Scottsdale, AZ Julie & Hilary Smith | Golden, CO the sun of Cuba, where she the use of a contraceptive Eric Perramond & Ann Brucklacher | Marjory R. Stage | Moscow, ID learned how to buy black-mar- vaccine for wild horses, bison Colorado Springs, CO Judee & Chuck Stanley | Idaho Falls, ID ket wireless Internet access and and urban deer. We were also Stephen Personius | Golden, CO Darby C. Stapp & Julia Longenecker | edit stories from a park bench. sorry to hear about the passing Kathy Peterson | Longmont, CO Richland, WA This issue’s Heard Around the of legendary Northwest alpin- Janelle Plattenberger | Sun City, AZ Joseph Start | Silverton, OR West was filed from the tropics. ist and environmentalist Doug Adrienne Poirier | Flagstaff, AZ Constance Steeples | Centennial, CO Betsy has returned, but no, she Walker. Doug, 64, was trying to William T. Pope | Mazama, WA Sari H. Stein | Grants, NM did not bring back any Cuban summit Granite Mountain near Richard & Megan Prelinger | San Francisco, CA Fred & Rose Stormer | Beaverton, OR cigars to hand out to new sub- Snoqualmie Pass, Washington, Janice Pryor | Littleton, CO Laura Stump | Loveland, CO scribers. Sorry. when he was likely caught in an Gloria Putnam | Valyermo, CA John Stutzman | Albuquerque, NM Speaking of hotspots, we avalanche on Jan. 1, authorities John & Lisa Ragsdale | Prairie Village, KS Thomas & Jean Sutherland | Fort Collins, CO received an ode to fire lookouts said. Throughout his life, Doug Carol & Francis Raley | Grand Junction, CO Brian & Mary Thornburgh | San Diego, CA from Canton, New York, reader helped preserve access to wild Tom Vandewater, inspired by our places for climbers and hikers. Richard Ramirez | Coleville, CA William Tieman | Estes Park, CO Dec. 7 story “Fire lookouts burn- —Paige Blankenbuehler Sue Rand | Colfax, CA Christina Toms | Fairfax, CA ing out:” “We lookouts may be a for the staff John & Diane Reich | Sedona, AZ Paula Trater | Oakley, UT H.R. & Nancy Rex | Fairlawn, OH Robert Tyndall | Austin, TX Sandy Righter | Denver, CO John Van Deusen | Fort Collins, CO Liz & Clair Roberts | Joshua Tree, CA Terri Vanlandschoot | Greenwood Village, CO Gerry A. Roberts | Arvada, CO Linda Vida | Carbondale, CO Mark Rochester | Sutherlin, OR Cheryl L. Wagner | Sammamish, WA Betty Roger | Aurora, CO Mildred Walton | Richland, WA Karen Rogers | Vashon, WA Philip Warburg | Newton, MA John Rosenberg | Tumwater, WA Tom Wasmund | King George, VA Melanie Rowland | Twisp, WA Andrew Weiner | Albany, CA Matt & Sandy Royster | Denver, CO Shannon Welch | Sandy, UT Rich Rozzelle | Carpinteria, CA Friend Wells, Fortieth Parallel West Inc. | Delbert Ruckle | Columbus, OH Los Angeles, CA Easterly Salstrom | Bellingham, WA Janet Westbrook | Ridgecrest, CA Douglas Schneider | Olympia, WA Kath Weston | Charlottesville, VA B. Schoen | El Prado, NM Daryl Willmarth | Tucson, AZ David Schooley, San Bruno Mountain Watch | Alison Wilson | Denver, CO Brisbane, CA Robert Winthrop | Washington, DC David L. Scott | Steamboat Springs, CO Diana C. Wood | Sacramento, CA Kathleen Sheehan Dugan | Bigfork, MT Linda C. Zeigenfuss | Carson, WA Doug Walker, who was president of the American Alpine Club, climbing Susan A. Sherman | Anchorage, AK Jacqueline Ziegler | Laramie, WY in Washington. Doug perished in the mountains he loved on Jan. 1. Mike Shikany | Bellingham, WA COURTESY AMERICAN ALPINE CLUB www.hcn.org High Country News 11 FEATURE | BY BEN GOLDFARB

THE FOREVER WAR A federal agency called Wildlife Services has been researching nonlethal means to protect livestock for decades. So why is it still killing so many predators?

he verb that people most often associate with coyotes A canid starts to yip, and soon the whole research center is “howl,” though it fails to capture Canis latrans’ vocal is singing again. I ask Young what the nearby town thinks of spectrum. Wolves howl. Coyotes also yip, squawk, whine, the ruckus. Nobody seems to mind, she says. One neighbor was bray, bark, wail and croon. First one starts — motivated stunned to learn that he lived near coyotes at all. He thought byT changing barometric pressure or its neighbor’s insolent gaze he’d been hearing cheers from a football stadium. or who knows what — and another joins in, and another, and That the Predator Research Facility evades detection soon a discordant chorus hollers skyward, voices melding into without being altogether hidden seems fitting: Wildlife Services an eerie drone. And then one coyote drops out, and another, and annually publishes voluminous charts tallying its kills, but the aural tapestry unravels to a single thread until the original other information — why it killed which creatures, at whose soloist, too, tapers off. And then it’s silent on the steppe. behest, and after attempting what alternatives — remains So it sounds at the Predator Research Facility in Millville, elusive. Activists and journalists have long sought to drag the In 2014, Utah, when I visit Julie Young, the wildlife biologist who directs agency’s lethal activities into the public glare. Wildlife Services the station, one crisp October morning. The 165-acre compound, has weathered exposés (including a 1991 High Country News Wildlife which houses 100 coyotes in fenced enclosures, is operated by feature), multiple federal investigations, scathing environmen- the National Wildlife Research Center, the scientific arm of an tal group reports and countless angry petitions. “This is an Services killed agency called Wildlife Services. If you’re well acquainted with agency whose time has passed,” Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., Wildlife Services, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agri- Wildlife Services’ most vocal congressional assailant, told the a coyote every culture, you’re likely a rancher who relies on the agency, or a Los Angeles Times in 2014. conservationist who despises it. Otherwise, you may have only a In response to criticism and evolving science, Wildlife eight and a vague idea that an army of trappers has used your tax dollars to Services claims that it’s changing course. Agency scientists and kill millions of animals every year for most of the past century. officials have spoken at Humane Society conferences, launched half minutes. Wildlife Services overwhelmingly targets invasive species new nonlethal research projects, and held workshops on deter- and nuisance birds: Over 40 percent of its 2.7 million kills in rence techniques. Even 2014’s eye-popping coyote kill total 2014 were European starlings. But it’s the slaughter of native represented the agency’s lowest figure in more than 20 years, predators — mostly to defend livestock and revenue-generating though whether that’s a one-year aberration or an emerging game animals like deer, often on public land — that outrages trend remains to be seen. “We’ve always had nonlethal methods, environmentalists. In 2014, Wildlife Services exterminated 796 but we’re getting more proactive in recommending them,” says bobcats, 322 wolves, 580 black bears, 305 cougars, and 1,186 red John Steuber, Wildlife Services’ Montana state director. “We’re foxes. And that’s nothing compared to coyotes. That year, the evolving with the rest of wildlife management.” agency killed 61,702, one coyote every eight and a half minutes. Still, 100 years of tradition can breed inertia in any organi- That bloody reputation notwithstanding, scientists at the zation. Though biologists at the Utah field station have stud- agency’s Predator Research Facility have spent decades con- ied nonlethal techniques since 1972, body counts have mostly sidering more peaceful deterrents: guard dogs, electric fencing, stayed level. “The National Wildlife Research Center does good motion-activated alarms, and strings of flags, called fladry, that work, and their scientists collaborate with all sorts of non-agen- confuse carnivores. Researchers also study coyote behavior — cy people,” says biologist Bradley Bergstrom, who chairs the how dominants and submissives interact, how individuals learn Conservation Committee of the American Society of Mammalo- from neighbors, how they defend territory. Young and I talk in- gists. “But they don’t seem to influence field operations.” side an observation tower that stands, panopticon-like, near the All the science in the world means nothing, in other words, A coyote shies from facility’s center. Below us, pairs of coyotes pace wedge-shaped unless it sways the agency’s field trappers — and the states, a transportation box, facing page, pens. No two animals look alike — we see rust-tinged foxy ones, counties, municipalities, private businesses and ranchers whose at the Predator robust wolfish ones, scrawny piebalds. One lopes clockwise contracts supply half of Wildlife Services’ funding. Antipathy Research Facility around its pen; two more jog along a fence line, like mirror im- toward predators often runs bone-deep among those partners. near Logan, ages. A coyote trots to the tower’s base and stares up, watching Reform, therefore, may require transforming attitudes at the Utah, where the watchers. agency’s grassroots, rather than merely assailing it through biologists study The tower’s interior has fallen into disrepair: Paint peels from courts and Congress. “Until Wildlife Services is told differ- coyote behavior walls, smudges cloud windows, dead flies litter sills. The coyotes ently by the people who pay the bills, it’s hard to imagine real to determine what have proven too smart to let humans observe them. “They know change,” says former agency biologist John Shivik. “Managing might keep the when you’re in here, and no matter how long you sit, some never animals is easy. Managing people is really hard.” animals from killing behave normally,” says Young, a Southern California native with livestock. is facility is one of two startling aquamarine eyes and an ebullient laugh. “We’ve tried WESTERNERS HAVE BEEN BATTLING carnivores since before in Utah; the other is having three people walk in and two walk out. But coyotes can Meriwether Lewis shot a grizzly along a Montana creek in 1805. in Millville. count.” Now Young uses the room to set up video cameras. The But Wildlife Services’ story doesn’t truly begin until 1915, when KRISTIN MURPHY coyotes haven’t figured out they’re being recorded, yet. Congress allocated $125,000 to exterminate wolves, coyotes

12 High Country News January 25, 2016 www.hcn.org High Country News 13 predator control funding to a 1998 House bill, but was saved by eleventh-hour lob- bying from ranching-state lawmakers. To be sure, combating carnivores is just one task among many, and killing animals that damage crops and livestock occupies a smaller proportion of Wild- life Services’ attention than it once did. These days, the agency also eradicates harmful feral pigs, fights rabies, protects endangered sea turtles and drives birds off runways. “We help keep people safe and healthy, and strive to do it in a way that won’t impact wildlife populations,” says agency biologist Buck Jolley. “You don’t think about it when you’re flying, but there are people nationwide relocat- ing thousands of raptors to keep planes in the air.” Still, around a quarter of the agency’s budget goes toward protecting livestock. And no predator occupies Wildlife Services’ attention like coyotes, fast-re- producing generalists that over the past century have colonized the United States’ length and breadth, from Alaskan tundra to Cape Cod beaches. In Chicago, eastern coyotes have learned to follow traffic lights; in New York City, they roam rooftops. In the West, their fierce intelligence makes them formidable foes for ranchers. Though hazards like disease, foul weather and lambing complications take a much greater cumulative toll on sheep, coyotes killed a reported 118,000 in 2014, far more than other carnivores. Dogs finished second. According to agency officials, specialists strive to remove only the offending animals when trappers resort to lethal measures. “Although we emphasize the use of nonlethal tools … no one tool provides 100 percent protection,” Wild- life Services Western Regional Director Jason Suckow and National Wildlife Re- search Center Director Larry Clark wrote in an email to High Country News. “In many cases, producers have already tried and exhausted their nonlethal options.” Oftentimes, however, coyotes also face population reduction, a presumed-guilty policy critics call “mowing the grass.” Terminate enough coyotes with poisons, traps, and aircraft-based guns, the logic goes, and you can pre-emptively quell livestock conflicts or protect mule deer. “The closer preventative work is associ- Giulia Chivee, top, and other predators. Sixteen years later, to be “very professional, not just driving ated with lambing or calving, the more an intern at the President Herbert Hoover created the through the desert with our guns out.” successful it is,” explains Steuber. “If you National Wildlife Division of Predator and Rodent Con- Yet as reporter Tom Knudson document- do it six months ahead, there’s a good Research Center trol (PARC) to remove irksome wildlife. ed in a 2012 Sacramento Bee series, the possibility that other coyotes will move near Logan, Utah, PARC, Wildlife Services’ progenitor, took agency’s specialists, as its trappers are in. But if you do it right before, you give watches how coyotes plenty of fire: In 1964, a committee of sci- called, have been implicated in various calves a chance to grow to where they’re interact with strings of apping red ags, entists led by A. Starker Leopold — son ugly imbroglios, including taking eagles, less susceptible.” A 1999 experiment in or adry, from an of Aldo Leopold, America’s most famous wolverines and family pets as collateral Idaho and Utah found that fewer than observation tower. carnivore-killer-turned-defender — pub- damage. Whistleblowers have described 1 percent of lambs were lost to coyotes Above, adry didn’t lished a report concluding the agency fellow specialists siccing hunting dogs in pastures strafed with aerial gunning, keep this coyote was slaughtering far more animals than on defenseless coyotes and leaving traps while losses in untreated fields hovered from reaching for a could be “justified in terms of total public unchecked for months. “These individuals near 3 percent. morsel. interest.” have such deeply entrenched mindsets External researchers, however, chal- KRISTIN MURPHY A handful of name changes notwith- that it’s hard to imagine how the agency lenge such studies. Adrian Treves, a standing, Wildlife Services’ predator can ever be reformed,” argues Brooks University of Wisconsin-Madison conser- playbook has changed little since. Opera- Fahy, director of the nonprofit Predator vation biologist, notes fatal flaws with the tions, one former trapper told me, tend Defense. Wildlife Services nearly lost its aerial gunning paper, including substan-

14 High Country News January 25, 2016 tial differences between the pastures Young pursues a dizzying array of ecological carrying capacity: the number studied. Shoddy experimental design is deterrence research. With help from of animals it can sustain given food, wa- not an isolated issue. When Treves and engineers, she’s looking into livestock ter and habitat. But systems also have a his colleagues recently sifted through ear tags that will activate an alarm if a social carrying capacity — the number of more than 100 papers on lethal and non- sheep’s heart rate spikes, possibly indi- carnivores that their human cohabitants lethal predator management, they found cating an attack. In the coyote paddocks, will accept. Wildlife Services, Young a mere three that adequately deployed she’s experimenting — unsuccessfully, so claims, boosts that capacity by giving randomized controlled trials, what Treves far — with hormonal sterilization treat- ranchers somewhere to turn when they calls the scientific “gold standard”— all ments. She’s been distributing bolder lose stock. Other researchers disagree: of which tested nonlethal methods. “The breeds of guard dogs from Bulgaria, Tur- Adrian Treves, who dismisses the theory standard of evidence in the field is really key and Portugal to ranchers coping with as “a little blood buys a lot of good will,” low,” Treves says. “There has never been a recovering wolves and grizzlies in five has observed that lethal removal actu- “Carnivores properly designed study of lethal control.” Western states. In one room, a French ally reduces wolf tolerance, perhaps by Coyotes, too, seem almost supernatu- intern busily rolls a bundle of red flags, diminishing the animals’ perceived value. have per- rally resistant to eradication. As one a design that’s been tweaked to prevent Young, however, recently found that maxim goes, “Kill one coyote, and two coyotes from adapting to fladry. Western ranchers who had lethal options sonalities show up to its funeral.” “When you re- Nonetheless, Young defends Wildlife better accepted the wolves in their midst. duce the number of breeding adults in a Services’ lethal activities. Among her “Imagine you’re a rancher: You have ... Too shy, territory, there’s more food to go around, proudest achievements was designing an guard dogs, you have herdsmen, you put and that food is shunted to the pups,” M-44 — an exploding cyanide cartridge up fladry, yet you still have depredation,” and you’re says Bob Crabtree, an ecologist who favored by many trappers — that kills Young says, gazing over the sprawling began studying coyotes in Yellowstone coyotes without accidentally taking swift compound. “Now what do you do? You not going to in the 1980s. Pup survival skyrockets — and kit foxes. “I know people will dis- call us. We’re your last resort.” and since alpha coyotes with young kill agree, because it’s still lethal,” she says, establish a the most livestock, eliminating coyotes “but this is a great selective tool.” THE NEXT DAY, I drive up a long hill willy-nilly typically fails to reduce preda- Every ecosystem, she explains, has an overlooking the nearby town of Logan to territory. tion, an inconvenient truth corroborated by the agency’s own researchers. Exter- Too bold, mination can also catalyze disastrous chain reactions: Soon after the govern- and you’re ment began slaying carnivores in 1915, rabbit populations exploded, and the probably agency poisoned lagomorphs en masse. “Wildlife Services bears the burden of getting proof to justify the indiscriminate killing of predators — economically, ecologically shot.” and ethically,” Crabtree says. “I’ll go to Julie Young, biologist my grave saying that.” and director of the Predator Research AFTER JULIE YOUNG and I leave the tower, Facility near Logan, we drive to the Predator Research Facil- Utah ity’s equipment shed, where jumbled tractors and ATVs await repair. Bou- quets of retired traps dangle from pegs on one wall, jaws aglint. “Most of these designs don’t get used anymore,” Young says. But some do: She hoists one metal apparatus, its padded mouth snapped tight. “These are still the main traps for wolves: the long-spring.” After collecting her doctorate studying coyote territoriality at Utah State, Young spent two years with the Wildlife Conservation Society, researching saiga, an endangered antelope, in Mongolia and examining drilling’s impacts on pronghorn in Wyoming. A scientist with those conservation credentials might seem a strange fit for an agency despised by conservationists. But when I ask about that apparent contradiction, Young shrugs. “I’ve always been pragmatic about it,” she says. “Carnivores have personali- ties. Some are going to cause problems.” Biologists Julie That’s especially true of coyotes. “Their Young and Eric behavioral profiles fall along this bell Gese, top, ready vaccinations for curve on the bold-shy spectrum,” Young coyotes at the explains. “Too shy, and you’re not going Predator Research to establish a territory. Too bold, and Facility near you’re probably getting shot.” Under- Logan, Utah. At standing their dispositions has important le , workers hold implications: Discourage a dominant down a coyote in coyote’s taste for sheep, for example, and preparation for its its subordinates might stay away, too. shot. KRISTIN MURPHY

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 kill guard dogs alongside coyotes, leaving tions you sign. Environmentalists who some specialists reluctant to prescribe want to reform the agency, Shivik says, dogs. At annual state meetings, he found delighting in the heresy, shouldn’t fight himself politely disregarded. “They were to slash Wildlife Services’ federal funding always gracious,” he recalls. “But what I — they should double it, making it fully was saying didn’t seem to have any im- accountable to taxpayers. “All stakehold- mediate relevance to them.” ers are created equal,” he adds as the last Among the few trappers who incorpo- glimmers of sun fall on the distant Bear rated Shivik’s research was Rick Wil- River Range. “But some stakeholders are liamson, the agency’s longtime Idaho wolf more equal than others.” specialist. In 2000, Shivik began sup- plying Williamson with radio-activated WILDLIFE SERVICES’ FEALTY to its coopera- guard boxes that erupt with disturbing tors frustrates critics. But it comes with a noises — shattering glass, tumbling bowl- promising corollary: If ranchers buy into ing pins — when a radio-collared wolf ap- nonlethal management, specialists may proaches. Though the boxes only worked follow suit. on collared wolves, Williamson, with the Many producers already appear to be help of agency scientists, discovered they coming around, in some cases nudged by effectively discouraged predation in small predator-friendly groups like Defenders pastures. Yet few trappers shared his in- of Wildlife. According to USDA surveys, terest. “The majority felt like they had a 58 percent of sheep ranchers now employ full workload already,” says Williamson, some form of nonlethal deterrence, com- “and this was going to take more time pared to 32 percent in 2004. “We fence, at the scene versus just setting a trap. I we have herders, we have guard dogs, we think that was a huge mistake.” have sheds for lambs,” says John Baucus, That attitude, Shivik believes, stems a Helena-based rancher who serves on partly from Wildlife Services’ funding the American Sheep Industry’s Preda- mechanism, whereby “cooperators” — the tor Management Committee and is the agency’s term for those who contract with brother of former Montana Sen. Max it — share operational costs. In 2013, co- Baucus. “We’ve been working with preda- operators provided the agency $80 million, tors for a long time, and we understand compared with $85 million in federal mon- what’s required.” ey. As a consequence, trappers can feel In Montana, the agency appears to pressure to appease their de facto clients. be following ranchers’ lead. According to “I was out with a specialist once, and he state director John Steuber, specialists said, ‘John, I think the nonlethal stuff is recommended guard dogs 1,655 times in worth trying,’ ” Shivik says. “ ‘But unless I 2014. “You’ll see producers coming out show up with a dead wolf on the tailgate, of the feed store with a one-ton pallet of they don’t think I’m doing my job.’ ” dog food on a forklift.” When the Office John Shivik, who became disenchanted with Wildlife Services’ “inertia.” Sam Sanders, a former Wildlife Ser- of the Inspector General audited Wildlife KRISTIN MURPHY vices assistant district supervisor from Services last year, investigators observed eastern Nevada, corroborates Shivik’s nonlethal techniques on every ranch. visit John Shivik, the Predator Research account. According to Sanders, who What’s more, the agency has taken “Unless I Facility’s previous director. In 2014, departed the agency in 2011 and later some steps in response to Shivik’s five years after he left Wildlife Services, founded a private pest control company, primary criticism — that nonlethal show up Shivik published The Predator Paradox, his supervisors favored aerial gunning research doesn’t percolate from scientists a book that explores advances in non- for its visibility, even in situations where to specialists. In 2009, Wildlife Services with a dead lethal management. One needn’t read other tools would have proved more ef- promoted Michael Marlow, a biologist between the lines to detect his frustra- fective. “They’d say, ‘Make sure you fly and ex-trapper, to serve as liaison be- wolf on the tion with his former employer. “Given over that politically powerful rancher’s tween researchers, trappers and livestock bureaucratic realities … there is a certain house so he knows we’re out there doing producers. Marlow’s networking has tailgate, they amount of inertia involved” in its prefer- our job and will funnel state money to the paid dividends: A tip he gleaned at an ence for lethal control, Shivik writes. agency,’ ” Sanders recalls. American Sheep Industry conference, for don’t think Shivik, a gregarious biologist with Former Nevada Wildlife Services Di- instance, led to Julie Young’s European close-set blue eyes and tousled brown rector Robert Beach backs that claim in guard dog project. “We talk about being I’m doing hair, cut his teeth in coyote research a 2008 affidavit: “One of the first things I in contact with livestock more, altering under the tutelage of Bob Crabtree in was told by the Sheepmen when I arrived pasture schedules, using scare tech- my job.” Yellowstone. When the young scientist … was that they could have me removed niques,” Marlow says in an Oklahoma John Shivik, recounting assumed control of the Predator Research in a heartbeat if I did not (sic) something drawl. “Across the board, we’ve seen how one Wildlife Services Facility in 2002, he launched an ambi- they felt jeopardized their livestock op- people interested in learning how to bet- trapper explained why he tious nonlethal program, investigating erations. … Mr. Paris told me on several ter protect their livelihood.” wouldn’t switch to non- aversive taste conditioning, territorial occasions that he would have me removed Wildlife Services has also stepped up lethal controls. marking with coyote urine, and a heat- if I tried to take (his trapper) away from its education efforts. That’s especially and motion-activated alarm called the him.” The Mr. Paris in question, a sheep true in Montana, where in January 2015, Critter Gitter. He even found evidence rancher, today chairs Nevada’s Predatory Steuber launched a series of workshops for potential “guard coyotes,” territorial Animal and Rodent Control Commit- at which ranchers, conservationists and animals whose fear of fladry also kept tee, which helps fund Wildlife Services’ scientists recommend nonlethal tools, submissives at bay. operations. from fencing off chicken coops to safely While Wildlife Services awarded him The cooperator model may also discarding cow carcasses. A half-dozen raises and promotions for publishing in explain why the battering ram of public other states, including Oregon and Idaho, prestigious journals, however, trappers outrage has scarcely dented the agency. have also held workshops, and Utah, seemed to ignore his research. Some- If you’re reading this article in San Fran- Nevada and Washington will soon stage times, his nonlethal tools conflicted with cisco or Seattle, you’re not an influential their own conferences. traditional ones: M-44s, for instance, may constituent, no matter how many peti- For all its consulting and outreach

16 High Country News January 25, 2016 work, however, the agency’s fundamental approach remains unchanged. Though Wildlife Services’ directives advise specialists to recommend nonlethal methods first, the instructions aren’t requirements, and former trappers say the directives hold little sway. What’s more, the agency doesn’t generally view nonlethal A sampling of animals management as its duty. “We get asked killed by Wildlife Services, all the time, ‘Why doesn’t Wildlife Ser- by method, 2014 vices use nonlethal more?’ ” says Stewart Breck, a biologist at the National Wildlife Research Center. “Part of the answer is

that we do, and people don’t know about

Black Red, gray Mountain it. And part is a paradigm that says it’s LF )

Created by Lorenzo Stella Lorenzo by Created DA Bears Coyotes FoxesProject Noun the from lions Wolves not the responsibility of Wildlife Services ERVICES S to use those tools. Specialists may recom- Firearms 209 7,725 376 166 23 E ORTH ( WO

mend them, but it’s up to the livestock A MA N ING owner to implement them.” Snares (Foot/leg, neck) 206 13,615 645 58 12 BY WI LDL IF BY

Need help killing the coyotes menac- Traps (Body grip, cage, foothold) 154 4,515 799 77 211 SON DI LW A J

ing your lambs? We’ll put out traps. Want LUD INC ECT,

Cyanide capsule/gas cartridge 11,581 592 J AND to erect an electric fence? We’ll offer RO OR KI LL ED Calling device* 2,887 187 P

advice, but the wire’s coming from your F OX) OUN NIZE D wallet. Fixed wing/helicopter* 21,065 72 75 N HE TELLA (

Officials claim they lack capacity to T Spotlight* 203 12 UTH A deploy nonlethal measures on a large E Night vision/infrared* 35 scale. “It would be expensive and im- TIONS: practical to have our limited numbers Other 1 12 8 of Wildlife Services experts dedicated to Unintentional 10 64 89 4 1 daily implementation,” wrote Suckow and (cyanide, traps, snares) Y (COYOTE), LORENZO S LORENZO Y (COYOTE), Clark. But killing takes money and man- A ILLUSTR 2014.

Total 580 61,702 2780 305 322 ANI MALSUS DA OURCE: power, too: In 2014, Idaho paid Wildlife S - F Y WR A Services $140,000 to gun down 31 wolves *Accessories used to aid killing, which would take place by firearm or other means. — $4,600 per wolf. Zack Strong, wildlife advocate at the Natural Resources

Defense Council, sees that disconnect as TOR

illogical. “More producers are beginning Percent of operations using various nonlethal methods, by year RE DA to ask, ‘Why shouldn’t Wildlife Services P AMB

help us prevent conflicts from happening L in the first place?’ ” 1994 1999 2004 2014 IN THE TH LOSS AND The agency has begun taking hesi- Guard dogs 28.2* 28.2 31.6 40.5 HEEP TOR DE A TOR tant steps in Montana, where Wildlife S Fencing 29.6 57.0 52.5 54.8 Services and NRDC will soon split costs TES, 2015 Herding unavailable data 6.6 5.7 11.0 for around $13,000-worth of so-called ONPRE DA “turbo fladry,” flags attached to electri-

Fright tactics 7.2 5.1 2.2 3.1 STA NITE D OURCE: US DA OURCE: U fied fences. “People are starting to grasp S N AND Lamb sheds unavailable data 46.0 30.8 34.4 that predators are here to stay, and we gotta figure out how to deal with them,” *1994 number refers to guard animals in general. says Bryan Ulring, owner of Yellowstone

1994 1999 2004 2014 Guard dogs 28.2 28.2 31.6 40.5 Fencing 29.6 57.0 52.5 54.8 Herding unavailable data 6.6 5.7 11 Fright tactics 7.2 5.1 2.2 3.1 Lamb sheds unavailable data 46 30.8 34.4 other nonlethal methods 34.3 71 --guard dogs --fencing --herding --fright tactics A coyote attacking a sheep, le . Above, ocials radio-collar a wolf --lamb sheds a er darting it from a helicopter. USDA

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 Big Otis, a Great Pyrenees, stands guard as Marcia Barinaga feeds her ock of ewes in Marin County, California. TERRAY SYLVESTER

“I hear Grassfed Beef, who attended one of Steu- coyotes’ heads, and Hendricks says you Fox and other advocates fought the idea, ber’s workshops in Dillon. Ulring uses can almost train them. The well-behaved and in 1998, California voters passed a coyotes range riders to protect his own Centen- resident packs keep out troublesome ballot initiative prohibiting 1080, sodium nial Valley herd. “Sometimes that’s going transients — the “guard coyote” dynamic cyanide and steel-jawed leghold traps. howling every to mean lethal. But I don’t think anybody hypothesized by John Shivik. Soon local conservationists were clamor- wants to spend $5,000 to kill a wolf with Hendricks’ gentle approach would ing for Marin to drop its Wildlife Ser- night, and it a helicopter when there are better ways make her an outlier in Wyoming, but it’s vices contract altogether. Stacy Carlsen, of doing things.” less remarkable in Marin County, a lib- Marin’s agricultural commissioner, sought used to strike eral, affluent community just across the a compromise: What if the agency killed AN UNLIT BROOM CLOSET tucked inside Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. predators only as a last resort? Wildlife fear into my a Petaluma, California, airplane hanger More than 15 years ago, Marin expelled Services, however, rejected the bargain. seems like a strange place to observe Wildlife Services and implemented a The restrictions, wrote one official, “ham- soul. But the those better ways. Yet that’s where I find nonlethal approach to deterring coyotes, per the effectiveness of providing needed myself one steamy afternoon, surrounded a campaign led by an activist named, services.” It was Wildlife Services’ way or dogs have by the dim outlines of mops and boxes. appropriately, Camilla Fox. Today, Fox, the highway. Carlsen reluctantly pointed Windex tingles in the air. The only light with help from Hendricks and other vol- the agency toward the highway. proven so emanates from a yellow cylinder, a bit unteers, runs Project Coyote, a Larkspur- Not all of his constituents were chunkier than a thermos, which flashes based nonprofit devoted to human-carni- pleased. “My job is to promote agricul- effective that white, then blue, then red. Some bursts vore coexistence — and one of the noisiest ture, and you want to back your guys,” are strobe-like, others, long, lighthouse- bees in Wildlife Services’ bonnet. says Carlsen, a genial man with a tan it doesn’t style beams. Carnivore advocacy comes naturally pate. “At a gut level, services were being This is a FoxLight, invented by an to Fox, a slim, laser-focused woman taken away from a community.” What, scare me Australian sheep rancher. “The lights are whose father, Michael, studied canids ranchers wondered, would replace their random, so it’s harder for predators to at Washington University in St. Louis. federal support? anymore.” habituate to it,” Keli Hendricks says from Camilla grew up alongside an orphaned The answer emerged in 2000 –– the the darkness. “You set this out in a field wolf named Tiny, which had imprinted on Marin County Livestock and Wildlife Marcia Barinaga, Marin during lambing season, and coyotes think her father. (She’s reluctant to share that Protection Program. The arrangement re- County sheep rancher it’s people out there.” detail for fear it will encourage others to routed Wildlife Services contract funds to Hendricks, an amiable rancher with make pets of wild predators.) Michael fed ranchers to help them build fences, house a curtain of blond hair, raises around the wolf roadkill he peeled off the streets guard dogs and llamas, install alarms, 300 cows down the road from the air- himself. “Tiny was the most intelligent, and change husbandry practices. Ranch- plane hangar, which sits on her father’s conscientious, sensitive being I have ever ers with more than 200 sheep could ranch and vineyard. She despises the been around,” Fox tells me inside the receive up to $2,000, smaller flocks up to wanton predator killing endemic to her echoing hangar. $500. You could still shoot or trap coyotes industry, and she forbids it on her ranch. Fox moved to California in the early on your property, but you’d have to do it “Our cows calve in pastures with coyote 1990s, eventually joining an advocacy on your dime. packs,” she says as we depart the closet. group called the Animal Protection Insti- The Marin program, in other words, “Coyotes eat the afterbirth and leave. We tute. Shortly thereafter, Wildlife Services flipped Wildlife Services’ paradigm on its don’t shoot ’em and we don’t trap ’em. — then known as Animal Damage Control head: The county provided support for I’m not saying we never have problems, — proposed inserting Compound 1080, a nonlethal measures, and laid the burden but they’re rare.” Granted, cows are far once-banned poison, into special livestock of killing at ranchers’ feet. less vulnerable to coyotes than sheep. collars that would administer a lethal But did it work? Fox interviewed Still, fire a few warning shots over mouthful to any predator that bit them. ranchers, pored over records and collected

18 High Country News January 25, 2016 data for a master’s thesis at Arizona’s which helped Jensen limit predation to Prescott College. Her study, completed in just six sheep last year, a fraction of his 2008, showed substantial reductions in historic losses. But the fences require both wildlife killed and in annual preda- constant upkeep: Trees fall on them, tor take of sheep and lambs, from 24 head floods wash them out, pampas grass per ranch to just 8.5. These days, the engulfs them. So Jensen keeps a .22-250 program covers over 2,000 acres of sheep varmint rifle in his truck. He estimates ranches, as well as 11,000 head of poultry. he killed 35 coyotes in 2015. Among the beneficiaries is Marcia “Nonlethal is the term that makes Barinaga, a dairy owner who grazes it palatable,” Jensen says as we rumble sheep on around 100 acres. Though Bari- past two dappled lambs nudging at their naga grew up in New York, her grandmother. “But all it’s changed is who kills parents raised sheep in Idaho, and her the coyotes. I’m tired of being pointed at dad recounted harrowing tales of coyote as the model for everyone. This is just attacks on livestock. After a career in bi- another idea.” ology and journalism, Barinaga returned Jensen contends that escalating to her ranching roots in 2009. She’s used depredation has pushed some sheepmen Great Pyrenees guard dogs since day one out of business and compelled others to — county payments cover a substantial convert to cows. Budget cuts have forced portion of food and vet bills — and has Carlsen to cease compensating ranchers installed impermeable fences. She’s never for slain sheep, an initial feature of the lost a lamb. program. Even so, agricultural reports “I hear coyotes howling every night, state that Marin’s sheep industry has and it used to strike fear into my soul,” grown by 2,500 head since 1999. Nearby Barinaga says. “But the dogs have proven Mendocino County, which retained its so effective that it doesn’t scare me any- trapper, has lost 6,000 sheep. more, and I feel no need to kill a coyote. Yet despite pressure from Project I’m proud of this program.” Coyote and other animal groups, Cali- fornia counties have been slow to follow WILDLIFE SERVICES, HOWEVER, has fought Marin’s lead. The city of Davis termi- to prevent Marin’s model from spread- nated its Wildlife Services contract after ing. Soon after the program launched, a trapper triggered public outrage by kill- Carlsen was attending California’s ing five coyotes on a golf course in 2012, annual agricultural commissioners and Sonoma County defected in 2013. conference when he made an unpleasant But other dominoes haven’t toppled. discovery: Wildlife Services had used his Humboldt and Mendocino Counties data — inaccurately, Carlsen says — to suspended their contracts, but ultimately distribute reports detailing how much opted to renew. Mendocino’s contract re- money other California counties stood mains in jeopardy: The county now faces to lose if they followed Marin’s lead. “I a lawsuit from wildlife groups for failing thought that was about the lowest thing to evaluate Wildlife Services’ environ- they could do,” he says. mental impact before re-upping. activists, Keli Hendricks among them, Camilla Fox, top, More than a decade later, the agen- Two recent court cases suggest the cluster to starboard. A parade of Wildlife founder and director cy’s opinion of Marin remains unchanged. lawsuit may succeed. In July 2015, an Services scientists — Michael Marlow, of Project Coyote, When Wildlife Services published a draft appeals court ruled that the conserva- Stewart Breck, Julie Young — detail their helped push through environmental assessment evaluating its tion group WildEarth Guardians had research. “I can think of people who hate a California ballot Idaho operations in July 2015, it rejected standing to challenge lethal activities in the fact that I work for the agency I work initiative to ban certain methods of a Marin-style option as impractical Nevada, where it had sued the agency for,” Young says at the end of her pre- killing predators. and ineffective. The agency based this for relying on outdated science. And in sentation. “But 90 percent of what we’re Marin County dismissal entirely on a 2006 analysis by December, a judge barred Wildlife Ser- trying to do is the exact same thing.” Agricultural Stephanie Larson, director of the Univer- vices from killing wolves in Washington There’s some truth to that: Camilla Commissioner Stacy sity of California’s Sonoma County exten- without preparing a full environmental Fox preaches the gospel of FoxLights; Carlsen, above, sion office, which suggested that Marin’s impact statement, deeming that experts Young has a FoxLight sitting in her broke ties with conversion to nonlethal management led have “significant disagreement” about facility. Guard animals are a pillar of Wildlife Services to more dead coyotes. “Taxpayer dollars whether lethal removal works. the Marin program that Fox champions; when the agency aren’t being used to manage coyotes, but That Wildlife Services has sought to Young studies the efficacy of new breeds. refused to hold o on killing predators ranchers are shooting whatever they discredit Marin’s model rather than learn Where the agency and its detractors dif- unless absolutely see,” Larson claims. Dissenting wild- from it is, Fox believes, proof that the fer is in the application of those tech- necessary. TERRAY life biologists, however, point out that agency hasn’t truly embraced nonlethal niques — should nonlethal be the founda- SYLVESTER Larson’s paper lacks listed sources for its methods. “Wildlife Services has done tion of a predator management regime coyote estimates and makes the dubious everything it can to make sure other that kills only as last resort, or a tool on assumption that ranchers rarely killed counties don’t sever their contracts,” Fox the same shelf as airplanes and cyanide? predators before losing their trapper. says. “We are such a target.” How acceptable should it be to slaughter Still, no two ranches are alike, and coyotes? Each answer requires cracking techniques that deter coyotes in Barina- IN DECEMBER, I TRAVEL to the Hopland open another question: Who belongs on ga’s tight pastures might prove less man- Research and Extension Center, a Uni- the land, and for what purpose? How ageable in the sprawling meadows grazed versity of California field station tucked much risk should ranchers accept? What by ranchers like Bill Jensen. For years, in 5,300 acres of Mendocino woodland, is a coyote’s life worth –– or a sheep’s? Jensen, a fourth-generation sheepman to see a Wildlife Services workshop in Who pays, in the end? whose 500 acres overlook Tomales Bay, action. Those philosophical nested dolls have ranked among the Marin program’s most Though the mood is amicable enough, ecological and economic answers. But outspoken advocates; indeed, he helped a glance around the room reveals en- wildlife management is also a cultural author it. Today, his fields are criss- trenched battle lines. Trappers in Car- dilemma, one whose spiritual and ethical crossed by county-funded electric fences, hartts congregate on the left side, while facets frequently supersede technical

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 ones. Many ranchers feel a moral obliga- up to a 28-acre pasture, a field where tion to defend their stock by any means Camilla Fox had proposed a series of necessary; for their part, animal activ- FoxLight trials. Sunset bathes the hills; ists see inflicting superfluous suffering ungulate pellets squish underfoot. “Sheep upon individual carnivores as profoundly tend to sleep in the highest spot in the wrong. Today, too, many Westerners pasture,” says Jeff Furlong, Sonoma regard lethal management as an agrar- County’s trapper, pointing to a clearing. ian relic, one that no longer reflects the “You could put the light up here and get region’s urbanized, recreation-oriented it as close as possible.” reality. As land changes hands, as “best Furlong, whose position was partly and highest use” swings from sheep and funded by by Wildlife Services until cows toward hiking and conservation, the Sonoma dropped its contract, also moon- very meaning of wildlife evolves as well. lights as a rancher in Marin County. At Once, predators signified an impediment an agricultural meeting nearly a year to making a living. Now vast segments back, Camilla Fox had asked the room of the public believe they’re one of the whether anyone might be willing to try things worth living for — an evolution out FoxLights. Furlong, the trapper, was that has yet to permeate Wildlife Ser- the sole volunteer. Ravens hammered his vices’ cost-benefit analyses. new lambs, but Canis latrans mostly left Wildlife Services’ foes often point out him alone, though he still snared a few the hypocrisy of conservative producers that tried to breach his pasture. “Coyotes demanding federal aid when carnivores will habituate to anything,” Furlong says; come calling. As Predator Defense’s he’s worked with ranchers who keep 22 Brooks Fahy asks: “Why should we subsi- guard dogs and suffer predation never- dize sheep ranchers and not, say, plumb- A FoxLight can fool coyotes into thinking theless. “But if it helps for two weeks people are around by ashing random light. ers?” It’s a fair question, one that Fahy COURTESY PROJECT COYOTE during lambing season, it’s worth it.” used in 2005 to convince Oregon’s Lane Back at the grassy parking lot, Fauna County to end its predator control con- Tomlinson, a Project Coyote volunteer, tract. Then again, sustaining ranching, the public interest. The need for reform hands Furlong two FoxLights still en- Correspondent Ben at least on some private lands, provides a runs deep, but a Wildlife Services that closed in packaging. He’s recommended Goldfarb writes about bulwark against the tide of subdivision — kills as a last resort rather than a reflex, the devices to his producers, and decided wildlife from New the classic “cows, not condos” argument. and that first and foremost distributed to buy more himself. Tomlinson claps her Haven, Connecticut. Wildlife Services’ prioritization of M-44s guard dogs and fladry and alarm boxes — hands in delight. “We’re going to save @ben_a_goldfarb and aerial gunning may contravene the techniques that its own researchers some animals,” she cheers. Furlong smiles This story was funded national sentiment and available science, have devoted their lives to developing — tolerantly and stows the FoxLights in his with reader donations but preventing conflicts between the wild could be a valuable agency indeed. truck as the light fades over Mendocino to the High Country animals we worship and the domestic After the workshop, a small cohort of County. In the hills, coyotes prepare to News Research Fund. ones we eat qualifies, in some cases, as ranchers, activists and trappers wander hunt, the chorus silent, for now.

Rancher, continued from page 9 part of the ranch. But he knows the big, along the meadow’s contours. He even bushy grass could return, given better spread some puffball spores on the soil Kalsta farm that historical overgrazing by wild horses conditions, because he’s sifted its seeds in hopes that the fungal mycelium would journals, dating back and during big cattle drives is partly to out of the soil and germinated them. help bind the soil together and improve to the 1880s, note blame for the grasses’ decline. Below- Being resilient to climate change, its water-holding capacity. everything from late average precipitation in seven out of the he’s begun to think, might mean look- In past years, Kalsta’s water-trapping frost that “took a nip o the alfalfa,” to last 15 years hasn’t helped. Kalsta thinks ing backwards in order to move ahead efforts have yielded modest gains. But river levels. the mule-high grass was Great Basin — restoring and re-engineering the soil this summer, either because the timing SARAH JANE KELLER wild rye, a species he’s never seen on that to regain the land’s former productivity of the rainfall was just right, or because and water-storage capacity. Four years his improvements are starting to take, he ago, after Kalsta noticed that the washes saw huge differences. Puffballs carpeted already hosted soil-building lichens and the meadow, and some grasses were al- mosses, student volunteers installed rock most mule-belly high — a good start. dams in the dry gullies running down Mc- When a late-summer deluge dropped Cartney Mountain. Ideally, the dams will over two inches in 45 minutes, the water slow the flow of torrential summer rains soaked in behind the contours. A year and rapidly melting snow to trap the wa- ago, it would have puddled up for days. ter and the soil it can carry away. “It’s Water soaked into McCartney’s mostly about water movement,” Kalsta gullies, too, and more native bluebunch says, standing at the base of McCartney’s wheatgrass was growing than ever be- golden slopes. “How we get it down here fore. “I can’t wait for my first ryegrass and what it does in between is what’s go- plant to come up in here,” he says, in- ing to help us in the long term and keep specting the new soil collecting behind this from turning into dunes.” one of his dams. Kalsta is also tinkering with a mead- Kalsta wants to build more rock dams, ow that was contaminated when storm and create contours higher on McCart- water flushed out phosphates from sur- ney. His niece, who studies engineering, rounding rocks. Afterward, the only is helping him design a robot that will dig plants still growing were undesirable for the contours. “Someday, a kid’s going to grazing, like greasewood and cheatgrass. take over this ranch,” Kalsta says. “And It seemed like a low-risk place to experi- he’ll look at this and say, ‘Grandpa sure ment. Using a laser level and a tractor, got things right.’ Or, he’ll say, ‘Grandpa Kalsta built water-capturing ditches sure screwed things up.’ ”

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Notice to our advertisers: You can At the Center for Biological Diversity, we place classified ads with our online classi- believe that the welfare of human beings is fied system. Visit hcn.org/classifieds. Jan. deeply linked to nature — to the existence in 25 is the deadline to place your print ad our world of a vast diversity of wild animals in the Feb. 8 issue. Call 800-311-5852, or and plants. The Center is currently looking for e-mail [email protected] for help or in- a Chief Financial Officer (CFO). This position formation. For more information about our requires hands-on daily financial manage- current rates and display ad options, visit ment to ensure the health of the organization. hcn.org/advertising. For 2015, the Center has an operating budget of $11 million. We have 111 employees and Advertising Policy: We accept advertising experienced a 10 percent growth rate each because it helps pay the costs of publishing year for the last eight years. The CFO will have a high-quality, full-color magazine, where fiscal and business oversight over all financial topics are well-researched and reported and fiscal management aspects of the organi- in an in-depth manner. The percentage of zation. This position requires someone with an the magazine’s income that is derived from advanced educational degree, and there’s an advertising is modest, and the number of expectation of integrity and honesty because advertising pages will not exceed one-third of the fiduciary responsibilities attached. of our printed pages annually. This position is considered that of being a strategic partner at the Center and part of the Leadership Team. Strong managerial ex- BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES perience is needed in order to develop and Conservationist? Irrigable Land? Stellar maintain accounting procedures consistent seed-saving NGO is available to serious part- with nonprofit best practices in addition to ner. Package must include financial support. supervising accounting staff. To apply, please Details: http://seeds.ojaidigital.net. send a thoughtful cover letter and résumé via email to [email protected], “Attn: Chief Financial Officer.” We are an EMPLOYMENT equal opportunity employer. Apprentice naturalist guides, program interns, camp intern, camp cook. Sanctuary Forest, a land trust based in Canyonlands Field Institute in Moab, Whitethorn, Calif., seeks applicants for the po- Utah, is accepting applications for spring sition of Executive Director. For a job descrip- 2016. Job descriptions and application tion and application instructions, visit our instructions available on our website at website at www.sanctuaryforest.org, or email http://cfimoab.org/employment/. [email protected]. Apply by Jan. 31.

22 High Country News January 25, 2016 Powder River Basin Resource Council position with a preferred location of Denver, is seeking applicants to fill the position of Colo. Please send a cover letter, a résumé, Executive Director. Based in Sheridan, Wyo., references and a writing sample via email the Council works to empower local member (no paper) to PublicLands_attorney@biolog- groups and to monitor and inform public icaldiversity.org, “Attn: Attorney Job.” The policy affecting the state’s land, air, water, position will remain open until filled. No energy resources, agriculture and community telephone calls, please. Only candidates se- well-being. The Executive Director has the lected for interviews will be contacted. We overall responsibility for the organization’s are an EEOE. financial development, programmatic operations, office, and staff. For more informa- Quivira Coalition, Santa Fe, N.M. — tion go to www.powderriverbasin.org. To The Quivira Coalition, a nonprofit dedicat- apply: Please send a cover letter, résumé, ed to building resilience in working land- and two or three relevant writing samples to scapes, is seeking an Executive Director to [email protected] or Search Commit- provide inspired leadership for a mature tee at Powder River Basin Resource Council, organization looking to expand its reach in 934 North Main, Sheridan, WY. 82801. the American West. The ideal candidate will have seven or more years’ experience at pro- The Friends of the Missouri Breaks gressive levels of leadership responsibility, Monument is looking for an experienced the skills necessary to build bridges among individual to fill our Stewardship Director posi- diverse constituencies, and the vision and tion. The position is located in Helena, Mont. creativity to collaborate with staff and board For more information, please visit our website, members in the development of effective http://www.missouribreaks.org/blog/. programming. For a full job description, visit www.quiviracoalition.org. To apply, At the Center for Biological Diversity, we send cover letter, résumé and con- believe that the welfare of human beings is tact information for three professional deeply linked to nature — to the existence in references to: Transition Committee, our world of a vast diversity of wild animals [email protected]. and plants. The Center is currently looking for Deadline: 5:00 p.m. MST, Jan. 31, 2016. a Senior Attorney or Staff Attorney to join our Public Lands team of attorneys, campaigners and communication specialists who are working to enforce the laws governing federal leasing of fossil fuels. This position will focus on the Federal Fossil Fuels “Keep It In the Ground” Campaign. This is a full-time

www.hcn.org High Country News 23 MARKETPLACE

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24 High Country News January 25, 2016 BOOKS

Kimble’s status as a broke, busy graduate student living in arid Tucson, Arizona, The compromise between on an income of less than $20,000 a year. In a cheerful, clear voice, she admits her convenience and consequence struggles and compromises. Her garden plot, for example, is largely a failure. Like When 26-year-old Megan Kimble became many of her generation, her social life un- intrigued by the idea of unprocessed folds largely in restaurants and bars, and eating, she wasn’t entirely sure what the the book smartly tackles how to navigate term meant. After all, she writes, nearly mostly processed menus, what makes all food is processed by the time we eat it alcohol processed (or not), and how a — chopped, sautéed, fermented or folded commitment to eating real food can either into batter — “and often it is the better intersect or clash with the desire to be a for it.” But she also knew that some of part of community. “If I didn’t … engage our food is too processed, organic or not, in the messiness, of eating out and eating and so she set out to discover where, with another, then even if I ate perfectly exactly, the line should be drawn. unprocessed, I wouldn’t have really lived It took her all year. Her debut book, unprocessed,” Kimble writes. “Abstain Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of though we try, today’s world is one of Reclaiming Food, documents Kimble’s moderation. Of trying and failing, and shifting definitions, as she grinds wheat then trying and half-succeeding.” berries into flour, brews mead in a The book is full of fresh insights about bucket, harvests salt from the ocean, and the way communities are tied to food tries her hand at slaughtering sheep. systems. Eating processed food, Kimble Along the way, she explores all kinds of discovers, is a natural consequence of our topics: from the preservatives that give move-wherever-the-jobs-exist economy. Unprocessed: My industrially produced food a longer shelf Yet she questions the tendency to “(out- City-Dwelling Year of life to the planned obsolescence of our source) to others those key activities that Reclaiming Real Food food gadgets, from the tension between define the day-to-day. … What is life if Megan Kimble convenience and consequences, to the not the day to day? ... The tasks we have power of dollars spent locally. decided to label mundane … are (those 326 pages, softcover: $15.99. What sets Unprocessed apart from Megan Kimble picks zucchini at her plot that) accumulate into relationships and the last decade’s rash of books about in the University of Arizona Community memories.” William Morrow/ the shortcomings of our food system is Garden. COURTNEY TRINE BY KATHERINE E. STANDEFER Harper Collins, 2015.

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www.hcn.org High Country News 25 WRITERS ON THE RANGE Modern sagebrush rebels recycle old Western fantasies Ammon and Ryan Bundy, sons of scoff- mostly involving minimal fees for the Pacific Northwest’s logging spree, and law Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, made right to use some of the federal lands used executive orders to protect tens an ambitious New Year’s resolution: that are owned by the American public. of millions of acres from development. Force the federal government, which has Cliven Bundy started refusing to pay The “rebels,” led by ranchers from New managed more than half of the American grazing fees in 1993, and the Hammonds Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Nevada, West’s lands for the past century, to re- began their “rebellion” against the feds pushed back with a “county supremacy” linquish them, at gunpoint if necessary, in the early 1990s, when the U.S. Fish movement. Dozens of Western county to the nearest ranchers. and Wildlife Service built a fence to keep commissions approved cookie-cutter Over the first weekend of 2016, the their cattle from trespassing on the Mal- ordinances declaring that the federal Bundy brothers and a few dozen or so heur National Wildlife Refuge, the area government had no authority within OPINION BY militiamen and their sympathizers took now occupied. their borders, and they enlisted lawyers PAUL LARMER over the headquarters of the Malheur Though the militia folks drawn by who thought they could, on constitu- National Wildlife Refuge in eastern the Bundy and Hammond families’ tales tional grounds, “take back” the federal Oregon and declared it a safe haven for of woe may not know it, the Sagebrush lands. The courts repeatedly rejected well-armed “patriots” who oppose federal Rebellion is really the latest pout in a their arguments. land management. century-long tantrum over the end of Now the rural West is going through The group demanded that the fed- the open and unregulated frontier. Its yet another wave of rebellion, driven by eral government release local ranchers modern incarnations began in the 1960s the anxieties produced by a recession- Dwight Hammond and his son, Stephen, and 1970s, when Congress passed a slew scrambled, increasingly multicultural world, one that has left places like eastern Oregon grasping for a future. The rhetoric the Bundys are serving up now might sound exciting, yet it is merely a rerun of the past. In a press conference, Ammon Bundy said the refuge takeover aimed to get “loggers back to logging, ranchers back to ranching and miners back to mining. At one time (Harney County, Oregon) was the wealthiest county in the state; today it is one of the poor- est,” he said. “We’re going to be revers- ing this in just a few years by freeing up Ammon Bundy, these lands and resources … by getting Ryan Bundy and them back to where they belong.” LaVoy Finicum, men who have led A new and noble New Year’s resolu- the occupation in tion? No. Just a tired fantasy that has Oregon, speak to the long been rejected by most Westerners. press. BROOKE WARREN The public lands continue to provide a stream of wealth to locals, in the form of who reported to federal prison just as of environmental laws, including the not just timber, minerals and grass, but the occupation started to finish serving Endangered Species Act, the Wilderness also recreation, tourism and clean water. time for intentionally setting fires in Act and the National Environmental And locals, for the most part, remain 2001 and 2006, burning up more than Policy Act, and the agencies reluctantly partners with the increasingly collabora- a hundred acres of public lands in what began to implement them. By the early tive agencies that manage them. prosecutors described as an attempt to 1980s, disgruntled ranchers, who largely As one local rancher, who runs cattle cover up poaching. They also wanted the ran local and state politics, had formed near the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, told government to hand over control of the the “wise use” movement. Backed by op- OregonLive, “The last 10 or 15 years, the refuge and surrounding public lands to portunistic mining and logging compa- refuge and the ranchers who use the ref- local ranchers. According to OregonLive, nies, they fought against environmental uge have been getting along famously. I Ryan Bundy said, “Many would be will- regulation and for increased resource think if they (the occupiers) had showed ing to fight — and die, if necessary — to extraction. For a while, they found a up in 1950 or something, that’d have defend what they see as constitutionally sympathetic ear in the Reagan adminis- made more sense.” protected rights for states, counties and tration, but their dream of wresting the individuals to manage local lands.” public lands from the federal govern- Paul Larmer is executive director and This latest action, like the Bundy ment never gained national traction. publisher of High Country News. affair of 2014, recycles old gripes from The rebellion flared again in the a small cadre of ranchers and miners. 1990s, when President Bill Clinton and WEB EXTRA Writers on the Range is a syndicated service of To see all the current Their main complaint: They don’t want Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt tried High Country News, providing three opinion col- Writers on the Range to play by the rules that tens of thou- to increase grazing and mining fees, umns each week to more than 200 media outlets columns, and archives, sands of other public-land ranchers and brokered a plan to protect the north- around the West. For more information, contact visit hcn.org miners abide by every day of the year, ern spotted owl and thereby end the Betsy Marston, [email protected], 970-527-4898.

26 High Country News January 25, 2016 ESSAY | BY ANA MARIA SPAGNA

THE TREE STANDS in the middle of the river. Not in a shal- low side channel, but smack in the middle of the current, T barkless, the trunk battered and discolored, like an ill and splotchy patient, or worse. Technically, the tree is a snag. But still it stands, a hundred feet tall or more, with limbs that elbow toward the sky. An osprey nests near the top. The tree used to stand on dry ground, of course, a massive ponderosa pine, orange-barked and majestic, beside a trail through the woods. When the flood came to our valley 12 years ago, the river broadened and chiseled away at the bank, claiming the entire trail and a large chunk of road to boot. We never saw it coming. We should have seen it coming. But the tree still stands. We pass by it in cars or on bikes or, most often, on skis. The rerouted road isn’t plowed that far, so in winter a ragtag group of friends skis past regularly, in wool shirts and blue jeans and mismatched gear. Every time we do, we stop by the place in the river where it stands, to sip water or to peel off an extra layer of clothing, and mostly to marvel: It’s still there! Sometimes I wonder why we love it so much. Is it nostalgia? Do we love it because it’s a remnant of the way things used to be? Or is it because of its stubborn endur- ance — like a boxer leaning hard against the ropes, one that will not go down, no matter what. Maybe, by now, it’s just familiarity. The snag is one of us. We try to impress others, people from outside the valley, try to get them to whistle through their teeth — would you look at that? Instead, they look at us pityingly: So this is what passes as entertainment up here. They’re right, of course. They’re also missing the point. The tree still stands! Who could’ve known? How is it even possible? We know that, someday, it will topple. We’ve even considered taking bets on when, but if we’d started taking bets back when we first started talking about it, by now everyone would’ve lost. People like to predict when trees will fall. When I worked on trail crew, people did it all the time. The year after a big wildfire, they’d tell us: Better bring a lot of saw gas. But the roots of the blackened trees took years to loosen, and sometimes never loosened at all. Elsewhere, seemingly healthy trees snapped by the dozen. Trees fell for unexpected reasons — a pestilence in the willows, a freak snowstorm in the spring — or for no reason at all. We gave up trying to guess. But it’s a hard habit to break, speculation. We must be hard-wired for it. Lately, there’s been a glut of apocalyptic books. The end is caused by a pandemic flu or a war or a natural disaster. The fascination lies in predicting who will survive and where and how, and for how long they’ll survive. Some people bet on food production, some on weaponry; some on self-reliance, some on cooperation. A few outliers put faith in art. The truth is, we don’t know what will happen or when. Even while we try to hold it together, to prep and plan, we don’t know. Meanwhile, remnants surround us: the meadow that didn’t burn, the sandy ocean bluff sloughing but not yet slid, the blackened toenail after a too-long hike, right before it peels off, the eerie glowing coals in a campfire in the rain. Something to cherish, something that can’t last. You come around one last bend before the view opens wide. An osprey swoops close. You look up and catch your breath. Osprey nest in a There it is, still standing, silhouetted white against the snag in the Middle cloudless blue. Fork of the Salmon River, Idaho. Ana Maria Spagna lives and writes in Stehekin, MARJORIE MCBRIDE Washington. Her most recent book is Reclaimers.

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

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY BETSY MARSTON

THE WEST and the upshot, as Williams County Ball caps off to the feisty writer Ted Commissioner Dan Kalil puts it: “We are Williams, called a “national treasure” overbuilt.” As thousands of laid-off oil- and “Rachel Carson for sportsmen,” field workers depart, many have adopted by Forbes magazine for his decades of a routine that involves TJ’s Autobody environmental and outdoor writing. & Salvage, reports Bloomberg Business. Williams didn’t pull his punches in a TJ’s is where former workers dump their December interview with contribut- pickups and recreational vehicles — not ing editor Monte Burke. He called even stopping to collect some money for a most sportsmen “easily manipulated vehicle’s scrap value. “I wake up and RVs by their worst enemies,” and blasted are in my driveway,” said owner Tom No- the National Rifle Association, saying vak. “It’s insane, there are empty campers it “can now be counted on to be on the everywhere.” wrong side of every environmental issue.” And he still has it in for feral COLORADO cats, those domestic feline marauders A paid obituary in western Colorado’s estimated to gorge on up to 4 billion Delta County Independent caught our eye birds a year: “Feral cats learn to avoid because of the family’s willingness to talk traps and guns. The only solution is COLORADO about their father’s long battle with men- selective poisoning — again by wildlife ... and snacks, too. Also a snow shovel. BROOKE WARREN tal illness. Randolph “Randy” Park, born professionals, not the public. The Auss- in 1952, owned a grocery store in Rifle ies do it; we don’t.” MONTANA when his daughters, Jessica and Katie, were growing up. There, he “knew and extended Magazine editor Amanda Fortini didn’t move IDAHO a hand for anyone who needed it,” they write. from Los Angeles to Livingston, Montana, to get One of the hottest potatoes in the West is the During the last half of his life, however, Randy closer to nature, but rather to make a rela- question of whether open range laws are out- Park realized that he needed help for himself; tionship work. Once she entered this new and moded. The way it is now, if you’re driving and he could not outrun his “demons.” Mental ill- rugged way of life, she tells Good magazine, she a two-ton cow materializes in front of you in ness, his daughters report from experience, “is suddenly found herself living in a still “feral” an area that is designated open range, it’s your one of the most debilitating things that can hap- place that was prone to violence and blizzards responsibility to avoid hitting that animal; if pen in a family.” Shame and guilt are associated — a place where “nature becomes part of every you hit it, you’re liable for its loss. You’re also with trying to deal with it, they say, and many decision.” Perhaps the biggest surprise, she says required to fence out cattle if they annoy you people may feel they never did enough to help. with humility, was that nature called the shots. by trooping into your garden. A tragic accident “If you feel that way at all, I ask you to treat If you choose to adopt a place like Montana, she last November has led some people to ques- yourself with the same compassion you would advises, “You will be reminded that the moon is tion this long-enshrined code of the Old West. offer a good friend, and forgive yourself. My dad running you. The sun is running you. The light After a vehicle hit a bull on a remote highway would want you to do that.” Randy Park, who or lack of light is running you. You are the full near Council, Idaho, the police arrived, gunfire loved to hunt, fish and hang out with friends moon. You are the rushing river. You are the erupted, and rancher Jack Yantis “ended up when he was younger, spent his last years in animal, moving and being moved.” dead.” Nonetheless, the Idaho Farm Bureau, a caring place called Delta House. The town’s which has some 12,000 fulltime ranchers and growing recognition that people like Randy farmers among its membership, resolutely NORTH DAKOTA need help has also encouraged local support for backs the open range law. Idaho Lt. Gov. Brad After five years of a frantic building boom fueled Delta’s homeless shelter. As his daughters say, Little, a rancher, told MagicValley.com that it by horizontal drilling for oil in the Bakkan area “We are thankful for that.” might be time to reconsider. “I tell my cattle- of North Dakota, the bust has settled in, big man friends, ‘You have a school bus hit a bull, time. Although permanent dwellings continue WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see you’re not going to like the way the open range to go up in towns like Williston — thanks to hcn.org. laws in Idaho are changed.’ ” borrowed money — oil prices have plummeted, Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and rigs have been pulled out, man camps closed, often shared in this column. Write [email protected].

High e saying is that any press is good press, Country but in small towns, locals know this isn’t true. News “ For people who care about the West. Gina Knudson, in her essay, “Bullies must not be allowed to hijack our” story,” High Country News covers the important issues and from Writers on the Range, hcn.org/wotr stories that are unique to the American West with a 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.

28 High Country News January 25, 2016