A collared pronghorn took her last breath on Feb. 16. The adult doe’s remains were found on the south end of the Pinedale Mesa.

Another marked-and-tracked doe died a couple days later, just 500 yards away. A week later the third adult female went, her final resting place a mile or so north of her migratory compatriots.

With that, every collared animal that traveled the celebrated Path of the Pronghorn in 2022 was dead.

It was a grim sign for a migratory pronghorn population that has thrived in recent years. Now, following the deadliest winter on record in which a disease outbreak compounded fatalities, the fate of the long-distance travelers that winter in the Green River basin but sojourn for the summer in Grand Teton National Park, the National Elk Refuge and along the Gros Ventre River is unclear. Wildlife scientists aren’t sure how many remain.

“Anything’s possible, right?” Brandon Scurlock, a regional wildlife coordinator for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said. “But I would have to think that some of those animals made it and will make that migration.”

But the outlook is grim, with the large majority of animals from the larger Sublette Herd likely dead, according to Scurlock. Pronghorn in the herd were being closely studied as the state considers whether to recognize and protect a route that remains undesignated due to political pressure from industry groups. The monitoring effort tracked 83 does throughout the herd as recently as December. By Tuesday, when Scurlock spoke to WyoFile, just 21 of them were still alive — including zero of the Jackson Hole migrants.

“We lost 75% of our collared animals,” he said. “It’s erroneous to [extrapolate] that 75% to the entire herd, but that’s our best indication of survival. If we did have 400 or 500 [Jackson Hole migrants], our best guess is that 75% of those might be gone.”

In Jackson Hole pronghorns’ favor is that the migratory population has thrived of late. Counts in 2020 and 2021 were the highest on record.

If the so-called Path of the Pronghorn does live on, it’s all but assured that drastically fewer animals will make the journey, which cuts through gas fields, skirts coming-soon subdivisions and treads over a mountain pass.

Lost before 

An archaeological site along the migration route at Trappers Point holds evidence that humans have hunted pronghorn along the path as long as 6,000 years ago.

But even within that long history, the Path of the Pronghorn has faded before.

Joel Berger, a Wildlife Conservation Society researcher and former Jackson Hole resident, was part of the multi-agency research team around the turn of the century that first mapped the route. The science led to the Bridger-Teton National Forest amending its management plan, in essence creating the first federally designated migration corridor in the United States. The southern reaches remain undesignated — to the chagrin of some wildlife advocates.

“Early reports were a couple of thousand around the turn of the century, then they went extinct locally in Jackson,” Berger said.

The migration route was lost, he estimated, between about 1910 and the 1950s.

“The pronghorn were just all shot out,” Berger said, “because we didn’t have good conservation in those days.”

Green River basin pronghorn evidently learned the ancient route into modern day Teton County again some four decades later. Berger likened them finding their way back to a pinball player’s inevitable outcome.

“What happens? Ultimately, the ball ends up in the hole, right?” Berger said. “From our GPS data we know they were bouncing all over, but the only access into Jackson was the single route.”

Fast forward to the present, and management of the pronghorn herd is much more deliberate and science-based.

Game and Fish and the National Park Service not only survey the Jackson segment annually, the state agency keeps close tabs on numbers within the entire herd, which spans western Wyoming from Green River to northern Grand Teton National Park. The population breached 60,000 in the early 2000s but was last estimated at 43,000, Scurlock said.

In past bad winters over the last couple decades the herd has fared OK.

“We know we did lose some pronghorn in ‘16-’17, but this winter was unprecedented in terms of the number of days below zero and the depth of the snow on the winter range. ” Scurlock said. “We just didn’t see these large foci of carcasses [in ‘16-’17].”

In the wake of winter 2022-’23, there are conspicuous concentrations of death scattered throughout the region. Motorists can see them without leaving their vehicle in places like the East Fork hill, located on the east side of Highway 191 between Farson and Boulder.

“We’re seeing these clusters of animals on the landscape that are now dead,” Scurlock said. “Rock Springs to Boulder, over to Big Piney, down by Kemmerer.”

Outbreaks of mycoplasma bovis, a new affliction in the Green River basin that causes a deadly respiratory disease, have been observed in the hardest-hit areas, he said. The carcass of the first Jackson Hole migrant that died this winter was shipped to a Laramie laboratory and tested positive for the disease.

The verdict

There are a few bright spots better for survival along the southern fringes of the Sublette Herd’s high desert home, Scurlock said. Those areas, he said, include the Red Desert between the Killpecker Sand Dunes and the town of Superior and the bluffy country overlooking Interstate 80 near James Town.

Although it’s an open question what remains of the Jackson Hole segment, answers should come through in the next couple weeks.

“In a nutshell, we won’t know until they show up in June,” Game and Fish wildlife biologist Aly Courtemanch said.

State and federal agencies will partner to do a more-thorough census of what’s left later in the summer. Game and Fish has drastically reduced hunting opportunities to give the herd its best shot at recovery. Doe and fawn hunting — which has the most impact on populations — has been eliminated in all hunt areas roamed by the herd, Scurlock said.

“They are fairly fecund, and they can bounce back pretty quick just because they have twins as the norm,” he said. “Our plan is to give the herd the maximum opportunity to bounce back by eliminating that reproductive harvest.”

Still, the population’s starting point will likely be significantly lower than wildlife managers have seen in their lifetimes. They’re beginning to see what that looks like.

Game and Fish biologist Gary Fralick’s territory doesn’t cover the Sublette Pronghorn Herd, but he drove through a swath of its habitat on Monday on his way to take a look at what’s left of the Wyoming Range Mule Deer Herd.

“Since I’ve been around, in that country it’s always the pronghorn leading the deer. And they’re not there.”

Gary Fralick

Typically there’d be “several hundred” pronghorn foraging this time of year on pastureland and in the sagebrush from the Hoback Rim down to Daniel Junction, he said.

Fralick, a 30-year veteran at his biologist post, saw only 11 animals. Their absence, he said, isn’t because of a delayed migration. It’s because they’re dead.

“Since I’ve been around, in that country it’s always the pronghorn leading the deer,” Fralick said. “And they’re not there.”

The post Fatal winter puts ‘Path of the Pronghorn’ on shaky ground appeared first on WyoFile.

By Rachel Crumpler and Rose Hoban

Obtaining an abortion in North Carolina will now be more challenging after Republican state lawmakers overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of Senate Bill 20, a bill that adds new restrictions on women seeking the procedure, limiting access after 12 weeks and imposing new requirements. 

In a night filled with drama at the General Assembly, both chambers of the legislative body accomplished the override, voting along party lines. After the vote in each chamber, observers in the galleries above lawmakers erupted in screams and cries of “shame, shame,” as they were herded out of the chambers. 

Senate Bill 20 adds an additional in-person appointment at least 72 hours before a procedure, requires that abortions be performed at hospitals after 12 weeks and implements new reporting requirements.

While the outcome was not a surprise, there was no shortage of drama as constituents and fellow lawmakers rallied support for their side and hectored lawmakers perceived to be on the fence with visits, calls and emails. The drama was enhanced by the defection of Charlotte Democratic Rep. Tricia Cotham, who made a switch to the Republican Party in April, sealing a Republican supermajority in the House of Representatives. A supermajority had already existed in the Senate after last November’s election.

At the legislative building in downtown Raleigh on Tuesday afternoon, supporters and opponents of the new restrictions filled the upstairs galleries of the legislative chambers and the space outside, under the rotunda. Many brought both hand-lettered and printed signs reading, “Vote Pro-Life” and “Bans off our bodies.” While members of the two groups mingled mostly peacefully, at times some jostled and tempers flared.

The override means that North Carolina will join the ranks of Republican-controlled states that have moved to impose new restrictions on abortion after the Dobbs decision last summer overturned the longstanding Roe v. Wade decision that had opened up access to abortion. The new restrictions also mean that North Carolina — which had become an abortion refuge for many women in the South — will become less of an access point for people seeking abortions.  

Tense debate in the Senate 

Both protestors and supporters of the override began arriving at the legislative building in the early afternoon and by the time the Senate convened at 4 p.m.,the galleries above that chamber were filled. An overflow crowd stood outside the gallery windows holding up their signs during the debate. 

“Nothing else you could do will erase the harm that this bill will do to women and girls — our health, our status in society, our ability to plan our families and our careers,” Sen. Natasha Marcus said during her turn during the debate. “It undermines our ability to trust that you care about what happens to us.”

Marcus described growing up in a political family in which her father was an elected Republican who believed in personal freedom and refused to vote to restrict abortion access. By passing SB20, she argued Republicans in North Carolina no longer stand for the principles of personal freedom.

At times the Senate debate became testy, as Democrats asked leading questions of the majority Republicans, trying to pin them down on details of the bill that some say are ambiguous. 

“People in this chamber are saying that I am somehow doing something inconsistent with what I said during the election cycle,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Wilmington), who was peppered with questions from Democrats after other Republicans refused to yield to questions. “The politics of this, saying that people made promises, I wrote an op-ed and said exactly what I was going to do. I didn’t promise anything to the people in this room.” 

“This isn’t political theater here today. It may be to you. It’s not to me,” he said. 

In the end, the Senate voted 30-20 along party lines. After the vote tally, several Democratic senators promptly held up matching signs reading, “Politicians make crappy doctors.”

“I think we’ve ended up in a place that is supported by the vast majority of folks,” Senate leader Phil Berger (R-Eden) told reporters after the vote. “I think what we’ve done is put North Carolina at a place that shows respect for life, shows respect for women and shows the interest of this General Assembly in trying to assist in those ways that we can assist if someone has a pregnancy that they carry to term and worries about some of the things about how to take care of a child.”

House vote seals override 

Then it was the House’s turn to vote. After a dinner recess where observers stayed seated in the gallery to keep their places, House representatives returned to the chamber to debate. 

All eyes were on Cotham, who wore a bright pink dress, a color that’s been associated with supporters of Planned Parenthood. For the entirety of the proceeding, she sat silently.

That was different from a now-notable 2015 incident, when Cotham spoke during a debate on the House floor about receiving care to terminate an ectopic pregnancy, making her a champion of abortion rights supporters at the time. 

This year, that mantle passed to Rep. Diamond Staton-Williams (D-Harrisburg), who gave a heartfelt testimonial of choosing to terminate a 2002 pregnancy after much consideration with her husband when she was a young wife and mother of two.

“It was not an easy decision at all,” she said. “It was not made lightly or frivolously … I knew that in order for my family to prosper and to continue with the opportunities that we had in front of us, this was the best decision for us.”  

Staton-Williams also shared that she had two additional unviable pregnancies that required medical intervention.

“When I read this language of Senate Bill 20, all I see is the removal of the God-given right, for myself and folks like me, to make decisions for ourselves,” she said.

Shortly after Staton-Williams spoke, debate concluded with Rep. Kristin Baker (R-Concord) having the last word for Republicans. Baker, a physician, argued that the bill “protects the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship.”

That statement drew a howl of protest from the galleries, where observers — including physicians who were there in protest — had been largely silent, waving their hands in the air to applaud statements they supported and giving the thumbs down when they disagreed.

The observers were admonished by House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Kings Mountain), who told members of the audience to stay silent or leave.

Only minutes later, the House vote to override the veto came. Cotham voted with her new caucus for a final vote tally of 72-48 along party lines.

Once again, observers in the gallery erupted into shouts of “Shame!” This time loud and continuing. Moore ordered the General Assembly police and sergeants-at-arms to escort protesters out of the building. 

There were no arrests.

Second successful veto override

Cooper rejected the bill with his veto stamp only three days ago during a rally across from the Legislative Building in downtown Raleigh that drew a crowd of close to 2,000 people.

This marks the second successful veto override this year. In March, Republican lawmakers voted to override Cooper’s veto of a controversial bill repealing the permit requirement for handgun buyers.

Cooper had urged people to contact four Republican lawmakers — Lee, Rep. John Bradford (R-Cornelius), Rep. Ted Davis Jr. (R-Wilmington) and Cotham — all of whom said on the campaign trail that they’d support fewer restrictions on abortion than the bill dictates.

Ultimately, that advocacy — walking the halls of the legislature, emails, phone calls — proved unsuccessful. The abortion provisions of the bill will go into effect July 1.

In a statement released after the House vote, Cooper said that Republicans had argued that the bill is less restrictive than Democrats have warned. 

“We will now do everything in our power to make sure that’s true,” he wrote. “North Carolinians now understand that Republicans are unified in their assault on women’s reproductive freedom and we are energized to fight back on this and other critical issues facing our state.”

Tears, celebrations

Abortion rights supporters say the override deals a devastating blow to abortion access in the state.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Susanna Birdsong, general counsel at Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, who choked up as she spoke. “It’s gonna make so many people in our state less safe.” 

Cora Field and Loretta Pfeiffer came to Raleigh from Chapel Hill and said they cried when they found out the lawmakers overrode Cooper’s veto. At age 16, they said it’s disappointing to see abortion access diminish. They don’t know how the changes could affect them if they one day ever need an abortion.

“I’m witnessing a really sad day in history,” Pfeiffer said. “I feel like my rights are being taken away and I can’t do anything about it.”

The General Assembly’s actions ignore overwhelming opposition to the bill from the medical community, including the North Carolina Medical Society, the North Carolina Obstetrical and Gynecological Society, the North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians and the NC affiliate of the American College of Nurse-Midwives.

In contrast, pro-life supporters celebrated the passage of the new restrictions.

“Thousands of babies will have their lives,” said Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of NC Values Coalition. “Their lives will be saved and women will be supported when they encounter an unplanned pregnancy with all the funding in the bill — to help them with childcare, with paternal and maternal leave for state employees.”

Twenty-year-old Abigail Griffin drove two hours with her family to be at the legislature to witness the override and show her support for cutting the window for abortion access. 

“I believe that every life is a gift from God and that life begins at conception, so anything we can do to protect that sanctity of life is perfect,” she said. 

Vowing to continue care

While abortion providers did not want new restrictions to come to fruition, they said they’ve been preparing for the possibility since Roe was overturned last summer.

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic spokesperson Molly Rivera said her organization’s preparation has included hiring specialized staff who are trained to help patients navigate hurdles within their home state or those of traveling to another state. With new abortion restrictions coming in July, there will be much to adjust to in North Carolina.

“We will have work to do to prepare our North Carolina clinics for this new reality,” Rivera said. “Figuring out how we can keep our doors open, figuring out how we can help as many patients as we can within the state and then how we can connect patients to the care they need out of state.”

Amber Gavin, vice president of advocacy and operations at A Woman’s Choice, an abortion provider with three clinic locations in the state, predicted that North Carolina will see fewer people coming from out of state.

Gavin emphasized that it’s difficult to provide abortion in an ever-changing landscape of state laws and court rulings, including recent challenges to the abortion drug mifepristone.

“We absolutely intend to continue to provide care,” Gavin said. “Obviously, working with our attorneys and our colleagues to make sure that we are in compliance with the law but still providing really compassionate and patient-centered care.”

The post With veto override, 12-week abortion restrictions now law in NC appeared first on North Carolina Health News.

West Texas voters rejected three conservative Christian candidates who sought to infuse religious values into local politics. The campaign support the candidates received from local churches has prompted calls for state and federal probes.

This story was produced in partnership with the nonprofit newsroom Type Investigations and is co-published with ICT.

In any given year, thousands of people are incarcerated in dozens of detention facilities run by tribal nations or the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Often left out of research on climate and carceral facilities, the tribal prisoner population is one of the most invisible and vulnerable in the country.

Now, climate change threatens to make matters worse.

According to a Grist analysis, more than half of all tribal facilities could see at least 50 days per year in temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century if emissions continue to grow at their current pace. Ten facilities could experience more than 150 days of this kind of heat. Yet many tribal detention centers do not have the infrastructure, or funding, to endure such extreme temperatures for that long. This kind of heat exposure is especially dangerous for those with preexisting conditions like high blood pressure, which Indigenous people are more likely to have than white people.

“Tribal court jails are the worst jails in the country. They’re worse than any facilities you’ll ever go to,” said Diego Urbina, a public defender for the Pueblo of Laguna. “I worked at a [veterinary] hospital when I was 15 years old, and the vet hospital had better facilities than we have out here.”

In the Pueblo of Laguna jail, just 45 minutes west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the air conditioner was often down, according to Brandon Chavez, a Laguna citizen who has been detained multiple times over the past few years. Even when doors were left open for cross ventilation, the effort did little to blunt the hot desert air, Chavez said.

“Climate change and excessive heat factors into Pueblo planning for all aspects of Laguna government and the Laguna community,” officials from the Pueblo of Laguna wrote in an email to Grist and Type Investigations. When asked whether Laguna currently has plans to manage climate impacts like excessive heat, officials wrote, “The [detention facility’s] HVAC system is less than 10 years old and normally keeps the occupants warm in the colder months and cool in the hotter months. Malfunctions will occasionally happen and are quickly repaired.”

While New Mexico’s Cibola County rarely sees a heat index over 90 degrees, both Chavez and Urbina said that the Laguna Tribal Detention Center, located there, can be unbearably hot. And temperatures are only expected to go up: According to data from the Union of Concerned Scientists, Cibola County — and the Laguna jail — could see about 50 days per year above 90 degrees by the end of the century if emissions and temperatures continue to rise at their current pace, a drastic change from the present day.

According to Chavez, the Laguna jail is already a grim place. “There was literally pipes exposed,” said Chavez. “There was mold on places, and we used to tell [the guards]. They didn’t care. I’ve been into some pretty huge jails around some places, and nothing still compares to the mistreatment [at] my Pueblo jail.”

Urbina said his clients detained in the jail have complained about backed-up toilets, overdue repairs, and overcrowding, including having to share a shower with 20-plus other people. “At one time, they packed that thing like sardines,” Urbina said of the Laguna jail.

In response, James Burson, an in-house attorney for the Pueblo of Laguna, told Grist and Type that a renovation of showers, toilets, and sinks in the facility was completed in February 2022.

Tribes have their own justice systems, including courts, law enforcement, jails, and prisons. In a given year, thousands of people are incarcerated in these detention facilities. In 2021, more than half of those detainees were held for nonviolent offenses, and a majority had not been convicted of a crime.

Tribal jails have a long history of mismanagement. In 2004, the Department of Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, issued a report that called the state of tribal jails a “national disgrace.” It examined everything from deaths in facilities, attempted suicides, and escapes — serious incidents that were not reported to supervisors 98 percent of the time — to smaller issues including broken lights, malfunctioning cameras, faulty plumbing, and leaking water pumps. “Nothing less than a Herculean effort to turn these conditions around would be morally acceptable,” investigators wrote at the time.

​​In the aftermath of the report, funding for facilities increased, the percentage of certified officers grew, and new jails were built. However, multiple reports and investigations over the years have shown that little else has changed since 2004. According to an NPR report in June 2021, at least 19 people had died in tribal detention centers since 2016, while one out of five correctional officers had not completed required basic training. Reporters also highlighted facilities with broken pipes, dirty water, and other infrastructure problems.

“Under Interior’s new leadership, we are seeking increased funding and conducting a comprehensive review of law enforcement policies, practices and resources to ensure that [Bureau of Indian Affairs] detention center staff are adequately trained, that our facilities are upgraded, and that we respect the rights and dignity of those within our system to the fullest extent,” Darryl LaCounte, the director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, said in a written statement to NPR at the time.

In an April report, the Office of Inspector General, or OIG, highlighted serious health and safety concerns at three tribal detention facilities: San Carlos Apache Adult/Juvenile Detention Center, the White Mountain Apache Adult Detention Center, and the Tohono O’odham Adult Detention Facility. The report comes as part of an ongoing performance audit of BIA-funded or BIA-operated detention programs, and says that the problems identified need immediate attention. Issues include holes in walls, broken air-conditioning, nonoperational toilets and sinks, and moldy shower ceilings. Many of those challenges were also included in a 2016 OIG report.

“The safety issues raised in this report are disturbing enough on their own, but the fact that they span multiple administrations is inexcusable,” U.S. Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, a ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement on the recent report.

In 2022, The Intercept assessed the growing risk of extreme heat in jails and prisons across the United States. But of the roughly 6,500 facilities The Intercept analyzed, only 16 were tribal detention centers and jails, excluding the vast majority of tribal facilities across the country. Grist and Type Investigations built on The Intercept’s reporting to fill this gap.

Based on an analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists, information collected via Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests from the BIA, and research conducted in partnership with the Carceral Ecologies Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, we tracked heat risk for 81 tribal jails and prisons spread across 20 states.

In 2019, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a county-by-county analysis of just how hot the contiguous U.S. could become under different levels of global climate action, from rapid action to reduce global emissions to effectively no action. The researchers then looked at the heat index, or the “feels like” temperature, which takes both humidity and air temperature into account, to paint a holistic picture of how heat would actually be experienced by communities on the ground. The National Weather Service also uses the heat index when issuing advisories or excessive heat warnings.

The researchers found that by mid-century, under a no-action scenario, “the average number of days per year with a heat index above 100°F will more than double, while the number of days per year above 105°F will quadruple.” In other words, in just a few decades, dangerous heat will become much more commonplace unless aggressive action is taken to limit climate change.

Jails across the country already face challenges when it comes to managing heat. The Intercept’s analysis found that “hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people are being subjected to prolonged periods of high heat every year.” Tribal jails are no different.

According to information Grist obtained through FOIA, most tribal facilities are in the Western U.S., where climates tend to be arid or hot. Nearly 20 percent of tribal facilities already face more than 50 days per year with a heat index above 90 degrees — the point at which heatstroke and heat exhaustion become much greater risks, particularly for vulnerable groups, such as elderly and obese people, and those with preexisting health conditions.

Within 80 years, if emissions continue to grow at their current rate, three out of four tribal facilities could experience 50 days or more in those temperatures.

Hundred-degree temperatures are a key marker for the National Weather Service. Generally, heat advisories are issued once the heat index reaches 100 degrees for 48 hours. Just five tribal facilities typically experience more than 50 days per year where the heat index tops 100 degrees F. But at the world’s current rate of emissions growth, that number will more than triple by the end of the century, with 17 tribal facilities experiencing 50 or more days per year where the heat index tops 100 degrees. Places like the Colorado River Indian Tribes Female Adult Detention Center and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Department of Corrections Juvenile facility, located in Parker and Scottsdale, Arizona, respectively, could experience well over 100 days per year in 100-degree heat.

In states not historically considered “hot,” like Montana, Idaho, or Washington, tribal detention facilities could also see dramatic increases in excessive heat, according to Grist’s analysis. Facilities typically accustomed to experiencing only a day or two of temperatures above 90 degrees could see up to 24 days per year where the heat index tops 90, just within the next few decades.

“That ramp-up from zero to 10 [days out of the year] — that’s really significant for places where the infrastructure is less prepared,” said Kristina Dahl, the principal climate scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate and energy program. “Generally, in any given year, heat kills more people in the U.S. than any other hazard like a hurricane, a flood, tornadoes, etc.”

Dahl and her fellow researchers have called for aggressive action to limit global warming, but for some communities in the U.S., more frequent extreme heat is inevitable.

Even if world leaders take rapid action to curb global temperature rise and reach goals set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, the number of tribal jails and detention centers experiencing more than 50 days over 90 degrees could increase by roughly 70 percent by the end of the century.

The Union of Concerned Scientists used statistical models to predict the number of days each county in the contiguous United States would experience temperatures above 90, 100, and 105 degrees F by the end of the century. But a county’s risk of experiencing extreme heat can change, depending on the degree to which world leaders are able to lower fossil fuel emissions and stop global warming.

A “rapid action” scenario represents the fulfillment of the goals set forth in the Paris climate accord, or limiting temperature rise to 3.6 degrees F above preindustrial temperatures.

Under the “slow action” scenario, greenhouse gas emissions will have declined by mid-century and temperature rise would be limited to roughly 4.3 degrees F by the start of the next century. Scientists consider this scenario to be the most likely.

According to Grist’s analysis — which combines Union of Concerned Scientists’ data with information on detention center locations obtained via FOIA requests — under this scenario, roughly one-third of tribal facilities would see more than 50 days per year with a heat index reaching at least 90 degrees F.

Roughly 14 percent would see more than 50 days with a heat index topping 100 degrees F.

---

One of the biggest hurdles to understanding and addressing the heat risks tribal facilities face is gathering even the most basic information about them.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs places tribal corrections facilities into four categories: direct, 638, self-governance, and tribal. Direct means the facility is run directly by the BIA; there are 23 of these programs. Meanwhile, 638 programs, which receive BIA funding but are contracted out to tribes to operate, make up roughly half of all facilities, according to BIA documents. Self-governance facilities can also receive federal funding and allow tribes more control. Tribal facilities are run and funded directly by tribes themselves.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security publishes hundreds of datasets related to critical infrastructure for public use. Among them is a database containing addresses for over 6,700 correctional institutions in the United States. Of these records, only 16 are tribal facilities, representing less than 20 percent of tribal detention centers in operation.

The BIA does not make publicly available the exact number and locations of many tribal jails and detention centers, including the physical address of the jail at Pueblo of Laguna — Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s home community. In an email to Grist and Type, a BIA spokesperson attributed this lack of transparency to “security reasons.” When asked to explain the nature of these security concerns, BIA did not expand, but instead wrote in an email that tribes are “not required to report address changes to the BIA.” The agency added that it provides oversight, including onsite visits to monitor compliance with federal standards.

Last year, Grist filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the specific locations of all tribal detention facilities, including those previously kept private by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The BIA released the locations of 23 active detention centers managed by the agency, but withheld the addresses of tribally operated detention centers. Those include 638, self-governance, and tribal facilities.

A second FOIA request for these locations revealed only the cities in which these facilities are located, and no street or mailing addresses. The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Department of Corrections juvenile and adult facilities, for instance, are located in “Scottsdale, AZ,” but where those centers are in the city’s roughly 185 square miles was not revealed. Grist has appealed the agency’s response.

Grist partnered with the Carceral Ecologies Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, to begin answering these questions.

The U.S. Department of Justice tracks information about the population in tribal jails through the Annual Survey of Jails in Indian Country. According to its midyear surveys from 2010 to 2019, an average of 70 percent of tribal jail detainees were held for nonviolent offenses. By midyear 2021, that percentage had dropped slightly to roughly 60 percent of detainees. According to the Justice Department, the average length of stay for a tribal detainee in 2021 was roughly 11 days, with 53 percent of those held in these facilities that year having not been convicted of a crime.

Heating and cooling are common problems in tribal jails, according to tribal public defenders, who also said water quality, bathroom maintenance, overcrowding, and staff training are of concern.

Those conditions can make incarcerated people, as well as those who work at carceral facilities, more susceptible to health risks associated with extreme heat. Preexisting conditions such as asthma, hypertension, and obesity can increase susceptibility to heatstroke and heart attack.

“[Incarcerated people] have limited mobility and suffer from a disproportionate amount of mental health and medical comorbidities that are exacerbated by exposure to extreme temperatures,” environmental epidemiologist Julianne Skarha and her coauthors wrote in a 2020 paper in the American Journal of Public Health assessing the health effects of extreme heat among incarcerated populations.

There is limited research on the intersection of extreme temperatures and carceral facilities, and in research Grist reviewed, tribal jails were not included.

However, between 1988 and 2019, Skarha and her team inspected at least 100 legal cases citing violations of the Eighth Amendment — that no imprisoned person can be subject to “cruel and unusual punishment” — based on exposure to extreme temperatures. In Texas alone, Skarha found that approximately 270 heat-related deaths occurred between 2001 and 2019 in carceral facilities that do not have air-conditioning. Yet no national database tracks air-conditioning availability in jails, let alone tribal jails.

In Arizona, one of the hottest states in the country, three tribes have seven facilities that face the greatest risk for excessive heat among tribal jails. These facilities include the Colorado River Indian Tribes’ male, female, and juvenile detention centers, and adult and juvenile centers for the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community’s Department of Corrections and the Gila River Department of Corrections.

The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Department of Corrections adult and juvenile facilities are located in Maricopa County. Last summer, temperatures in Maricopa County reached a high of 115 degrees, with the National Weather Service issuing 17 heat warnings for the Phoenix area in 2022. As of October 2022, the total number of heat-associated deaths in the county reached nearly 380 — up at least 50 percent from the same month in 2021.

“As a tribe, we’re starting to realize climate change,” said Wi-Bwa Grey, a member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community tribal council. “We’re in the desert, where the sun hits us the most. Now, leadership, our council, is starting to really take that into consideration.”

About a four-hour drive northeast of Salt River, the Zuni Pueblo adult and juvenile detention facilities in McKinley County, New Mexico, have historically seen very few days where the heat index tops 90 degrees. But by the end of the century, Zuni Pueblo could experience more than roughly 55 days a year with temperatures above 90 degrees if emissions continue at their current rate, representing a massive change to the area’s typical climate.

Tyler Lastiyano, Zuni Pueblo’s director of public safety, said the Zuni jail, a 638 facility, recently updated its HVAC system. To deal with rising temperatures and higher energy costs, he hopes that the facility can transition to renewable energy. “If we can get the funding to do that, it’ll help us in the long run,” he said. For now, however, Lastiyano has to make trade-offs.

“Our tribal government can help. They can advocate, and they have advocated, but it’s the Bureau [of Indian Affairs] that has to approve our funding,” he said.

Of the 27 tribal jails visited by Department of Interior investigators in 2004, 10 were run directly by the BIA while 17 were 638 programs, run by local tribes with a combination of federal and tribal funding. Investigators noted that, in general, the 638 facilities were better managed.

In 2022, after NPR’s reporting, the BIA announced reforms to its corrections program, including updated policies for death investigations, revised processes for cell checks, and improvements to staff training.

But Ed Naranjo, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation and a former supervisory special agent for the BIA who helped spark the 2004 investigation, says that not enough has been done since the report’s release. “You got people sitting in D.C. in these offices, and they don’t really give a damn about what’s going on in the field,” Naranjo said. “It seems that they just neglect what’s going on as long as nobody makes any waves, and everything’s supposedly fine.”

In a statement, a BIA spokesperson wrote, “In accordance with procedures developed in partnership with Tribes, facility conditions are monitored quarterly to assess facility needs and to prioritize projects to be completed with available funding.” The BIA also wrote that it does not track how much funding tribes contribute toward detention facilities or whether optimal staffing levels are fulfilled. In response to a question about how many functioning HVAC systems there are in tribal detention centers, the spokesperson wrote that there is no centralized monitoring program relating to the maintenance of HVAC systems, but that “essential airflow systems are closely monitored and maintained by Tribal/BIA maintenance crews.”

For 2023, the BIA has budgeted over $15 million for “public safety and justice facilities improvement and repair,” roughly two-thirds of which is earmarked for “minor improvement and repair,” which can include accessibility updates and disposal of property. Just $1 million is designated for environmental projects like managing air and water quality, which comes to just over $12,000 per facility if divided equally among the 81 facilities listed by the BIA.

In its 2023 budget, the BIA plans for the construction of nine new detention centers, including three 638 facilities, most of which are replacing existing facilities. According to the BIA’s 2023 Budget Justifications report, without these new facilities, “Employee and Inmate safety will also continue to be impaired by inadequate facilities incapable of addressing modern detention requirements.”

Derrick Marks, a Yankton Sioux Council Member, says one of the biggest issues with relying on federal funding is that money is tied to the whims and policies of the administration in power. “As Native Americans, the less that we can have other people making decisions on our behalf, the better it is,” said Marks.

The Yankton jail, located in Wagner, South Dakota, less than 15 miles north of the Nebraska border, is currently run directly by the BIA. While Marks says he would prefer the tribe manage the jail itself, he’s hesitant about pushing for a shift to a 638 contract. Although 638 facilities receive BIA funding, Marks says that the amount provided would not be sufficient to properly run the jail and the tribe simply doesn’t have the resources to fill in the gaps. Beyond day-to-day upkeep and administration, preparing for a more extreme climate future comes with its own hurdles. “I don’t know where the next administration is going to go with this stuff, with climate change,” Marks said. “It’s just so up in the air.”

Some Indigenous activists, however, are not convinced that tribal management and increased funding are real solutions. Some, like Brandon Benallie, who is Diné and a member of the K’é Infoshop, a Diné Anarchist and Communist Collective, believe that jails are part of a punitive justice system that has never worked for Indigenous people. Instead of spending millions on upgrading tribal jails, tribes should be spending money on resources to build culturally appropriate treatment centers for substance use disorders and working to address the root causes of crime, argues Benallie.

“We can’t just call everything an experiment of sovereignty when it harms our people,” said Benallie. Later in the interview, he explained, “We’re looking for short-term or nearsighted solutions to handle things that take an immense amount of time and responsibility.”

Experts and tribal officials who Grist spoke to for this story underscored the obligations the federal government owes to tribes but routinely violates — legal agreements between Indigenous nations and the United States that exchanged large swaths of land for guarantees like education, health care, and financial support.

“The feds can always help out more,” Urbina, the public defender at Pueblo of Laguna, said. “They have a trust obligation to the Native American tribes, and I think they can always do a better job, considering the historical trauma, the stuff that’s been done by the federal government to these tribes.” Officials from Laguna wrote to Grist that they need additional resources from the federal government for the detention facility and regularly request additional funding for staff and facility improvements.

In lieu of relying on the United States, though, tribes have adapted. When heat reached dangerous levels in Arizona this past summer, tribal council member Grey said Salt River detainees were kept inside, safe in indoor recreation areas with air-conditioning, tablets, and televisions. According to Grey, the center is able to avoid infrastructure problems found in some other tribal jails because it is a self-governance facility funded by the tribe, in part through tribally operated casinos. In addition to infrastructure, funding goes to initiatives such as language classes for detainees and culturally appropriate programs that focus on rehabilitation.

“We’re blessed because we’re able to have our own HVAC people on staff dedicated to the facility,” said Grey. “A lot of communities aren’t that blessed to have that.”

To help close the gap and protect some of the country’s most vulnerable prisoners, advocates say that the federal government needs to uphold its obligations.

“Tribes need to raise a lot more hell about this whole thing, demand things,” said Naranjo. “I don’t think a lot of tribes realize they have a voice. If they unify and get together, they can make some changes and get things done.”

---

Additional research by Precious Ivy Molina, Liz Barry, and Nicholas Shapiro of Carceral Ecologies at UCLA

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Extreme heat will take an unequal toll in tribal jails on May 10, 2023.

Pauly Denetclaw
ICT

WINDOW ROCK, Arizona — Navajo Nation President Buu Van Nygren was not coy about his intention to lift the COVID-19 mask mandates on the Navajo Nation once elected. This was one of his campaign promises that he made for his first 100 days. He’s kept that promise.

On Friday, Nygren signed an order that lifted the last of the COVID-19 restrictions that mandated masks be worn in schools, healthcare facilities and assisted-living homes.

“It’s an exciting time because it just shows that as president, I believe in our people at the local level, as well as really trying to empower them,” Nygren told ICT.

This decision was not made hastily. Since taking office the Nygren administration has been getting feedback from these facilities and institutions on what they wanted when it came to the Navajo Nation health mandates. According to Nygren, they wanted to have autonomy over their own policy and procedures.

“The schools, majority of them, wanted to lift it because it’s so hard to require the students to wear them in class, to go to school, all the write ups, and it was just really tough on the administrators,” Nygren said. “But as far as assisted-living facilities, that’s up to them. I know they run their own facilities. Health care facilities, that’s up to them.”

In January, Nygren lifted the general public indoor mask mandate with the exception of health care facilities, assisted living facilities and schools.

Beginning in spring of 2020, the Navajo Nation quickly sent workers home, shuttered offices and non-essential businesses, mandated masks, closed its borders to visitors and enacted curfews. This was in an attempt to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

The nation became a hotspot for coronavirus cases and deaths over the course of the pandemic.

Approximately 170,000 people who live on the Navajo Nation, according to the U.S. Census. The Navajo Department of Health reported nearly 84,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of May 5, 2023. The nation also reported 2,117 deaths.

The pandemic worldwide has claimed nearly 7 million lives in the last three years, according to the World Health Organization.

On Friday, the World Health Organization determined that the COVID-19 pandemic was no longer a global health emergency, saying the virus has been on a downward trend for the last year. The United States is set to let its health emergency order end on May 11.

“I think I’d be so hesitant if the Navajo Nation was the first organization to reopen,” Nygren said. “I’d be very hesitant but a lot of entities around the Navajo Nation have been reopened, some of them, over a year now, some of them into the months. We’re just playing catch up at the moment.”

Cabinet member Rhonda Tuni, and head of the Navajo Department of Health, supports the removal of the final mask mandates on the nation.

“We are very excited to finally lift the mask mandate all across the Navajo Nation,” Tuni said. “Continue to practice the guidelines, hand sanitizing, and anything else that you’ve learned throughout these last three years.”

As the school year winds down, the mask mandate for next year has been a topic of discussion for the public schools on the nation.

“We’re very thankful to President Nygren and his staff to not necessarily lifting the mask mandate but just making it an option for our families,” said Shannon Goodsell, superintendent of Window Rock Unified School District. “This provides an opportunity for all of our students, all of our moms across the Navajo Nation to make the best decision for their families in order to keep their children safe while they’re in our schools. On behalf of the public schools across the Navajo Nation, we would like to say thank you.”

Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, Hopi Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni and White Mountain Apache Tribe are the handful of tribes that still have a mask mandate, according to the Arizona Department of Education.

Earlier this year, Nygren received backlash about his decision to lift the general mask mandate.

The response on Nygren’s Facebook live announcing the lift is mixed, some people agree but many do not.

“I’m not here to please everybody but I’m here to make decisions as president,” Nygren said. “I think that’s very important. You got to make decisions and move on.”

ICT is a nonprofit news organization. Will you support our work? All of our content is free. There are no subscriptions or costs. And we have hired more Native journalists in the past year than any news organization ─ and with your help we will continue to grow and create career paths for our people. Support ICT for as little as $10. Sign up for ICT’s free newsletter.

Morristown’s top administrator plans to leave his job by the end of June, he announced this week, close to two months after the town’s selectboard chair also resigned. 

The decisions by Eric Dodge, the town administrator, and Bob Beeman, the board chair, followed months of contentious local debate over the Lamoille County town’s proposed 2024 fiscal year budget, which voters overwhelmingly rejected on Town Meeting Day. 

The budget was controversial in part due to its size — more than $10 million, which a small but vocal group of residents argued was too large for the 5,500-person community — as well as salary increases it included for town employees, including Dodge.

A revised budget set to go before voters next month still includes those increases. All Morristown employees have been slated to receive what Dodge has described as an 8.7% cost of living adjustment, though some in certain pay grades would get larger raises.

The town administrator read a resignation letter at Monday’s selectboard meeting, saying that his decision came after “uncountable hours of contemplation.” He didn’t say why he planned to leave; on Friday, he did not return a request for comment.

“My reasons for making the decision are personal,” said Dodge, who was hired in April 2021 after serving on the town’s selectboard. “I do not intend to air them publicly.”

After Dodge read his letter, several board members and town officials — who, in some cases, appeared to be crying or holding back tears — said that while they respected Dodge’s decision to leave, they were disheartened by the position the town was in.  

“It’s very troubling to me,” said Don McDowell, the board’s vice chair. “It saddens me that we’re at this point.” 

Beeman, the former board chair, resigned his seat with a year left in his term just days after the March election. He chalked up his decision, in part, to the town’s political climate becoming “extremely negative and volatile” over the past year, he has said.

At Monday’s meeting, board member Laura Streets said recent months had marked “unprecedented times” for the town. Streets is one of two members elected in March, along with Travis Sabataso, who had campaigned against the proposed budget. 

“I’m actually very sorry that these were your two years in this position,” Streets told Dodge. “It’s been incredibly stressful.”

Streets and Sabataso voted to accept Dodge’s resignation, while board member Chris Palermo voted against it, having said earlier in the meeting that he disagreed with Dodge’s decision and wanted him to stay. Judy Bickford, the board chair, abstained, setting up the possibility that the board would not approve Dodge’s request to leave. 

McDowell, who had the final vote, paused for almost 30 seconds before granting Dodge the board’s approval. His “yes” vote was “the hardest vote I’ve ever taken here,” McDowell told his colleagues.

Dodge said he intended to stay on until a new town administrator was hired, but he said he wanted to be out of the job by June 30.

Monday’s meeting also saw some discussion about the 2024 fiscal year budget, which officials have slimmed down in advance of the planned revote on June 6. 

The new proposal totals about $9.4 million, roughly 13% higher than the budget voters approved in 2022. It’s estimated to increase local tax bills by about 10%, compared to the roughly 25% increase that had been proposed on Town Meeting Day this year.

Town officials said they were able to reduce the size of the budget in part by drawing on about $250,000 of the town’s reserve funds, as well as putting off hiring a new highway department employee. The proposal still includes funding for a new police officer, which the local agency has said is badly needed to bolster coverage on its overnight shift.

All five selectboard members voted in favor of the latest proposal. 

Dodge has defended keeping the salary increases in the budget as a way to keep town jobs competitive at a time in which many other municipalities are vying for workers. In the letter he read Monday night, he spoke highly of the town’s employees.

“My intent when I stepped into this role was to create a work environment built on trust, mutual respect, open communication and personal accountability,” Dodge said. “I couldn’t have selected a better team to bring these concepts to.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Another top Morristown official to resign.