Is the Wilderness Act Still Protecting Nature?

The Landmark 1964 Law Is Now Preventing Effective Land Management and Critical Climate Research

At the end of 2023, four environmental groups sued the National Park Service and invoked the Wilderness Act to stop the replanting of trees following a catastrophic wildfire in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Around the same time, the National Park Service announced that it aimed to invoke the Wilderness Act to limit the use of fixed anchors on Yosemite’s iconic big wall climbs.

How did a law created 60 years ago to protect nature in undeveloped areas come to do something else entirely—and, in the process, become counterproductive to its own …

by Daniel T. Blumstein and Thomas B. Smith | April 22, 2024

If We Can’t Change American Gun Laws, We Should Change American Culture | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

If We Can’t Change American Gun Laws, We Should Change American Gun Culture

Focusing on Violence Prevention Might Slow Gun Rights Activists’ Arms Race

by Firmin DeBrabander | November 6, 2023

The prospects for gun control laws have never been bleaker. As states and courts fall all over themselves to make guns more available, the civilian arsenal has ballooned to 400 …

What Do Mining Claims and National Parks Have in Common?

America Enacted Two Environmental Laws 10 Weeks Apart in 1872. One Encouraged Drilling Into Public Lands—The Other Tried to Conserve Them

by Adam M. Sowards | October 27, 2022

If you know where to go in Death Valley National Park, Wrangell-St. Elias Park and Preserve, Glacier Peak Wilderness, or Bears Ears National Monument, you might come across the remnants …

The ‘Ferociously Contested’ Story of How Blackness Became a Legal Identity

In Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana, Colonial Laws Defining ‘Freedom’ Still Affected the Status of Citizens Centuries Later

by Ariela J. Gross and Alejandro de la Fuente | April 23, 2020

How did Africans become “blacks” in the Americas?

Those who were forced into the ships of the infamous slave trade probably thought of themselves using ethnic and territorial terms that …

The Carpinteriazation of Banned Bags

California Is Voting on Whether to Catch up With a Beach City Transformed by a Ban on Single-Use Bags

By Joe Mathews | October 13, 2016

Next month, California might almost catch up with Carpinteria.

The small beach town in Santa Barbara County, population 13,500, is rarely cited as a leader in anything. But when it comes …

Why Is It So Hard to Stop Rave Overdoses?

Heavy-Handed Calls to Ban the Music Events Have Done Little to Curb Their Drug-Related Deaths

By Louis Patterson | August 17, 2016

When the music comes on at a rave, a synergetic feeling of mass escape and euphoria runs through the crowd. But this unparalleled collective high has come at a cost. …

Get More Zócalo