Last week, writes T.A. Barron, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee updated its bill to include privatizing over 250 million acres of public lands in 11 western states, making them eligible for “disposal.” Barron urges public land users to stand up now against this sell off. Once in private hands, he warns, wild places are gone forever and “no trespassing” signs are the result.

Erasing history, one park at a time, by Ernie Atencio, tells of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's plan to eliminate "negative" depictions of U.S. history at national parks, monuments and other public lands. Not so easy, writes Atencio, as Americans expect to learn a true story no matter how cruel or unpleasant. How, for instance, do you sanitize the World War II creation of Japanese American internment camps? Atencio warns: “The past might not be pretty, but what occurred is called history, and it’s important that we learn what we hope never to repeat.”

In the Northwest’s old-growth forests, home of the timber wars of the 1990s, brown-striped barred owls are moving in and stealing the prey base needed by the smaller, and endangered, northern spotted owls. The federal solution, writes Mitch Friedman, is for sharpshooters to kill 16,000 barred owls a year. Decades ago, Friedman was an Earth First! member who spent days as a tree sitter, hoping to thwart old growth logging. Now, the spotted owl that halted the logging of ancient trees needs drastic help. Friedman explains where he stands on this controversial issue.

Because of federal staff cuts, two online registries for cancer studies and the health status of firefighters are down and no longer operate, writes Riva Duncan, wildland firefighter and advocate. As the busy summer fire season approaches, it’s just one more “punch in the gut,” says one firefighter. “But when the fire call comes, we’ll respond like we always do and worry later.”

Calling ethanol wasteful and inefficient doesn’t begin to list its drawbacks, writes Ted Williams. Derived from corn grown in the Midwest and West, he finds that It costs more to produce than gasoline, reduces mileage for vehicles, corrodes gas tanks and car engines, pollutes air and water, and, by requiring more energy to produce than it yields, increases America’s dependence on foreign oil. But so far, Williams adds, ethanol remains protected by a powerful agribusiness lobby.

Montanan Tracy Stone-Manning, former director of the Bureau of Land Management and now director of The Wilderness Society, writes with passion about our heritage of public lands. Yet selling parts of that heritage is the goal of the current administration, whose budget bill will be under consideration starting this week. Stone-Manning warns that once public lands turn into private profit centers for energy extraction or housing, wildlife will suffer, and all of us who love the still-wild outdoors will begin to lose what makes America unique in the world.

Scientific criticism followed fast to the news that a company called Colossal had produced three genetically engineered dire wolves. Biologist Pepper Trail points out the habitat no longer exists for an animal that was adapted for preying on now-extinct ground sloths and giant bison. And the gene “edits” only involved 14 genes, with 20 differences between living gray wolves and extinct dire wolves.The goal of conservation is not to preserve individual animals, Trail writes, it is to help populations sustain themselves in their native habitats and for that we have a long way to go.

Benjamin James Waddell is a legal advocate for immigrants in Colorado who has seen ICE, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, become increasingly aggressive. Since President Trump took office, ICE has arrested nearly 33,000 people, though only half of them were convicted criminals.

It’s such a wonderful concept—thousands of homeowners selling power back to the electric company, while also reducing their vulnerability to natural disasters such as wildfire, writes Andrew Carpenter. What’s even better: Residential solar power mimics a stand-alone power plant, one that need never be built.

In 1947, the Utah-born writer and historian Bernard DeVoto summed up the West's attitude toward the federal government: "Get out and send us more money." Now, says the Utah writer and photographer Stephen Trimble, federal offices are being closed and staffers fired, but no additional money is coming. The federal presence is crucial to the region, Trimble says, and the economic crisis caused by the new administration might just open the region's eyes to a necessary and beneficial partnership.