'I Am Here Fighting for My Life and Future Children'

Demonstrators for Black lives Militarized police ‘I am here Birders against racism fighting for my life

Vol. 52 / July 2020 No. 7 • hcn.org and future children’ –SKYE, LOS ANGELES EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER Greg Hanscom EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Brian Calvert ART DIRECTOR Cindy Wehling DIGITAL EDITOR Gretchen King ASSOCIATE EDITORS Emily Benson, Paige Blankenbuehler, Graham Lee Brewer, Maya L. Kapoor PHOTO EDITOR Roberto (Bear) Guerra ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR Luna Anna Archey ASSISTANT EDITORS Jessica Kutz, Carl Segerstrom, Anna V. Smith EDITOR AT LARGE Betsy Marston COPY EDITOR Diane Sylvain CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Elena Saavedra Buckley, Ruxandra Guidi, Michelle Nijhuis, McKenna Stayner, Jonathan Thompson CORRESPONDENTS Leah Sottile, Sarah Tory EDITORIAL FELLOWS Nick Bowlin, Kalen Goodluck, Helen Santoro Anagi Crew hunts a 30-foot male bowhead whale on the Bering Sea in an umiaq, a small sealskin boat that is prized for its light weight, stealthy movement and respect for tradition. Yves Brower DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Laurie Milford SENIOR DEVELOPMENT OFFICER Paul Larmer MAJOR GIFT ADVISER Alyssa Pinkerton DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATES Hannah Stevens, Carol Newman SENIOR MARKETER JoAnn Kalenak EVENTS & BUSINESS PARTNER COORDINATOR Laura Dixon IT MANAGER Alan Wells DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS Erica Howard ACCOUNTS ASSISTANT Mary Zachman CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER Kathy Martinez CUSTOMER SERVICE Karen Howe, Mark Nydell, Tammy York Know GRANT WRITER Janet Reasoner FOUNDER Tom Bell the

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Brian Beitner (Colo.), John Belkin (Colo.), Seth Cothrun (Calif.), Jay Dean (Calif.), Bob Fulkerson (Nev.), Wayne Hare (Colo.), West. Laura Helmuth (Md.), Samaria Jaffe (Calif.), Nicole Lampe (Ore.), Marla Painter (N.M.), High Country News is an independent, reader-supported nonprofit 501(c)(3) independent media organization that covers Bryan Pollard (Ark.), Raynelle Rino (Calif.), the important issues and stories that define the Western U.S. Our mission is to inform and inspire people – through in-depth Estee Rivera Murdock (Colo.), journalism – to act on behalf of the West’s diverse natural and human communities. Beginning April 1, 2020, High Country News Rick Tallman (Colo.), Andy Wiessner (Colo.), (ISSN/0191/5657) publishes monthly, 12 issues per year, from 119 Grand Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Florence Williams (D.C.) Paonia, CO, and other post offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 DIRECTOR EMERITUS Luis Torres (N.M.) a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155, 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.

2 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS EDITOR’S NOTE FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS

Emily Benson Moscow, Idaho @erbenson1

IMAGE

Kimi Eisele Tucson, Arizona @KimiEisele

Cable Hoover Gallup, New Mexico The West protests @cablehoover

WE ARE CURRENTLY EXPERIENCING the full brunt of what the writer bell hooks calls the Maya L. Kapoor “dominator culture.” Those who did not previously understand this must surely grapple with it now. Davis, California “Throughout our nation,” hooks writes in belonging: a culture of place, “the dehumanization of poor @kapoor_ml people, the destruction of nature for capitalist development, the disenfranchisement of people of color, especially African-Americans, the resurgence of white supremacy … has become an accepted way of life.” Jenna Kunze This acceptance has created severe injustices, from the police killings of Black people and others, Anchorage, Alaska to the rising death toll from COVID-19, to the suffering that climate change has already wrought @jennakunze throughout much of the world. These issues are inseparable, because they are all the product of this culture of domination — a culture finding renewed strength in the current political environment.

How does High Country News fit into all this? hooks can help, as she offers a counter to dominator Stephanie Mei-Ling culture: the promotion of “a culture of belonging, a sense of the meaning and vitality of geographical Los Angeles place.” One of HCN’s roles, I think, is to help readers understand the Western United States as a place. @mei_ling It is my hope that this will help readers bring meaning and vitality, equity and justice, to this place, to create for all who live here a culture of belonging. We can do this by examining the West as a whole.

In this issue, for example, we cover Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the West, while highlighting Anastasia Selby solutions to heavy-handed policing. And we offer a data-driven look at disproportionate police Seattle, Washington militarization and violence across the region. But we also explore the climate adaptations forced @anastasiaselby onto the Inupiat of the Arctic, as well as the coastal cities of California. We follow efforts to save a vanishing species of catfish along the U.S.-Mexico border. And we describe the rise of labor organizing among fruit packers and ski patrollers alike. The issue also features an interview with a founder of #BlackBirdersWeek; an argument for full-time wildland firefighters; and a former insider’s warning Andrew Schwartz of a compromised Bureau of Land Management. Seattle, Washington

To view any of these stories separately is to overlook the hidden connections between them. Read together, they expose the obvious: Dominator culture has pushed the West — the world — to the brink. It appears that people are now pushing back, and that much of the West has joined them. The question, then, is: What comes next? Carl Segerstrom Spokane, Washington @carlschirps Brian Calvert, editor-in-chief

JULY 2020 3 United States biologists Thomas Hafen and Chuck Minckley work with Mexican biologists Alex Gutiérrez- FEATURES Barragán and Alejandro Varela-Romero (pictured from left) to measure the distance to an eDNA sampling site while conducting fieldwork in northern Sonora, Mexico, in Fish Out of Water 28 September 2019 (above). Roberto (Bear) Guerra / HCN

The Yaqui catfish was going extinct. Then came the border wall. Vinnie Cervantes, director of Denver Alliance for Street Health Response, talks to people about new programs BY MAYA L. KAPOOR and lawsuits stemming from police response to protests in Denver (right). Carl Payne / HCN

‘What choice do we have?’ 22

As the Arctic warms, the Inupiat adapt. BY JENNA KUNZE Access to subscriber-only content: ON THE COVER hcn.org Skye Woods, photographed outside Los Angeles City Hall, where daily hcne.ws/digi-5207 protests have been part of the international response to police brutality sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May. Stephanie Mei-Ling / HCN Follow us @highcountrynews

4 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS REPORTAGE REFLECTION & REVIEW

Experts in de-escalation 7 Toward full-time 41 wildland firefighting How Eugene, Oregon, avoids unnecessary policing. More permanent opportunities WHAT WORKS BY ANNA V. SMITH would give many of us stability. PERSPECTIVE BY ANASTASIA SELBY

Bureau of Lost Management 42 Narrow interests now dominate the agency’s direction. PERSPECTIVE BY JIM KENNA

Post-apocalyptic feminism 43 In Lauren Beukes’ Afterland, only women survive. Can they rebuild? REVIEW BY KIMI EISELE

#BlackBirdersWeek 44 takes on racism IMAGE Sheridan Alford and the stand ‘against police brutality.’ Q&A BY EMILY BENSON

#iamthewest 48 Sunny Dooley, Navajo storyteller, Chil Chil Tah, New Mexico. BY CABLE HOOVER

Voices from an uprising 8 Will COVID-19 help save 14 Portraits from Los Angeles’ small slaughterhouses? Black Lives Matters demonstrations. As laborers for the Big Four PHOTOS BY STEPHANIE MEI-LING meatpackers fall ill, small slaughterhouses see Where COVID-19 12 unprecedented demand. revived labor organizing BY CARL SEGERSTROM Washington fruit packers seek lasting gains from pandemic strikes. A unionized ski patrol 16 BY CARL SEGERSTROM When Vail Resorts added Stevens Pass to its empire, ‘It’s not natural for them 13 ski patrollers feared becoming to cooperate’ fungible cogs in a corporate San Francisco Bay towns agree machine. So they organized. they need to plan together BY ANDREW SCHWARTZ DEPARTMENTS for sea-level rise. The trick is getting them to do it. Lethal law enforcement 18 BY ROBIN MEADOWS Police from Western states are 3 EDITOR’S NOTE some of the most militarized and violent in the country. 6 LETTERS FACTS & FIGURES BY JONATHAN THOMPSON 17 THE LATEST

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21 DEAR FRIENDS

46 HEARD AROUND THE WEST

JULY 2020 5 LETTERS AMERICA’S HISTORICAL VIOLENCE The architect of President Graham Lee Brewer’s interview Trump’s environmental rollbacks, with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz pro- Interior Secretary David Bern- vides some historical framing for hardt, has spent most of his career current socio-political happen- serving industry, anti-regulation ings (“Armed and contagious,” ideologues. June 2020). When things don’t J.K. Sloan, via Twitter make sense, dig into history to find out why. UNJUSTIFIED CAPTIVITY High Country News is dedicated to independent Alan-Michael Foucault, Rena Priest does an effective job journalism, informed debate and discourse in the via Twitter in her story, drawing parallels public interest. We welcome letters through digital between captive orcas and miss- media and the post. Send us a letter, find us on social The culling of human beings is ing and murdered Indigenous media, or email us at [email protected]. what I am heartbroken about — women (“A captive orca and a our old, our houseless, our vulner- chance for our redemption,” April able. 2020). Fifty years on, how do we Natalie Hirt, via Twitter justify the conditions Tokitae WILDLIFE POACHERS guise of Christianity. They live in lives in, let alone the fact of her As a subscriber and contributor a fantasy bubble where there are The interview provides a view on captivity itself? to High Country News for many no rules, no regulations and no the armed reopen “protests,” from Lance Martin, via Facebook years, I have to say I was shocked control over destructive behavior. an interesting point of view. It’s by the graphic descriptions of Government is an obstacle to their a chilling analysis summing up Such a tragic story. Poor sweet animal cruelty in the poaching “freedoms.” three centuries and their original Tokitae, imprisoned for 50 years article (“Digital Shadows,” June Joe Bickel, via Facebook sins: guns, profits and a culture of in a tank that’s illegally too small. 2020). I happened to be brows- privilege. Maybe a tad bit radical, In 2005, southern resident orcas ing the print edition over lunch. FLYING FISH? but makes you think. finally received protection under Bad timing. The article describes I cannot help but comment in Jürgen Kraus, via Twitter the Endangered Species Act and admirable teamwork by the peo- protest of the practice illustrated were never to be kept captive ple who brought these perverted in the story, “Running hot” (June POISON FOR PROFIT again. But the law excluded Toki- killers to justice, but it doesn’t do 2020) of apparently tossing (live?!) This is the Trump administra- tae. She is made to perform circus much to explain why the crimi- salmon up and over a stationary tion’s environmental shock doc- tricks and be USED as a surfboard. nals acted as they did. I would’ve setnet onto the rocky shoreline. trine (“Reg wreckage,” June 2020): Fred Page, via Twitter appreciated some warning about I’m sure I don’t understand the Ramping up the killing of poor, the graphic content, much as business of commercial fishing, Black, brown and Native peoples, The scientific name for the orca broadcasters do before airing sto- but no animal deserves to be dis- and poisoning the world for profit. is Orcinus orca. To my tribe, the ries containing descriptions or patched in such a degrading man- Alyosha Goldstein, via Twitter Lhaq’ te’mish of the Salish Sea, imagery that could be upsetting ner. they are people. In our stories, to some people. Alex Kouvel, Tucson, Arizona While the nation is distracted by they have societies and a culture Louis Jaffe, San Francisco a pandemic, the Trump adminis- similar to our own. tration is rolling back health and Quad Finn, via Twitter One of the smartest moves in this environmental protections at a story is that the reporter included breakneck pace. comment from a foreign terror- Susan Stone, via Twitter ism and radicalization researcher. The story is about heavily armed men running a poaching ring in Washington and Oregon. Ian Morse, via Twitter “The purveyors of this image represent A FLAG OF FANTASY The Gadsden flag has become a the darker elements of human nature, symbol of ignorance and hate (“Who’s Treading Now?” June including selfish, violent and anti-democratic 2020). Worse yet, the purveyors of this image represent the darker sentiments, often under the guise elements of human nature, including selfish, violent and anti-demo- of Christianity.” cratic sentiments, often under the

6 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS CAHOOTS crisis workers speak with the parents of a young man having a mental health crisis. Each worker completes 500 hours of training in areas including medical care, conflict resolution and crisis counseling. Thomas Patterson

nation’s longest-running examples and harm reduction, which reduces WHAT WORKS is CAHOOTS — Crisis Assistance calls to police, averts harmful Helping Out On The Streets — in arrest-release-repeat cycles and Eugene, Oregon. CAHOOTS has prevents violent police encounters. inspired similar programs in other cities in the region, including the THE WHITE BIRD CLINIC Denver Alliance for Street Health in Eugene started CAHOOTS Response, Mobile Assistance 31 years ago as an alternative Experts in de-escalation Community Responders of for people who felt alienated or Oakland and Portland Street disenfranchised from systems How Eugene, Oregon, avoids unnecessary policing. Response in Oregon. that had failed them, CAHOOTS Such programs take police out Operations Coordinator Tim Black BY ANNA V. SMITH of the equation when someone said in an interview. “We’re there is going through a mental to listen, we’re there to empathize, health crisis, struggling with and we’re there to really reflect on substance abuse or experiencing what they’re going through,” and homelessness. When police show to discuss ways to access resources AS CITIZENS ACROSS the country Minneapolis City Council members up, situations can escalate, and the to help them. CAHOOTS — a free, fill the streets to protest police pledged in June to disband its police use of force can be disproportionate, 24/7 community service — is killings of Black people, the violent department entirely. As cities look especially towards Black people; a funded by Eugene and neighboring response from law enforcement for what’s next, there is already a 2016 study estimated that 20% to Springfield at a cost of around $2 has added urgency to a national proven system of de-escalation for 50% of fatal encounters with law million, equal to just over 2% of conversation about police brutality. the high volume of mental health enforcement involved someone their police departments’ annual Pressure is mounting to reform or calls that police respond to, which with a mental illness. Advocates say budgets. The program is currently abolish police departments. City often end in violence. the CAHOOTS model shows those fundraising to expand and make up officials in Western urban centers Mobile, community-based crisis encounters aren’t inevitable: Less for COVID-19-related budget cuts. like Los Angeles are reducing police programs employ first responders than 1% of the calls that CAHOOTS Under the model, instead of budgets — L.A.’s currently totals that are not police to address responds to need police assistance. police, a medic and a mental health $1.8 billion — and reinvesting in disturbances where crimes are The CAHOOTS system relies on worker are dispatched for calls underfunded social initiatives. not being committed. One of the trauma-informed de-escalation such as (continued on page 36)

JULY 2020 7 “I came because it’s a bigger purpose, espe- “It’s really horrible how African American “As I was walking with the crowd, people were cially for this generation now. I’m an older people are treated. And as a white woman, it’s smiling, saying I was playing the right music. I person. … This has been going on for a long kind of awful that I can come to things like this felt good. I stayed there the whole night.” time, and it’s about time to change. The only and not be worried that something’s going to —Wilkens, Echo Park way that change can be brought forth is not happen to me, and I can be pulled over, and not through violence, but uniting and coming worry that something’s going to happen to me.” together to stand for a purpose.” —Kim, Los Feliz —Edward, Lubbock, Texas

“I’m here for my siblings, my family, other Black “I’m supporting Black Lives Matter and here men, our future generation and my children — with union leaders and supporting the cause. “The goal isn’t to live forever, but to create if I ever have children — you know, people in I’m glad I did.” something that will.” general.” —Yancy, Downtown LA —Soulaire, Hollywood —Layah, Willowbrook

Image caption here. Photographer name / Image Source

8 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS “I’ve been a revolutionary singer-songwriter for “Seeing all the police brutality … I see a lot of “I’ve been a victim of it. I’ve been a victim of over 20 years now, and this is everything that abuse of authority, you know. And I feel like police harassment just because of my skin I’ve been speaking about forever.” everyone has a voice, and when we all come color. I feel him (George Floyd). I might not feel —Jhavoice, Sherman Oaks together, it makes a stronger community … a as much pain as he did, but I feel him on his louder voice.” level.” —Mandi, Rosemead —Tim, Gardena

“I’m here to fight for justice. We’re better in numbers; we’re more powerful in numbers. And we ain’t got nothing but time, so we’re here to fight for justice for the many people that have “I have a son, and African American been lost at the hands of police brutality and men are targets.” violence.” —Nandi and Christopher, Rancho Cucamonga —Kristen, Mid City

Voices from an uprising Portraits from Los Angeles’ Black Lives Matters demonstrations.

PHOTOS AND INTERVIEWS BY STEPHANIE MEI-LING

JULY 2020 9 “When I seen that officer had his knee in his “I’ve been choked to the point where I passed “Anguish. I didn’t really want to come out, and back and would not release him … I’m not going out. I started an organization called ‘I Can’t then I felt guilty as the days proceeded on, and to lie, I cried. That was hurtful to see any human Breathe’ after I was choked by a security I watched on television. And I felt like my voice being with an officer with his knee on his officer — for nothing.” needs to be heard, even though for many years neck! So that’s why I’m here … to protest. And —Brother Wayne, Altadena my voice never counted, never meant anything. because Black lives matter.” My tears never counted.” —Joyce, South Central —Sherry (Cocoa), Downtown LA

“Women of my generation raised those “I’ve been going to protests a lot to learn. I want millennials, and we raised them to do this. to contribute to the community.” We’re so happy they’re finally out here.” “Equality. I want equality.” —Eddie, Downtown LA —Bonnie, Mid Wilshire —Dom, North Hollywood

Image caption here. Photographer name / Image Source

10 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS “I was one of the first people who went to an “I am a Black woman, and we need to stand for “I was there when Martin Luther King was establishment in Memphis in 1968 to integrate. justice and Black lives.” killed in Memphis. Yeah, I was there. The times It was a Thursday. I came to protest because it —Carlyn, Los Angeles are changing, and this is a sign that people are was beating on my heart so strongly. Being sick of this racism. People are created equal, involved in the 1960s, and now in 2020.” and this is about time for people who want to —Percy, South LA be superior, they have to come down to earth and realize the time for that is over.” —Charles, Downtown LA

“I’m here for the protest, because being a descendant from the African American community, we have to fight for our Black civil and constitutional rights here in the city and “I saw videos online on Instagram and wanted “It’s about time. It’s about time.” the county of Los Angeles.” to see in real life what it was like.” —Bryan, Marina Del Rey —Gerald, Century City —Armani, Lynwood

JULY 2020 11 REPORTAGE

Where COVID-19 revived labor organizing Washington fruit packers seek lasting gains from pandemic strikes.

BY CARL SEGERSTROM

ON A CRISP MAY MORNING in Washington’s than 4,000 cases in the county. Twenty-nine of were deaf to their concerns about COVID-19. Yakima Valley, Blanca Olivares took her break them worked at Allan Bros. Olivares began reaching out to employ- from sorting apples at the Allan Brothers pack- Latinos and people of color are more likely ees with whom she rarely interacts, including ing facility a little early. Soon, five other workers to be exposed to COVID-19 because they dispro- night-shift workers and those in separate areas joined her in the outdoor patio area. Together, portionately work in jobs deemed essential, and of the facility. They soon realized that each they waited, disappointment creeping in when they are more likely to develop complications cohort shared similar frustrations, Olivares said. more didn’t follow. Little by little, however, from the disease due to lack of access to healthy Momentum for collective action grew. employees trickled out. Within the hour, 40 to 50 food and reliable health care. Latinos make up Despite the lack of a union or experience people had congregated, and the first in a string just 13% of Washington’s residents, but they with organized labor, the ad hoc coalition was of labor strikes that would include hundreds of accounted for 43% of the state’s confirmed (continued on page 40) workers at seven fruit packing facilities in the COVID-19 cases. On May 30, David Cruz, a long- valley had begun. “I didn’t know anything about time worker at the Allan Bros. plant, died after strikes,” Olivares said, through a translator. “I being hospitalized with the virus. Martha Aguilar, an employee of Hansen Fruit and Cold Storage, strikes for hazard pay, sick pay and safer working just knew that if we all put our voices out there, Olivares, whose daughter is a nurse, was conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic in front of the then maybe they would listen to us.” well aware of the seriousness of COVID-19 and company’s fruit-packing facility in Yakima, Washington, The labor actions — catalyzed by frustration the heightened risk she faced in her work envi- on May 16. Terray Sylvester over inadequate protections and compensation ronment. She likened her job to being the joker during the COVID-19 pandemic — swiftly grew in a card deck — able to fill whatever role is into a protest against industry working conditions needed. As she moved between different areas in general, according to Rodrigo Rentería Valencia, of the facility, workers expressed their unease an anthropology professor at Central Washington about the sickness and their working conditions. University and member of the Washington State Olivares emailed management and Commission on Hispanic Affairs, who chronicled requested a meeting to address the problems. the strikes and interviewed dozens of work- But rather than engage her directly, the manager ers. The strikers held out for weeks, their fight and human resources staff bypassed Olivares demonstrating the nascent power of the region’s and went to others on the line first, gauging the agricultural workers and the challenges they face mood before addressing the squeaky wheel. in having their concerns heard. Workers grew frustrated when their chosen Yakima’s first case of COVID-19 was representative was left out of the process. reported on March 8. Rumors swirled, but little Poor lines of communication and hard-to- solid information emerged about the spread break hierarchies are common in agricultural of the virus within workplaces. Employees at work. “Perhaps most upsetting for workers is the fruit-packing plants, who are predominantly industry doesn’t allow workers a voice within Latino, feared the virus could spread rapidly in the pyramidal structure,” said Rentería Valencia, the close quarters of sorting and stamping lines. who biked a couple miles to the Allan Bros. strike Their concerns were justified: According to the when it first started. Instead of taking their Yakima County public health department, as of grievances directly to the owners, workers must early June, more than 800 agricultural industry communicate through managers, who can abuse workers had tested positive for the novel corona- their power to silence them, he said. At the same virus, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the more time, the workers felt that state-level authorities

12 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS REPORTAGE

‘It’s not natural for them to cooperate’ San Francisco Bay towns agree they need to plan together for sea-level rise. The trick is getting them to do it. A beach in Pacifica, California, undergoes restoration efforts. Sea-level rise in the area is so severe that nearby apartment buildings had to be removed because the BY ROBIN MEADOWS eroding cliffside made them too dangerous. Lucas Foglia

FOSTER CITY, A COMMUNITY of curving to cooperate,” said Mark Lubell, director of the jurisdictions to talk to each other? At this point, streets and cul-de-sacs, edges up to California’s Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior it’s optional.” San Francisco Bay. Built on wetlands that were at the University of California, Davis. “Local Fain hopes that giving all stakeholders drained and filled more than a century ago, the governments really hate being told what to do.” a voice will ensure buy-in. “Coordination is city was barely above sea level to begin with. In their defense, local governments also bear full important, especially in a closed bay system,” Today, 34,000 people live in Foster City, and all responsibility for protecting their constituents she said, adding that while her agency has taken that keeps water from pouring into their streets from sea-level rise. the lead on a regional plan, it has no authority and neighborhoods is an earthen levee fortified The water keeps rising, shrinking the to implement it — which means the plan still by concrete and riprap. With climate change window for implementing solutions. Sea-level won’t be binding. raising the sea level, this won’t be enough to rise already threatens the bay shore, which, at Another worry, Fain says, is that without protect the small city. So, in 2016, officials floated about 500 miles, is half the length of the entire coordination and accountability across Bay a plan to raise the levee. California coast. The worst is yet to come: The Area towns and cities, wealthy residents will get That worried Hank Ackerman, the Bay Area needs to plan for a 2-foot rise by 2050 outsized protection. San Rafael, a city on San flood-control program manager for Alameda and up to 7 feet by 2100. Francisco Bay in Marin County, is among the County, which lies just across the bay from In a 2019 survey, Lubell found that Bay Area nation’s top 10 richest. But San Rafael’s Canal Foster City. Ackerman wrote in a 2017 letter leaders overwhelmingly agreed that the biggest neighborhood is home to 12,000 people, most that he was “very concerned” that raising the barrier to addressing sea-level rise is the lack of a of them Latinx living in apartments on incomes levee could shift floodwaters to Alameda County, regional plan. For years, no one had stepped up below the poverty line. The neighborhood is also much of whose 36 miles of shoreline is densely to lead such a plan — until now. one of the first here that will be hit by sea-level populated. He cited research showing that rais- rise, projected to be submerged as soon as 2030. ing seawalls in one area can simply transfer the STRICTLY SPEAKING, San Francisco Bay is Marco Berger, the community resilience rising waters elsewhere. “To address sea-level an estuary. This configuration can cause ripple coordinator at the Multicultural Center of Marin, rise jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction will result in effects at surprising scales: When seawalls are worries that Canal neighborhood residents an acceleration in the adverse impacts to other taller in one part of the bay, water can surge over will face both the brunt of sea-level rise and entities around the Bay,” Ackerman concluded. lower walls in a completely different part. The displacement by gentrification. While property But Foster City moved forward anyway, and lowest-lying stretches of shoreline already flood improvements like flood protection protect resi- in 2018 passed a $90 million levee bond, putting during intense storms and the highest of high dents from the impacts of climate change, they it on track to be the first municipality around the tides. can also drive up housing costs. “We want to bay with comprehensive shoreline protections Now, in the first bay-wide effort to protect create equity for the Canal neighborhood,” Berger against sea-level rise. Alameda County and other shorelines from rising waters, Jessica Fain, who said. “They usually don’t have a voice at the table.” local jurisdictions have no recourse against such helped New York City recover from Hurricane Unifying all the voices around the bay on unilateral actions. Sandy, is convening stakeholders to find sea-level rise is an enormous task, yet Fain faces The San Francisco Bay Area has 101 munic- common ground. “It’s a tricky issue,” said Fain, it with equanimity. “Sea-level rise can feel like a ipalities across the nine counties that ring the a planner at the San Francisco Bay Conservation far-off problem — but it’s not when you look at bay, and each is like a little kingdom. “Cities are and Development Commission, which regulates the time it takes to plan large infrastructures,” self-interested actors. It’s not natural for them land use along the bay. “How do you get adjacent Fain said. “We need to move on this.”

JULY 2020 13 REPORTAGE

Will COVID-19 help save small slaughterhouses? As laborers for the Big Four meatpackers fall ill, small slaughterhouses see unprecedented demand.

BY CARL SEGERSTROM

A RECENTLY CLOSED small slaughterhouse in in Odessa, Washington. The plant, which was smaller ones, including the Odessa plant — are Odessa, Washington, is in the process of reopen- backed by community development agencies, inspected by U.S. Department of Agriculture or ing, thanks to soaring demand for locally raised would allow ranchers to tap into consumer state inspectors and permitted to sell individ- and processed meat. As large meatpacking facil- demand for local beef without transporting ual cuts to stores and restaurants. Businesses ities across the country have become hotspots cattle long distances for slaughtering or using like Wilke’s, however, don’t have inspectors for COVID-19 outbreaks — at least 277 cases have large meatpackers. on site and can only process animals that were been confirmed among the nearly 1,500 work- But the cooperative struggled with inconsis- purchased directly from individual ranchers. ers at the Tyson Foods plant 100 miles south in tent sales and hiring and retaining employees That lack of access to venues like farmers Wallula, Washington, and three people have died in a small town, Gross said. Now, however, with markets makes it harder for small slaughter- — business is booming for small meatpackers. the pandemic driving demand and closing the houses to stay in business. In response, federal With grocery stores limiting customer price gap between local and industrial beef, the lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill purchases, some Wendy’s restaurants running Odessa facility is preparing to reopen in July. several times in recent years. The PRIME Act out of beef and the price of ground beef increas- Jeff Wilke, a butcher on the outskirts of would make it easier for butchers who aren’t ing nearly 5% from March to April, customers are Spokane, Washington, who works directly with USDA-inspected to reach customers by allow- flocking to ranchers like Ed Gross, who has a herd animal owners, is also seeing unprecedented ing them to sell meat to restaurants and other of 1,500 cattle in eastern Washington. “Even big consumer interest — so much so, that he’s retail outlets. chain stores are looking to buy from us now,” said booked up for the rest of the year. “My phone’s Without such reforms, the current bump Gross, one of the founders of the Odessa plant. been ringing off the hook,” Wilke said. in business for small processors may not last. Big meatpacking facilities have made meat Wilke’s business, Quadra K-Meats, serves Right now, it’s time to “make hay while the sun cheap in the United States. But those low prices people who are raising their own animals and shines,” said Rebecca Thistlethwaite, an agricul- have come at a cost to workers and pushed smaller ranchers who sell directly to consumers. Wilke tural extension agent for Oregon State University slaughterhouses out of business. Now, as people slaughters animals where they were raised, and the director of the Niche Meat Processor turn to small butchers for meat, the pandemic something he’s done since he was a kid, helping Assistance Network. But with the potential for is exposing the vulnerability of this centralized out his dad in the 1970s. “Animals don’t get poked a prolonged economic slump following the system — and highlighting the importance of a and prodded and loaded onto semis,” he said. pandemic, she expects that most people will diverse and resilient food economy. But that process isn’t nearly as efficient as soon return to cheaper meat processed at large The meatpacking industry has undergone industrial operations: The assembly lines facilities, as happened during the 2008 recession. major consolidation. From 1990 to 2016, the U.S. at large meatpacking facilities can process That would further the long-term decline lost more than 1,800 livestock slaughterhouses, hundreds of cattle an hour, while Wilke slaugh- of small slaughterhouses and ranching oper- 40% of the industry. As small slaughterhouses ters and processes about eight animals a week. ations, leaving the meat industry even more closed, the so-called “Big Four” meatpacking That means meat processed by small slaughter- consolidated and vulnerable to future disasters. companies — Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National houses typically costs more: A locally raised and The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the risk Beef — came to dominate the industry. Today, slaughtered cut of top sirloin steak at the Main of relying on just a handful of companies and these four companies process more than 80% Market Co-Op in Spokane costs more than $14 a factories to keep grocery stores full. A diverse of beef in the U.S. pound, while a top sirloin at Walmart in Spokane system composed of businesses from large to In 2013, the Livestock Processor’s Cooperative costs less than half that. small is key to making the food supply resilient, Association, a group of ranchers in eastern Slaughterhouses like Wilke’s also confront Thistlethwaite said. “People are realizing that Washington, tried to break the grip of indus- a two-tiered system of slaughterhouse certi- now,” she said. “Hopefully, we can continue to try consolidation by opening a slaughterhouse fication. Most large facilities — and some support small producers going forward.”

14 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS Jeff Wilke prepares to shoot a cow at a client’s property in Spokane County, Washington. Wilke slaughters animals where they were raised, instead of putting them through a stressful journey to an industrial slaughterhouse (left).

Ken Wilke and his son, Jeff Wilke, skin a cow at a client’s farm in 2011. The family’s company, Quadra-K Meats, serves people who raise their own animals. With large meatpacking plants closing down, demand for small butchers has skyrocketed (below).

Young Kwak

JULY 2020 15 REPORTAGE

A unionized ski patrol

When Vail Resorts added Stevens Pass to its empire, ski patrollers feared becoming fungible cogs in a corporate machine. So they organized.

BY ANDREW SCHWARTZ

IT TAKES FOUR YEARS to they went — wasn’t just about become a “competent patroller” at sustainable wages, but about Stevens Pass Ski Resort, a couple of demanding a voice to speak to hours east of Seattle, Washington. management as co-equal stake- Such a ski patroller, said Katrina holders in their resort. Rostedt, a longtimer herself, will Following decades of seem- have absorbed the idiosyncrasies ingly inexorable decline, union of twisted knees and broken wrists activity is on the rise in some and know exactly where wet snow sectors. But unions in the ski poses an avalanche risk unless industry, whose seasonality fits explosives are properly deployed. awkwardly into the rigid U.S. labor Yet the patrollers who know regime, are rare. Going into the these things are precisely the sort 2018-2019 season, an independent who tend to leave. Evan Woods, who union represented ski patrollers began patrolling in the 1980s, has at Aspen’s four resorts, while seen “hundreds” grapple with the patrollers at another four — of When the CWA union was approved and Brianna Hartzell was named unit president, she same question after three to five the hundreds of resorts in North said that management treated her and other union figures unfairly. Ryan Irvin / HCN years: Embrace a lifestyle that leaves America — were represented by you earning barely more than mini- the Communication Workers of mum wage, or hang up the red coat America (CWA). hourly raise at a cost well under as Vail upgraded uniforms, the and trade passion for practicality? In recent years, Vail and its the $50 million it reported spend- company tightened the dress code. For those who regard patrolling nascent private equity-backed ing last year on stock buybacks to Management instituted a drug as a labor of love, this tension is competitor, Alterra, have led a boost the price of its shares. policy that some felt made patrol- part of the job. Still, it grated in 2018, period of brisk ski industry consol- lers less likely to report incidents. when Stevens Pass Resort became idation; Vail now owns at least BEFORE THE PRESEASON Popular programs that brought in another asset in the fast-expanding 34 resorts in North America — training program for the 2018-2019 volunteer doctors and made phys- empire of Vail Resorts, an industry including major destinations like season, Katie Johnston gave little ical therapists available to resort titan worth more than $8 billion Whistler-Blackcomb in Canada, thought to Vail’s acquisition of employees were eliminated. — underscoring the big money Breckenridge, Colorado, and Park Stevens. But the “bull in a china For skeptical patrollers, frustra- and power dynamics governing City, Utah. While flat attendance shop” energy of new management tion mounted, not so much at the even this modest and tradition- numbers, climate change and now preoccupied with standardizing changes per se, but the apparent ally easygoing workplace. Many the coronavirus crisis threaten operations in line with other resorts lack of interest Vail management patrollers wanted to be treated, future prospects, there’s still seri- made many patrollers uneasy, said seemed to have in their perspective. and compensated, as profession- ous money in the ski business. In Johnston, then entering her fifth “You had to fight for everything,” als, not fungible parts in a corporate 2019, Vail reported more than $300 year on patrol. Capital investments, said Johnston. “It was essen- machine. The unionization effort million in profits. It could give lift rescue training and safety tially like negotiating a union they commenced — learning as every ski patroller it employs a $5 policies were welcome. But even contract — but with no power.” Vail

16 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS representatives declined multiple written and voicemail requests to Vail could give every ski patroller it employs a comment for this story. Historically, talk of forming $5 hourly raise at a cost well under the $50 million a union often came tinged with sarcasm. But at the preseason it reported spending last year on stock buybacks to training, patrollers spoke about it in earnest, said Johnston. As the boost the price of its shares. season began, Johnston and other organizers solicited the thoughts of “every single patroller.” They their own jobs. Keeping mum “was differently. She had come to unfairly. There was a “target” on reached out to CWA union repre- all about protecting them,” said believe that, even with amicable her back, she said, and she was sentatives, who guided interested Johnston. “It felt weird. I didn’t like employee-manager relations, it’s among those named in unfair labor patrollers through an arcane maze it. But it was kind of that necessary “an illusion that employees on the practice charges the union filed, of U.S. labor law. evil.” In March 2019, union support- ground can actually go and give but ultimately retracted. (High One rule is that, generally, you ers signed and submitted cards to constructive criticism to resort Country News reviewed the labor don’t organize on company prop- the National Labor Relations Board management.” By now, Hartzell, complaints, which alleged arbitrary erty. So, in early 2019, workers to petition for CWA representation, like other rank-and-file patrol- discipline and discrimination.) The hosted after-work meetings at their and an election date was set for the lers, had already been educated heat “dissipated,” Hartzell said, as homes in nearby Leavenworth, a following month. on the union’s terms. But some momentum built on the collec- Bavarian-themed tourist desti- supervisors, excluded from the tive bargaining process, and as it nation and outdoors hub on the IN 2015, WHEN BRIANNA organizing process, had a different became clear how much patrollers’ eastern side of the Cascade Range. HARTZELL patrolled at Utah’s view. As the patrol director, with and Vail’s interests aligned. Johnston says most of the patrol Park City Resort, Vail brought in the an LRI consultant present, deliv- Then the coronavirus hit. In attended at least one of the meet- Labor Relations Institute to educate ered a slideshow-based curriculum a flash, in March, it stalled nego- ings — free-form discussions in workers about unions as a repre- about unions during occasionally tiations on a first contract and which organizers took questions sentation vote approached. LRI is testy mandatory morning meet- shuttered the industry. Millions of and listened to concerns, basically a high-priced “positive employee ings, tensions simmered between workers, thousands of ski patrollers saying that “it seems big and scary, relations” consulting firm that anti-union and pro-union factions among them, lost their jobs. While but you also have a legal right to advises against unionization. Its within the patrol. In April, 2019, the Hartzell believes that Vail, given organize. Here’s rules you can’t curriculum convinced Hartzell, National Labor Relations Board the circumstances, generally did break, or you could get fired.” then in her first year of patrolling, held a secret ballot: The CWA union right by its employees, the crisis Some rules posed problems. that a union would impede direct was approved by a 27 to 18 vote. drove home how little power indi- Many patrollers regarded their communication between patrollers The year since then has not vidual workers have. And it may supervisors, former rank-and- and supervisors. She voted against always been smooth. Before every- well be a catalyst. Other ski indus- file patrollers, as friends. By law, unionization. (CWA narrowly won, one scattered into the offseason try union drives are “out there — we however, they were excluded from anyway.) in 2019, Hartzell was named unit know about them,” said Hartzell. the bargaining unit. Moreover, if Years later, when Vail brought president. At times, amid the “The tide’s turning. Which is excit- they learned about the unioniza- LRI to Stevens prior to the union early friction of the 2019-2020 ing as, like, this little worker bee, tion effort, they might feel obliged vote, Hartzell, now working at the season, Hartzell said management hearing about other worker bees to tell management, to protect Washington resort, saw things treated her and other union figures getting organized.”

THE LATEST Backstory the Justice Department is seeking to retry the During his 2017 trial for charges stemming Bundy family over the standoff. from an armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service Followup near Bunkerville, Nevada, rancher Ryan Bundy In mid-May, E&E News reported that the BLM described a Western United States built by is investigating Ryan Bundy’s alleged illegal rugged individualists like himself despite irrigation construction on the Gold Butte A new heavy-handed federal interference. His speech National Monument, the same land where he to the jury lasted over an hour and evoked and his family have unlawfully grazed cattle longstanding tensions dating back to the 1970s, for years. A group of hikers filed a complaint Bundy when the Sagebrush Rebellion emerged as after seeing Bundy drive a truck carrying large a vocal opponent of federal management of reels of sprinkler line into the area. public lands (“How Ryan Bundy sees the West,” —Kalen Goodluck ranch? 11/20/17). The case ended in a mistrial, though

JULY 2020 17 FACTS & FIGURES $2.4 million

Acquisitions

by Western states:

10,294 assault riﬂes Lethal law enforcement 312 armored vehicles 77 aircraft Police from Western states are some of the 38 body armor most militarized and violent in the country. POLICE OFFICER GEAR IN OFFICER GEAR IN , AFTER MILITARIZATION

BY JONATHAN THOMPSON Annual killings ... per 1 million State military acquisitions National rank for most per 1 million ... per 1 million Indigenous ... per 1 million police killings per capita people Black people people Latino people Value of equipment received NEW MEXICO $$$ via 1033 program, 1990-2020* OVER THE PAST THREE DECADES, local and state law enforcement agen- ALASKA cies have become increasingly militarized, both in approach and equipment, ARIZONA purportedly to fight the so-called wars on drugs and terror. More and more COLORADO Western counties and towns have special weapons and tactics, or SWAT, teams, $5 $10 Value of equipment, and they are more heavily armed than ever before, often with equipment NEVADA per capita population obtained from the Department of Defense. The battlefield-ready equipment, MONTANA and a mindset to match, have been on display nationwide this spring as law WYOMING enforcement agencies responded to protests against the killing of Black people WASHINGTON by police and against police brutality in general. CALIFORNIA LARAMIE, WYOMING As protesters gathered in Laramie for Black The current transformation of police officers into militarized troops has its Lives Matter protests, they also carried signs that said, “Justice for IDAHO roots in the National Defense Authorization Act of 1989, which allowed the U.S. PORTLAND, OREGON: Portland Police Bureau Chief Jami Resch resigned Robbie.” They referred to Robert Ramirez, who was killed by Albany from her post in June, following intense criticism over the Bureau’s UTAH County Sheriff’s Deputy Derek Colling in 2018 during a traffic stop. military to support civilian law enforcement drug interdiction efforts, and in response to protests in that city, including firing tear gas and “non-lethal” Colling had previously worked with the Las Vegas Metropolitan the subsequent Defense Authorization Act. This included the so-called 1033 projectiles into crowds. The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon OREGON Police Department, where he was involved in two shootings, includ- called the police response “excessively violent and dangerous.” ing one that killed a 15-year-old boy. Program, which further expanded the sale and donation of military equipment Police in Oregon have killed 123 people since 2013, with all but U.S. AVERAGE to all law enforcement agencies. After 9/11, the flow of weaponry to civilian about 20 of the killings occurring outside of Portland, often in rural agencies ramped up dramatically. areas or small towns. This aligns with nationwide trends: Police shootings have dropped somewhat in the biëst cities, but they’ve DENVER: After shooting protesters in late May with rubber bullets — Since 9/11, police and sheriffs’ departments, including those in rural climbed over the last several years in rural areas. knocking one person unconscious and rendering another blind — the Western counties, have acquired arms, ammunition, vehicles, grenade launch- Denver Police Department was ordered by U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson to cease using chemical weapons or projectiles ers, drones and even helicopters by way of the 1033 Program and grants from SALT LAKE CITY: On May 30, riot gear-clad police officers poured $34.4 against persons engaging in peaceful demonstrations. The judge the Department of Homeland Security. The armored vehicles present at many out of a giant armored vehicle onto a Salt Lake City street to confront million $3.7 million wrote that “some of the behaviors of what I hope and believe to be a minority of the police officers in Denver and the nation during recent of the protests this spring, for example, were likely MRAPs, or mine-resistant protesters. Instead, they found a 67-year-old man, carrying only a small camera and a cane, whom they knocked to the ground as he days (and before), not only vis-à-vis persons of color but against ambush-protected vehicles, valued at about $700,000 each. hobbled away. peaceful protesters of all backgrounds, have been disgusting. … The In 2015, President Barack Obama signed an executive order restricting the The protesters in question were demonstrating against the death $19 Denver Police Department has failed in its duty to police its own.” of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. But a few days million type of gear the 1033 Program could transfer, citing concerns that military later, they were given another reason to hit the streets when $11.7 equipment in the hands of police can alienate and intimidate local residents. body-cam videos were released showing Salt Lake City police million FARMINGTON, NEW MEXICO: Farmington, a town of about 45,000, In 2017, President Donald Trump rescinded that order, re-opening the free- officers shooting an armed robbery suspect, Bernardo Palacios- $4.3 has a SWAT team that boasts a “a four wheel drive armored vehicle Carbajal, 20 times in the back. flow of ammunition, guns and armored vehicles to police. million equipped with a ballistic resistant exterior, explosive shielding, radioactive detection devices, explosive gas detectors. …” Officers With the growing awareness of the killing of Black citizens by police, under- from various law enforcement agencies have killed at least seven $17 scored by countless incidents of brutality against protesters, calls for reform BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA: Since 2013, officers with the Kern $10.7 people in and around Farmington — which is notorious for violent County Sheriff’s Department and the Bakersfield Police Department million $26.3 million racism toward Indigenous peoples — since 2013. have reached a crescendo nationwide. One of the many possible suggestions have killed at least 38 people, 18 of whom were Latino. The two $132.6 million now before Congress is a bipartisan proposal to curtail the 1033 Program. The agencies have also been major recipients of military equipment, million acquiring several unmanned vehicles, night-vision image intensifiers, WINSLOW, ARIZONA: In March 2016, Winslow Police Department chance of it getting through the current administration, where Trump has explosive ordnance disposal robots and dozens of M16s. Officer Austin Shipley confronted a 27-year-old Navajo woman named encouraged law enforcement to “look tough” and governors to “dominate” On June 3, a white motorist hit and killed a Black man who was part Loreal Tsingine, who had been accused of shoplifting at a Circle-K, of a protest in Bakersfield, one of three such incidents in the city over $21.2 protesters, is slim. $89 and threw her to the ground. When Tsingine approached Shipley with the course of a week. million Meanwhile, Western states — which have some of the highest rates of million a tiny pair of medical scissors in her hand, Shipley shot her five times. She was one of at least 14 Indigenous people killed by police in killings by police — are also some of the biggest recipients of military gear, an Arizona over a seven-year period. Shipley resigned, but was never indication of how militarized any given agency has become. “Militarization PHOENIX: Perhaps the most militarized police force in America was charged with the killing. the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, headed up by Sheriff Joe via 1033 is a symptom of the larger rot at the core of the institution of policing,” The Winslow Police Department has received 27 M16 rifles, an Arpaio. By 2014, the department had amassed a multimillion-dollar armored truck and a grenade launcher from the 1033 Program. said Casey Delehanty, assistant professor of political science at Gardner- arsenal, including a .50-caliber machine gun. But in 2015, the Depart- ment of Defense kicked the county out of the 1033 Program and took Webb University. Delehanty co-authored a 2017 study showing that increased back its gear, because Arpaio had misplaced weapons. Arpaio was proliferation of military equipment fosters a military-style culture in law voted out of office in 2016 and in 2017 was convicted of contempt for enforcement, encouraging military-style responses to problems and leading to violating court orders regarding racial discrimination, only to be *Law enforcement agencies also acquire military-grade equipment pardoned shortly afterward by President Donald J. Trump. Arpaio is from sources besides the 1033 Program. Those acquisitions are not an increase in police-inflicted violence, even by officers who are not militarily running for sheriff again this year with the slogan: “Make Maricopa included here. equipped at the time. County Safe Again.” Infographic design by Luna Anna Archey, Officer illustrations by Minus Plus. Sources: U.S. Defense Logistics Agency; mappingpoliceviolence.org, U.S. Census estimates, 2019.

18 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS $2.4 million

Acquisitions

by Western states:

10,294 assault riﬂes 312 armored vehicles 77 aircraft 38 body armor

POLICE OFFICER GEAR IN OFFICER GEAR IN , AFTER MILITARIZATION

Annual killings ... per 1 million State military acquisitions National rank for most per 1 million ... per 1 million Indigenous ... per 1 million police killings per capita people Black people people Latino people Value of equipment received NEW MEXICO $$$ via 1033 program, 1990-2020* ALASKA ARIZONA COLORADO $5 $10 Value of equipment, NEVADA per capita population MONTANA WYOMING WASHINGTON

CALIFORNIA LARAMIE, WYOMING As protesters gathered in Laramie for Black Lives Matter protests, they also carried signs that said, “Justice for IDAHO PORTLAND, OREGON: Portland Police Bureau Chief Jami Resch resigned Robbie.” They referred to Robert Ramirez, who was killed by Albany from her post in June, following intense criticism over the Bureau’s UTAH County Sheriff’s Deputy Derek Colling in 2018 during a traffic stop. response to protests in that city, including firing tear gas and “non-lethal” Colling had previously worked with the Las Vegas Metropolitan projectiles into crowds. The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon OREGON Police Department, where he was involved in two shootings, includ- called the police response “excessively violent and dangerous.” ing one that killed a 15-year-old boy. Police in Oregon have killed 123 people since 2013, with all but U.S. AVERAGE about 20 of the killings occurring outside of Portland, often in rural areas or small towns. This aligns with nationwide trends: Police shootings have dropped somewhat in the biëst cities, but they’ve DENVER: After shooting protesters in late May with rubber bullets — climbed over the last several years in rural areas. knocking one person unconscious and rendering another blind — the Denver Police Department was ordered by U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson to cease using chemical weapons or projectiles SALT LAKE CITY: On May 30, riot gear-clad police officers poured $34.4 against persons engaging in peaceful demonstrations. The judge out of a giant armored vehicle onto a Salt Lake City street to confront million $3.7 million wrote that “some of the behaviors of what I hope and believe to be a protesters. Instead, they found a 67-year-old man, carrying only a minority of the police officers in Denver and the nation during recent small camera and a cane, whom they knocked to the ground as he days (and before), not only vis-à-vis persons of color but against hobbled away. peaceful protesters of all backgrounds, have been disgusting. … The The protesters in question were demonstrating against the death $19 Denver Police Department has failed in its duty to police its own.” of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. But a few days million later, they were given another reason to hit the streets when $11.7 body-cam videos were released showing Salt Lake City police million FARMINGTON, NEW MEXICO: Farmington, a town of about 45,000, officers shooting an armed robbery suspect, Bernardo Palacios- $4.3 has a SWAT team that boasts a “a four wheel drive armored vehicle Carbajal, 20 times in the back. million equipped with a ballistic resistant exterior, explosive shielding, radioactive detection devices, explosive gas detectors. …” Officers from various law enforcement agencies have killed at least seven $17 BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA: Since 2013, officers with the Kern $10.7 people in and around Farmington — which is notorious for violent County Sheriff’s Department and the Bakersfield Police Department million $26.3 million racism toward Indigenous peoples — since 2013. have killed at least 38 people, 18 of whom were Latino. The two $132.6 million agencies have also been major recipients of military equipment, million acquiring several unmanned vehicles, night-vision image intensifiers, WINSLOW, ARIZONA: In March 2016, Winslow Police Department explosive ordnance disposal robots and dozens of M16s. Officer Austin Shipley confronted a 27-year-old Navajo woman named On June 3, a white motorist hit and killed a Black man who was part Loreal Tsingine, who had been accused of shoplifting at a Circle-K, of a protest in Bakersfield, one of three such incidents in the city over $21.2 $89 and threw her to the ground. When Tsingine approached Shipley with the course of a week. million million a tiny pair of medical scissors in her hand, Shipley shot her five times. She was one of at least 14 Indigenous people killed by police in Arizona over a seven-year period. Shipley resigned, but was never PHOENIX: Perhaps the most militarized police force in America was charged with the killing. the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, headed up by Sheriff Joe The Winslow Police Department has received 27 M16 rifles, an Arpaio. By 2014, the department had amassed a multimillion-dollar armored truck and a grenade launcher from the 1033 Program. arsenal, including a .50-caliber machine gun. But in 2015, the Depart- ment of Defense kicked the county out of the 1033 Program and took back its gear, because Arpaio had misplaced weapons. Arpaio was voted out of office in 2016 and in 2017 was convicted of contempt for violating court orders regarding racial discrimination, only to be *Law enforcement agencies also acquire military-grade equipment pardoned shortly afterward by President Donald J. Trump. Arpaio is from sources besides the 1033 Program. Those acquisitions are not running for sheriff again this year with the slogan: “Make Maricopa included here. County Safe Again.” Infographic design by Luna Anna Archey, Officer illustrations by Minus Plus. Sources: U.S. Defense Logistics Agency; mappingpoliceviolence.org, U.S. Census estimates, 2019.

JULY 2020 19 HCN readers: Funding our work for 50 years THANK YOU. Readers provide 75% of HCN’s funding. You can join the supporters here by donating $35 or more. Mail a check to P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428; call 800-905-1155; or contribute online at hcn.org/support.

JULY 2020 21 Traditional whaling is practiced in tune with the unpredictable weather of the Arctic. When wind pushes floating ice near the shorefast ice, the whalers must wait — somethimes for weeks — until it shifts again. Kiliii Yuyan

22 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS ‘What choice do we have?’ As the Arctic warms, the Inupiat adapt.

By Jenna Kunze

JULY 2020 23 TQIAGVIK SITS AT THE VERY TIP of the United States, saddled “They do.” against the Arctic Ocean. The Alaska Native Inupiat are set apart from While serving as mayor of other Indigenous peoples by their subsistence hunting of the bowhead the North Slope Borough, which whale. Even today, this unique, centuries-old practice determines encompasses eight separate the social structure, reflects community values and supplements the communities and about 10,000 people’s nutrient-rich diet. Nearly all of Utqiagvik’s roughly 5,000 people, Brower also chaired the residents, the majority of whom are Inupiat, rely on hunting to support Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commis- their way of life. sion. The AEWC was formed in Which is why Harry Brower Jr., an Inupiaq whaling captain and 1977, after the federal government, Arctic Alaska mayor, finds it odd when outsiders try to explain things worried about low bowhead whale to him. numbers in the Bering Sea, banned “I’m reading about this research on bowhead whales in different the Inupiat’s subsistence hunt. In countries,” he told me one afternoon in February. I met Brower in a response, local whalers conducted U mahogany-clad office decorated with relics of his hometown: mounted their own census, which proved walrus tusks, paintings of icebergs at sea and a portrait of Brower and that the whales were being under- Utqiagvik’s first mayor, Eben Hopson, standing with other community counted by the thousands when members under “the Gateway to the Arctic” — two huge whale bones they swam underneath the ice. arranged in a dramatic arch. The Inupiats’ research resulted in “Here are two words I read about this morning,” he said, pointing an increased quota. This anecdote This work was supported to a yellow Post-it on his desk inscribed with the words “hyperboreus” is a well-worn story in Utqiagvik by the Pulitzer Center’s and “parsimonious.” Until he Googled the term, Brower didn’t know — formerly known as Barrow — a nationwide Connected what it meant, though he is, in fact, a hyperborean: an inhabitant of point of pride marking a time the Coastlines reporting initiative. the Far North. “(Scientists) all speak a different language,” he said. Inupiat bested the federal govern-

24 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS ment by showing more precise broke the federal government’s science perspective, that is the only knowledge of their lands and 120-year record. The shift has conclusion.” waters. happened so quickly in the North The Arctic has lost 641,000 that it has outrun the research square miles of sea ice in the month IN THE LAST TWO CENTURIES, tools used to measure it. In 2017, it of March alone — an area roughly the climate has been severely changed so fast that the National the size of Alaska, according to altered by human forces. But it Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin- National Snow and Ice Data Center has always been changing in some istration warned scientists that the records. Warmer temperatures form here, according to the Inupiat. data was potentially flawed. But the Utqiagvik community members also make for a later freeze and an join together to tow a bowhead Evidence of past ecosystem shifts data proved accurate: It was the whale to shore after three earlier breakup of the ice, shrinking is preserved in the great tusks of area’s warmest recorded tempera- successful hunts in a single day the time frame for spring whaling. a mammoth found in the peren- ture to date. in April. In a good year, about Whaling is the pinnacle of 10 whales are caught in spring nially frozen earth and in the oral “Nobody disputes that things whaling season and shared Inupiat culture and the subsistence histories repeated like mantras. change,” Alaska climatologist Rick among the community for food lifestyle. It takes place in spring and The term “climate change” strikes Thoman said. “The question is: throughout the year (left). fall, when bowhead whales migrate Yves Brower a different tone up here. Why are they changing now? Why past Utqiagvik. Inupiat hunters Life below 0 degrees Fahren- aren’t there mammoths on the JR Nungasak scrapes a bowl say the whales “give themselves” heit has always been challenging, North Slope now? You can’t answer clean inside a whaling camp to worthy hunters, so preparation tent as he takes a break from so the Inupiat story is defined by the question without invoking the perpetual watch of whaling is year-round and meticulous. adaptation. When the mammoth greenhouse gases. From a Western (below). Kiliii Yuyan Women carefully craft sealskin became extinct, the Inupiat boats, sewn together with caribou adapted. When Western influences tendon, and whaling crews clean crept north, the Inupiat replaced out their ice cellars. Community their dogsleds with snow machines, members store whale and other raw their seal oil lamps with electric- meats in traditional belowground ity. Today, the Arctic is warming at refrigerators dug about 20 feet into twice the global average, necessitat- permafrost. (Both climate change ing a new era of adjustments in life and urban development are now on land and sea. The weaker sea ice causing some cellars to thaw, spoil- endangers hunters, while melting ing the meat.) soil threatens homes and city infra- Each spring, hunters use ice structure. The encroaching sea is picks to build trails over frozen sea eating away at the shoreline. ice. Once the paths are smoothed, “What other choice do we have?” they drive snowmobiles several Kaare Sikuaq Erikson, an Inupiaq miles to reach open water. At the science liaison at the village corpo- ice’s edge, they assemble camps, ration, said. “People assume that then wait for a bowhead to pass. we’re entering this new Arctic, As soon as a whale is spotted, the when in reality we have faced crews slide their sealskin boats adversity for thousands of years. into the water, and a crewmem- We’ve always been able to adapt ber attempts to harpoon the and be resilient. This is no differ- animal. When a whale is struck, ent.” the captains signal other crews by VHF radio. Other hunters rally to THE ARCTIC — “GROUND the boat, and everyone pulls the ZERO for climate change” — is whale onto the ice shore. warming more rapidly than the rest But landing a bowhead has of the planet because of a positive become increasingly dangerous: feedback loop called Arctic amplifi- Each whale weighs up to 120,000 cation. Rising global temperatures pounds and must be pulled onto melt the reflective surfaces of snow the less stable sea ice. and ice each year, exposing the Inupiak brothers Jack and darker areas they cover, and the Brower Frantz are co-captains on open water and bare ground absorb their uncle’s whaling crew, having sunlight, rather than reflect it. This risen through the ranks since they absorbed light creates heat, melt- were teenagers. “When we were ing more snow and ice. growing up, it always seemed like Last year, temperatures in the ice was a constant,” Jack said. Utqiagvik and the state of Alaska “We always knew it was going to

JULY 2020 25 be good. The last five years, it just into the 21st century. Before it was of other banks followed suit. Mayor others to their camps to help drag seems like it’s hit or miss.” built, in the 1980s, most residents Harry Brower penned an edito- whales onto the ice for butchering. Brower Frantz, now 34, remem- hauled ice in for water and used rial for the Wall Street Journal, Druckenmiller calls the information bers the long snowmobile ride to “honey buckets” for sewage. condemning the investment bank “supplemental” to whaling crews’ the ice edge, roughly 15 miles from for claiming stakeholder engage- traditional practices. “To be resilient the shore. When he was a teenager, IN THE LATE 1960S, the larg- ment as a core business principle to the environment relies on having it took more than two hours. “I felt est oilfield in North America was while failing to consult the people multiple tools at your disposal,” he safe driving out there by myself, discovered on Inupiat land, 200 of the North Slope. said. “This is just one of them.” and I was just a kid,” he said. Now, miles east of Utqiagvik. The Inupiat “The way we see it, caring about Previously, hunters some- the ice frequently breaks off within lobbied to form the North Slope the land and wildlife should also times struggled to locate trails in a quarter-mile of the shore, making Borough. Once they had an incor- mean caring about the Indigenous the vast expanse of tundra, said the past five years the most unsafe porated government, they were people who inhabit the land,” he Bernice Oyagak, an Inupiaq whaler. he’s experienced. able to collect property taxes from wrote. “We aren’t hungry for oil, “Now, it’s cool, because (they) send On land, Utqiagvik residents oil and gas infrastructure built on we are hungry for progress and us a map and they say, ‘Here’s face a different but related insta- their land. Ever since, that money understanding from those on the their trail,’ ” she said. The map bility underfoot: permafrost thaw. has made up the majority of the East Coast and beyond. We don’t also shows ice thickness, making Last summer, Utqiagvik endured North Slope Borough’s property tax need your protection or judgment. it “kind of scary to know when the wettest summer on record, with revenue. Last year, it came to $377 We need your respect. We need to you’re driving over a mere two feet twice as much rainfall as usual. million, borough financial director be treated like fellow Americans.” of ice,” she said. “But I guess it’s Rain thawed the ground several Sandra Stuermer said. better to know it than to not know feet deeper than normal, past the Oil money not only afforded TODAY, AS ICE CONDITIONS it, because you’re hauling back so “active” layer of permafrost, which the North Slope the construction worsen, whalers are finding new many pounds of meat. It can be is normally frozen year-round. of the kind of infrastructure most hunting methods, using technolog- dangerous out there.” During freeze-up, the infrastruc- of America had enjoyed for the ical improvements that help keep The work of adaptation never ture built into the usually immobile past 100 years, it also provided the hunters safe in the risky work they ends. Now, as increasingly tough permafrost — water lines, tele- funds necessary to maintain it in do to feed their communities. As whaling years leave freezers empty, phone poles and house pilings — all harsh conditions — conditions technology improves, the Inupiat the Inupiat hunt more caribou. began pushing up out of the ground. exacerbated, ironically, by climate adapt. With coastal erosion eating away Now, utility poles tilt at worrisome change. Today, the money gener- The University of Alaska Fair- several feet of beach each year, the angles, and some homes appear to ated from property taxes pays for banks has mapped out hunters’ borough is seeking federal and be teetering on stilts. all borough operations, including trails to whaling camps, for exam- state bonds to build a $300 million Bill Tracey, a local assembly- the state and federal bond debts for ple, and this research has become seawall. When the drinking water man who represents Point Lay, a maintenance of infrastructure in all an increasingly valued tool for lagoon become polluted, the city village about 200 miles southwest eight villages. contemporary hunters. Matthew put in place infrastructure to collect of Utqiagvik, said the thaw there “Barrow has been lucky,” Yves Druckenmiller, who developed it, snowmelt that now runs through is so bad that once-narrow crawl- Brower said. Like most locals, he is now a research scientist at the spigots. And now that permafrost spaces under the homes can now still refers to his town by the name a National Snow and Ice Data Center. thaw and coastal erosion threaten hold ATVs. British whaling officer gave it in the In partnership with whaling crews, homes, a local housing authority “The biggest change is that it’s 1800s, rather than using its Native the borough and local whale biol- is building adjustable homes on gotten so warm that the permafrost name, which the village voted to ogist Craig George, Druckenmiller sleds. The Inupiat adapt, bearing is thawing so far down that all of the return to in 2016. “We’ve been really used GPS navigation to map the the brunt of global climate change pipes are moving a lot and breaking,” wealthy from our oil money.” trails from 2008 to 2011. The project, — a harbinger of what’s to come in a said Yves Brower, Harry Brower’s For many here, oil money which was inspired by an elder’s world that remains stubbornly reli- second cousin, who heads the water represents opportunity and attempt to hand-draw maps years ant on fossil fuels. and sewer department in Utqiagvik. autonomy. In 2018, the median earlier, overlaid GPS trail locations “We’re taking on all the risks He is acutely aware of the impacts household income of North Slope with surveys of ice thickness and because of these global and envi- of the changing climate: The week Borough residents was $75,431. with satellite imagery showing the ronmental changes that are occur- we spoke, nine different water pipes Many are grateful for the wealth, general type of ice and its extent. ring,” Brower said. “We’ve endured broke, spouting like geysers out of even as the greenhouse gases The resulting maps are distributed the train wreck. The train wreck is various paved roads. emitted by fossil fuel use continue throughout the community during here. Everything is spilled all over Not all of Utqiagvik’s pipes to warm the Arctic. Now, however, hunting season. Whaler Jack the ground, and we’re just looking are buried in the permafrost. The the Inupiat are facing yet another Frantz said the maps are regarded at it and trying to figure out: What majority are housed in a utilidor, a challenge: the potential shift of the as helpful and educational for the do we do now? Who’s responsible? 3-mile-long tunnel of water, sewer global economy away from those younger hunters who haven’t spent Now we have to deal with it.” and electrical pipes. The utilidor — fossil fuels. years studying ice conditions. Still, the Inupiat remain which cost $800 million, funded In December, citing climate Though Druckenmiller’s undaunted by an unknown future. almost entirely by oil money — is change, Goldman Sachs announced student research ended in 2011, “We have to to be a survivalist here Utqiagvik’s single most valuable it would stop financing new oil he continues the study every year. in the Arctic,” Brower said. “We’re asset. It helped bring the borough exploration in the Arctic. A number Whalers use the map data to direct strong. We can survive.”

26 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS In a festival tradition that goes back millennia, Inupiat villagers join together to toss successful whalers into the air to celebrate a successful whaling season and to give thanks to the whale for its gift (above).

The village of Utqiagvik, where most of the 5,000 residents rely on hunting to support their way of life (left).

Kiliii Yuyan

JULY 2020 27 Fish Out of Water The Yaqui catfish was going extinct. Then came the border wall. By Maya L. Kapoor | Photos by Roberto (Bear) Guerra

28 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS I N THE SPRING of 2016, biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wild- and state biologists felt they had to try one more time. In a last- life Service came to a terrible realization: The Yaqui catfish, ditch breeding effort, the agency gathered 11 fish and shipped the only catfish species native to the Western United States, them to a hatchery in Kansas. Within weeks, all of them died. was on the cusp of disappearing. After a week of searching, Eventually, even the one geriatric catfish left on display at the they could catch only two wild fish. They estimated that, at Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum had to be put down. most, just 30 fish remained. Today, the Yaqui catfish, a whiskery-looking crea- For approximately two decades, the last known Yaqui ture that evolved at least 2 million years ago and was once catfish in the United States had been kept in artificial ponds common enough for people to catch for food, is functionally built in and around San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, extinct in the United States. There may be a few still hidden on the Arizona-Sonora border, and at a local zoo. Creatures of in Arizona’s ponds, but not enough to keep a population alive. rivers and wetlands, they had not reproduced. Still, federal According to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2019 five-year

I JULY 2020 29 review of the species, it’s on the border wall before the 2020 pres- Thomas Hafen, Chuck Minckley, tarian. And yet the Yaqui catfish’s brink of global extinction; even as idential election, blasting desert Alex Gutiérrez-Barragán and looming extinction bothers me for Alejandro Varela-Romero (pictured the catfish faces ongoing threats mountains, tearing up old-growth from left) study a map of the Yaqui the simple truth is represents: The in Mexico, scientists know enough saguaros and destroying the catfish’s range, discussing where Borderlands can’t have its rivers about the its basic biology to save it. ancestral homelands and cultural to take eDNA samples during and destroy them, too. fieldwork in northern Sonora, To people for whom “Sonoran resources of tribal nations such as Mexico, in September 2019 (above). Desert” conjures up images of the Pascua Yaqui, Tohono O’odham BIOLOGISTS KNOW surprisingly steadfast saguaros or sun-struck and Hopi. According to Laiken Thomas Hafen filters water through little about Yaqui catfish, dusky eDNA sampling equipment in Cajón lizards, the fact that a native Jordahl, a staff member with the Bonito. In a few months’ time he will animals that live at the bottom of catfish species existed in such a Center for Biological Diversity, wall get the results: Both Yaqui catfish ciénegas and streams, growing up to dry place can be surprising. In construction will require 700,000 and introduced channel catfish, about two feet long. Only about 2% which hybridize with them, are reality, prior to European coloni- gallons of water each day. present (above right). of their historic range lies within the zation, the region supported rich To be clear, the Yaqui catfish United States; the rest is in Mexico. waterways and aquatic communi- is no jaguar. It’s no beauty; it’s not The protected habitat of Cajón Living mysterious lives in gloamy Bonito, in Sonora, Mexico, where ties. The current extinction crisis terrifying; its babies aren’t even all biologists still find Yaqui (previous places, Yaqui catfish inhabit a world speaks to an uncomfortable truth: that cute. A reclusive fish, it never pages). rich in ways we humans can never In a land of finite resources, every swam in more than a relatively imagine. Like many catfish, they choice, big or small — irrigating small portion of U.S. waters. In are covered with tastebuds instead an alfalfa field, taking a swing on almost a year of researching them, of scales. Catfish are named for the a golf course, burning fossil fuels I still haven’t gotten a glimpse of long, flexible barbels that sprout — means choosing what kinds of one. When I lived in Arizona, my from their faces like a cat’s whiskers, habitat exist, even far away from favorite catfishes were different helping them feel and taste their town. And that means choosing species entirely, probably chan- world. Yaqui catfish may commu- which species survive. nels or blues; they arrived before nicate with each other through Now, the hunt is on to find me breaded and lightly fried at a drummings and stridulations, and more Yaqui catfish in Sonora, small restaurant just south of the they may hunt by tracking the elec- Mexico. But as the election season University of Arizona campus, tric discharges from other animals’ ramps up, the Yaqui catfish faces accompanied by iced tea, some- nervous systems. a new threat: The Trump admin- how fitting into my convoluted The Sonoran Desert’s fishes istration is racing to complete the rationalizations about being vege- have evolved fascinating adapta-

30 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS was meant to be a place where sprouted in the water, by way of native fish species could survive, environmental DNA, or eDNA, frag- even as their natural ecosystems ments of genetic material left like drained to sand. The Yaqui catfish microscopic calling cards. It was lived there, some for decades; these cards that Thomas Hafen, a what they didn’t do was reproduce. graduate student at Oklahoma State These fish, creatures of deep pools University, hoped to pick up. As and flowing rivers, seemed to need they waded in the river, Hafen and something that the artificial ponds his research assistant, Alex Gutiér- didn’t provide to breed. rez-Barragán, periodically sampled Meanwhile, residents of the the river. Wearing medical gloves, Southwest — including me, for they gently scooped water into a approximately half my life — have filter designed to strain out eDNA. washed our dishes, cleaned laundry, After a battery-powered pump had swum in pools, watered plants, and sucked through enough water, they generally gone about our daily lives used forceps to peel the filter out of by tapping into what water persists, its cup, carefully fold it up, and place including the Colorado River and it in a container for shipment to a lab underground aquifers. Today in the in Montana. In several months’ time, Sonoran Desert’s dry creekbeds, one they would know whether any Yaqui can sometimes see a black band in catfish had passed by recently. the soil wall — all that remains of A friendly, quiet worker in miles of rivers and wetlands. his mid-20s, with brown hair and a stubbly beard, Hafen spent two BECAUSE ONLY a small part of years before college on a Latter- the Yaqui catfish’s range lies in the day Saints mission trip in Mexico, United States, American research- becoming fluent in Spanish. Now, ers hope that they can collaborate he was surveying as much of the with Mexico to save the species remaining Yaqui catfish habitat in tions: Some give birth to live young; Cattle, introduced in the 1500s by from global extinction, and maybe Mexico as he could for traces of the others snuggle down and wait out the Spanish, overgrazed the land, even donate a few more fish to the elusive animals, hoping, eventually, dry spells in the mud. But the past congregating around and tram- United States. But Mexico’s Yaqui to be able to identify the best habi- few centuries have been especially pling sensitive desert river systems. catfish, which historically inhab- tat for the species. If Yaqui catfish rough for them. As the Borderlands’ Farms, mining and the extirpation ited thousands of miles of river breed in captivity, Hafen’s research human communities keep grow- of beavers all disrupted the South- systems throughout Northwest will help identify where to release ing, and climate change makes the west’s rivers, which abruptly chan- Mexico, are disappearing too, and their young, and which rivers to region hotter and drier, streams stop nelized in the 1800s, changing from the race to protect them is hobbled protect. flowing and wetlands vanish. Mean- meandering ciénegas to deeply by a basic lack of information. As Hafen strained water while, introduced species, includ- etched arroyos. In the 1900s, enor- On the Sonoran Desert’s samples, Sonoran Desert fish expert ing channel catfish originally from mous dam projects began sending version of a fall day, the afternoon Alejandro Varela-Romero held a Central and Eastern North America, the Southwest’s water far away, irri- high hovering around 90 degrees bucket and binoculars and peered push out, or hybridize with, native gating California’s agriculture, even Fahrenheit, a binational group into a deep, slow pool of green species. Like most of the South- as Sunbelt cities kept growing. By of researchers gathered in Cajón water swirling gently in the lee of west’s aquatic species, Yaqui catfish 1973, when the Endangered Species Bonito, a canyon that cuts through a boulder. A thoughtful man in his have struggled to survive since Act passed, such intensive pump- former ranchland purchased by 50s, with dark hair peppered gray European colonization. ing meant that the region’s ciéne- a wealthy American, Valer Clark, and a mustache, Valera-Romero Today, a river in the South- gas were almost all gone, including about a mile south of the U.S.-Mex- wore plastic-rimmed glasses and west often means a dried-out, the tiny fragment of Yaqui catfish ico border. They were there to a T-shirt bearing a Spanish trans- sandy wash where trash and the habitat in southeastern Arizona. collect that missing information. lation of the famous quote by skeletal remains of cottonwoods Generally, the Endangered Emerged from their vehicles, evolutionary biologist Theodosius bleach in the sun. But before colo- Species Act protects critical habi- the researchers gathered an assort- Dobzhansky: “Nothing in biology nization, networks of riparian areas, tat for rare species, the logic being ment of buckets, field gear and makes sense except in the light of wetlands and slow-moving rivers that a plant or animal can’t survive notebooks and began walking in evolution.” He called out the scien- flowed through the region, where if there’s nowhere left for it to live. the creek, stopping periodically to tific names of tiny darting fish I Indigenous peoples have lived and San Bernardino National Wildlife document its condition. The river could barely see. He had a feeling farmed for millennia. Refuge, designated in 1982, was a clattered through the small canyon, that a Yaqui catfish might appear. A combination of colonialism different approach to saving species. carrying dried leaves above its sandy It certainly was hard to imag- and human-caused climate change An archipelago of manmade pools in bed. It also carried evidence of living ine a location more hospitable turned rivers and wetlands to dust. a sea of desert shrubland, the refuge things that had stepped, swam or to native fish than Cajón Bonito,

JULY 2020 31 where smoky-black catfish could float gently above the riverbot- tom, sheltered by sloping banks and submerged branches. Hawks circled overhead, while songbirds called from the bushes. Earlier that day, a skunk had excavated a small dig below a tree stump no more than 10 feet away from where the researchers were working, and then apparently curled up for a nap. But even here, channel catfish — one of the biggest threats to Yaqui catfish — had infiltrated. When Hafen got his eDNA results months later, they would show that almost every- where in Mexico where he found Yaqui catfish, he’d found channel catfish, too. “In the past, there were no exotics in the (river) basins,” Varela-Romero explained. “When the (Mexican) government started building reservoirs, federal officers had a brilliant idea of buying exotic fishes like channel catfish and putting them in the reservoirs, to give to the people the opportunity to eat fish,” even though, he said, everyone already ate the native ones. As these introduced species have pushed the Yaqui catfish to extinction at lower elevations, the species survives higher up, in hard-to-reach, isolated mountain headwaters. There, though, illegal drug grows threaten the fish. Varela-Romero said that in the past, while sampling Sonoran rivers for native fish, he came upon poppies growing wild on the banks. Their seeds had washed down from opium grows. “The problem is that money from the U.S. pays for those activities,” he observed. The economics can get personal: Varela-Romero’s father’s car was once stolen in Hermosillo, Sonora. It turned up months later in Yuma, Arizona, after being used to run drugs across the border. Because the Yaqui catfish is dying out, Varela-Romero said, “you develop some kind of love. … We call it cariño en español.” He always got excited when he saw a Yaqui catfish in the wild, wonder- ing each time how many more he

32 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS might see. Today, though, he had The men excitedly hauled a the planet really mattered. no luck. The catfish, if any were catfish to shore in a bucket and Only later did it occur to me nearby, stayed hidden. gently transferred it to a shallow that perhaps, if I couldn’t tell the rectangular container. The small, difference between a Yaqui catfish IF HAFEN AND HIS TEAM repre- soot-gray animal burrowed into the and a channel catfish, that was sent cutting-edge fisheries research, corners, seeking an escape with its because they communicate in with fussy portable filters and slick mouth and barbels. We crowded the language of fish, not primates sampling methods, Varela-Romero over it, and I found myself getting — that their seeming interchange- Using a boat Chuck Minckley has embodies an older approach to unexpectedly emotional, looking owned since he was a teenager, ability said more about my limited natural history, his expertise at what might be one of the last of he and Thomas Hafen check understanding than it did about earned through hours spent study- an under-studied, barely known netting for Yaqui catfish that their limited distinctions. escaped into a holding pond at ing different species, counting bent species, trying to escape from a plas- Rancho San Bernardino in Sonora, spines, describing the exact color tic box. I felt foolish a few minutes Mexico (left). THE SAME ECONOMIC of scales, trying to think like a fish. later, when Varela-Romero checked PRESSURES that push Yaqui A catfish that was pulled from a Another biologist on the trip, Chuck its pit tag and announced that it was net at Cuenca Los Ojos was at catfish toward extinction today Minckley, was an original member actually a Yaqui-channel hybrid. I first thought to be a Yaqui. After have wreaked havoc on local of the Desert Fishes Council, a wondered whether the loss of a they checked its pit tag, however, human communities for centuries. they realized it was a hybrid of nonprofit research organization species that looked just like one of a Yaqui and a channel catfish Even as American and Mexican for desert fish biologists in the the most common fish species on (below). researchers try to save the species, U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Minckley tribal nations such as the Pascua missed the first meeting because Yaqui are working to re-establish he was drafted for military service control over their natural resources, in the Vietnam War, but he hasn’t including the Yaqui catfish. missed one since. Now in his 70s, “If we had a tapestry of our he waded slowly down the canyon history on this side of the border, it as Hafen’s crew sampled the water, would probably be missing a bunch pausing to rest at times on an of big chunks,” Robert Valencia, overturned bucket. His ancient then-chairman (now vice chairman) black Lab, Shadow, raced happily of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, told me. through the shallows, huffing like Valencia and I met in a conference a freight train. room at the Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s Varela-Romero and Minckley administrative offices, about 20 are determined to catch and breed minutes away from downtown Yaqui catfish in Mexico as quickly as Tucson. Valencia, who is in his 60s, possible, even though no one really has dark hair and a thick salt-and- knows how. It’s easy to read their pepper mustache. He wore what he efforts as a comedy of errors, with called his “end of summer” shirt — fish found, lost, misidentified. In a red Hawaiian-print button-down. reality, with low budgets and impro- To Valencia, the tribe’s history is vised tools, the researchers are learn- too important to lose. “We can’t let ing how to work with the species. things go,” he said. “As a matter of The problem is that their learning fact, we’re doing the opposite. We’re curve has crashed into an extinc- looking at — on both sides of the tion curve. After years of neglect, border — what are important parts the Yaqui catfish is rare enough that of history we don’t know, or we need every fish matters, making it hard to to know more?” experiment with ways to breed them, At one point, Valencia wrote or even to keep them alive. down a Yaqui word for me in my One afternoon in Mexico, the notebook, after I struggled to sound researchers attempted to recover it out myself. “What it means is, ‘In eight Yaqui catfish caught in Cajón the beginning,’ ” he explained. “We Bonito, which had escaped from have to always remember what we some netting in a holding pond. had in the beginning. To me, that’s This involved using a broken kayak number one.” paddle to maneuver a rowboat, To Valencia, the catfish ties which Minckley had purchased as Yaqui peoples to the Río Yaqui a teenager to take duck hunting, region, in part by embodying the out to the middle of the pond, and importance of water to the tribes. pulling up yards of soggy netting. As the flow of Borderlands water

JULY 2020 33 and species has been curtailed, so, any,” Valencia said. “We always to create family-based “micro- too, has the movement of Yaqui insist on directing whatever effort hatcheries.” Partly, this is for peoples across their ancestral lands. it is, whether research, whether cultural reasons — the Yaqui catfish Considered Mexican by the programs, because what we found is a traditional food — but it would United States, the Pascua Yaqui over the years, if we let other people also be part of the Yaqui pueblos’ Tribe only gained federal recogni- do things for us — it fails, every single long battle for the Mexican govern- tion in 1978, despite its presence on instance.” Yaqui catfish conser- ment to honor their treaty rights, both sides of the border since long vation seems to fit this pattern: In which include extensive control of before the United States or Mexico 2015, after three years of applica- water and other natural resource existed. In 1964, the tribe secured tions, Valencia won a grant from The northern Sonoran landscape in the Río Yaqui basin. Currently, the land in southern Arizona that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to as seen at the Cuenca Los Ojos Mexico’s dams force Yaqui commu- San Bernardino Ranch, just south would become its reservation create monitoring and educational of the San Bernardino National nities in Mexico to rely on water from the Bureau of Land Manage- programs about Río Yaqui fish on Wildlife Refuge (right). contaminated by agricultural ment, after surviving the Yaqui both sides of the U.S-Mexico border. runoff laden with pesticides and Robert Valencia, then-chairman Wars, a persistent attempt — first Not long after, he found out about (now vice chairman) of the Pascua heavy metals. According to the by the Spanish government and the 2016 die-off of Yaqui catfish at Yaqui Tribe, who says the catfish Latin American Herald Tribune, more recently by Mexico — to kill the Kansas fish hatchery. ties Yaqui peoples to the Río Yaqui Mexico defied its own Supreme region, in part by embodying the off Yaqui tribes and use their land Working with the eight Yaqui importance of water to the tribes Court to build an aqueduct to pipe along the Río Yaqui for mining pueblos in Mexico, Valencia wants (below). Río Yaqui water to Sonora’s growing and large scale agriculture. “If you capital city of Hermosillo, further read about our history, there was ignoring Indigenous claims to the an unwritten extermination policy watershed and its natural resources, against our people in Río Yaqui,” including its fish. Valencia said. “They killed us, The Pascua Yaqui Tribe has shipped us off as slaves in Yucatán, already built microhatchery proto- did whatever they could.” People types. One sunny morning in were sent as far away as the Carib- September, I met James Hopkins bean and Morocco, never to return. (Algonquin and Métis), a law profes- In the late 1970s, Valencia’s sor at the University of Arizona who uncle, who was tribal chairman, directs the Yaqui Human Rights successfully fought to gain tribal Project Clinic and has legally repre- recognition from the U.S. govern- sented Yaqui pueblos in Mexico, in ment. Today, the Pascua Yaqui a parking lot near the Pascua Yaqui Reservation includes approxi- Tribe’s Casino del Sol. On roads mately 2,000 acres southwest made slick and puddled by recent of Tucson, bordered partly by rain, we drove together to Tortuga Tohono O’odham land and partly Ranch, a former cattle ranch that by the city’s growing sprawl. Yaqui the tribe now owns, to examine its people regularly move back and prototype aquaponics operations. forth across the U.S.-Mexico border, A hoop house held burbling tanks although that’s been harder since where luminous koi fish swirled the 9/11 terror attacks, Valencia under bright green vegetation. said. Valencia’s mother, who was Further efforts to raise Yaqui catfish born in the U.S., grew up in the were on hold for now, until more Yaqui pueblo of Tórim in Mexico. Yaqui catfish become available. But Valencia remembers her reminisc- even without the catfish, micro- ing about rivers “teeming with fish,” hatcheries of fish such as tilapia or before Mexico built three dams channel catfish could be important along the Río Yaqui. routes to nutritional independence On the one hand, the delayed for Yaqui families in Mexico. recognition of its sovereignty means “(Yaqui pueblos) want a clean, the tribe is only now addressing sustainable protein source,” quality-of-life issues that go back Hopkins said. “There’s a huge decades, Valencia said. But he sees infant mortality rate (in Mexico), advantages to its independence primarily because all their protein from the federal government. from the local area — fish, dairy “Because we weren’t entrenched, from local cows, goats, pigs — is we don’t have federal programs going to be carrying persistent that are based here; we didn’t want chemicals, mainly DDT.”

34 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS On the U.S. side of the border, Valencia would like the Pascua Yaqui Tribe to raise Yaqui catfish in captivity, in part for a commercial market. “It’s one of those things I think can be successful,” he said. “The people have some knowledge of the species itself.” Hopkins, though, expressed a more cynical reason for growing Yaqui catfish in microhatcheries. “Anything you’re trying to return back to nature, your plan has to fit with the larger state plan,” Hopkins said. For Arizona to take interest in the Yaqui catfish, there had to be a commercial value, such as a restaurant market for the fish, or an interest in sport fishing. “I’ve been transparent with people like Chuck Minckley and others, saying, ‘Look, if you bring the fish back, where’s it going to go?’ ” Hopkins told me. “It’s going to have to be a commodity in its own way.”

ONE WARM FALL DAY last September, I visited San Bernardino According to Myles Traphagen, the next time I drove through, those National Wildlife Refuge, a remote “We have a field biologist and GIS special- mountain views would be gone. landscape of rolling hills with a ist who previously worked at San So, too, might the springs that the backdrop of sharply angled moun- to always Bernardino, no environmental refuge’s fishes relied on. Without tains at the Río Yaqui headwaters analysis has been conducted on water, there would be no future in southeastern Arizona, where the remember the impacts of wall construction here for the Yaqui catfish. last Yaqui catfish in the U.S. were on the region’s water, or on its fish. I later called Bill Radke, who caught for the failed breeding effort. what we “Since there was no NEPA required, has managed San Bernardino for Traces of catfish eDNA still turn up no prior studies, we are essentially about two decades, and asked him in ponds here, although it’s uncer- had in the navigating in uncharted territory, whether falling groundwater levels tain whether that DNA is from with no baseline for what the final in the refuge might be just one more living fish, or the remains of dead beginning. effects might be,” Traphagen said. threat to the Yaqui catfish, or the ones. This is where the U.S. Fish Refuge staff declined to comment final nail in its fishy coffin. Radke and Wildlife Service would like to To me, that’s on the impacts of the border wall. would not comment on the effects reintroduce Yaqui catfish, if Mexico On my drive back to Tucson, of the border wall construction, but agrees. Up close, the ponds seemed number the clouds gathered into a gray he acknowledged that groundwa- peaceful: small, cattail-ringed comforter, trailing rain far to the ter levels have always been a big pools rippling in a rising breeze. one.” south. It was my favorite kind concern for the survival of fish at But now, the ponds them- of dappled desert weather, the the parched refuge. selves are endangered, collateral filtered light deepening the green “You almost have to end your damage in the Trump administra- on hillsides and softening the story that way, because I don’t tion’s determination to construct craggy mountains. In the distance know that any of us can say that a border wall before the Novem- I spotted a bright white post — a for sure,” Radke said. “What’s that ber election. Despite the COVID- historic border marker, rising adage about how far you can lean 19 pandemic, wall construction from the shrubs. Past that, the roof off a cliff before you fall? You don’t continues at a breakneck pace, of a ranch house in Mexico. Trucks know until you lean too far.” using local water to spray down passed me slowly on the dirt road, dusty roads and mix concrete. As spraying water to keep down the of this writing, Customs and Border dust. It took me a few minutes to Reporting for this story was Protection has not provided High realize why: They were preparing supported in part by the Fund for Country News with requested for the construction crews to arrive, Environmental Journalism of the groundwater use estimates. to build the border wall. Perhaps Society of Environmental Journalists.

JULY 2020 35 (continued from page 7) unhoused, who are experiencing member. When Siemens managed programs like these, which show a welfare checks or possible behavioral health issues, are much a downtown cafe, she used the stark contrast to the typical police overdoses. In 2017, such teams more likely to be the victims of service often. “I really don’t have response. This month, the Coalition answered 17% of the Eugene Police violence than the perpetrators.” the tools, and I think the police in for Police Accountability in Oakland Department’s overall call volume. CAHOOTS differs from other our community also don’t have the presented a final report to the This has saved the city, on average, mental health partnerships with tools” for people in crisis, she said. city council to begin its own pilot $8.5 million each year from 2014- the police in important ways: Staff “There really shouldn’t be one group program, MACRO, this summer. In 2017, according to the White Bird employ “unconditional positive of people who is expected to cover Denver, in May, Vinnie Cervantes Clinic. regard,” a phrase from psychology all of those bases, especially a group worked as a medic with the Denver Though CAHOOTS uses the that means complete support and of people who are weaponized and Alliance for Street Health Response, police department’s central dispatch, acceptance of the people they militarized. ... Their training shows which he also directs. It’s part of a it is distinct from the department. encounter, and the organization is them ‘that’s something I have to mutual aid nexus that emerged Employees do not carry guns or run as a “consensus collective,” rather respond to with force.’ ” during protests in the city over the wear uniforms; instead, they wear than a hierarchy. Every employee’s police killing of George Floyd in casual hoodies and drive vans with a voice carries equal weight. INCREASINGLY, COMMUNITY Minneapolis. Cervantes and others dove painted on the side. CAHOOTS’ Each crisis worker completes organizers are reaching out to treated protesters who were left methods are designed to prevent 500 hours of training in areas CAHOOTS, hoping to develop bleeding and bruised after police escalation, Black said. “If an officer including medical care, conflict similar programs. Since 2013, the fired off tear gas, rubber bullets and enters that situation with power, resolution and crisis counseling. city of Portland, Oregon, just a flash-bangs and pummeled them with authority, with that uniform Around 60% of CAHOOTS’ patients couple hours north of Eugene, has with batons. To Cervantes and and a command presence, that are homeless, and about 30% have seen a 60% increase of “unwanted others, it was yet another example situation is really likely to escalate.” severe or persistent mental illness. person” calls to 911, according of how quickly police resort to It’s a false assumption that “The patient that we’re serving is the to a Willamette Week analysis of excessive force. “Our community people experiencing a mental expert in their situation,” Black said. Portland Police Bureau data. In 2017, stepped up to collaborate and health crisis will respond violently, “They know that we’re a voluntary an Oregonian analysis found that create a network of support to Black said, and a police response resource and that we’re not going to 52% of arrests involved homeless solve a larger public safety crisis,” is often unnecessary. CAHOOTS take their rights away just because individuals, even though they Cervantes said. “That’s something fielded over 24,000 calls last we’ve shown up on scene.” comprise less than 3% of Portland’s we can take beyond protest.” year; less than 1% of them needed Dorothy Siemens, an artist who population. Policing and jails account for assistance from police, and no one grew up in Eugene and still lives In 2019, Portland City 30% of Denver’s overall budget. The has ever been seriously injured. there, said that she, her family Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty repurposing of those funds would “That type of mentality really and her friends all call CAHOOTS, and Street Roots, a homeless be a huge opportunity for collective contributes to the othering that rather than the police, when advocacy publication, introduced efforts like Denver Alliance, which has permitted oppression and they see someone in distress. Portland Street Response, a police resembles the CAHOOTS model. marginalization to persist,” Black The option makes her feel like alternative based on the CAHOOTS But no single model will work for said. “By and large, folks who are a more responsible community model. The pilot program, which every city, said Cervantes. Each was officially approved and program needs to be adaptive and funded by the city last November, reflect its community; Eugene, after Vinnie Cervantes, director of Denver Alliance for Street Health Response, talks to people about new programs and lawsuits stemming from police response to protests in Denver. focused on a southeast Portland all, is much smaller and has a whiter Carl Payne / High Country News neighborhood where 911 calls were population than Denver, Oakland on the rise. The program is now on or Portland. “It’s really important hold because of the coronavirus, that it is community-based, by but Hardesty hopes to get on the people that look like us and that ground soon. As the city considers have our shared experience,” said cutting its police budget, Hardesty Cervantes, who is Latino. Otherwise, is pushing for $4.8 million to go the program will only replicate the towards Portland Street Response same systemic problems. instead. “We are long overdue for In June, Cervantes’ organization investments in police alternatives, helped start a pilot program in including Portland Street partnership with the city of Denver, Response,” Hardesty, the first Black called Support Team Assisted woman elected to Portland’s city Response. Cervantes hopes to council, said in a statement to High develop a full-fledged program by Country News. “There’s no doubt 2021. But, for now, on the streets, we need to reimagine what it looks “we’re literally seeing our own proof like to get the right responder to the of concept of how we can take right situation at the right time.” ownership of crisis ourselves, and Nationwide protests have have solutions,” he said. “We don’t spurred renewed urgency for have to view everyone as a threat.”

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38 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS JULY 2020 39 (continued from page 12) Lopez, who joined the strikes at Allan Bros. from the Skagit Valley in western Washington, tapping into a long history of farmworker soli- Knowing a bit more about how strikes worked, advised striking workers. Columbia Legal darity in the Yakima Valley. In the 1960s and Lopez made sure that the workers stood together Services helped workers file an unfair labor 1970s, agricultural industry organizers east on their walkout until the final decision was charge with the National Labor Relations of the Cascades found common cause with made to declare a strike and form a picket line. Board against Allan Bros. Fruit Company. Allan the emerging national “Movimiento,” which “I’m not the guy that started the walkout,” Lopez Bros. CEO Miles Kohl contested the charge included the likes of César Chávez and Reies said. “It was my job to support my co-workers.” in interviews with local news organizations. Tijerina, and began forming unions and commu- Once the workers at Allan Bros. took the Neither Allan Bros. nor Matson Fruit Company nity support groups among local Hispanic leap, others across the valley felt empowered to responded to requests for comment from High agricultural workers. Organized labor in the follow. Eventually, workers from six other pack- Country News. area has since dwindled. But vestiges of the ing facilities in the Yakima Valley went on strike. Eilish Villa Malone, an attorney for the early farmworker movements remain, including Rosa León, a worker at Matson Fruit Company, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project who works Radio KDNA, a public Spanish language news said that the lack of social distancing within the primarily with immigrant agricultural work- station — one of the few places local workers facility, and management’s practice of selling ers, also took part, rising at 4 a.m. to organize could get basic information on COVID-19. — rather than giving — masks to workers, moti- delivery of meals, coffee and supplies to strik- After leading the initial walkout on May 7, vated her to join the strike. “COVID-19 gave us ers before and during her normal workday. “At Olivares stepped back to let other voices take the power to speak up,” León said. “I’ve been first, I was just out with my friends in solidarity, over. “The hardest part was to dare to do it,” said there four years, and never before have workers then all of a sudden I was completely engrossed,” Olivares, who credits her mother with teaching organized.” said Villa Malone. As she traveled between strike her the importance of speaking out, and God for As the movement gathered momentum, sites, she also educated workers — particularly making her a courageous woman. “But once you community members, union representatives the undocumented ones — about immigration dare to jump, you have others there to support and nonprofit legal centers joined the cause. rights. you.” Familias Unidas por La Justicia (Families United After 22 days, striking packers at Allan Bros. One of those voices belonged to Agustín for Justice), an independent farmworker union started to return to work, with negotiations underway between a newly formed workers’ committee and ownership. Just as she was the first to walk off, Olivares also wanted to be the first to return to work. She was welcomed back respectfully, and the strike officially ended the next day. “COVID-19 gave us the power Back on the job, Olivares was given gloves and a face shield. Line speeds on the conveyor to speak up.” belt had been slowed down to ease the work and allow more distance between the workers. Olivares appreciated the changes, but worried that the shield she was given could get caught in the machinery and injure her. She brought her concerns to a manager with whom she’d been at odds in the past, who came back 30 minutes later with a different option. The quick response felt like a major improvement and a sign that workers were more likely to be heard in the future. Workers at all seven packing plants have now returned to work after gaining concessions on better pay, safety and the formation of worker committees to advocate on behalf of their peers. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, D, also released new workplace safety standards for agricultural workers after protests at the Capitol in Olympia and a lawsuit against the state Department of Health and the Department of Labor and Industries. “Everybody needed a little push — owners, management, peers, even those that didn’t join the strike,” Olivares said. “We pushed ourselves to change; now everyone is better for this push.” Outside the Yakima Valley town of Naches, a group of women picket at the edge of Highway 12 during the first week of the strike at Allan Bros Packing Inc. Rodrigo Rentería-Valencia

40 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS PERSPECTIVE

Toward full-time wildland firefighting

More permanent opportunities would give many of us stability. Los Padres National Forest firefighter Jameson Springer watches a controlled burn on the so-called “Rough Fire” in BY ANASTASIA SELBY Sequoia National Forest, California, in August 2015. Max Whittaker

WHEN I BEGAN WORKING as a hotshot fire- stability and improve the health of our forests to the main perks of government employment: fighter for the Forest Service in 2001, I was hired and grasslands, as well as help contain the health insurance, paid time off and retirement as a part-time, temporary worker. At the time, volatile fire seasons we’ve seen in recent years. packages. Access to health care should be essen- over half the crew was made up of part-time Adding more permanent firefighters to the roster tial for firefighters, and many current seasonal employees. Today, the Forest Service employs would have several effects, all of them far-reach- employees would be happy to trade winters off approximately 10,000 wildland firefighters, but ing and significant. The most obvious would be for steady employment and benefits. Meanwhile, still less than half of them are permanent full- the year-round staffing of crews, which currently year-round employment could help stabilize the time workers. operate on a seasonal basis. Forest Service budget, clear its $5.2 billion main- When the Forest Service was formed in Less obvious are the ways in which this tenance backlog and, over time, create healthier the early 20th century, it had only a handful shift could change the fundamental culture of forests and grasslands, increasing carbon sinks of forest rangers. If a fire broke out, men were wildland firefighting. Many firefighters travel and leading to less destructive wildfires. pulled out of saloons and other public places to far from their home base during the winter, and When I worked as a seasonal firefighter, it fight it. Since then, the agency has ballooned in there’s a high turnover rate, with many leaving felt like my life was on pause in the winters. I size, and its wildland firefighting has changed the profession altogether after only a couple of eagerly waited for the start of fire season. Iron- dramatically. Much of the weight of firefighting years. As a seasonal worker, I would have been ically, that signified stability. If my peers and I now falls on the shoulders of the Forest Service. supported by full-time work and the benefits had been employed full-time, we would have The agency already helps manage 500 million that could come with it. Of course, the impact of worked better together, gained a deeper under- acres of land, but it’s also called in whenever the long hours would have to be mitigated, but standing of our local jurisdictions and had more fires get big enough to require national support. financial security would help. opportunities for training and education. We Half its annual budget is spent on wildfires, with There’s also an ecological intimacy that also would have been insured and felt more spending increasing exponentially even as the can be developed by staying on the forest for respected as employees. Ultimately, the decision agency’s overall budget remains nearly static. the winter. Eliminating the transient nature to grant the Forest Service increased funding This spending eats into other Forest Service of seasonal positions could integrally connect to support more permanent employees could responsibilities, such as fuel management and firefighters to their local forests, aiding in the lead to a more positive outcome, not only for the mitigation, maintenance and the tending of development of local fire regimes and strength- agency and its employees, but for the ecological forest and grassland health. ening relationships with other local agencies, systems that are integral to our survival. The unpredictable nature of wildfires, both government and nonprofit. It could also longer fire seasons and the increased devel- increase employee retention, decrease training Anastasia Selby is currently working on a narra- opment of housing and communities in fire- costs and lower the risk of injury or death. Imag- tive nonfiction book, HOTSHOT, which describes prone areas makes predicting a yearly budget a ine, for example, local fire crews working with her time as a wildland firefighter and details the complex and sometimes impossible task. Shift- Indigenous populations and nonprofit groups history of forest management and Indigenous ing toward a full-time force is a move in the right to improve fire health year-round. land practices in the Western United States. She direction. It can increase firefighter security and Currently, seasonal employees lack access is based in Seattle.

JULY 2020 41 PERSPECTIVE true after quarantine. Oil and gas companies cannot be the agency’s only economic concern. The BLM coor- dinates with hundreds of local communities across the West. In 2015, the agency identified 374,000 jobs and $88 billion in economic output Bureau of Lost Management tied to public lands. The benefits were spread across a broad range of land uses, including outdoor recreation, such as hunting, fishing Narrow interests now dominate the agency’s direction. and hiking. Local workforces depend on public lands in ways people might not expect. The land BY JIM KENNA also provides field sites for scientists and heri- tage sites for Indigenous nations. Over 97% of BLM employees live in communities adjacent to the lands they manage. Engag- ing broadly with elected officials and tribes, state I’VE SPENT OVER 40 YEARS — spanning agencies, county commissioners, interest groups seven presidential administrations and across “Oil and gas and user groups must continue to be their priority, five Western states — serving the American just as it was when I was a state director. public. Nearly all of that time was with the companies cannot Careful checking of facts on the ground, Bureau of Land Management and Department and dialogue with both neighbors and experts, of the Interior. I believe that Americans value be the agency’s only helped us sense the public interest of a diverse their public lands: They see them as part of being society. The current administration seems to American, and they expect to see them passed concern.” value short-term expediency over seeking and intact to the next generation. honestly representing community knowledge The BLM’s mission is not ideological and and opinions. does not give preference to certain land-users. A century ago, a rock in Wyoming called Its legal mandate calls for managing public lands Teapot Dome gave its name to a notorious scan- for a variety of uses, treating energy generation recently in the Western Arctic and around Chaco dal. Hoping to create a strategic underground and conservation equally. But now, the agency Canyon in New Mexico. oil reserve, then-Interior Secretary Albert Fall is losing sight of that mission. I worry that the No urgent need drives this cavalier attitude skirted public scrutiny and leased drilling rights nation is on a path that will deeply embed toward the public. Oil companies already hold to two oil companies that he had financial ties private interests into public lands. about 10,000 unused drilling permits, yet they with. After years of congressional investigations Jeopardizing millions of acres of federal have swept up roughly 42 million more acres in and court battles, Fall was convicted of bribery. lands and skewing land-use plans to maximize nine planning areas across the American West The current situation is not perfectly analo- certain uses — with little interest in, or acknowl- and Alaska. If these lands are important to the gous to the 1920s, but it does provide us with a edgment of, meaningful public participation — nation’s energy portfolio, a focused case should cautionary tale. Public awareness and involve- goes decidedly against the BLM’s mission. be made for them. ment are good hedges against corruption. Like most of my colleagues, I felt a profound Why the push for leasing now, during a After decades of service, I’m deeply disap- responsibility to engage in public dialogue and worldwide oil glut? Leasing now will lock in low pointed by the direction the present BLM leader- involve communities. This is how we ensured financial returns for taxpayers and lower reve- ship has taken. It saddens me to think about how that we were making the best-possible, best-in- nues for state and local governments. If the Inte- dispirited many dedicated colleagues now feel. formed decisions on behalf of present and future rior Department really wanted to help oil-patch Many of them have scientific backgrounds and generations. It’s disappointing to see today’s workers, it would promote the job of cleaning up they know the present trajectory is not sustain- leadership devaluing iconic landscapes, dimin- abandoned wells. able. Nearly all BLM employees are passionate ishing public participation, and catering to the Secretary Bernhardt panders to oil and gas in their desire to serve the public. We should financial ambitions of narrow, favored interests. interests by reducing royalties, handing out respect them in doing so. Since he took office, Interior Secretary David small business loans meant for local businesses, Let’s all hope that the current BLM and Inte- Bernhardt’s aggressive agenda has favored corpo- and leasing millions of acres for pennies on the rior leadership listens to the people who are in rate interests. This push has continued despite dollar. His actions — carried out under the cover touch with local communities and knowledge- the pandemic, ignoring public outcry against of a national emergency — do not serve taxpayers, able about public lands. Ultimately, let us hope despoiling cherished Western landscapes. state and local governments, or the public interest. the landscapes we love as Americans are handed The BLM has recently moved ahead with Instead, the Interior Department should be to our children and grandchildren intact. oil and gas lease sales on more than 200 thou- assuring the American people that our coun- sand acres of public land in Wyoming, Nevada, try’s public lands will remain open to the public. Jim Kenna retired as the California state director Montana and Colorado despite the oil market Americans should know that their public lands for the Bureau of Land Management in 2015 after glut. The pandemic has made it easier for the will provide open space for families to safely 40 years of public service. He is currently based in agency to sidestep the public comment process recreate, support local economies and contrib- Medford, Oregon, and serves on the board of the for projects in extremely sensitive areas, most ute to clean air and water. This should be just as Conservation Lands Foundation.

42 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS REVIEW

Post-apocalyptic feminism

In Lauren Beukes’ Afterland, only women survive. Can they rebuild?

BY KIMI EISELE

IN THE ANNALS OF HISTORY and literature, — and America itself — are portrayed as barren it is usually girls who dress as boys — or women and lawless, where women brandish tire irons, as men — to survive in a man’s world. Joan of Arc, guns, knives, lies and apologies to survive. This Sarah Edmonds and Malinda Blalock did so to “frontier” becomes a metaphor for life-after-pan- fight in the wars of their time. Many women writ- demic. Whenever the writing slows, the reader ers have used traditionally male pen names to can see the landscapes. “In the early morning free their work from gendered misconceptions light, the highway is a gray crayon swipe through and reach wider audiences. the salt flats crossing into Utah, craggy moun- But in Lauren Beukes’ new novel, Afterland, tains reflected in the water,” Beukes writes, set in 2023, in the wake of a global pandemic, a comparing the view to an arid stretch between Michelle Urra / HCN boy must present as a girl to cross the United Johannesburg and Cape Town. She reminds us States and eventually return home to Johan- that it’s not just the Western U.S., but the whole nesburg, South Africa. The boy is 12-year-old world, that is now ravaged; everyone is squinting Miles, son of Cole, an artist who loses her Amer- through an unclear dawn. for too much too soon? The story takes place ican husband to an influenza-like disease called At times, complexities are lost in the novel’s only three years after the virus takes hold. Maybe human culgoa virus, which morphs into an quick pace. Cole and Billie’s rivalry remains the matriarchy will come to Afterland in time. aggressive prostate cancer fatal to most boys somewhat opaque, and we see women’s roles We do encounter a self-sufficient commune and men. Miles, fortunately, is immune. framed — still — by the patriarchy. There’s the in Salt Lake City — “a bunch of anarchists, The novel opens as Cole and Miles — now criminal life, with its unscrupulous employers. socialists, off-the-gridders, and other free radi- “Mila” — flee the California hospital compound There’s the sex worker life, finally legal. And cals” who turn gardens into farm allotments. where they’ve ended up after coming to the there’s the nun’s life, where “sisters” empty their “Some people see what’s happened as a chance States to care for Miles’ cousin. Their getaway is hearts by apologizing for their transgressions. to reinvent themselves,” says Vana, a meteorol- orchestrated by Cole’s sister, Billie. When Cole There’s nothing wrong with sex workers or nuns, ogist. In front of the house sits a tractor, painted finds out that Billie wants to sell Miles’ sperm but I wanted to see a wider panoply of options with the words “The Future Is Female” — but on the black market, however, she attacks her for sexual and spiritual expression. “Female” has been crossed out and replaced with sister and escapes with her son. Together, they Cole and Miles eventually join the sisters, “Fucked.” embark on a road trip across a changed America. disguising themselves all the way to Miami, Cole and Miles/Mila don’t stay long before Reading about a fictional pandemic’s after- where Mila must choose between the group’s they hit the road again, danger pressing down. math in the middle of a real one is eerie. After- vision of redemption and her own mother’s. Perhaps if they’d stayed a bit longer, they’d have land’s virus is worse than the one that causes Afterland becomes a fierce love story, one that glimpsed a future that was female, and not so COVID-19 — it’s much deadlier, and it infects at maps the treacherous roads a mother will travel “fucked” — a place where women work together least 5 billion people. But there are unsettling to protect her child. Beukes gestures to the to find solutions, feed one another, provide parallels, from the virus’ mysterious machina- layered dynamics of gender and race (Cole is homes and grieve the dead. This may not be the tions to the rapid infection rates. Cole’s relatives, white and her son/daughter is Black), but prior- future they are traveling to, but I hope it’s where exposed on a trip to Disneyland, pass sniffly days itizes the story’s action and momentum. the rest of us end up. in a hotel room, and some of them eventually I often wanted the story to meander along contract the cancer. Around them, airports, side roads and linger in the homesteads, to look shops and cafes close. “You can’t imagine how at how women were gardening, doctoring and much the world can change in six months,” Cole building to keep society functioning. We see Afterland thinks. “You just can’t.” women undertakers and soldiers, but I longed Lauren Beukes Beukes, a South African novelist, propels for a post-male society that pushed past patri- 416 pages, 416 pages, the story forward with stolen cars, flying bullets archal structures, offering new models for prob- hardcover: $14.99 and rest stops in quirky communities. The West lem-solving, safety and well-being. Am I asking Mulholland Books, 2020.

JULY 2020 43 Lauren Crow / HCN

SHERIDAN ALFORD’S LOVE media prompts. They hope to boost OF BIRD-WATCHING stems the visibility of Black nature enthu- from a simple fact: “Anybody can siasts, highlight the value of racial do it.” Old or young, through expen- #BlackBirdersWeek diversity and promote dialogue sive binoculars or with the naked within the larger (and largely white) eye (or ear), in a bucolic park or takes on racism birding community. from a city window, anyone can High Country News caught connect to the avian world around Sheridan Alford and the stand ‘against police brutality.’ up with Alford the day before them. Alford, a graduate student the launch, during a tumultuous in natural resources at the Univer- BY EMILY BENSON weekend of nationwide protests sity of Georgia, in Athens, Georgia, over police violence against studies African American partici- Black people. In Western cities, pation in bird-watching, trying to from Albuquerque, New Mexico, understand why some Black people to Denver and Seattle, peaceful engage in the activity and others daytime protests provoked by the don’t. killing of George Floyd in Minne- She’s also one of the co-found- New York’s Central Park, announc- with that scenario,” Alford said in a apolis gave way to overnight chaos, ers of a social media push, #Black- ing that she was calling the police recent interview. In response, she as police fired tear gas and rubber BirdersWeek, which launched on “to tell them there’s an African and other members of a grassroots bullets into crowds, and buildings May 31. The campaign was sparked American man threatening my group, @BlackAFinSTEM, who and cars were destroyed. Officials by the viral video in which a white life.” work in science or related fields, responded with curfews, emer- woman threatened a Black birder in “I think a lot of us identified decided to organize a week of social gency declarations and National

44 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS Guard deployments. The organiz- It’s happening right at the same peoples’ voices to be heard. A lot ers of Black Birders Week addressed time as these nationwide of times, someone will say that the synchrony of their project and protests. they’ve created a safe space or, the civil unrest directly on Twitter: And there was no way we could’ve they’ll say, like, “Oh, yeah, we want “We want it to be clear that we stand predicted that! to hear what you have to say.” But with the protesters fighting against then when you actually step out police brutality even as we organize Do you see the initiative and the and say it, it’s not received well, or a protest specific to being #Blackin- protests as parallel? Or not? it’s discounted or discarded. Nature,” they wrote. I see them in parallel. … As a Black The climate It’s really just about voices and This conversation has been person, I feel for my people, within accountability and understanding edited for length and clarity. the riots and the protests and all the is shifting that everyone, especially Black things that are happening across people, are human beings, and we Who should participate in Black the country. And I think it all just to where would like the same treatment as Birders Week? Who is it for? further affirms and identifies what everyone else. It is for Black birders. But who can it is to be a Black person in America. a lot of the participate? Anybody and every- People need a break from a lot What do you hope people body, and we encourage everybody of the hurt that they’re feeling. I acts against watching or participating in to participate! We love seeing the know a lot of my counterparts are Black Birders Week will take support. When you’re trying to fight like, I’m not going to get on social people of away from it? for something that you believe in, media today, I’m going to take the I think that one of the biggest take- sometimes you just want to know day to myself. I think providing this color or aways will be to kind of disprove or that someone else is in your corner, uplifting and celebratory week will muddle the generic stereotype of fighting that same fight with you. give people that break that they Black people what a birder or a bird-watcher is. We are not excluding anyone. need to mentally gather themselves A lot of times on bird walks, The whole purpose is to highlight as a lot of these racially charged and are being the people on the walk will auto- and showcase Black birders, and very heated discussions are being matically look to the men in the anybody can do that. had all across the country. filmed, and group for answers. … So it’s always You need the heat, but you also important to be like, actually, no, Why is the Black Birders Week need something to offset that some- they are the woman said that, or actually, initiative important at this times. I feel like that’s what Birders no, this Black person actually moment? Week will provide. available to knows a lot about this bird; to just At this point, things are popping up kind of change the narrative about in cities around the country that are It seems like these are two the general what not only a Black birder is, but either racially driven or stereotyp- different ways to respond to the what a Black scientist is. ically driven, prejudice, whichever same thing — systemic racism public — word you would like to use. The — two different ways to try to It seems like birding in particular climate is shifting to where a lot of dismantle that. a lot of is well-suited to this initiative. the acts against people of color or Right. Two sides of the same coin; I definitely agree. The reason I love Black people are being filmed, and really, the same side of the same people are it is because it’s so accessible. they are available to the general coin. It’s just different ways of You can literally bird watch on public —a lot of people are now hitting it at different angles, and now seeing your way to work every day. … Bird seeing what some people have all of it can only help, at the end of watching is simply the observation experienced their entire lives. the day. what some of birds, whether you do that from But we think that it’s very your house, whether you go to a important to highlight the work It feels like this campaign is people have park specifically to do it, whether that people are actually doing and a celebration of the diversity you have binoculars or you’re just kind of drive that conversation to, within the birding community — experienced looking at the biggest bird you can yes, look at us, and please acknowl- is that right? see. edge the hardship we go through I would say celebration, as well as a their entire — but as you acknowledge those safe space. Because not everything How’s the reception been so far? hardships, also look at what we’ve is peaches and roses, and there are lives. The reception has been amazing been doing in our research, or what dialogues that need to be had. … and astounding. We’re all just really we’ve been doing in our commu- Hopefully, we’ll be able to touch grateful, and really appreciative, nities to better the climate as a on some of the issues that people and glad that people are looking whole. So I think this week kind of are truly feeling in their hearts and for it; it seems to be something that fell exactly where it needed to, as far kind of hash things out. a lot of people didn’t know they as time frame. needed. What do people need to hear? The biggest thing is just allowing

JULY 2020 45 Heard Around the West Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram.

BY BETSY MARSTON

MONTANA supposed to celebrate.” For Barr, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously that’s Jan. 17, when the sunrise goes observed that “the very rich … are back to what it was on the solstice. different than you and me.” He didn’t And because visits to town — an add that it’s because some of them 8-mile ski trip each way — can be own helicopters, but apparently stressful, he celebrates his return helicopters do make their owners by watching a favorite movie and feel special, perhaps even entitled to eating a good meal: “Woohoo! Big break a few laws. Two friends riding party time.” Rule 4 says: “Embrace horses through Montana’s Bob the grumpiness,” because some- Marshall Wilderness recently were times it helps to complain about, surprised to find a couple fishing say, endless snowfall. Fortunately, close to a helicopter that was conve- Rule 5 provides his antidote for niently parked on a sandbar. It’s irritability: watching movies. Barr illegal to fly or land a helicopter in owns 357 movies, and especially designated wilderness, so one rider enjoys “fluff-oriented” ones like asked the man if it was his helicopter. The Princess Bride and Love, Actu- The man replied, “Yeah, nice way to ally, as well as Bollywood specta- go, ha.” When the rider then asked, cles like Bride and Prejudice. About “What makes you think that’s OK to 20 years ago, Barr added a movie park it in the wilderness?” the man room to his cabin, furnished with a replied, “We are below the high-wa- comfortable chair for himself, plus ter line. It’s OK. Please move along, “two other chairs with the idea that and if there’s any problem you have Sienna Gonzales / HCN I’d invite people up. And I never do.” our tail numbers.” The rider, who He’s a happy man. would only give his name as John “for fear of retribution,” found that expecting to find a seriously ill been the only full-time resident THE WEST answer insufficient, reports the driver inside. Instead, he discov- of Gothic, a former mining town When Yellowstone National Park Hungry Horse News. “The conver- ered a 5-year-old named Adrian, almost 10,000 feet above sea level, was still closed due to COVID-19, sation became heated,” according whose head barely reached the top just outside Crested Butte. In the an impatient woman sneaked in to John, and the helicopter couple of the steering wheel. Adrian had 1970s, he started measuring snow to photograph the hot springs. But “thought it best to leave.” Helicopter a perfectly reasonable story: He levels “because he was bored.” That while walking backward near Old owners Sam Schwerin and his wife, was driving to see his sister in Cali- inspired his first rule of success- Faithful to get the perfect shot, Sara, who is on the advisory board of fornia, where he planned to buy a fully living alone: “Keep track of reports Big Sky Town Crier, she Montana State University, later had a Lamborghini, because that’s what something,” whether it’s the rain- “tumbled into a thermal feature.” public-relations firm release a state- you do when your stubborn mother fall or the birds outside your house. Burned and probably embarrassed, ment about the incident, which the won’t buy one for you. “He might Because once you start doing she drove 50 miles before park Forest Service says is under investi- have been short on the purchase that, he said, you become part of a rangers intercepted her and called gation. The statement said the Boze- amount,” reports CBS News, “as he network of people doing the same in a helicopter to fly her to a hospi- man couple thought they’d landed only had $3 in his wallet. thing. Over the decades, Barr’s tal in Idaho. No word on how the outside the wilderness and not on snowpack records have informed unnamed woman fared, but last fall, the South Fork of the Flathead. COLORADO many studies of climate change. a tourist staying at the Old Faithful Who better to give tips on life Rule 2 is “Keep a routine,” so that Inn suffered a similar fate. Out on UTAH under quarantine than that master even if you forget what day it is, a stroll one night, poking around A highway patrolman just outside of social isolation, Billy Barr? For “you know what time it is.” Rule with a flashlight, he tripped into a Ogden, Utah, pulled over a swerv- almost 50 years, Barr told the 3 says to “celebrate the stuff that hot spring near the geyser’s cone ing Dodge Journey recently, Mountain West News Bureau, he’s matters, rather than the stuff you’re and suffered severe burns.

46 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS JULY 2020 47 119 Grand Avenue PO Box 1090 Paonia, CO 81428

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#IAM THE WEST SUNNY DOOLEY Navajo storyteller Chil Chil Tah, New Mexico

For 35 years I’ve been a storyteller, but there is no Navajo word for “storyteller.” That’s an imported word. I just grew up always being told reasons why things are the way they are and reasons why we do what we do in the proper manner. I personally was not aware that those were “stories.” A story at its core, at its heart, is healing. When a person is ailing, they step into a story and that is either the blessed way or the unblessed way. Cable Hoover / HCN Cable Hoover

Do you know a Westerner with a great story? Let us know on social.