The first wolves return to Yellowstone amid much fanfare and mixed reactions.
Taxpayers and the grizzly are getting gored
Dear HCN: Why is the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee supporting delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly bear? (HCN, 1/23/95). After 35 years of research on this population and the expenditure of several million dollars, there still is no reasonable population estimate for the Yellowstone grizzly or a scientifically defensible measure of what constitutes a recovered population.…
Race alarms public; methane project doesn’t
A much-hyped race through Utah’s canyon country has attracted record public comment – and exposed how difficult it is to get the public involved in managing public lands. “It’s frustrating,” says Dennis Willis, a recreation staffer in the Price, Utah, office of the Bureau of Land Management, which is doing an environmental assessment of the…
Idaho salmon suit angers locals
Setting off a firestorm of local protest in Idaho, a federal judge ruled Jan. 9 that the Forest Service should temporarily halt mining, grazing, logging and road-building activities on six national forests. U.S. District Judge David Ezra said that the agency had to stop all ongoing activities until it consulted with federal biologists about effects…
It takes a thief
An eel-like parasite that devastated the lake trout population of the Great Lakes may one day swim in Yellowstone Lake. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it may consider introducing sterile sea lampreys to control invasive lake trout discovered there last summer (HCN, 9/19/94). “At at this point we’re not ruling out any proposals,”…
Ranchers backed
Ranchers are struggling land stewards in the eyes of New Mexicans, a new poll has found. A University of New Mexico telephone poll found that only 33 percent of the respondents thought cows damage the environment, although 49 percent said environmental preservation should be the top priority of public-land management. Eighty percent contended that maintaining…
Wolves gain support
The wolf is welcome in Colorado, say 70 percent of the respondents in a recent statewide survey. The study polled 1,452 residents and found that a majority on both sides of the Rockies support the reintroduction of the gray wolf. The results on the Western Slope surprised researchers, who had expected the region’s livestock industry…
A biased HCN board?
Dear HCN, I noticed that you now have at least three ranchers on your board of directors – Farwell Smith, Diane Peavey and Doc Hatfield. At least two out of the three are well known and outspoken advocates of public-lands grazing. Isn’t this just like the National Cancer Association having a couple of tobacco farmers…
Why can’t both sides move a little toward each other?
Dear HCN, I enjoyed Ed Marston’s editorial in the Dec. 26 High Country News. I’m a (gasp) federal-land rancher in (gasp) Catron County, N.M., and write a weekly editorial in the Courier, which often bashes (gasp) enviro-preservationists. I’ve been active in working on the Catron County Land Plan in relation to water. I’ve watched each…
Really teed off
Dear HCN, I’ve had a bellyful of Ed Marston’s sappy romanticizing about the Western rancher (HCN, 12/26/94). I’m from a ranching family – my great-grandmother came out West in a covered wagon in 1846, and my grandfather homesteaded a ranch in Arizona in 1913 – and the way you Easterners buy into this “rugged individual”…
This mating is no game
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The wolves are back, big time. Federal biologists are playing matchmaker. When six more gray wolves were trundled into Yellowstone Jan. 20, one male was introduced to a prospective new mate, and biologists hoped the two wouldn’t fight. They didn’t. Although the wolves postured,…
Wolves may not need Big Brother
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The wolves are back, big time. Some veteran wolf biologists call the designated federal restoration a big mistake. “They don’t need to reintroduce wolves,” says Diane Boyd, who for the past 15 years has studied wolves as they have migrated down from Canada and…
Canada provides $2000 wolves
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The wolves are back, big time. ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOUSE, Alberta – Someday, perhaps not too far off, residents of the region around Yellowstone National Park may know wolves the way Gerald Gustavson knows wolves. “It’ll happen one day, when you’re out in the forest,…
Not much fuss over wolves in Canada
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The wolves are back, big time. ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOUSE, Alberta – Canadians who live around wolves have a simple attitude toward the predators: No big deal. As fierce debate continues in the United States over the place of wolves, Canadians who live with the…
In surprising ways, wolves will restore natural balance
When wolves arrived in Yellowstone last month, it was as though a boulder were tossed into a lake: the ripples began to spread, and eventually they will touch everything. As trucks carrying the predators entered the park, coyotes nearby began to howl; now they yip and sing almost every hour near the wolf pens. “I…
Dear friends
Jim Stiak, reporter High Country News was honored last year when The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog chose this newspaper for one of its capsule reviews, calling HCN “the model for eco-media reporting.” The example the catalog chose to represent the paper was Jim Stiak’s lead story on timber theft, a concise exposé of how the…
New governor accepts nuclear waste
BOISE, Idaho – New Idaho Gov. Philip E. Batt broke with tradition Jan. 12 and agreed to accept a total of 11 railroad-borne casks of nuclear waste from the U.S. Navy during the next six weeks. In return, the Navy has promised to find a geologic repository outside Idaho “as quickly as practical” and transfer…
Behemoth sturgeon struggle to survive
At the turn of the century, horses were sometimes needed to haul 20-foot white sturgeon from Idaho’s Snake River. Today, fish behemoths like that are found only in historical photo archives, although nine-foot-long lunkers are known to survive. The story of the demise of America’s largest freshwater fish reads much like that of the Snake…
The wolves are back, big time
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – Badged officers blocked traffic as the lengthy motorcade approached. Reporters and photographers crowded both sides of the road, and satellite dishes atop television stations’ trucks stood ready to beam the scene to the rest of the world. At a “media center’” occupying a cavernous gymnasium, banks of telephones were ready…
Happy pack of journalists pursues quarry
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The wolves are back, big time. MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, Wyo. – There were photographers taking pictures of photographers, and another group of photographers taking pictures of them, when wolves came back to Yellowstone National Park. Canadian Broadcasting Company reporter Kelly Crowe called the frenzy…
One bullet prompted regret
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The wolves are back, big time. LANDER, Wyo. – The wolf head on the wall tucks its ears and bares its teeth at all who enter the living room of this 85-year-old retired sheep rancher. This aging trophy with broken teeth is perhaps the…