The Columbia Basin Fish Accords have funded $1 billion worth of habitat restoration projects, but can they replace free-flowing rivers?
Endangered Species
Posted inArticles
The most important wildlife management plans you’ve never heard of
Western states scramble to prepare Wildlife Action Plans, due in 2015.
Posted inArticles
Gunnison sage grouse gets divisive ‘threatened’ listing
The decision upsets enviros and industry alike.
Posted inOctober 13, 2014: Charles Bowden's Fury
Has the Obama administration hobbled the Endangered Species Act?
A new policy may set the law back half a century.
Posted inOctober 13, 2014: Charles Bowden's Fury
The Latest: Wyoming’s wolf delisting thrown out
A U.S. District Court hands management back to the feds.
Posted inArticles
The Earth has half as many animals as it did in 1970
In the Western U.S., megafauna is on the rise — but amphibians are in trouble.
Posted inArticles
Did Obama’s Interior hobble the Endangered Species Act?
A new policy sets the law back a half-century, conservationists say.
Posted inGoat
Fish and Wildlife declines to list wolverines as endangered
Not enough evidence of climate harm to list wolverines, says Fish and Wildlife Climate change is a real force disrupting wildlife populations. But for the 300 or so wolverines living in the lower 48, there’s still not enough evidence of present or future danger to protect them under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
Climate changes for wolverine listing
What good can the Endangered Species Act do in a warming world?
Posted inGoat
ESA changes could help protect sage grouse on private land
In an increasingly subdivided and trailblazed West, southeastern Oregon’s Harney County is a place that can still make you feel small. From the empty blacktop two-lane highways 78 and 20, broad grasslands rise to sagebrush-studded mesas and hills that crest and break to the blue horizons like the landlocked waves of a parched sea. Drive-fast-with-your-windows-down […]
Posted inArticles
Are Yellowstone grizzlies ready for delisting?
A recent study of the bears’ diets has spurred a move toward ending endangered protections.
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
The Latest: Woodland caribou are in danger of disappearing from the U.S.
Environmental groups file suit over caribou habitat.
Posted inGoat
Carrots for conservation
A new conservation program that gives landowners incentives to improve habitat for lizard and prairie chicken.
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
The Butterfly Sting
How a federal wildlife agent brought down one of the world’s most notorious insect thieves.
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Drilling, wolves, guns and plutonium
“Drill here, drill now,” has become something of a political mantra in this election-year summer of high gasoline prices and frustrated consumers. Tack on “pay less,” and it’s the bumper-sticker slogan for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s national campaign to expand domestic energy production. Many Republicans now running for Congress hope their enthusiasm for drilling […]
Posted inArticles
Love for the clay-loving buckwheat
By 8 a.m., the July day felt like a scorcher. Waves of heat rippled along the western Colorado adobe hills, shriveling plants and baking the soil to a fractured crust that crunched with every step. Two white tents peeking from between golden hills could have been a mirage, if it weren’t for the sizzle of […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Two weeks in the West
“With no disrespect to the eagle, I’ve always thought that the horse should be our national emblem.” —Singer Willie Nelson, arguing against the slaughter of horses for human consumption Interior’s fuzzy science. If it were up to many U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists, the Endangered Species Act would now protect the Gunnison’s prairie dog, […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Is It or Isn’t It (Just Another Mouse)?
Why science alone will not settle the West’s endangered species dilemmas
Posted inWotr
Killing cougars is the easy choice
The state of Oregon is back in the business of killing cougars. After a long and contentious public comment process, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission recently approved a management plan for the state’s top predator that would allow government-paid hunters to reduce cougar numbers back to 1993 levels. That could ultimately mean the killing […]