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I just read “The Mountain Islands in the Desert Sea” (May 2021). It’s well-written and has nice photos, but the theme is grossly exaggerated. Sycamore Canyon is one of the best-documented local areas in Arizona: Botanists have visited and collected there for a century or so. In the SEINet database, there are 3,665 records of […]

In the publisher’s note in the May issue, you state that you “cover the West’s thorniest issues and gravitate without hesitation toward difficult conversations.” I’d like to suggest that this was true in the past, but it’s not always true today. You’ve made it clear that some of the major changes you’ve made over the past […]

Thank you for the excellent article about James Plymell (“Did James Plymell need to die?” March 2021). I am so deeply moved that you wrote this story. I found it very upsetting myself and wrote a little piece for the local newspaper. To see that someone else took up the story makes me feel not […]

Kudos to the citizens of McCall, Idaho, for pushing back on the development swap (“Growing pains,” April 2021). We have already lost more than half our wildlife in the past few decades, and one of the many ways we’re killing them is by developing more and more of their habitat to accommodate our continuous population […]

Miles W. Griffis makes good points about the unintended consequences of the changes in river management in Los Angeles that will further displace the displaced (“The invisible anglers of the Los Angeles River,” May 2021). The push-pull of water management in LA that seeks to control, or eliminate, residential/urban runoff should also be explored. Other […]

The possibility of restoring rail passenger service to the former Northern Pacific line in Montana has remained a dream for over 40 years (“Montana counties band together to reinvigorate passenger rail,” May 2021). I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but the logistical challenges to making it a reality have multiplied in the four decades […]

I found the article about the Chinook Indian Nation interesting and enlightening (“Unrecognized,” April 2021). I totally sympathize. We were thrown off our land 200 years ago, and we’re still trying to get it back. Of course, the usurpers claim it’s their land, but not only did they not even exist when we inhabited the […]

I don’t think the headline “Americans go on a gun-buying frenzy” (May 2021) is accurate. About 15% of Americans (best estimate is 25-35 million) own all the guns, with each owner holding an average of five. Most Americans neither buy nor use guns. Rusty Austin Rancho Mirage, California This article appeared in the print edition […]