Letters to the editor, March 2024

GREEN COLONIALISM MARCHES ON

I am a 70-year-old enrolled Yakama and Wenatchapam on my maternal grandmother’s side. I remember the “Fish Wars” on the Columbia River as a youth, and relatives hunting elk on ceded lands and getting arrested for exercising treaty rights. Washington state has been an enemy of treaty rights for as long as I can remember.

Such an attitude reaches back to Congress and the Treaty of 1855 and earlier. It will remain so into the future. This fact is evidenced by your informative article (“Who’s Protecting Badger Mountain?” February 2024) detailing one employee’s experience working for the state of Washington.

In my experience, an endemic racist attitude is prevalent within Washington’s governmental agencies.

The enemies are within. Sound the warning, and trust the Creator!

Steven Hilliard
Las Cruces, New Mexico

Having worked with an independent archaeologist on clearance surveys on the Colorado Plateau, I can affirm that she experienced pressure from energy companies to produce reports favorable to them. Integrity has its costs.

The industrial revolution needs an industrial renovation that includes Indigenous re-emergence.

Steve Moore, via Mastodon

SELF-SERVING HUMANS

Humans commoditize animals, move them hundreds of miles, ignore their sentience while focusing on self-serving ends, and then vilify them for having the temperament, courage and intelligence to defend themselves against an invasive species (humans) now recognized as a clear threat (“Learning To Live With Musk Oxen” February 2024). The typical human response: Declare open season.

Henry Kimbell
Rio Rancho, New Mexico

MAKING SENSE OF MAKE SUNSETS

I appreciate the concerns voiced by people of the tribes mentioned (“What to make of Make Sunsets” February 2024). They raise serious concerns that all living beings should be considering. Clearly, more research into solar geoengineering is needed. The term was unknown to me before reading this article.

Katherine Brown
Cochise, Arizona

DEVELOPMENT VS. INSURANCE

I was glad to see Kylie Mohr’s recent interview with Dave Jones, former California insurance commissioner (“Homeowner’s insurance is going up in smoke” January 2024). He is correct in his assertion that climate change plays a pivotal role in rising property insurance costs. I am writing, however, to protest his glaring omission of the role that development patterns, specifically suburban and exurban development, have played in ballooning disaster risk throughout the West and Southeast.

It is past time that we took a decisive stand to ensure that planning acknowledges the risks of expanding the wildland-urban interface. We must empower our land managers to treat fire as a matter of public and forest health; hopefully, the intelligentsia, such as Mr. Jones, can recognize this.

Adam Cook
Missoula, Montana

With its complete emphasis on climate change, the interview with former California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones substantially missed the mark. Large-scale wildfires are part of the natural ecology of California’s chaparral. They occurred before climate change set in and will continue. What is immediately driving the fire crisis in California is the persistent expansion of housing into high fire-hazard locations. Expansion of the “wildland-urban interface” also leads to more human-caused ignitions and to the frequent fires that are steadily converting native vegetation to flammable weeds.

Dan Silver, executive
director, Endangered Habitats League
Los Angeles, California

EVEN MORE TOXICITY

Thank you to Brooke Larsen and Luna Anna Archey for the informative “Toxic tour of the Great Salt Lake” (December 2023). As one who has fought numerous such projects and programs in and around the lake and Utah’s West Desert over the last 40-plus years, I understand how important it is to inform and remind folks of our propensity to damage this fragile resource.

In that spirit, I would add a few other neighboring threats and toxic legacies in the Great Salt Lake watershed (clockwise east to west on the map): Western Zirconium (sole U.S. manufacturer of cladding for nuclear fuel rods); Hill Air Force Base (groundwater contamination, air and noise pollution); Northrop Grumman Corp. (production of the new Sentinel ICBM); the Tooele Army Depot (open detonation and burning of old munitions) and the Chemical Weapons Demilitarization Facility (completed nerve and blister agent destruction); Aragonite Incineration Facility (hazardous waste incinerator); Clean Harbors (hazardous waste landfill); Energy Solutions (radioactive waste landfill); and Dugway Proving Ground (U.S. Army’s premier site for testing of biological and chemical weapons defense).

Kind of resembles a sacrifice zone, doesn’t it?

Steve Erickson
Salt Lake City, Utah

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