New western mystery explores competing conservation ethics
Underlying the mystery and character arcs in my new novel, Deception at the Diamond D Ranch, is a discussion about what it means to love and care for the land. Earlier this spring the environmental storytelling publication Voices for Biodiversity republished my book’s Chapter 12 in which the two main characters discuss their competing conservation ethics.
Conservation ethic as an idea emerged from the environmental philosophers of the 1960s, a decade that resulted in passage of landmark environmental laws like the Wilderness Act and Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. In a broad sense, a conservation ethic is a person or community’s ideas about of resource use, allocation, exploitation and protection.
It should go without saying that varying people and communities have different views about how to use and protect the land, and this point of tension creates the fundamental friction between my two main characters, rancher Fey Dunham and ranger Cade Rigens. One grew up on the land and wants to make a living from it. Another works for the government and is inclined to protect it.
This battle between use and preservation of public lands in the western United States is very real. It played out famously in the Pacific Northwest with the spotted owl wars when conservationists and loggers duked it out over the region’s remaining old growth forests.
It continues to play out in places like the lower Snake River in eastern Washington state where endangered wild salmon and a free-flowing river have been throttled by the federal government’s dams.
And, as in my fictional novel, it has played out between ranchers and conservationists across the West.
The communities involved in these conflicts vary, but one of the most consistent threads tying them together is the presence the federal government as force for or against conservation, for and against resource use and exploitation. The federal government has been everyone’s hero, and it’s been everyone’s enemy.
As a representative of the federal government, my protagonist Cade creates some level of sympathy for the government’s position in my novel. With that said, however, I hope the novel also illustrates how ham-handed the bureaucracy can be—a topic I plan to dive deeper into in future Cade Rigens novels.