On July 21, President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to run in his place, launching her to the forefront of potential Democratic nominees. Harris’ term as VP hasn’t produced many significant policy outcomes of her own, but her experience as a California senator and attorney general, as well as her 2020 presidential campaign, point to a consistent record of pro-climate, pro-environmental policies and an evolved understanding of tribal land issues. Should she eventually assume the Oval Office, her career to date signals a likely continuation of the West’s Biden-era gains in the protection of public lands, water and wildlife as well as support for tribal sovereignty.  

“We couldn’t be more excited,” said Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s lands-protection program. Harris worked with the organization on bills to expand California’s public lands, increase access to nature and develop community incentives for wildfire prevention. “She understood the totality of these issues, and that gives us great confidence.”

Over the past four years, the Biden administration reinstated protections for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest and conserved more than 41 million acres of public land. It passed the climate-forward Inflation Reduction Act, which was hailed as a windfall for domestic clean energy jobs and a once-in-a-generation wealth transfer to historically marginalized communities. The record bears a striking resemblance to Harris’ own platform for president, which also pursued environmental justice and sought an end to fossil fuels on public lands.

“This was the most impactful one-term presidency on public lands, climate change and environmental justice,” Manuel said. Harris, who was born in Oakland and spent much of her career in California, was also able to provide the Biden administration with insight into regional issues. “A Westerner leading on all these issues is very significant.” 

Prior to joining Biden’s ticket, Harris was best known as a Golden State prosecutor. As California’s attorney general, Harris won multiple settlements against corporate polluters, including a $44 million settlement from the owners of a container ship that spilled 53,000 gallons of oil into the San Francisco Bay. She secured multimillion-dollar deals with oil companies BP, ARCO and ConocoPhillips for negligent monitoring of hazardous materials in gas station storage tanks, and she was part of the team that held Volkswagen accountable for bypassing air pollution regulations, eventually earning more than $86 billion in penalties for the state. However, her claim that she pursued polluters while working in the San Francisco DA office has come under scrutiny.

In the Senate, she co-sponsored bills to develop national wildlife corridors, divert revenue from energy development to national parks and further climate equity by calculating policy impacts on frontline communities. She voted to protect the Antiquities Act and the Great American Outdoors Act, as well as to halt drilling in the Arctic and pass a public-lands package that conserved 2 million acres of land and water. Over the course of four years, she earned multiple perfect scores from the League of Conservation Voters.

Harris’ track record with Indigenous affairs over her decades working in politics is more varied. As state attorney general, she created the first Indian Child Welfare Act Compliance Task Force to protect Native children. But she also opposed multiple tribal applications to put land into “trust” and thereby grow a tribe’s land base. During her time as attorney general, Harris’ office also pursued a legal argument that could have had negative, precedent-setting impacts for tribes that have acquired land in trust. She argued that the Big Lagoon Rancheria, a tribe that was seeking to build a casino on 11 acres of trust land, improperly received that land from the federal government. The case had the potential to open past land-to-trust transfers across Indian Country to litigation, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately ruled against California.

Trump’s impact on Indian Country over four years

Since then, Harris has distanced herself from that position. When then-Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier asked her about this publicly in 2019, Harris said that as California’s attorney general it was her duty to represent the state’s interests, which did not necessarily reflect her own. “As California’s attorney general she was perceived as being more focused on states than tribes,” wrote Mark Trahant (Shoshone-Bannock) in an analysis for ICT. “But that has largely shifted.”

During her 2020 campaign for president, for example, Harris promised to assist tribes in restoring their lands and to make it easier for them to do so in the future. Her campaign also detailed specific policies and initiatives to advance Native voting rights, increase funding for the federal agencies serving tribal communities, and protect Native women and children, building on some of the legislation that she co-sponsored during her time in the Senate. Those bills largely focused on supporting Native health care and addressing the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples, along with the Native Voting Rights Act of 2019 and other legislation concerning tribal wildlife corridors and food sovereignty. 

As vice president, she’s been a part of an administration that has made considerable strides in integrating Indigenous knowledge and tribal priorities into public-lands management, as well as in providing funding for Native-led climate resilience projects and appointing multiple Indigenous people to leadership positions. She was the first sitting vice president to visit the Gila Indian River Community and do an interview with the Native news organization ICT. Asked by reporter Aliyah Chavez (Kewa Pueblo) about the administration’s goals and the decision to appoint Native leaders like Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo), Harris said, “I do believe that we are setting a new model for what the interaction and what the partnership should be [with tribes], always grounded in full appreciation and respect for tribal sovereignty.” 

The Democratic Party has less than a month to introduce any alternative candidates before the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19. Other potential frontrunners, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, appear to be rallying behind Harris as the primary candidate who could win the race against former President Donald Trump. 

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On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities and municipalities can punish people for sleeping outside, even when they have nowhere else to go. In the case of The City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the conservative majority sided in a 6-3 decision with Grants Pass, a small city in southern Oregon, finding that its broad public camping ban did not amount to cruel and unusual punishment

“This is the single most important case on homelessness in the past few decades,” said Nisha Kashyap, an attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. The organization, which joined several others in writing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting the rights of unhoused people in Johnson, called the decision “devastating”.

“The decision risks opening the door to a whole slew of punitive measures that cities could enact in an effort to just push unhoused people out of their communities,” Kashyap said.

“This is the single most important case on homelessness in the past few decades.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that fines imposed by Grants Pass on people sleeping outdoors did not “qualify as cruel and unusual,” and thus did not violate the Eighth Amendment.

Gorsuch referred to briefs written by California Governor Gavin Newson, mayors of several Western cities, and conservative-led states, wherein city officials wrote that they need to be able to enforce public camping bans as part of the “full panoply of tools in the policy toolbox” to “tackle the complicated issues of housing and homelessness.”

The ruling removes a narrow but critical provision that had barred some Western states from fining, ticketing and jailing homeless residents for public camping when adequate shelter was unavailable. The decision comes as large cities across the West, facing an escalating crisis in homelessness, have passed a slew of anti-camping ordinances. Following the Supreme Court’s decision, such cities could pass stricter anti-camping ordinances.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown dissented. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that Grants Pass’s camping ban effectively criminalizes people for sleeping, a “biological necessity.” She wrote that the majority focuses “exclusively on the needs of local governments and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”

The Court did not rule out the possibility that the Grants Pass ordinances violate other protections afforded to unhoused people under the Eighth Amendment, such as the Due Process Clause or Excessive Fines Clause, affirming that the decision is narrow and does not give cities unchecked power to criminalize homelessness, Kashyap said.

The Supreme Court also overturned Martin v. Boise, a previous 9^th Circuit decision that found that imposing civil penalties for camping when homeless residents lack access to any shelter amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. In the opinion, Gorsuch wrote that homelessness is not an involuntary condition and is not subject to Eighth Amendment protections.

“Anything that weakens Eighth Amendment protections is really, really concerning,” said Kashyap, echoing the response from housing advocates.

In a press briefing on the day of the decision, Ed Johnson, director of litigation at the Oregon Law Center and lead counsel for the respondents in Grants Pass v. Johnson, said the “troubling decision that is legally and morally wrong,” and could potentially worsen the homelessness crisis. Johnson has no relation to Gloria Johnson, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

GRANTS PASS IS a city of 40,000 people with a vacancy rate of 1%; roughly 600 of its residents experience homelessness at any given time. There is one shelter, the Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission, which has 138 beds. It is a high-barrier shelter, meaning that people who want to stay there are required to work full-time at the Mission, remain sober and attend church services daily. People who cannot or choose not to meet these strict requirements cannot stay there.

In a 2013 meeting, Grants Pass City Council members said they deliberately sought to adopt laws that would keep homeless people from staying in the city.

“The point is to make it uncomfortable enough … in our city so (homeless people) will want to move on down the road,” said Lily Morgan, the then-city council president. The same year, Grants Pass started enforcing a 24-hour camping ban. Law enforcement officers began aggressively ticketing unsheltered people city-wide, often fining them hundreds — even thousands — of dollars.

Helen Cruz, for example, was fined $2,000 for sleeping in a public park. Cruz had lived in Grants Pass for four decades before she lost her housing in 2016. Even though she was working two jobs, as a house cleaner and at a motel, she couldn’t afford the city’s steep rent.

“The community around here is scared,” Cruz said, who is currently living in a church. She added that she feels like her elected officials “have no kindness and compassion for the homeless.”

In 2017, the Oregon Law center filed a class action lawsuit on the behalf of Debra Blake, an unhoused resident of Grants Pass, who passed away in 2021. Gloria Johnson and John Logan stepped up as class representatives. In 2020, the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit sided with the plaintiffs.

In the past few years, many cities in the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction — which includes California, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana and Washington, as well as Oregon — refrained from fining, ticketing and arresting individuals for sleeping in public, legislating with the lower court’s decision in mind. Now that the ruling has been overturned, Western cities like Bozeman, Montana, will be able to pass stricter ordinances.

“(This decision) removes the most basic protections that recognize the humanity of homeless folks,” Rankin said.

This has raised concerns among lawyers and housing advocates about an uptick in local anti-camping measures following the ruling.

In cities outside of the 9th Circuit that already have camping bans, such as Denver, legal protections for unhoused people will be unchanged, although Denver’s current policy is to offer shelter before sweeping residents.

But “it sends a very strong message that cities can choose to be less compassionate,” said Cathy Alderman, the chief communications and public policy at the Colorado Coalition for the homeless in Denver. “The ruling is basically saying, ‘Unhoused people, we owe you nothing.’”

Several ongoing, high-profile lawsuits involving homelessness also won’t be affected, including one in San Francisco, where a U.S. District Court judge in Oakland barred the city from destroying belongings and taking away tents from people living in encampments.

In Grants Pass and elsewhere, the material reality for homeless individuals will change very little, according to housing advocates. Sara Rankin, a professor of law at Seattle University and head of Seattle’s Homeless Rights Advocacy Project, stressed that the scope of Grants Pass v. Johnson is very narrow. Even before the ruling, cities could still legally sweep encampments and fine and arrest unhoused people. That hasn’t changed anywhere in the country. Under the previous decision, for example, unhoused residents in Grants Pass were still required to move every three days.

Now, “folks might have to disperse and leave the city. It might make it harder for us to find folks,” said Leah Swanson, the operations coordinator at MINT, a public health outreach organization in the Grants Pass area.

What rural homelessness looks like

Jodi Peterson, the director of Interfaith Sanctuary Community Housing, a low-barrier shelter in Boise, said that the 9th Circuit’s decision on Martin v. Boise has had an impact, albeit a small one. It has not prevented the city from conducting daily sweeps, but it has created some stopgaps; now, for example, law enforcement is required to call the shelter to see if it has any beds before they ticket an unhoused person.

In the long term, experts expressed concern that additional local resources and public funding will be funneled into criminalizing homelessness, rather than in housing people in the first place. “There’s a lot of data saying that criminalizing unhoused people doesn’t work,” said Ann Oliva, the CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, adding that criminalizing unhoused people only retraumatizes them and makes it harder for them to eventually find stable housing. “Criminalization is actually more expensive than just housing people.”

Legal experts and advocates stressed that the court’s decision will not address the homelessness crisis in the United States. In the long term, affordable housing is the solution, but “we need interim strategies, things like housing-focused shelter, making sure that outreach is robust, and keeping people as safe and healthy as possible,” Oliva said.

“We may not have a home, but we’re still people. We deserve to be respected, just like anybody else does,” Cruz said.

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When Yakama Nation leaders learned in 2017 of a plan to tunnel through some of their ancestral land for a green energy development, they were caught off guard. 

While the tribal nation had come out in favor of climate-friendly projects, this one appeared poised to damage Pushpum, a privately owned ridgeline overlooking the Columbia River in Washington. The nation holds treaty rights to gather traditional foods there, and tribal officials knew they had to stop the project.

Problems arose when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency in charge of permitting hydro energy projects, offered the Yakama Nation what tribal leaders considered an impossible choice: disclose confidential ceremonial, archaeological and cultural knowledge, or waive the right to consult on whether and how the site is developed.

This put the Yakama Nation in a bind. Disclosing exactly what made the land sacred risked revealing to outsiders what they treasured most about it. In the past, disclosure of information about everything from food to archaeological sites enabled non-Natives to loot or otherwise desecrate the land.

Even now, tribal leaders struggle to safely express what the Pushpum project threatens. “I don’t know how in-depth I can go,” said Elaine Harvey, a tribal member and former environmental coordinator for the tribal fisheries department, when asked about the foods and medicines that grow on the land.

“It provides for us,” echoed Yakama Nation Councilmember Jeremy Takala. “Sometimes we do get really protective.”

Although government agencies have sometimes taken significant steps to protect tribal confidentiality, that didn’t happen with the Pushpum proposal, known as the Goldendale Energy Storage Project. Tribal leaders repeatedly objected, telling the agency that if a tribal nation deems a place sacred, they shouldn’t have to break confidentiality to prove it — a position supported by state agency leaders and, new reporting shows, at least one other federal agency. 

Nonetheless, after seven years, in February FERC moved the project forward without consulting with the Yakama Nation. 

The process known as consultation is often fraught. Federal laws and agency rules require that tribes be able to weigh in on decisions that affect their treaty lands. But in practice, consultation procedures sometimes force tribes to reveal information that makes them more vulnerable, without offering any guaranteed benefit. 

If a tribal nation deems a place sacred, they shouldn’t have to break confidentiality to prove it.

The risks of disclosure are not hypothetical: Looting and vandalism are common when information about Indigenous resources becomes public. One important mid-Columbia petroglyph, called Tsagaglalal, or She Who Watches, had to be removed from its original site because of vandalism. And recreational and commercial pickers have flooded one of Washington’s best huckleberry picking areas, called Indian Heaven Wilderness, pushing out Native families trying to stock up for the winter. 

The Yakama Nation feared similar outcomes if it fully participated in FERC’s consultation process over the Goldendale development. But there are alternatives. The United Nations recognizes Indigenous peoples’ right to affirmatively consent to development on their sacred lands. A similar model was included in state legislation in Washington three years ago, but Gov. Jay Inslee vetoed it.

The requirements of the consultation process are poorly defined, and state and federal agencies interpret them in a broad range of ways. In the case of Pushpum, critics say that has allowed FERC to overlook tribal concerns.

“They’re just being totally disregarded,” said Simone Anter (Pascua Yaqui and Jicarilla Apache descendant), an attorney at the environmental nonprofit Columbia Riverkeeper. “What FERC is doing is so blatantly, blatantly wrong.”

THE YAKAMA NATION has been outspoken in its support for renewable energy development, including solar and small-scale hydro projects. But not at Pushpum; it’s sacred to the Kah-milt-pah people, one of the bands within the Yakama Nation, who still regularly use the site.

The proposal would transform this area into a facility intended to store renewable energy in a low-carbon way. Rye Development, a Florida-based company, submitted an application for permits for a “pumped hydro” system, where a pair of reservoirs connected by a tunnel store energy for future use.

FERC has offered few accommodations for the Yakama Nation on the Goldendale project. 

FERC spokesperson Celeste Miller told High Country News and ProPublica in an email that “we will work to address the effects of proposed projects on Tribal rights and resources to the greatest extent we can, consistent with federal law and regulations. This is a pending matter before the Commission, so we cannot discuss the merits of this proceeding.”

“FERC legally doesn’t have to do very much here,” said Kevin Washburn (Chickasaw), dean of the University of Iowa College of Law and former assistant secretary of Indian affairs at the Department of the Interior. “Consultation is designed to open the door so tribes can get in the door to talk to decision-makers.” According to experts, the process can range from collaborative planning that addresses tribal concerns to a perfunctory discussion with minimal impacts, depending on the agency.

“This is the problem with consultation and its lack of teeth,” said Anter. “If the federal government is saying, ‘Hey, we consulted, check that box,’ who’s to say they didn’t?”

There’s another problem with consultation, too: Any discussions with a federal entity are subject to public disclosure. That’s good for government transparency, Washburn said, but it can make tribal nations even more vulnerable. “And it’s why tribes are right to be cautious in what they share with feds,” he said.

That’s an obstacle at Pushpum. Things became even harder there in August 2021, when FERC notified the Yakama Nation that federal consultation would be carried out not by the agency itself, but by the developer. The Yakama Nation pushed back, asserting its treaty rights to negotiate as a sovereign nation only with another nation, not with a private entity. FERC, however, insisted that designating a third party was “standard practice.” The National Historic Preservation Act, signed into law in 1966, says an agency “may authorize an applicant or group of applicants to initiate consultation,” but maintains that the federal agency is still “responsible for their government to government relationships with Indian tribes.”

The Yakama Nation also worried about commission rules that require anything the tribal nation says to FERC be shared with the developer. “It gets very sensitive when we share those kinds of stories,” said Takala, the tribal councilmember. “We just don’t share to anyone, especially a developer.”

Some say FERC could change that internal rule, since it isn’t required by law. “For them to cite their own regulations and be like, ‘Our hands are tied,’ is ridiculous,” Anter said. For months, FERC and the Yakama Nation went back and forth over the conditions under which the tribal government would share sensitive information, with the Yakama Nation repeatedly asking to share information only with FERC.

Ultimately, FERC proposed four ways the Yakama Nation could participate in consultation. In the eyes of tribal leaders, all these options either posed significant risks to the privacy of their information or rendered consultation meaningless.

The first three were laid out in a letter from Vince Yearick, director of FERC’s division of hydropower licensing, sent on Dec. 9, 2021. For option one, it suggested the tribal nation request nondisclosure agreements from anyone accessing sensitive information. Yearick did not specify whether FERC would be responsible for issuing or enforcing these NDAs.

“It gets very sensitive when we share those kinds of stories. We just don’t share to anyone, especially a developer.”

Delano Saluskin, then-chair of the Yakama Nation, called this option “far from the requirements of NHPA or in line with the trust responsibility that the Federal Agency has to Yakama Nation,” citing FERC policies and National Historic Preservation Act law in a February 2022 letter to state and federal government officials requesting support. He added that it “describes a process that does not protect information that is sacred and sensitive from disclosure.”

Alternatively, FERC said, the Yakama Nation could simply redact any sensitive information from documents it filed. This option, however, would leave FERC in the dark about the details of what cultural resources the project would imperil. That would make it harder for FERC to require project adjustments or weigh the specific impacts in its decision about whether to permit construction.

Third, the Yakama Nation could withhold sensitive information altogether, which would present similar problems.

 Lastly, in a June 2022 follow-up letter, the commission suggested that the Yakama Nation submit a document “with more details regarding the resources of concern” and a request that some of the information be treated as privileged or withheld from public disclosure.

Overall, Saluskin described FERC’s options as a “failure” to conduct legal consultation in good faith.

A federal agency similarly raised concerns: In May 2023, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which advises the president and the Congress on protecting historic properties across the country, wrote to FERC suggesting that it “provide the Tribes with opportunities to share information that will be kept confidential.” FERC’s rule regarding disclosure, the council said, could insulate the agency from meaningful consultation, “and as a result from any real understanding of the nature and significance of properties of religious and cultural significance for Tribes.” 

THE CONCERNS OVER FERC’s engagement with the Yakama Nation are part of a wider discussion of U.S. government protections for tribal privacy and cultural resources. Speaking at a tribal energy summit in Tacoma in June 2023, Allyson Brooks, Washington’s state historic preservation officer, said that even though the consent language was vetoed by the governor, state law for protecting confidentiality around tribal cultural properties is still stronger than federal law, which only protects confidentiality if a site is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

In Washington, if a tribal historic preservation officer says, “‘X marks the spot; this is sacred,’ we say, ‘OK,’” Brooks declared. She said asking tribal nations to prove a site’s sacredness is like asking to see a photo of baby Jesus before accepting the sanctity of Christmas. “You don’t. You say ‘nice tree’ and take it at face value. When tribes say ‘X is sacred,’ you should take that at face value too.”

That approach is vital to the Yakama Nation, which recently saw a developer involved with a project proposed in nearby Benton County leak information that the nation believed was private. 

The Horse Heaven Hills wind farm would be the biggest energy development of any kind in Washington state history. But the sprawling 72,000-acre project overlaps with nesting habitat for migratory ferruginous hawks, a raptor state-listed as endangered.

Court documents related to the permitting proceedings show that the Yakama Nation believed it had identified the locations of the ferruginous hawks’ nests as confidential, in part because the hawks are ceremonially important. In May 2023, the Yakama Nation requested a protective order from the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, a state-level analog of FERC. The order, which the council issued, instructed all parties to sign a confidentiality agreement before accessing confidential information, similar to the nondisclosure agreements FERC proposed. If any party disclosed that information, they could be liable for damages. 

But the order didn’t stop that information from getting out. In February 2024, the Seattle Times published a story on the Horse Heaven Hills wind farm, which included a map of ferruginous hawk nests — a map that was credited to Scout Clean Energy, the developer.

The Yakama Nation quickly filed a motion to enforce the protective order, alleging that Scout Clean Energy had transgressed by passing protected cultural information to the press.

“If a tribal historic preservation officer says, “‘X marks the spot; this is sacred,’ we say, ‘OK.’”

The developer counter-filed, claiming that even if nest locations were a part of confidentiality discussion, the map itself was not, and that it was so imprecise that the critical details remained confidential. The council ultimately agreed. 

Despite the risks, Washburn said that tribes should take any opportunity to share their stories with federal officials, even if the conditions aren’t perfect. “I wouldn’t necessarily encourage tribes to give their deepest, darkest secrets to a federal agency,” he said. “But I would encourage them to meet with FERC and try to give FERC a first-person account of why they think this is important.”

Not all experts agree. Brett Lee Shelton (Oglala Sioux), an attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, said FERC is out of step with other federal and state agencies. “It’s hard to believe that it’s anything but disingenuous, using that tactic,” he said. “It’s pretty well known by any agency officials who deal with Indian tribes that sometimes certain specifics about sacred places need to remain confidential.”

And for Bronsco Jim Jr., a spiritual leader of the Kah-milt-pah people, sharing too many details is out of the question. Cultural specifics stay within the oral teachings of the longhouse, the site of the Kah-milt-pah spiritual community. Jim said he doesn’t even know how to translate all of the information into English. “We don’t write it; you won’t see it posted. You won’t see it in books. It’s our oral history. It’s sacred.”   

This article was produced in partnership with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network.

Photo illustration sources: USGS, Rye Development, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Columbia Riverkeeper. Leah Nash, Jurgen Hess/Columbia Insight, Steven Patenaude.

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When I started reporting this story, I intended to ask several rural election officials about their work: how they got into it, the highs and lows, what they wish people knew about it. But all four officials I contacted refused to be interviewed or else ghosted me when it was time.

That doesn’t surprise Paul Manson, the research director at the Elections & Voting Information Center, a nonpartisan academic research organization. Manson has seen how contentious rural election administration has become in the face of increasingly deep partisan divides and persistent misinformation. “There is some super-intense pressure on folks right now,” he said. “I would suspect, at this time, many local election officials are shying away from more spotlights.” 

Rather than add to their stress, I decided to ask Manson my questions instead. Though he isn’t an election official himself, he has surveyed and interviewed hundreds of them. Below, Manson explains what makes American — and particularly rural — elections unique, why most election officials are women, and what he’s most concerned about come November.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

High Country News: How do American elections differ from the rest of the world’s? 

Manson: If you were a voter in Mexico or France, you’d have a national voter ID card, and things would be managed at that level. Instead, we do a classically American thing: We push that responsibility down to the lowest level.

Instead of having one federal office of elections, we have 8,000-10,000 of them. That number varies a bit, because we divide the duties of election administration — from voter registration to Election Day administration to auditing and certification (of votes) — differently in each state. So we even have a hard time defining what an election office is. It’s a beautiful bit of American democracy at work.

HCN: Are there any advantages of this system, especially when it comes to rural areas? 

Manson: Rural election officers often have legitimacy. They have shared with me just how much work they do to know their constituencies: They go to Elks meetings, veterans meetings, and share what this work of running an election looks like. 

That’s a huge asset. As maddening as it is to decentralize it, that local face, I think, just means a lot to voters. If someone starts asking questions about how things work, a lot of these administrators are happy to invite them to observe the process during election season, and that can make a big difference.

HCN: How does election administration in rural areas — like Garfield County, Montana, which has 888 registered voters — differ from election administration in, say, Los Angeles County, which has 4.3 million registered voters? 

Manson: In a larger office, the staff are entirely focused on election administration. In a more rural setting, it’s often in another type of office. So, here in Oregon, the county clerk will be serving in that role — and also managing property recordings, marriage licenses, maybe passport applications. Elections are part of the basket but not the entire basket. 

HCN: Seven of the eight states that allow 100% vote-by-mail elections are in the West: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington. How does that affect our elections? 

Manson: Thankfully, we’ve been on the cutting edge when it comes to voting options. Usually, the benefit of vote-by-mail is it’s cheaper: When you do polling places, you need to ramp up a lot of poll workers. That’s also a recruitment challenge. It used to be easier to find temporary workers, but this political binary has scared away some folks. Think about the average poll worker: an older American who’s maybe not interested in being in the fray. Vote-by-mail helps alleviate some of those pieces. 

HCN: What else has changed for local election officials over the past decade? 

Manson: Prior to, say, 2016, this was work that didn’t get a lot of attention. (Now) there are new stresses hitting these local election officials. When we were doing our interviews, in one of five, we would have to pause because it became too emotional, and the person needed to reset. 

It’s not uncommon for me to hear stories about personal threats, being challenged at the grocery store or (being) uncomfortable leading with what their job is because they’re fearful of how these national narratives have colored perceptions of elections work. Unlike their peers in more urban settings, (rural) election officials are lower-paid officials who wear many hats, but are also members of the communities they serve — and these attacks hurt uniquely for them. 

HCN: Your research has found that 84% of local election officials are women, and nearly three-quarters are over the age of 50. Many people you interviewed had mothers who held the role before them. Why does that matter?

Manson: In our society, we ask women to raise children, take care of the older generation and take care of their own household. (Election) work traditionally has done very well to support a woman trying to balance those three careers. You add on top an onslaught of public records requests that take up time, being challenged in the shopping line, and we’re seeing more and more departures from the field. We are losing institutional knowledge, folks who’ve been doing this for a long time. It seems like this toxic environment is really a challenge.

HCN: What happens if a rural district can’t replace its election official? 

Manson: We haven’t crossed that bridge yet. The closest we’ve seen is some activist perspectives — some examples in Colorado, New Mexico and California, where the secretary of State had to right the ship because someone came in and felt like they could manipulate how elections are run.

HCN: What can be done to improve the situation? 

Manson: We need to have candidates express their support for the legitimacy and quality of elections administration. This is going to be a very polarizing presidential election. I know these officials will do their best, but it’s a lot of pressure. 

HCN: Why should people care about rural elections? 

Manson: Some of these rural counties may represent a deciding factor in a congressional race, so the quality of election administration will matter in terms of how much faith we have in the outcomes. 

At the local level, I always ask students how many governments there are in the United States. And 90,000 is the official number, if you go with the U.S. Census. Most of those are special districts: school districts, soil and water conservation districts, rural fire protection districts. Those are elections that these county officials are also administering, so keeping that system operating is critical for a lot of the public services in rural counties.

Susan Shain reports for High Country News through The New York Times’ Headway Initiative, which is funded through grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as fiscal sponsor. All editorial decisions are made independently. She was a member of the 2022-’23 New York Times Fellowship class and reports from Montana. @susan_shain

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Patty Coen was able to finish her bachelor’s degree because she had an abortion. Ever since, the Southwest Colorado resident has been an advocate for abortion access and reproductive justice. 

She worked as a nurse at a reproductive-care agency in Durango for about seven years. When a campaign started to protect abortion rights by getting a state constitutional amendment on the ballot, she headed the petition drive in rural Montezuma County, where she lives.

She said her personal story and her experience working at Planned Parenthood 

compelled her to get involved. 

“I worked at Planned Parenthood when Texas shut down abortion as unnecessary healthcare during Covid,” Coen said. “So I saw the people with uteruses drive 12 hours, have their abortion, get right back in the car and drive back to Texas.” 

Coen said she wanted to make sure that voters in Montezuma County had a chance to help get the amendment on the November ballot. 

“I really wanted our county to be represented,” Coen said. 

Although rural voters as a group are more likely than voters in large cities to support conservative candidates, that doesn’t necessarily translate into anti-abortion preferences. A poll of rural voters in swing states to be released this month by the Rural Democracy Initiative found that three-quarters of respondents said women should be in charge of decisions about abortion. 

“I know we [people who support abortion rights] are here,” Coen said. “You see the loud people of hate, and it’s like, yeah, they’re loud and they make you think they’re a lot of ’em. But I mean, wow, we got a lot of signatures.”

Abortion is currently legal in Colorado at all stages of pregnancy. The proposed Initiative 89 seeks to amend the Colorado constitution so that the legality of abortion in the state can not change in the future. It also would allow for public health insurance funds to cover abortion, overturning a current constitutional amendment prohibiting state insurance and Medicaid from paying for abortion care. 

To get on the ballot in Colorado, initiative petitions that seek to make changes to the constitution need at least 124,238 signatures with signatures from at least two percent of the registered voters in each of the 35 Colorado state senate districts. 

Cobalt, a Colorado abortion advocacy nonprofit, helped organize the signature gathering for Initiative 89, along with a coalition of organizations under the name Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom.

According to Laura Chapin, communications consultant for Cobalt, the petition was turned in to the Colorado Secretary of State with 230,000 signatures on April 18th, a week earlier than the deadline of April 26th. On May 17th, 2024, the Proposed Initiative 89 qualified for the November ballot.

“​​Rural Colorado was pretty awesome because people are really motivated. If you come to them and say, ‘we want to put abortion rights in the Colorado constitution,’ you get a really strong response. We’ve been really pleased with the rural outreach and the rural response,” said Chapin.

Coen, who lives in Montezuma County, said that even within Colorado there is not enough access to abortion care in the more rural regions, like Southwest Colorado. When Coen worked there, the Durango Planned Parenthood offered surgical abortions, but now only offers medical abortions. 

The Cortez Planned Parenthood, in Montezuma County, also offers medical abortions, but for a large chunk of the region including Montrose and the San Juan Mountain towns, accessing abortion care means driving over the San Juan mountains to one of two Southwestern Planned Parenthoods, west to Salida, or north to Glenwood Springs, a trip of at least 2 hours and including several mountain passes depending on the direction. 

At the same time that the petition drive to get Initiative 89 on the ballot was underway, a petition for an opposing initiative was also underway in Colorado to ban abortion after conception. The initiative did not receive enough signatures to appear on the ballot.

Abortion-rights petitions to add abortion access to state constitutions as a 2024 ballot initiative are in progress or have already been successful in many states including Arizona, Nebraska, Missouri, Maryland, Florida, and others. However, most of these measures only protect abortion until viability, which is not the case in Colorado. Colorado allows for abortion throughout the pregnancy. 

Montezuma County and Southwest Colorado’s location in the Four Corners makes it the ideal destination for out-of-state abortion seekers from neighboring states with harsher abortion laws like Arizona and Utah, or further away in Texas and Oklahoma.

“We’ve got to be a refuge state for this. We’re surrounded by states that are 100% against abortion,” said Coen.

The post Rural Coloradans’ Show Strong Support for Abortion-Rights Constitutional Amendment appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

This school year, Montana, a state with fewer than 8,000 teachers, had 1,000 unfilled teaching positions. Meanwhile, Dutton-Brady Public Schools, a rural district about an hour from the Canadian border, easily filled its three vacancies.

Administrators credit a blue-hued room strewn with toys and highchairs: Little Diamondbacks Daycare, which is located inside the district’s K-12 school, steps from the cafeteria and the library. On a chilly Monday morning, children were trying on costumes, riding rocking horses and enjoying a rowdy game of musical chairs.

Eight-month-old Rowan watched the action from the arms of a staffer. Rowan’s mother, Jessica Toner, is a rookie teacher who heads the third-fourth grade classroom down the hall. Though Toner was offered four higher-paying positions in Great Falls, where she lives, she could neither find nor afford decent child care. “I called probably 15 different day cares,” she said, but they either didn’t have openings or were too expensive. “It was a nightmare.”

Toner hadn’t considered Dutton-Brady, which is a 32-minute drive from her house. But when she heard it had an opening — one that came with subsidized day care — she applied. “That’s what drew me,” she said. “And then I came to find that I love it out here.”

In-school day care can be found across the U.S., from Maine to Oklahoma and Colorado. It’s one way to tackle two crises: a shortage of qualified teachers and a shortage of quality child care. Recent data suggests that 79% of U.S. schools with teacher vacancies had difficulty filling them, while half of Americans live in “child care deserts” — communities that have at least three times as many children as licensed child-care slots. In many places, including Montana, both issues are more acute in rural areas. And of the 10 states with the highest rates of residents living in child-care deserts, seven are in the West.

Ask anyone involved with school-run day care, whether staff, clients or administrators, and they’ll probably say they’re delighted to have it. Experts, however, warn that it’s not a panacea. “All of this is well-intended,” said Chris Herbst, a professor who studies child care at Arizona State University. “But none of this is a sustainable, broad-based, fully funded solution to a long-standing problem.”

IN THE SPRING OF 2022, Dutton-Brady faced several teacher retirements. Superintendent Jeremy Locke knew it would be hard to replace them; it always was.

The Dutton-Brady School District is deeply rural, serving 131 students in a 625-square-mile region, an area larger than Grand Teton National Park. Its main school is in Dutton, and two others are located on colonies of Hutterites, an isolated Anabaptist religious sect. Dutton, which is the only town for miles, is home to two taverns, a water tower, a bank and a gas station that also sells fertilizer and livestock feed. There’s not a single stoplight.

Recruiting teachers has long been difficult; at times, the district has had to lure teachers from as far away as the Philippines. And veteran teachers rarely apply. Most recruits are like Toner: recent graduates who are just starting out, and perhaps starting families.

So, at a meeting that spring, Locke and the Board of Trustees seized upon the idea of opening a day care center to boost recruitment and retention. They scrambled to get the paperwork, financing and staffing in order before the 2022-’23 school year began. “We had to make it work,” Locke said. “Or else we knew that we were going to be dead in the water as far as staffing goes.”

Little Diamondbacks now serves 21 children, ranging from a few months to 5 years old. Dutton-Brady teachers pay up to $270 per child, per month for full-time, year-round care, a rate that is subsidized by state grants and by non-staffers who pay full tuition, up to $540 a month.

Staffing the facility has been a constant headache — it’s tough to find child-care workers anywhere, let alone in such a rural county — but Locke said it’s been worth it. “If we didn’t start this day care last year, we would not have filled our three openings,” he said. “We have no teacher shortages right now.”

In-school day cares exist elsewhere in rural Montana, too. Ekalaka, a town of 399 people on the eastern edge of the state, opened its center in August 2022. Browning, located on the Blackfeet Reservation in northwest Montana, started its facility in 1985; it was initially meant to serve teen mothers but now serves mostly staff members.

Browning’s superintendent, Corrina L. Guardipee-Hall (Blackfeet-Cree), used the day care when her children were small. “It really helped me be able to be a teacher and eventually administrator and now a superintendent,” she said. “It did help retain not only me as an employee, but also other people around the district.” It’s also a recruitment incentive: Guardipee-Hall noted that two new teacher assistants submitted day care applications for their children immediately after being hired.

“If we didn’t start this day care last year, we would not have filled our three openings.”

Montana’s school-based day care centers would seem an ideal way to attract and keep teachers. But Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown University, said they don’t address the root causes of shortages: low wages and decreased public perceptions about the profession’s prestige. Plus, day care centers support teachers for only a short time during their career, if at all.

“There are a lot of initiatives to compensate teachers in ways other than actual wages,” Kraft said, referring to efforts to subsidize student loans, housing or child care. “All of those have potential, although I would argue that it may be more effective to simply take the cost of those programs and fold them into higher teacher pay.”

In that regard, Montana has a long way to go: Its starting teacher salaries rank 51st in the nation. When the Learning Policy Institute, a national nonprofit, adjusted for cost-of-living differences, it found that the average starting salary for a Montana teacher was only $36,480 — far behind neighboring Idaho ($44,150) and Wyoming ($51,530).

As for why school districts might provide housing or child care before increasing wages, Kraft explained they might be “hesitant to commit to permanent and substantial pay raises with some uncertainty about the fiscal climate.” Besides, he noted, compensation must be negotiated with teachers’ unions — “often a time-intensive and slow process” — whereas a district can unilaterally decide to open a day care.

Ultimately, Kraft said, solving the teacher shortage will require major policy changes, as well as “generational shifts in how we perceive the profession.”

IN RURAL AREAS, in-school day care centers aren’t merely useful to the school; they also serve the community. About half of Little Diamondbacks’ regular attendees are the children of non-staffers, some of whom drive from nearly 40 miles away. Ekalaka’s facility, which is also open to community members, is the only licensed one in the county.

In rural Colorado, the West Grand School District, between Steamboat Springs and Breckenridge, has had an early childhood center since 2018. West Grand opened its facility after several teachers quit because they couldn’t find child care, but administrators soon realized it would address a greater need: The town has just one other licensed day care, and it’s often full.

The school’s day care center now serves roughly 22 children, only seven of whom are the offspring of teachers. “We knew we needed to (open it),” said Superintendent Elizabeth Bauer. “Not just for our teachers, but for our community.”

Hannah Wynd, who works for the local health department, said she might have had to move if she hadn’t gotten a spot at West Grand. “I, quite frankly, would not have a job if it wasn’t open and it didn’t have room for my children,” she said. “It’s super important, what it’s provided for my family.”

Experts don’t dispute the critical role these facilities play in families’ lives. In-school day care centers have been “introduced or enacted by well-meaning people who are probably frustrated that nothing is happening federally and are taking it upon themselves to try to better their community,” said Herbst, the Arizona State University professor.

“I, quite frankly, would not have a job if it wasn’t open and it didn’t have room for my children.”

Yet ultimately, Herbst believes such changes are “piecemeal,” and that true change must happen on a national scale. He wants Congress to support child-care subsidies, like those that were initially included in President Biden’s Build Back Better plan.

In the meantime, rural administrators, teachers and parents plan to keep doing what they can to keep their jobs local, their schools open and their kids cared for. (That includes obtaining additional sources of funding for their day cares: Dutton-Brady’s largest grant recently ran out, and West Grand is seeking new community funding partners.)

They don’t have the luxury of waiting for policymakers to decide their fates.

Because here’s the picture Locke painted: If Dutton-Brady loses a single teacher, it may not be able to replace them. If the school loses a second teacher, and a third, it could end up being assimilated into a bigger district. And then the community hub, the heart of the tiny town of Dutton, would be gone.

“We don’t have an option to not figure it out, because when we don’t, everything dries up,” Locke said. “It’s really an existential threat.”

Susan Shain reports for High Country News through The New York Times’ Headway Initiative, which is funded through grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as fiscal sponsor. All editorial decisions are made independently. She was a member of the 2022-’23 New York Times Fellowship class and reports from Montana. @susan_shain

The post This Montana school solved its teacher shortage by opening a day care appeared first on High Country News.

Only the tips of his crampons and ice axes held the climber’s body close to the wall as he balanced more than 100 feet above the snow-covered ground. A kick from his left boot dislodged a chunk of ice, which crashed far below like a chandelier shattering into thousands of pieces. Then Lake City, Colorado, was quiet again.

Lake City is an old silver-mining town — population 432 — tucked in a valley in the San Juan Mountains. It’s a popular summer gateway to the high country, but the throngs of warm-weather tourists and vacation homeowners tend to vanish at the first hint of snow. Business windows display “Closed for the season” signs, while a small but hardened group of locals hunker down for the long winter.

But on many weekends this year, just around the corner from downtown, dozens of cars lined the entryway to Engineer Pass. There’s a new kind of visitor in Lake City, the kind that thrives on the same bitter cold that drives others out: ice climbers. Here at the Lake City Ice Park, glittering ice cascades from the surrounding cliff faces like the tentacles of giant blue-green jellyfish. Climbers scale the towering walls and then shuffle into a warming hut to soothe their frozen toes.

The niche sport has brought a welcome influx of cash and liveliness into the winter isolation of Hinsdale County. Restaurants and lodges cater to the ice climbers, altering their hours and menus to accommodate them. One even began offering ice climbing gear rentals.

“My goal is to fill every lodge in town and have the restaurants stay open all winter long,” said Ben Hake, Lake City’s Parks and Recreation director. Winter sales tax revenue has risen by nearly 40% since 2019. Hake’s goal is to eventually cover a mile of the canyon in ice, turning Lake City into a climber’s paradise.

But the demands of Colorado’s billion-dollar winter recreation industry can have unwelcome side effects. Recreation booms and increased visitation have reshaped the identities of small communities across the Western U.S. And once development starts, it can become difficult — sometimes impossible — to control.

“We push and push tourism, and at some point we have to look at how we’re going to manage it,” said Lily Virden. She grew up in Lake City, where she is now a public school teacher and the owner of a clothing and gift store called 38º North. “This is the first year that I think we’re like, ‘Whoa, are we ready for this?’”

SEEKING SHELTER FROM the falling snow on a Saturday in February, a group of climbers hunched over a jigsaw puzzle-covered coffee table at the San Juan Soda Company. Christian Hartman’s family has owned the summertime ice cream pitstop since 1988. In July, the line often snakes out the front door and across the street.

“My parents used to say that you could literally shoot a cannon down Main Street in the winter and not hurt anybody,” Hartman said. “It was that dead.”

Three years ago, for the first time, Hartman decided to stay open during the winter. On the shelves, mixed in with the souvenirs and gifts, customers can find a menagerie of ice tools, mountaineering boots, crampons, ropes and helmets. Summer sales still dwarf winter revenue, but the shop is starting to make a small profit during climbing season.

“My parents used to say that you could literally shoot a cannon down Main Street in the winter and not hurt anybody. It was that dead.”

Around the corner at the Lake City Brew Company, owner Justin Hill has redesigned his menu to appeal to hungry climbers. During the fleeting summer months, thousands of Texans, Oklahomans and Louisianians pass through Lake City, attracted by the vast network of off-road vehicle trails right outside town. Every seat in the brewery fills up, and guests overflow onto the patio. Now, Hill’s tables stay full in January and February.

“The park makes it more exciting to live here in the winter,” Hill said. “Without ice climbing, Lake City would be pretty desolate.”

The Lake City Ice Park was created by a motley crew of carpenters and raft guides who shared a passion for the sport. They began “farming,” or creating their own ice in the Lake City area in the late 1990s — a scheme fueled by a mischievous curiosity and thousands of feet of hose.

Two local climbers, Craig “Mad Dog” Blakemore and Mike Camp, later noticed that the town’s main water tank sat right above cliffs that could potentially hold ice. The pair asked the town manager if they could tap into Lake City’s water supply and pump water over the edge when the temperatures dropped. This became the first section of the ice park.

“She (thought) I was crazy as hell,” said Camp, who has been ice climbing for nearly 40 years. “I said, ‘Just give me a chance, and let’s see what happens.’ The next weekend we had a whole wall of ice.”

Today, the town of Lake City runs the ice park on a modest annual budget of $16,000. Over the last three seasons, Hake has added two new areas, the Beer Garden and Dynamite Shack. Many of the climbs are steep enough to turn the average person’s stomach, but access is surprisingly easy. Climbers can tiptoe across frozen Henson Creek and drop a rope for almost any route after a 10-minute trek to the top of the cliffs.

The climbers often say they heard about the park by word of mouth or stumbled on it by accident. Although finding a hot breakfast can be challenging, they think the long drive to Lake City is worth it, a way to avoid Colorado’s busier, more well-known ice walls.

“Lake City is super low-key, and we prefer that,” said Brad Priebe, a climber from Colorado Springs. “But it’s amazing to see the number of people out climbing ice.”

THIRTY MILES WEST of Lake City, ice climbing has already remade another small Western Slope town. In Ouray, the climbers can scale more than 150 named routes along the Uncompahgre River Gorge at what has become the world’s largest man-made ice-climbing park. During the winter of 2021-’22, the Ouray Ice Park pumped $18 million into Ouray County.

In small recreation-dependent mountain towns like Ouray and Lake City, there is a fine line between much-needed economic growth and development run rampant. While most residents welcome the ice climbers, others worry that the crowds that are likely to flock to a well-known park could spoil some of the magic that originally drew them to Lake City in the first place.

But Lake City’s size and remote location could slow down its transformation. Surrounded almost entirely by public land and with a less-than-square-mile footprint, the town has limited space to expand, and there are no satellite communities nearby to help siphon off the population growth.

“I would definitely like (the ice park) to keep growing,” Hartman said. “You can try and increase growth, but it’s hard to stop it. Sometimes it’d be nice if it were like a faucet that you could turn on to flow that you want, and then leave it there. But we don’t have that kind of control.”

“It’s not like a boom or bust, and we’re not sinking money we don’t have. (The town) is content to build it slow and build it well.”

For years, Lake City tried to promote other types of winter sports, advertising its groomed snowmobile trails and small ski hill. But in the era of climate change, snowfall varies from year to year. At the ice park, the town can turn on the tap and create winter recreation. The Parks and Recreation Department is already working to create more ice to ensure that anchors stay open and climbers don’t have to wait in line.

“We’re trying to put a stable foundation under our community,” said Hinsdale County Commissioner Kristine Borchers. “It’s not like a boom or bust, and we’re not sinking money we don’t have. (The town) is content to build it slow and build it well.”

Hartman, the soda shop owner, said he still thinks of Lake City as a “true mountain town.” It’s the only incorporated community in Hinsdale County, home to a single school and no chain restaurants. But he believes the changes are for the best. There are new faces in town. The climbers are quiet, and the recreation is human-powered: no wheels or motors, just muscle and movement.

During the peak summer season in June and July, Hartman’s customers often ask him: “What’s it like during the winter?” His answer is slowly changing.

Bella Biondini is the editor of the Gunnison Country Times and frequently covers water and public lands issues in western Colorado.

The post Can ice climbing bring life to an isolated Colorado town in the dead of winter? appeared first on High Country News.

On a Thursday morning in late March, a group of Wenatchi-P’squosa people and a few dozen supporters assembled amid patches of snow and mud atop Badger Mountain in southeastern Washington. The foggy sagebrush-dotted bluff is among dozens of locations that developers want to use for new renewable energy efforts in the state. 

The gathering – the first Indigenous-led demonstration against this proposed development – was intended to highlight threats to cultural resources including food and sacred sites on the mountain. Earlier this year, a ProPublica and HCN investigation found that the state’s process for assessing those resources, which relied on a developer-funded cultural resource survey, had been inadequate. A state archaeologist identified significant shortcomings in the report that was submitted to get the project approved, and the investigation documented bullying behavior by the companies involved.

The proposed solar project is currently in the hands of a governor-appointed group of state officials who will advise him on whether to permit the project. Organizers said they were concerned that the Energy Facility Siting Evaluation Council (EFSEC) will move the project forward, despite tribal objections. The Colville Tribes have to work with state agencies like EFSEC on consultation and land surveys as part of the permitting process. The tribal nation, along with other Indigenous nations, has formally issued objections but did not publicly support or organize the demonstration. Still, multiple tribal leaders, including council members, showed up and shared their thoughts.

“The Colville Tribe has opposed this project since we were notified,” said Business Councilmember Karen Condon, adding that it breaks her heart and that she personally is opposed. If the solar farm goes in, she said, it will destroy their traditional foods and medicine. “Once our areas are destroyed, our ground is destroyed. We’ll never get that back.”

She said the tribal nation should have a greater say over what happens to it. “This is still our land,” said Condon. “We’re sharing it with those that currently occupy the land, but it’s our land.”

“Once our areas are destroyed, our ground is destroyed. We’ll never get that back.”

“Our people have been coming here since time immemorial to gather our first foods, our medicines,” said organizer Darnell Sam, a former tribal business councilmember and current traditional territories coordinator for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. That confederation includes Sam’s people, the Wenatchi-P’squosa. He added that you can’t walk far in any direction without running into a cultural site. “What happens when we come here, and we can’t gather the food? You’re breaking the law. Long before there was any other law, this was the law: that we have to honor the food.” The development would also impact the Moses Columbia and the federally unrecognized Wanapum people, and at least one of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. The mountain, located near the town of Wenatchee in central Washington, is “a mother. It’s a grandmother. It’s part of our family,” said Sam.

Another attendee talked about protecting everything that lives on the land. “Our brothers and sisters, the deer, the bear, the elk,” said Sophie Nomee, chair of the Wenatchi Advisory Group to the Colville Tribal Business Council. “These are the things that we have to continue to protect.” She cares about the non-Native current owners of the land, too, she said. “We don’t want them to experience what our ancestors went through, when they had to migrate up to the Colville Reservation.” 

For one protester, Steven Wynecoop, it’s not just about sovereignty and culinary tradition. The solar development is a health issue. “We can’t keep living off the foods they give us,” said Wynecoop. U.S. government distribution of canned and processed foods on reservations, along with disparities in food access, has been linked to health issues in Native communities. Clarice Paul, a member of the Wanapum Band, said that her community also has cultural ties to the mountain, and that developments on these sacred lands “go against the grain of historical traumatic healing for our people.”

For some, the demonstration was so important that they pulled their kids out of school to be here. “This is my family’s land,” said Mari St. Pierre, who brought her three children from a couple-hours’ drive away to attend. “A year before my grandma passed, she took us up here to dig for roots.” St. Pierre said she wants her children to continue learning about their ancestral lands, a goal supported by their education at Paschal Sherman Indian School, a residential boarding school originally built by colonizers. The Colville Tribes purchased it in the 1970s to disseminate their own cultural teachings.

“This is my family’s land.”

One supporter, Sonya Schaller, called Badger Mountain a “rare botanical garden.” Attendees proposed other locations for solar arrays: on fallowed farmlands, corporate rooftops, over parking lots or on lands where a Washington State University mapping project has identified least-conflict zones for solar siting. 

EFSEC has recently hired a contract archaeological firm to redo technical work after the original developer-funded survey sparked numerous objections from tribes and state agencies. If EFSEC approves the project, the final authority to permit lies with Gov. Jay Inslee. In 2021, Inslee vetoed language in the Climate Commitment Act that would have protected the Indigenous right to free, prior and informed consent to any development proposed on Indigenous sacred lands. On Thursday, demonstrators complained that they felt unheard by the state in general, and particularly by EFSEC. “They’re not listening to tribes. They’re not listening to the public. And that’s a problem. I do look forward to the day that we set up a protest in Olympia,” said Condon. Organizers say that’s the plan.

On the same day as the demonstration, EFSEC had planned a visit to the other side of Badger Mountain to conduct technical work with an archaeologist from the Colville Tribes. But that visit was rescheduled: “They’re afraid of us,” shouted someone in the crowd, to a ripple of applause and war whoops.

“Public participation is an important part of the EFSEC review for all projects,” said EFSEC spokesman Karl Holappa in an emailed statement. “We encourage the public to get involved and weigh in through the public comment process.”

Sam said that organizers weren’t thinking about EFSEC when they planned the event, and he emphasized that they’re not just “a bunch of rowdy, wild Indians.”

“It’s been said, and we’re going to say it again: We’re not against green energy. It has its place, but it’s not here on this mountain,” said Sam. “Let it find its place. Let the governor hear that. Let everybody at EFSEC hear that.” 

B. ‘Toastie’ Oaster (they/them) is an award-winning journalist and a staff writer for High Country News writing from the Pacific Northwest. They’re a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Email them at b.toastie@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy. 
Follow @toastie@journa.host

The post Wenatchi-P’squosa people demonstrate against proposed solar project  appeared first on High Country News.

Though it’s often less visible and rarely discussed, rural homelessness is rising six times faster than homelessness overall. One person who’s been sounding the alarm for years is Julie Akins, a veteran journalist and former mayor of Ashland, Oregon, who now serves as senior housing director at AllCare Health.

Her latest report on rural homelessness, which came out last month, is based on hundreds of conversations throughout southern Oregon over a six-month period. At times, Akins has even embedded with the people she interviewed: sleeping in her car or a tent, enduring scabies and head lice. We called her up to ask what she’d learned — and what the lessons might be for the rest of the rural West.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

High Country News: In your latest report, you noted that people in rural areas often deal with lower pay and a more limited housing stock than those in urban areas. How else does rural homelessness differ?

Julie Akins: Urban homelessness looks like a bunch of tents in a centralized space, because people are trying to access transportation and services. In the rural West, services are spread out, and sometimes it can take people hours to walk from one part of their community to another.

In rural communities, you see people trying to tuck away in places where they can be unseen. I interviewed people living at rest stops. Families in their cars, driving all night with the heat on to keep their kids warm. Grandmothers and grandfathers, walking with walkers to rundown RVs where they don’t have hot water. A woman living under the crawl space of an Airbnb that she cleaned. People on Bureau of Land Management land, trying to hide out in a vehicle. It’s scattered and pervasive.

HCN: There are many stigmas surrounding homelessness: that everyone experiencing it is lazy or has issues with substance abuse or mental health. What did you find? 

JA: That was the main thing people asked me to do: They spoke to me in exchange for reporting that they are not a “bum,” a “drug addict” or mentally ill. Breaking through the concept that if you don’t have enough money, you’re somehow a failure and don’t deserve a hand up is really the hardest point to drive home, right? Because those stereotypes exist.

HCN: A “living wage” is the amount an individual needs to earn to cover their basic needs. In Oregon, it’s $24 an hour. Readers may be surprised to learn that 60% of the people you spoke to were employed. Can you break down the math of poverty? 

JA: Well, Taco Bell pays $15 an hour. You could work there full- time and have another part-time job and still not have a roof over your head.

I met this young man, very smart. Halfway through college, he started having seizures; he discovered he had epilepsy. So he had to quit school, he couldn’t drive anymore. (He and his mother) were living in an RV. He wound up working at Taco Bell, but he can only work a certain number of hours. Because if he gets over a threshold, then he no longer is qualified for Medicaid. And without Medicaid, he couldn’t afford his anti-seizure medicine. The way we have it set up, you kind of have to stay in poverty if you have an illness.

At what point do we accept that? That you can be a working person and still homeless? That you can be a retiree who worked your entire life — and now you’re unhoused because your wife died, and only one Social Security benefit is not enough? At what point can we say the American dream has become a nightmare?

At what point can we say the American dream has become a nightmare?

HCN: According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, “a chronically homeless person costs the taxpayer an average of $35,578 per year.” When that person is placed in supportive housing, those costs are cut nearly in half. Can you talk about the cost of homelessness?

JA: I’ll use Susan as an example. She’s 71 now. She had a blister on her calf; she couldn’t keep it clean and dry because she was spending an Oregon winter in her truck. So this wound got worse and worse, to the point where it was so badly infected it was filled with maggots. She wound up in the intensive care unit for, I believe, eight days. The expense of that is astronomical: $3,000 a day. I mean, you could have housed her for how long for that kind of money?

HCN: What has changed since your first reporting trip in 2016? 

JA: There seems to be a marked loss of hope. When I first went out, people seemed to believe it was a blip. There was some sort of optimism. Now they’re looking around and realizing it’s mathematically impossible to pull yourself out of homelessness without help. That’s very discouraging. People want to be independent, to be proud of themselves. They want a good job, a place to live; they want to progress in their life. And when you do everything you can and that still doesn’t happen, how can you avoid losing hope?

HCN: What are the solutions?  

JA: Homelessness is a housing problem. When you’re hungry, you don’t sit around and think: Hmm, what would be a cure for hunger? You’re like, I’m hungry, I’m going to eat something. I’m unhoused, I need a place to live — it’s really that direct.

Mountain towns are trying all sorts of solutions to the housing crisis

HCN: How has this reporting changed you? 

JA: I don’t think I can ever not be grateful that I can lock my door and get in my bed and pull the covers up and drift off to sleep. It’s such a small thing, but it’s also a huge thing.

Until you’re (sleeping in your car), you don’t understand how terrifying it is. Even in small towns, there’s a lot of commotion at night that you might not ever know about if you live in a house. There’s the terror of: What if I have to go to the bathroom? And then just the general sense of being so out of touch with what you think of as normal life.

Now, I am really aware of what being ostracized in society can do to you from a psychosocial perspective. It’s so traumatizing. And this is what it’s like for people (experiencing homelessness) day in and day out. That is a moral failing. And it’s not the moral failing of the people who are unhoused; it’s the moral failing of this country.

The post What rural homelessness looks like appeared first on High Country News.

Over the course of 17 days, the team killed 94 brown bears — including several year-old cubs, who stuck close to their mothers, and 11 newer cubs that were still nursing — five black bears and five wolves. That was nearly four times the number of animals the agency planned to cull. Fish and Game says this reduced the area’s bear population by 74%, though no baseline studies to determine their numbers were conducted in the area. 

The goal was to help the dwindling number of Mulchatna caribou by reducing the number of predators around their calving grounds. The herd’s population has plummeted, from 200,000 in 1997 to around 12,000 today. But the killings set off a political and scientific storm, with many biologists and advocates saying the operation called into question the core of the agency’s approach to managing wildlife, and may have even violated the state constitution.

The Board of Game, which has regulatory authority over wildlife, insisted that intensive control of predators in Wood-Tikchik was the best way to support the struggling herd. But the caribou, which provide essential food and cultural resources for many Alaska Native communities, are facing multiple threats: A slew of climate-related impacts have hampered their grazing, wildfires have burned the forage they rely on, warmer winters may have increased disease, and thawing permafrost has disrupted their migrations.

With conditions rapidly changing as the planet warms, wildlife managers nationwide are facing similar biodiversity crises. Rather than do the difficult work of mitigating rising temperatures, state agencies across the country are finding it easier to blame these declines on predation.

“We don’t want to talk about how the tundra is changing, because that’s something we can’t fix,” says Christi Heun, a former research biologist at Alaska Fish and Game.

“We don’t want to talk about how the tundra is changing, because that’s something we can’t fix.”

In Wyoming, where a deadly winter decimated pronghorn and mule deer, the state spent a record $4.2 million killing coyotes and other predators and is considering expanding bear and mountain lion hunts. Wildlife officials in Washington are contemplating killing sea lions and seals to save faltering salmon populations from extinction. In Minnesota, hunters are inaccurately blaming wolves for low deer numbers and calling for authorities to reduce their population. Culls like these are appealing because they are tangible actions — even when evidence suggests the true threat is much more complex. “You’re putting a Band-Aid on the wrong elbow,” says Heun, who now works for the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife. 

As the climate crisis intensifies, she and others say, wildlife management strategies need to shift too. “All we can do is just kind of cross our fingers and mitigate the best we can,” she adds. For people whose job is to control natural systems, “that’s a hard pill to swallow.” 

IN JANUARY 2022, a flurry of snow fell as the Alaska Board of Game gathered in Wasilla, far from where the Mulchatna caribou pawed through drifts, steam rising from their shaggy backs. Its seven members are appointed by the governor. Though they make important decisions like when hunting seasons open, how long they last, and how many animals hunters can take, they are not required to have a background in biology or natural resources. They also do not have to possess any expertise in the matters they decide. Board members, who did not respond to requests for comment, tend to reflect the politics of the administration in office; currently, under Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy, they are sport hunters, trappers, and guides. 

That day, the agenda included a proposal to expand a wolf control program from Wood-Tikchik onto the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge — though that would require federal approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; the government ultimately rejected the proposal.

The conversation began with two Fish and Game biologists summarizing their research for the board on the herd. Nick Demma explained that, like most ungulates, on average half of Mulchatna’s calves survive. In a study he conducted, many died within two weeks of birth; he mentioned as an aside that their primary predators are brown bears. “But I want to stress that this basic cause of death and mortality rate information is of little use,” he quickly added. Predator and prey dynamics are complex: The calves may have died anyway from injury or disease, and their removal may reduce competition for food and resources, improving the herd’s overall health. 

When Demma tried to analyze the existing wolf control program, he found he didn’t have the data he needed to see if removing the canines helped calves survive. In fact, from 2010 to 2021, when Fish and Game was actively shooting wolves, fewer caribou survived. So the researchers turned their attention to other challenges the herd might be facing. 

His colleague, Renae Sattler, explained that preliminary data from a three-year study suggested there could be a problem with forage quality or quantity, especially in the summer. This could lower pregnancy rates or increase disease and calf mortality. In the 1990s, the herd had swelled as part of a natural boom-and-bust cycle, leading to overgrazing. The slow-growing lichen the animals rely on takes 20 to 50 years to recover. Compounding that, climate change is altering the tundra ecosystem the animals rely upon. She also found that today, 37% of the sampled animals had, or were recently exposed to, brucellosis, which can cause abortions, stillbirths, and injuries. Biologists consider such high levels of disease an outbreak and cause for concern.

Sattler also noted that half of the animals that died in the study’s first year were killed by hunters taking them out of season — meaning the predators killing the most adult caribou were people. For all these reasons, the biologists suggested that the Board of Game reconsider the wolf control program.

Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang, who oversees the agency, immediately questioned their conclusions, and their recommendation. Killing predators, he said during the meeting, “seems like one of the only things that’s within our direct control.” In other words, it was better than doing nothing. 

Demma seemed taken aback, and chose his words carefully. “I guess what we are kind of trying to present there is just the information,” he told the board. “It’s — you know — wolves aren’t an important factor right now.” The meeting broke for lunch. When it resumed, the board unanimously voted to continue the wolf program through 2028, and, even more surprisingly, to add brown and black bears over a larger area. The public and Fish and Game biologists didn’t have the typical opportunity to comment on this expansion of predator control.

When he heard what happened, “I just was stunned. I was shocked,” says Joel Bennett, a lawyer and a former member of the Board of Game for 13 years. A hunter himself, Bennett served on the board under four governors and recalls his colleagues having a greater diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. Their votes were always split, even on less contentious issues. The unanimous vote “in itself indicates it’s a stacked deck,” he says. That’s a problem, because “the system only works fairly if there is true representation.”

In August, Bennett and the Alaska Wildlife Alliance filed a lawsuit claiming the agency approved the operation without the necessary “reasoned decision-making,” and without regard for the state’s due process requirements. Bennett also was troubled that the state has tried to keep information about the cull private, including where the bears were killed. He suspects that, to have slain so many animals in just 17 days, the flights might have veered beyond the targeted area. He also wonders if any animals were left wounded. “Why are they hiding so many of the details?” he asked. A public records request reveals that although the board expected the removal of fewer than 20 bears, almost five times that many were culled without any additional consideration. 

Alaska’s wildlife is officially a public resource. Provisions in the state constitution mandate game managers provide for “sustained yields,” including for big game animals like bears. That sometimes clashes with the Dunleavy administration’s focus on predator control. In 2020, for example, the board authorized a no-limit wolf trapping season on the Alexander Archipelago, a patchwork of remote islands in southeast Alaska. It resulted in the deaths of all but five of the genetically distinct canines. The Alaska Wildlife Alliance sued, a case Bennett is now arguing before the state Supreme Court. “That was a gross violation of ‘sustained yield’ in anyone’s definition,” he says, adding that even today, there is no limit on trapping wolves there.

“That was a gross violation of ‘sustained yield’ in anyone’s definition.”

Once, shooting bison from moving trains and leaving them to rot was widely accepted. Attitudes have evolved, as have understandings about predators’ importance — recent research suggests their stabilizing presence may play a crucial role in mitigating some of the effects of climate change. Other studies show predators may help prey adapt more quickly to shifting conditions. But Bennett worries that, just as Alaska’s wildlife faces new pressures in a warming world, management priorities are reverting to earlier stances on how to treat animals. “I’ve certainly done my time in the so-called ‘wolf wars,’” Bennett says, “but we’re entering a new era here with other predators.”

EVEN AS LEGAL CHALLENGES to the board’s decisions move forward, scientific debate over the effectiveness of predator control has flourished. Part of the problem is that game management decisions are rarely studied in the way scientists would design an experiment. “You’ve got a wild system, with free-ranging animals, and weather, and other factors that are constantly changing,” says Tom Paragi, a wildlife biologist for the state Department of Fish and Game. “It’s just not amenable to the classic research design.” Even getting baseline data can take years, and remote areas like Wood-Tikchik, which is accessible only by air or boat, are challenging and expensive places to work. 

Paragi has for more than a decade monitored the state’s intensive wildlife management programs and believes predator control can be effective. Looking at data collected since 2003, he notes that when Alaska culled wolves in four areas in a bid to bolster moose, caribou, and deer populations, their numbers increased. They also remained low in those areas where wolves were left alone. (His examination of this data has not yet been published or subject to peer review.) Elsewhere in the state, removing 96% of black bears in 2003 and 2004, reducing hunting, and killing wolves boosted the number of moose. Heavy snowfall during the next two winters killed many of the calves, and most of the bears returned within six years, but Paragi still considers the efforts a success. By 2009, the moose population had almost doubled.

He’s also not convinced that Demma and Sattler were right when they told board members that predation doesn’t appear to be the most pressing issue for the Mulchatna caribou. He says record salmon runs have likely brought more bears near the park and the calving grounds, and warmer temperatures have fostered the growth of vegetation that provides places to hide as they stalk caribou. As to the suggestion that the herd is suffering from inadequate food supplies, he notes that their birth rate has been high since 2009. That’s often a strong indicator of good nutrition. 

But Sattler says, “It isn’t that cut-and-dried.” A female caribou’s body condition, she explains, exists on a spectrum and affects her survival, the size and strength of any calves, and how long she can nurse or how quickly she gets pregnant again. “The impact of nutrition is wide-reaching and complex, and it isn’t captured in pregnancy rates alone.” Understanding how nutrition, brucellosis, and other factors are impacting the herd is complicated, she says.

“We can present the data, but what you do with the data is ultimately a political decision.”

There are a lot of interacting factors at play on the tundra — and among those trying to determine how best to help the herd. “Part of the frustration on all sides of this is that people have different value systems related to managing wild systems,” Paragi says. To him, last spring’s bear kill wasn’t truly a question of science. “We can present the data, but what you do with the data is ultimately a political decision,” he says. 

Sterling Miller, a retired Fish and Game research biologist and former president of the International Association for Bear Research and Management, acknowledges that crafting regulations is left to the politically appointed Board of Game. But Miller says the agency tends to dismiss criticism of its predator control, when there are valid scientific questions about its effectiveness. In 2022, Miller and his colleagues published an analysis, using Fish and Game harvest data, showing that 40 years of killing predators in an area of south-central Alaska didn’t result in more harvests of moose. “Fish and Game has never pointed out any factual or analytical errors in the analyses that I’ve been involved with,” he says. “Instead, they try to undercut our work by saying it’s based on values.”  

Miller also was involved in what remains one of the agency’s best examples of predator relocations. In 1979, he and another biologist moved 47 brown bears out of a region in south-central Alaska, which resulted in a “significant” increase in the survival of moose calves the next fall. But Miller says Fish and Game often misquotes that work. In reality, due to a lack of funding, Miller didn’t study the young animals long enough to see if they actually reached adulthood. Similarly, Fish and Game conducted an aerial survey this fall of the Mulchatna herd, finding more calves survived after the bear cullings. But Miller and other biologists say that’s not the best metric to measure the operation’s success: These calves may still perish during their first winter. 

The Alaska government is the only one in the world whose goal is to reduce the number of brown bears, Miller says, despite the absence of baseline studies on how many bears are in this part of the state. It irks him that the state continues to use his research as justification for allowing predator measures like bear baiting. In most parts of Alaska, Miller says, “the liberalization of bear hunting regulations has just been so extreme.”

“The liberalization of bear hunting regulations has just been so extreme.”

While last year’s bear killings were particularly egregious, similar cullings have gone largely unnoticed. State data shows over 1,000 wolves and 3,500 brown and black bears have been killed since 2008 alone. In 2016, for example, the federal government shared radio tag information with the state, which used it to kill wolves when they left the safety of the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve — destroying so many packs that it ended a 20-year study on predator-prey relationships. “There weren’t enough survivors to maintain a self-sustaining population,” recounted an investigation by the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The nearby caribou herd still failed to recover. 

Multiple employees for Fish and Game, who didn’t want to be named amid fear of repercussions, told Grist that the agency was ignoring basic scientific principles, and that political appointees to the Board were not equipped to judge the effectiveness of these programs.

Even these criticisms of the agency’s science have been subject to politics: This summer, a committee of the American Society of Mammalogists drafted a resolution speaking out about Alaska’s predator control — only for it to be leaked to Fish and Game, which put up enough fuss that it was dropped. Link Olson, the curator of mammals at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, was one of many who supported the group taking a position on the issue. Olson says that even as someone who “actively collect[s] mammal specimens for science,” he is deeply concerned with Alaska’s approach to managing predators.

A month later, 34 retired wildlife managers and biologists wrote an open letter criticizing the bear cull and calling the agency’s management goals for the Mulchatna herd “unrealistic.” Meanwhile, neither Demma nor Sattler, the biologists who cautioned the board, are still studying the herd; Demma now works in a different area of the agency, and Sattler has left the state and taken a new job, for what she says are a variety of reasons.

EVERY FALL, millions of people follow a live-streamed view of the biggest bears in Katmai National Park, which sits southeast of Wood-Tikchik. The animals jockey for fish before their hibernation, in an annual bulking up that the National Park Service has turned into a playful competition, giving the bears nicknames like “Chunk,” and, for a particularly large behemoth, 747. 

Though marked on maps, animals like 747 don’t know where the comparative safety of the national park ends and where state management begins. This can mean the difference between life and death, as Alaska and federal agencies have taken very different approaches to predator control: The National Park Service generally prohibits it. This has sparked a years-long federalism battle. Back in 2015, for example, the Board of Game passed a rule allowing brown bear baiting in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, leading the Fish and Wildlife Service to ban it in 2016. The state sued, and in 2020 the Trump administration proposed forcing national wildlife refuges to adopt Alaska’s hunting regulations. Similarly, the National Park Service challenged whether it had to allow practices like using spotlights to blind and shoot hibernating bears in their dens in national park preserves. In 2022, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal agencies have ultimate authority over state laws in refuges; last year, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

How these agencies interact with local communities is markedly different, too. Both Alaska Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have regional advisory groups where residents can weigh in on game regulations, but Alissa Nadine Rogers, a resident of the Yukon- Kuskokwim Delta who sits on each, says that, unlike the federal government, it feels like “the state of Alaska does not recognize subsistence users as a priority.” On paper, the state prioritizes subsistence use, but under its constitution, Alaska can’t distinguish between residents, whereas the federal government can put the needs of local and traditional users first. This has frequently led to separate and overlapping state and federal regulations on public lands in Alaska. 

Many people in the region rely on wildlife for a substantial part of their diet. Since the area isn’t connected by roads, groceries must be barged or flown in, making them expensive — a gallon of milk can cost almost $20. In addition to being an important food source, caribou are a traditional part of her Yupik culture, Rogers explains, used for tools and regalia. It’s a real burden for local communities to be told they can’t hunt caribou, which has driven poaching. As state and federal regulations have increased restrictions on hunting, she says residents have difficulty obtaining enough protein to sustain themselves through the winter. “If people don’t understand how it is to live out here, what true perspective do they have?” she asks. “Subsistence users are the ones who bear the burden when it comes to management. And a lot of the time, folks aren’t feeling that their voices are being heard or adequately represented.”

Yet Rogers says state and federal systems can provide an important balance to each other, and she approves of Fish and Game’s predator control efforts. As the former director of natural resources for the Orutsararmiut Native Council, she helped the council write a resolution, later passed by the statewide Alaska Federation of Natives, supporting last spring’s bear and wolf cull. She thinks officials should focus more on climate change but believes culling remains a useful tool. “It gives a vital chance for the [caribou] population and immediately supports growth and recovery,” Rogers says. She also asked Fish and Game to institute a five-year moratorium on all hunting of the herd. “If we go any lower, then we’re pretty much gonna be facing extinction.”

Who gets to make choices about the state’s fish and wildlife resources is a point of increasing tension this year, as a lawsuit unfolds between the state and federal government over who should manage salmon fisheries on the Kuskokwim River, to the west of the Togiak refuge. All five of its salmon returns have faltered for over a decade — making game like caribou even more critical for local communities. (In sharp contrast, to the east of the river, Bristol Bay has seen record recent returns, showing how variable climate impacts can be.) The Alaska Native Federation and the federal government say fishing should be limited to subsistence users, while the state has opened fishing to all state residents.

To ensure Alaska Native communities have a voice in such critical decisions, the Federation called for tribally designated seats on the Board of Game this fall. “We need to have a balanced Board of Game that represents all Alaskans,” says former Governor Tony Knowles. He, too, recommends passing a law to designate seats on the board for different types of wildlife stakeholders, including Alaska Native and rural residents, conservationists, biologists, recreational users, and others. Knowles also proposes an inquiry into Fish and Game’s bear killings, including recommendations on how to better involve the public in these decisions. “We deserve to know how this all happened so it won’t happen again.”

It’s clear to many that business as usual isn’t working. “I have no idea how the state comes up with their management strategy,” says Brice Eningowuk, the tribal administrator for the council of the Traditional Village of Togiak, an Alaska Native village on the outskirts of the Togiak refuge. He says Fish and Game didn’t tell his community about the bear cull, and he expressed skepticism that primarily killing bears would work. “Bears will eat caribou, but that’s not their primary food source,” he says.

Part of the solution is setting more realistic wildlife goals, according to Pat Walsh, whose career as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist involved supervising the caribou program in the Togiak refuge. Recently retired, he says the current goal for the Mulchatna herd size was set 15 years ago, when the population was at 30,000, and is no longer realistic. Reducing that goal could allow targeted subsistence use — which might help ease some of the poaching. Though Fish and Game has killed wolves around the Mulchatna herd for 12 years, he points out the caribou population has steadily dropped. “We recommended the board reassess the ecological situation,” he says, and develop goals “based on the current conditions, not something that occurred in the past.” 

Today’s landscape already looks quite different. Alaska has warmed twice as quickly as the global average, faster than any other state. When Rogers was in high school, she tested the permafrost near her house as an experiment. As a freshman, she only had to jam the spade in the ground before she hit ice. By the time she was a senior, it thawed to a depth of 23 inches — and in one location, to 4 feet. Summers have been cold and wet, and winters have brought crippling ice storms, rather than snow. Berry seasons have failed, and the normally firm and springy tundra has “disintegrated into mush,” Rogers says.

Feeling the very ground change beneath her feet highlights how little sway she has over these shifts. “How are you gonna yell at the clouds? ‘Hey, quit raining. Hey, you, quit snowing’?” Rogers asked. “There’s no way you can change something that is completely out of your control. We can only adapt.”

Yet despite how quickly these ecosystems are shifting, the Department of Fish and Game has no climate scientists. In the meantime, the agency is authorized to continue killing bears on the Mulchatna calving grounds every year until 2028. (The board plans to hear an annual report on the state’s intensive management later this month.) As Walsh summarizes wryly, “It’s difficult to address habitat problems. It’s difficult to address disease problems. It’s easy to say, ‘Well, let’s go shoot.’”

“It’s difficult to address habitat problems. It’s difficult to address disease problems. It’s easy to say, ‘Well, let’s go shoot.’”

Management decisions can feel stark in the face of nature’s complexity. The tundra is quite literally made from relationships. The lichen the caribou feed on is a symbiotic partnership between two organisms. Fungus provides its intricately branching structure, absorbing water and minerals from the air, while algae produces its energy, bringing together sunlight and soil, inseparable from the habitat they form. These connections sustain the life that blooms and eats and dies under a curving sweep of sky. It’s a system, in the truest and most obvious sense — one that includes the humans deciding what a population can recover from, and what a society can tolerate. 

As another season of snow settles in, the caribou cross the landscape in great, meandering lines. There are thousands of years of migrations behind them and an uncertain future ahead. Like so much in nature, it’s hard to draw a clear threshold. “Everything is going to change,” Rogers says.

Lois Parshley is an award-winning independent investigative journalist. Follow more of her climate reporting @loisparshley on social media. We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.