The 90 Miles from Needles Newsletter Returns!
If you're seeing this, it's because you subscribed to our email newsletter. It's been a while since we sent the last one and so if you've changed your mind in the interim, you can unsubscribe here.
We last sent one of these out in January of this year. Why the lapse? It's a long, complicated, and not very interesting story having to do with a disruptive house fire and the decline and death of my sweet dog Heart.
It has been a year. So far.
And that certainly applies to the desert as well. Since our last issue we've covered native activism, the destructive "second border wall" being built parallel to the existing wall in southern Arizona, nuclear waste; attacks on desert national monuments, the campaign against extending the border wall through the Big Bend region, the plight of native bees, why salt lakes are important, and a proposal to install a stripmine next to Joshua Tree National Park.
That's a lot to cover, and we did it despite a challenging home life.
But I no longer have need to care for my dearly missed pup, and the house remediation is gathering steam. So it's time to reboot this newsletter. Thank you for your patience!
Our newest episode covers Trump's attempt to gut two beloved national monuments.
Our most recent episode, out July 17, includes the wonderful desert writer Morgan Sjogren. Morgan and I talk about the efforts by the White House to cut down the size of Grand Staircase escalante and Bears Ears national monuments by more than 90 percent each. This move, urged on the White House by Utah senator Mike Lee, is likely to be overturned in federal courts. But whether that reversal comes before mining companies and developers can move into the monuments and start messing things up is an open question.
Your feedback wanted!
Seeing as we've missed about 20 episodes since our last email, it seems like a good time to think about how this newsletter functions for the long term. To that end, we have a couple questions in the form below. Your answers will help us figure out how to steer this thing in a good direction.
Or, you can leave your feedback in comments, below.
Fellowship for Desert Reporting
The Desert Advocacy Media Network Fellowship for Desert Reporting will rigorous, place-based journalism focused on deserts and the communities who call deserts home.
Traditional news outlets serving desert regions have steadily dwindled. Entire landscapes and communities are left undercovered. This fellowship will work to counter that loss by paying emerging journalists to cover these complex, living places.
We have a significant donation to this project that is to be used as matching funds for the first $5,000 of donations to the fellowship. At this writing, we've only matched less than $2K of that. Your donation will this go twice as far to support journalists — and to bring new voices onto 90 Miles from Needles.
Your support will be incredibly helpful as we tackle this new project. You can donate an appropriate amount by clicking the button below.
We have an exciting pair of new projects we'll talk about in the next issue. For now, please feel free to share this with people you think might be interested!
Remember: the desert needs you.
-Chris
Member discussion