A new book seeks to make sense of the hated canid’s history.
Non-native Species
Posted inArticles
Invade, steal water: The plant spreading in Utah’s wetlands
Battling a nonnative reed to protect Great Salt Lake bird habitat.
Posted inDecember 26, 2016: Obama and the West
Latest: Invasive zebra mussels have reached Montana
Their arrival could have drastic economic effects.
Posted inArticles
Should we accept invasive species that don’t cause harm?
Amid a national immigration debate, the collared dove raises questions about acceptance.
Posted inSeptember 19, 2016: Frontera Incognita
How humans nurtured the hated mosquito
Alexander von Humboldt and the spread of Aedes aegypti.
Posted inSeptember 5, 2016: When the Doctor is Out
Time to make peace with invasive species?
A conversation with climate science director Stephen Jackson about why and where we should tolerate non-native invaders.
Posted inArticles
Glacier National Park reshuffles native trout
The move will protect species at risk from climate change and invasive fish in new habitats.
Posted inMarch 21, 2016: Making Sense of Malheur
Latest: Courts backs domestic sheep reduction near Idaho’s Hells Canyon
An Idaho court upheld a 2007 plan intended to protect bighorn sheep.
Posted inJanuary 25, 2016: The Forever War
Taking down feline marauders and surviving “feral” landscapes
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inArticles
Leave your dog at home, please
What I say will not make me a popular person, but here it is: For excellent reasons, dogs should not be – and usually aren’t — allowed in the backcountry of national parks. Dogs, being predators, bother wildlife even when they’re leashed. Then there’s canine fecal matter, which carries a number of diseases and parasites […]
Posted inArticles
Researchers find an answer to invasive cheatgrass
Will this native bacteria finally thwart one of the most invasive weeds in North America?
Posted inArticles
Wildland restoration is like marriage: An imperfect work in progress
When I first joined Wildland Restoration Volunteers, I had the naive idea that helping the environment was a lot like a blind date: You get together and hope you click. Some of the projects were just like that: We’d carry tools in, rebuild a trail so it no longer interfered with endangered plants, and go […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2015: Close Ties in Big Landscapes
How to redefine — and defend — wilderness
A review of a new way to look at what’s wild and what’s not, in Jason Mark’s ‘Satellites in the High Country’ and Fred Pearce’s ‘The New Wild.’
Posted inArticles
BLM launches a native seeds strategy for damaged landscapes
The initiative aims to restore burned ecosystems and target fire-prone invasives like cheatgrass.
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
The great Flathead fish fiasco
State and tribes disagree over how to tackle an exotic species’ takeover of a Montana lake.
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
Eucalyptus: Beauty or Beast?
Restoration pits these exotics against California natives. But for some, they’re a natural.
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Is there a way through the West’s bitter wild horse wars?
On a sunny spring day, T.J. Holmes creeps up a dusty arroyo in southwestern Colorado. The 41-year-old former journalist and mountain-bike champ wears beat-up jeans, her blonde curls unfurling from a sun-bleached visor and a big gun slung over one shoulder. The chalky hills of Disappointment Valley look as if they deserve their name. This […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Great Basin scientists unleash new weapons to fight invasive cheatgrass
This guy is lovely!” ecologist Beth Leger exclaims, falling to her knees. A tiny, energetic woman in her mid-30s, Leger hovers, bee-like, over a teensy grass with blue-green blades. It is, she tells me, a “cute” native called Poa secunda. It’s early May, and Leger, graduate student Owen Baughman and I are crouched on Peavine […]