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Articles by Tim Vanderpool
Are Our Public Lands on the Chopping Block Again?
On workdays, Louis Williams rises with the sun and makes a short drive into Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah. There, guides from his Ancient Wayves River and Hiking Adventures company lead visitors past the monument's soaring cliffs and rock art or rafting down the meandering San Juan River. Williams is Navajo, and his Indigenous team represents various local Tribes, including Zuni and Hopi.
In Planning for Climate Change, Native Americans Draw on the Past
When the leaders of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla tribes gaze across the Umatilla River, a tributary of the Columbia in northern Oregon, they see their past, present, and future. Organized as the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), the tribes have lived with the ebbs and flows of the river for millennia, as it provided them with clean water and once-abundant food sources, such as salmon.
AI and the Judicial System: Drastic Changes Coming?
In the U.S. civil justice system, the latest technologies bring both promise and potential pitfalls. Reform advocates hope that new tools can help make the system fairer and more affordable for people seeking legal assistance. But small mistakes can spark huge consequences. Those risks are particularly acute with large language models, which serve as the basis for generative AI tools such as ChatGPT.
In Taiwan, Immigrants And Their Children Redefine Identity For An Island Nation
Migrant Lives Pedestrians walk under a vibrant archway of red lanterns on a bridge in Taipei, Taiwan ushering in the Year of the Dragon. Wiktor Dabkowski/ZUMA Migrant Lives Pedestrians walk under a vibrant archway of red lanterns on a bridge in Taipei, Taiwan ushering in the Year of the Dragon. Wiktor Dabkowski/ZUMA You've reached your limit of free articles. To read the full story, start your free trial today. Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.
Should We Let AI Be Our Judge? How Artificial Intelligence Could Enter Our Legal System
In the U.S. civil justice system, the latest technologies bring both promise and potential pitfalls. Reform advocates hope that new tools can help make the system fairer and more affordable for people seeking legal assistance. But small mistakes can spark huge consequences. Those risks are particularly acute with large language models, which serve as the basis for generative AI tools such as ChatGPT.
Should We Let AI Be Our Judge? How Artificial Intelligence Could Enter Our Legal System
Future Court 2.0 Future Court 2.0 You've reached your limit of free articles. To read the full story, start your free trial today. Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime. Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time. Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.
Colorado Basin Tribes Address a Historic Drought-and Their Water Rights-Head-On
A warm breeze slips down from Sleeping Ute Mountain, stirring fields of alfalfa and corn across the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Farm & Ranch Enterprise in the arid flats of southwestern Colorado. The state-of-the-art farm, with its ultra-efficient drip irrigation, satellite-guided tractors, and sought-after Bow & Arrow brand of non-GMO cornmeal, is an intense source of pride for the 2,000-member Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.
Will Biden Fix Trump’s Border Wall Disaster?
Before he left office, former President Donald Trump completed 450 miles of his border wall at a cost of roughly $15 billion. All that money bought righteous dedication: well-paid construction crews were still blasting through the rugged borderlands—decimating canyons, burying streams, destroying wildlife corridors—on the day incoming President Joe Biden was inaugurated. And on that day, as promised, Biden ordered a halt to Trump’s debacle.
Wonder Makes Us Innovate
Those “fires” include immediate, urgent civil legal needs of those who seek legal help, such as tenants who have received an eviction complaint and are five days away from a court hearing on the eviction. A traditional direct service approach to serving those with civil legal needs includes adding more legal aid attorneys across the country — necessary, but never enough.
How to Stop a Highway
When Tanya Debose looks out at her Independence Heights neighborhood, she sees history threatening to repeat itself. It was 1924 when Debose’s great-grandfather bought land here, in the first African American municipality to be founded in Texas. By 1929, however, Independence Heights had been annexed into the city of Houston, and plans were laid for a major new highway to run right through its heart.
After the Local Coal Mine Shuts Down, These Navajo and Hopi Communities Seek a Just Transition
Herb Yazzie, a former chief justice of the Navajo Nation Diego James Robles Herb Yazzie recalls the days when he could graze his herds of cattle and sheep across his homelands in the northeastern Arizona region of the Navajo Nation, between sandstone bluffs and shadowy canyons. But in recent years, the watering holes the animals relied on dried up. Like other tribal members, Yazzie blames the Black Mesa coal mine, which operated on Hopi and Navajo land for nearly half a century, until 2005.
Toxic “Forever Chemicals” Came Between This Farmer, His Cows, and the Air Force
When Art Schaap looks out across his sprawling property, he sees broad, blue skies and 4,000 milking cows. But it’s what he doesn’t see that has ruined him. In August 2018, the longtime Clovis, New Mexico, dairy farmer was approached by officials from nearby Cannon Air Force Base who asked to test his well water. Those tests revealed sky-high levels of contamination by toxic chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
Ending the Free Ride for America's Mines
THIS STORY WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS A DISPATCH From Route 83 in southern Arizona, the Rosemont Valley spreads toward the Santa Rita Mountains like a rumpled carpet. Lying mostly within the Coronado National Forest south of Tucson, it is dappled with juniper and stitched together by small washes, a picturesque backcountry where the hush is broken only by the occasional plane. But for all this seeming tranquility, Rosemont has long been bitterly contested. Hikers treasure its pristine beauty.
Is the Free Ride Over for America’s Mines?
From Route 83 in southern Arizona, the Rosemont Valley spreads towards the Santa Rita Mountains like a rumpled carpet. Lying mostly within the Coronado National Forest south of Tucson, it is dappled with juniper and stitched together by small washes, a picturesque backcountry where the hush is broken only by the occasional plane. But for all this seeming tranquility, Rosemont has long been bitterly contested. Hikers treasure its pristine beauty. Local businesses love the swelling ecotourism trade.
New Mexico Has a Methane Cloud Visible by Satellite. It Also Has Bold Climate Plans.
Flaring in the Permian Basin oil fields in Eddy County, New Mexico Black.Thornberry/Flickr August temperatures hovered in the 90s. But emotions ran even hotter inside the Walter Gerrells Performing Arts Center in Carlsbad, New Mexico, as a tense crowd wrangled over methane. It was a timely topic; soon after taking office in January, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham had signed an executive order mandating 45 percent statewide reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Saving a Rare Plant and Rescuing a River
In a hushed corner of southern Arizona, sunlight glints off an emerald-colored plant with resplendent helmetlike flowers and the stature of a spindly adolescent. Called the Arizona eryngo, it’s a member of the carrot family that can top five feet in height and feeds pollinators ranging from hummingbirds to honeybees. It’s also among the rarest plants on earth, clinging to existence in two precarious Arizona wetlands known as ciénagas.
These Texans Are Sick of Chemical Fires and Toxic Spills in Their Backyard
Smoke rising from a petrochemical fire at the Intercontinental Terminals Company in Deer Park, Texas David J. Phillip/Associated Press Marcelys Perez was driving her son to school when she saw the morning sky darken. She thought rain was on the way. But by that afternoon, she knew the gray-black clouds billowing over her working-class Houston neighborhood of Magnolia Park signaled something much more ominous. By then, her son was sneezing bloody mucus.
Places We Love: Silver City's Bear Mountain Lodge
Things get a little wild at Bear Mountain Lodge. by Tim Vanderpool Above: Bear Mountain Lodge in Silver City. Courtesy of Bear Mountain Lodge. “Come forth into the light of things,” Wordsworth wrote. “Let nature be your teacher.” Bear Mountain Lodge, a place where nature’s lovely classroom flourishes, takes that notion to heart. Tucked among the hills above Silver City and hugging the 3.3-million-acre Gila National Forest, Bear Mountain Lodge is an inspired hideaway for wildlife and people.
Hidden Agenda?
Parents raise concerns that a Tucson charter school has ties to a Turkish nationalist movement By Tim Vanderpool No one can knock the numbers. In recent years, students at Tucson's Sonoran Science Academy have secured stellar scores in math, science and other categories. The academy has earned glowing mentions in national magazines such as U.S. News and World Report, and in 2009, was deemed Charter School of the Year by the Arizona Charter School Association.
The Festering Sanitation Crisis at Our Border
Contact with contaminated water can lead to human illnesses ranging from skin rashes and hepatitis A to intestinal parasites and salmonellosis. As if that weren’t bad enough, industrial waste—including heavy metals, chemical solvents, and even DDT—often flows into the mix; Border Patrol agents working in the Tijuana wildlife refuge often suffer chemical burns from wading through the muck.
Border Checkpoint Crusader
Each weekday morning, engineer Terry Bressi makes a fifty-mile journey from Tucson, Arizona, to Kitt Peak National Observatory, a sprawling, mountaintop astronomical research complex on the Tohono O’odham reservation. Working with the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, the graying, no-nonsense scientist divides his time between maintaining Kitt Peak’s telescopes, and searching the heavens for comets, asteroids, and other earth-threatening projectiles.
The Mysteries of the Sands
Photographs by Jen Judge. I’m careening among huge sand dunes, and hanging on for dear life. Not that Patrick Martinez, a polite and gracious biotechnician, has suddenly gone loco behind the wheel of his Polaris ATV. It’s just that White Sands National Monument, where he works, seems to bring out another side to everything. Normally dark lizards get a curious hankering to turn pale. Typically squat yuccas gloat atop 30-foot stalks—until the sand shifts below and they topple over.
Silver City Adventures
In downtown Silver City, you’ll find dozens of locally owned art galleries, shops, and studios, as well as murals, theaters, and restaurants. The Historic District includes the “Big Ditch”—now a popular downtown park and one of the entrances to Silver City’s many greenways. About 40 miles to the southeast, City of Rocks State Park has hiking trails, a botanical garden, and a public night-sky observatory.
Douglas | Visit Arizona
Douglas A lush desert oasis near Bisbee, Douglas will enchant you with tales of its mining and ranching past. Beauty, history, and charm – Douglas has it all. Named after mining pioneer James Douglas, the town of Douglas was settled as a smelter site for the nearby copper mines of Bisbee. But local history stretches back even further.
Climate Change Is Worsening Houston’s Housing Crisis
More than a year after Hurricane Harvey slammed into Texas—washing out homes in Houston, Galveston, and other cities on or near the Gulf of Mexico—many residents are still scrambling for decent accommodations. The category 4 storm, which made landfall on August 25, 2017, spawned at least 57 tornadoes, killed 68 people, and caused an estimated $125 billion in damage. The Houston area alone was inundated by some nine trillion gallons of water.
Goodyear | Visit Arizona
Goodyear Catch a Cactus League Spring Training baseball game and enjoy desert living in one of the fastest growing cities in the United States. Hey, batter, batter…swing! That’s what you might hear while watching a fun spring training game at the Goodyear Ballpark, the spring home for the Cincinnati and Cleveland. In fact, the Goodyear Ballpark was voted the Best Place to See a Spring Training Game in the USA Today 10 Best Readers’ Choice Poll in 2014.
Price of Admission
The darkness lifts, and daybreak nudges into the desert. For northbound migrants, this sunrise may signal a time to find shade and dodge the Border Patrol. Or it could mark the start of a white-knuckle dash to catch rides bound for the interior. From there, god willing, the migrants may disappear into a world offering more hope than the one they left behind.
A Standing Rock on the Border?
Tohono O’odham activist Ofelia Rivas has a reputation for clashing with U.S. Border Patrol. On her tribe’s 4,500-square-mile reservation, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border, that can be a stressful vocation. But she doesn’t show it, sharing conversational snippets and a slight, quick grin. Her skin is the color of stained clay, and she cuts a stylish figure: narrow glasses and a red-flecked scarf trailing in the slight breeze. Her black sneakers are gray with dust.
Canyon solitude - Sunset
Spring settles into Arizona’s Carr Canyon just as it did in the 1880s, when frontier lumber baron James Carr prodded his mule train down the canyon’s steep road. About the only thing different these days is that a brawny 1939 stone-and-wood ranch house named for Carr is now a visitor center showcasing the canyon’s history, wildlife, and hiking trails. On the way to the canyon, stop in Sierra Vista to pick up sandwiches at Delio’s Italian Restaurant ($; 3637 S. State 92; 520/378-1066).
San Carlos and the sea
San Carlos is an Ernest Hemingway kind of town. Brawny and beautiful, the Mexican village stretches along a sun-drenched ribbon of land between the mountains and the eastern shore of the Gulf of California. Fringed with fishing boats and seaside restaurants, with marine life teeming offshore, it’s a setting that could inspire Papa to raise his pen?or a toast?to this charmed convergence of land and sea. On this balmy day, the Marina San Carlos is the place to be.
Travel planner - Sunset
San Carlos is 400 miles south of Tucson. Take Mexico 15 south from Nogales, Sonora; the modern four-lane toll road charges approximately $18 round trip. For information on travel and auto insurance requirements in Mexico, go to www.aaa-arizona.com and click on “Insurance.” Fall daytime temperatures average in the 80s. To call San Carlos phone numbers from the United States, first dial 011-52-622. A useful website for planning is www.sancarlosinfo.com. Water Sports.
In Arizona, reptile poaching made easy
Dave Prival picks his way across a tumbledown slope, carefully peering into crevices among the broken rocks. We’re alpine-high on a southern Arizona mountain range that shall remain nameless, for reasons you’ll soon understand. It’s been another year of crackly drought, and wildlife is feeling the heat. That includes the twin-spotted rattlesnakes that Prival and his small crew of fellow herpetologists have been catching, measuring and marking each July for the past 18 years.
Ask a Mexican | Ask a Mexican! | Tucson Weekly
Dear Mexican: I found your column about Mexican men and spousal abuse, and my question is: Is there any help for this ever ending? I've been with a Mexican man, who is also an abuser of alcohol, although it has slimmed down some. He gets angry out of the blue and starts hitting on me and later realizes what he has done and cries. I had to leave him for my protection, but the feelings between us remain, and I don't know what to do with the situation. Can you provide any comments or help?
Dust Devil | Dust Devils | Tucson Weekly
Afraid... many scream and cry Some call say good-bye Most run Some hide Many pray Unnamed heroes save some Chaotic... confusing sight Many injured Some dead Bloody slaughter Single gunman Assault weapon Once again.... — Gail Bornfield
The Skinny | The Skinny | Tucson Weekly
Republican Ally Miller has had quite the first term. She has been caught blatantly lying about using her private email for county business. She has opposed efforts to retain the county's largest private employer, Raytheon. She has gone through more than a dozen staffers, many of whom report that she is both paranoid and a terrible boss. She has called 911 because she was unhappy with the Tucson Weekly. In short, she has behaved in an erratic and looney manner since she took office.
Dust Devil | Dust Devils | Tucson Weekly
Shaved head framed in rings Eyes of steel look of defiance A past to be forgotten A future yet unknown It's an identity search: I am here Look at me I matter You'll find her - She's beautiful You'll like her - She's you Time passes Experiences change Life softens into a new day — Gail Bornfield
Feds, ranchers aren’t always at odds: how they’re finding common ground
Although you wouldn't know it by the recent standoff in Oregon, some tensions between ranchers and the government have actually lessened in recent years. Government agencies are increasingly courting ranchers as conservation partners. Ranchers Jim and Sue Chilton stand next to the refugium on their property in Arivaca, Ariz. The refugium harbors a threatened amphibian called the Chiricahua leopard frog.
Critics Call McCain's Oak Flat Tactics a New Low
Something about Oak Flat just brings out the ornery in a politician. And of course that something is money and influence. Stir in a few long-simmering grudges, and you have a rancid stew that bares little resemblance to principled democracy or good policy.Which brings us to Arizona Sen. John McCain. There existed a time, long ago, when the good senator was actually considered somewhat of a conservationist.
The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch
I'll tell you, in my next life I want to come back as a consultant. Doesn't matter what kind‚—environmental, medical—hell, even toilet bowl technician will do. I just want a starboard seat on that gravy train of perpetual expertise.
Crisis of Confidence: City Transportation Staff Called Out on Double-Dealing
The Broadway Boulevard Project suffered a meltdown last week, when several members of its Citizens Task Force—apparently convened to be a flock of sheep—finally revolted against their imminent fleecing.At the packed meeting on March 19, they railed against being hoodwinked by city transportation planners, who had diligently gathered their suggestions over more than two years, and then just as earnestly cast those recommendations aside.
Broadway Widening Opponents Dig in for the Final Stretch
Sunrise has just cracked the Rincon Mountains, as Mark Homan and Madeline Ryder push one last sign into the soggy ground. It’s a series of signs, really, written in clever rhymes and leading to this crescendo: “Don’t Super Size Broadway.”That would be Broadway Boulevard, the roadway roaring alongside us, dampened by rain and thick with early morning commuters.
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