By Julie McWilliams

Aspiring journalist Brennan Cusack set off on a solo cross-country trek last summer to get an insider’s look and to research four instances where environmental and economic interests were at odds.

“As I drove from California to Minnesota, I stopped and visited different organizations that are dedicated to conservation efforts but are involved in conflicts,” says Cusack, a senior English major at the University of Pennsylvania who calls Santa Barbara, Calif., home.

Her research, outlined in a presentation at a symposium held by Penn’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, is titled “Investigating Local Conflicts Between Environmental Conservation and Economic Development.” At the symposium, Cusack described to professors and fellow students the challenging situations she uncovered:

• People wrestling with how to sustain a wild horse rescue with limited resources.
• Environmentalists wanting to protect the Sequoia forests from lumbering.
• A clash between residents of a small Minnesota town who want to reintroduce mining versus those favoring tourism.
• A dispute between climbers and Native Americans who differ on what is sacred at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

Her journey began with a stop in Lompoc, Calif.,  a short drive north of home. Here she volunteered for a week at the Return to Freedom wild horse sanctuary she says is under threat: “Three hundred horses are being cared for on a 300-acre property, and there’s no room for any more. To sustain their operation, the owners must engage the next generation in their plight.”

Next, she traveled to the Sequoia National Monument in east central California where she met 97-year-old Martin Litton. A passionate environmental crusader, Litton was fighting to get this 328,000-acre home to the giant sequoias, the largest concentration of these trees in the world, transferred from the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service to the National Park Service.

“The forest service can designate it ‘a land with multiple use,’ and that means the trees could be cut down,” Cusack says. Litton “met with President Obama and presented him with a bunch of signatures, but it hasn’t happened yet. He was not successful by his death” in 2014.

Cusack then headed northeast to Wyoming, where she met Frank Sanders, a man who lives just outside Devils Tower National Monument and works as a guide on climbing expeditions up the rock formation. Sanders has claims to the land and. along with other climbers, is in a clash with the area’s Native American tribes who see Devils Tower as a spiritual and cultural tradition.

“Local Native American tribes are horrified,” Cusack says. “The tribes went to the Supreme Court arguing the tower’s religious significance. The climbers also said the site has a spiritual significance to them and that the court can’t choose one religion over another.”

Her final stop had a personal aspect to it. Growing up, Cusack spent her summers in Minnesota, canoeing in a wilderness area near an old mining town. Currently, some residents there want to revive mining, while others prefer to focus on tourism.

“The town is really divided over the decision whether to bring back mining or try to sustain itself as a tourist economy,” Cusack says. “Mining runoff could get sulfur into the water.”

What has her research taught her?

“The overarching theme I’ve learned from this experience,” Cusack says, “is that you can advocate and get as much popular support as you can, but, if you have no power in court, nothing will get done. You have to have good lawyers.”

Her research hasn’t surprised Paul Hendrickson, senior lecturer in the Department of English in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences: “Brennan is an altogether serious student, with an adventuresome bone, and a small contrarian and even anti-authoritarian streak, which I rather enjoy, indeed admire” he says. “The streak, plus the sense of adventure, has allowed her, I think, to go into these untamed places and see, or attempt to see, with the right amount of humility and daring, the hidden conflicts.”

Cusack’s travel and research were supported by a grant she received through the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.

“Last year, I took Paul Hendrickson’s spring journalism class  the best class I’ve had at Penn,” Cusack says. “At the end of the academic year, I wanted to do something in journalism and wondered if Penn could help pay my expenses.”

Hendrickson recommended her for a CURF grant, and, as a result, she was awarded funding from the Pincus-Magaziner Family Undergraduate Research and Travel Fund to support the search for her stories.

Ann Vernon-Grey, CURF’s associate director for undergraduate research, says Penn has “lots and lots of students doing interesting research. My job is to help undergraduates take advantage of all of our amazing resources, both financial and intellectual, whether they major in English, sociology, humanities or whatever it might be.”

To reach students, CURF works with academic advisors, departmental undergraduate chairs and faculty and staff in the cultural centers and the college houses.

“We also rely heavily on faculty to bring awareness of CURF to the students,” Vernon-Grey says. “All of the faculty are involved in educating the next generation of scholars, and research is fundamental to that goal, not just specific skills but also life skills.”

Hendrickson is one such faculty member. He has worked with Cusack for three straight terms, and says, “because she is such a good writer, and a conscientious one, I have trusted her implicitly to try to render things as they are; which is to say, to present all sides fairly but not quite at the expense of her own judgments.”

Those interested in learning more about Cusack’s research, and if and how the conflicts have been resolved, will have to wait patiently as the stories continue to take shape.

Before Cusack heads back to California this spring for a job in the Los Angeles film industry, she is working on a prose documentary project with Hendrickson that picks up from her travels last summer.