I’ve always gone to the woods to calm or rejuvenate a spirit too easily rubbed raw by modern life. It shouldn’t have surprised me that this continued into chemotherapy. Cockeyed from surgery and early treatments for ovarian cancer, I thought I was too tired or too sick to feel alive in the woods, but found […]
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Wolves don’t belong on the firing line
The day before the first-ever official wolf hunt started in Idaho on Sept. 1, I stood on the sidewalk outside the county courthouse in Sandpoint, watching cars stream into town. As demonstrators on the sidewalk waved placards protesting the hunt, people in those vehicles reacted, and I focused on their hands, counting waves and thumbs-up […]
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An ecological dilemma
It took the power of two flashlights to discover the source of the metallic screech that had been keeping us up nights. There, on the top of a telephone pole, sat a chunky juvenile great horned owl, plaintively calling for its parents to come feed it. But then my attention turned to the ground below […]
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Trapping is one tradition that ought to go
Every 20 years in Montana, more than a million bobcats, otters, wolverines, fishers, pine martens, otters, fox and other furry critters are exterminated from Montana’s forests and streams. Collateral damage includes the endangered Canada lynx, eagles and bears — not to mention all the dogs and cats unwittingly snared in traps. But a ballot initiative […]
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Conservationists wrong to oppose wolf hunt
Wolves have recovered, and it’s time for more rational management
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If you want to support wildlife, support ranching
An old friend of mine once said, “Sometimes Wyoming people would rather fight than win.” He’s right, of course. Even though there are only about 500,000 of us and our state does feel more like a small town with long streets, and even if I don’t know you — though there’s a good chance that […]
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Building brainpower on the cheap
It is not a nice day. The temperature is in the 50s and it is overcast and sprinkling. Through the ponderosa pines I can see that the mountains to the west are sprinkled with white. It will not be long before the rain turns into snow. If I pass the field exams, it will lead […]
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We can help bees by cleaning up our act
Over the last four years, millions of the West’s workers have vanished. No, they’re not immigrants deported back to Mexico. Rather, they’re honeybees, and no one’s sure where they’ve gone. Scientists have been baffled by the large-scale disappearances, but now there’s finally some good news: Recent research has identified at least three of the major […]
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Is Obama’s goal of diversity trumping other goals?
Homer Lee Wilkes. Ignacia Moreno. Hilary Tompkins. Each is a member of a racial or ethnic minority, and each has been nominated by Barack Obama, our first black president, to a high position with power over environmental issues in the West. And each has faced skepticism from environmentalists. On May 5, Obama picked Wilkes to […]
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The Poudre: A river besieged by thirsty cities
Colorado’s Cache la Poudre River flows east out of Rocky Mountain National Park and through a canyon northwest of Fort Collins. Along the way, like any other Western river, it is diverted to water croplands and fill washing machines. It is a magnet for rafters and fisher-folk, and the people of Fort Collins regard it […]
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Whose Valles Caldera is it?
When people try to describe the Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico, they sometimes compare it to Yellowstone National Park. Both offer stunning landscapes born of volcanic activity, and both are filled with wildlife. Though only 89,000 acres, Valles Caldera contains thousands of elk, vast grasslands, streams and mountains, all within the sunken remnant […]
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My home on a glacier
I spent the summers of 2007 and 2008 on a glacier in southeast Alaska, with 12 people and 200 huskies. I was working as a dogsled guide, and each morning I’d pull myself from my sleeping bag, slip on my raincoat and boots, and step from my tent into the pale light of the Northern […]
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Parks for the people — not profit
The fog that often hangs over Drakes Estero, an estuary in California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, tends to obscure the natural features that make this small body of water one of the treasures of our national park system. This estuary, which has been designated a wetland of international importance, hosts one of the largest breeding […]
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Cow-free at last
Deep in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument of southern Oregon lies my favorite wildflower meadow. This summer I need to step carefully, to avoid the lush clumps of Jacob’s Ladder blossoms and the delicate columbines, their blooms nodding in the breeze. I breathe in the scents of the wild: the spice of the conifers, the earthy […]
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Off the road again
Jack Kerouac wrote his entire novel “On the Road” in just three weeks. He used a continuous roll of teletype paper, as if pausing to put in a new sheet of paper would have caused a pile-up on his imagination’s highway. Lawrence Ferlinghetti said that Kerouac provided us with “a vision of America seen from […]
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A sucker punch to the stomach: When trees turn red
Colorado’s bark beetle epidemic is unlike anything in the state’s still-brief recorded history. Foresters say 95 percent of our lodgepole pines will be dead within just a few more years, with beetles likely to burrow next into the ponderosa pine along the urbanized Front Range corridor. To some people, this has been like a sucker […]
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Too much bling
Last week, the teenagers among our dinner companions started talking about “bling.” An older man at the end of the table asked, “What is this bleen stuff?” “No,” the kids said, giggling. “You know, bling.” Well, no, he didn’t know. “Really?” Hilarious laughter; then definitions: “It’s like, shiny. Glittery. Sparkly. Jewelry. Like, fancy stuff. Rhinestones. […]
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You gotta dream big when you dream about oil shale
Things have quieted in the oil patch, and you don’t hear as many chants of “Drill, baby, drill” as we did last summer. Even so, there remains considerable interest in developing oil shale, as evidenced by a recent report from the Center of the American West in Boulder. America’s biggest deposits are roughly centered where […]
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I can’t wait to drink wastewater
I’m not really a water connoisseur. I can’t tell the difference between bottled “mountain spring” water and ordinary tap water, and all the various brands of bottled water taste alike to me. There is, however, one kind of water I’m just longing to sip. Unfortunately, it’s not yet on the market, but I’m hoping it […]
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Backcountry lessons from the Lost Forest of Oregon
The Scout we were driving across the treeless landscape was coated with dust so thick you couldn’t read the decal identifying us as scientists from a Forest Service Research Station. Had the decal been legible, an observer might have thought we were lost. We weren’t, but the forest that my work-partner, Doug, and I were […]