Ever heard of The Orianne Society? I hadn’t either until I stumbled across their website recently while searching for “rattlesnakes” and “oil and gas development”. Founded in 2008, The Orianne Society is a relative newcomer to the wildlife conservation scene. Its mission: to conserve the world’s rare and imperiled reptiles and amphibians.
Marian Lyman Kirst
Posted inGoat
Carrots for conservation
A new conservation program that gives landowners incentives to improve habitat for lizard and prairie chicken.
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All dogs great and small
There’s a western myth out there that needs to be set right: the myth of the western mountain dog, the notion that to be a great canine companion in the rough and tumble American West, a dog must be robust, daring, unpampered, as comfortable in the rugged backcountry as it is on the couch. A […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Going down in flames
Long ago, many West Coast and Rocky Mountain tribes cremated their dead to purify them and free their souls, which were borne to the afterlife “on chariots of smoke.” Today, going out in a blaze is again the region’s most popular funerary rite. In 2010, the mountain and Pacific states (including Alaska and Hawaii) had […]
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Words are wind
From Twin Falls to American Falls, Jerome to Rexburg, a series of anti wind-energy billboards have been springing up around Idaho like mushrooms after a rainstorm. The big blue signboards feature pictures of windmills clustered around the campaign slogan: “Swindle” (the “wind” emphasized in bold red type), below which is written, “not cheap — not […]
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Insects — the neglected 99 percent
This December, the Xerces Society celebrated its 40th anniversary. Not bad for a group that champions the spineless. No, the Xerces Society isn’t a fraternity of bank executives or mortgage lenders. It’s a Portland, Oregon-based non-profit dedicated to the protection of invertebrates, animals that lack a physical (rather than metaphorical) backbone. Animals like earthworms, bumblebees, […]
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The year in environmental news
There are only a few weeks till 2012, which means you are probably trying to shovel your way through the flurries of “year-in-review” summaries that tend to accumulate around this time. One that stands out is Vermont Law School’s Top 10 Environmental Watch List, the venerated law school’s yearly synthesis of the country’s most pressing […]
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Friday News Roundup: Nuclear uncertainty
The American nuclear industry had some serious shade thrown its way in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant disaster. Almost a year later, U.S. nuclear still can’t seem to catch a break. On Wednesday, Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, announced that the agency will likely face delays in renewing […]
Posted inWotr
Home on the range
This year, I was lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving back home with my parents in central Montana. Holidays at home usually include the traditional trappings of board games, gravy boats and hungry dogs making cute under the table, followed by food-induced snooze fests in the living room. But what I most look forward to when […]
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Travel planning theatrics
Currently, Koch’s ranch is split by a slim Bureau of Land Management parcel. That parcel contains a public access road into the Gunnison National Forest. In return for eliminating this forest access, and gaining a few other parcels in the same area (totaling about 1800 acres), Koch is offering the federal government a pair of […]
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Making memories, one stock tank at a time
This year, I was lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving back home with my parents in central Montana. Holidays at home are plenty stuffed with the traditional trappings: board games, gravy boats, hungry pups making cute under the table, food-induced snooze fests in the living room. But what I most look forward to when I’m home […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Daniel Marlos shares his knowledge and love of the insect world
In early June, Daniel Marlos, an eccentric, cherubic-faced Los Angeleno, received an intriguing message from a friend: “If there weren’t two little, scrawny legs, I wouldn’t think it was a living thing!” she said, describing a creature loitering on her porch. She emailed Marlos a photo of a tawny, wingless insect, its legs cartoonishly splayed […]
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A Flood of Fault
—John McPhee, Atchafalaya, 1987 The Army Corps of Engineers’ Missouri River Division is not the place to work if you have a pathological need to be liked. That’s because the Corp’s water management priorities on the Big Muddy involve a crazy-making number of stakeholders, each with different and often conflicting interests. There are downstream barge […]
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Friday news roundup: Sulfide statutes and Jesus statues
EPA reinstates reporting requirements for a poisonous gas To the relief of citizen advocacy groups (and the irritation of industry), the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its decision last week to lift a 17-year-long Administrative Stay on Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) reporting requirements for hydrogen sulfide — a poisonous gas that smells like rotten eggs and […]
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Bugs in the plan
Despite the opposition of myriad conservation organizations, lawmakers, activists, and celebrities like Darryl Hannah, the Keystone XL pipeline has seemed well on its way to federal approval. Where star power has failed, however, an inch-long, carrion-dependent beetle might succeed. TransCanada conducted surveys on the beetle in 2009 and 2010, but they also trapped and moved […]
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Friday news roundup: Uranium — To mine or not to mine?
Though not as movie villain-worthy as its cousin plutonium, uranium, the naturally occurring element used to make nuclear weapons and fuel nuke plants, is just as contentious, as illustrated in this week’s headlines. On Wednesday, the Obama administration released a plan for a 20-year ban on uranium mining within a million acres of public land […]
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Colorado ski town zombification
In the last two months, I have been to three different “ski towns” in Western Colorado: Crested Butte, Vail, and Aspen. Each visit was my first and I approached the towns not with delusions of community-rich grandeur but with half-formed preconceptions based on my experiences in Montana’s resort communities, which tend to embrace the summer with […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2011: A Burning Problem
In national parks, where are all the fossils?
When it was established in 1922, South Dakota’s Fossil Cycad National Monument possessed the world’s most significant beds of fossilized, Cretaceous Age cycads, large, fern-like plants. But management was left to local ranchers, and paleontologists working the site received limited federal support. By the time the state historical society offered to take over in 1955, […]
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Pearls of discontent
Last week, The National Park Service released a draft environmental impact statement that assesses the impacts the commercial shellfish company has on the estuary where it’s based–particularly its impacts on eelgrass, water quality, and wildlife–and evaluates the pros and cons of issuing a new permit that would allow the company to continue operating.