When the Bush administration originally announced its intent to ban ocean fishing of chinook salmon along 700 miles of southern Oregon and Northern California coastline, many people in my hometown sneered their approval (HCN, 3/6/06: Fishermen blamed for salmon troubles). With the exception of a brief, limited and most probably token fishing season last summer, […]
Wildlife
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Lion plan draws heat from scientists, enviros
Lion plan draws heat from scientists, enviros
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
The life of an enigmatic seabird
One of the great North American ornithological mysteries in recent history was solved not by a scientist or a birder, but by a tree-trimmer. Working in an ancient Douglas fir in California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Hoyt Foster began to lop off a limb 148 feet above ground when suddenly he was confronted by […]
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 […]
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Apprehension
On an 860,000-acre refuge, wildlife officers face a human torrent
Posted inWotr
Puppets on the range
A puppet show just finished a 20-year run in southwest New Mexico. I first attended in 1994, when a magazine sent me to the Gila National Forest to inspect damage grazing had done to habitat of Gila trout, our only endangered inland salmonid. Grazing allotments in the Gila and Aldo Leopold wildernesses had been leased […]
Posted inWotr
Fishing ban will make us forget salmon
When the Bush administration announced plans to close ocean fishing ofchinook salmon along 700 miles of Southern Oregon and Northern Californiacoastline, many people in my hometown sneered their approval. With the exception of a brief, limited and most probably token fishing season last summer, Idaho’s upper Salmon River basin has been closed to salmon anglers […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
County and Forest Service bury the shovel
A long-running dispute over an infamous dirt road in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest may be winding down. The Forest Service and Elko County, Nev., are asking a federal judge to approve a settlement over the county’s claim to South Canyon Road in Jarbidge Canyon. Although the agency still refuses to recognize the county’s assertion of […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Burning down the house
Bush administration proposes sweeping cuts to community fire programs
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Pure bison make a comeback
Prairie conservationists build a herd free of cattle genes
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Communities and Forests: Where People Meet theLand
Communities and Forests: Where People Meet the Land ed. Robert G. Lee and Donald R. Field 320 pages, softcover: $29.95. Oregon State University Press, 2005. This collection of essays suggests that traditional forest management is shifting, from being solely science-based to accounting for societal and cultural values. Lee and Field present four major types of […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Mass wolf kill rests on shaky science
Idaho’s Fish and Game Department wants to boost the Lolo management zone’s dwindling elk herd by killing up to three-quarters of the area’s estimated 58 wolves and maintaining low wolf numbers for the next five years. But some biologists and conservation groups question the science behind the plan — the department’s first attempt to manage […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
A law born from the ashes
California’s devastating fires of 2003 gave rise to the Healthy Forests Restoration Act — the business end of the Bush administration’s Healthy Forests Initiative, itself introduced in Oregon after the 2002 fire season. George W. Bush’s Healthy Forests, by Jacqueline Vaughn and Hanna J. Cortner, is the story of a legislative moment in time — […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
On the wing again
As California condors disappeared, a new world emerged. From observation posts in Southern California’s Transverse Ranges in the 1960s, hazy vistas of L.A. subdivisions, office buildings and jet airplanes gradually replaced sightings of the largest bird in North America. “This is not a species that’s grown old and feeble,” NPR science reporter John Nielsen writes […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
The War on Wildfire
To wage war on wildfire, President Bush convinced Congress to help him change the rules of forest management. Are we better off now?
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Dam removal considered for Klamath
As salmon suffer, truce settles on river
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Slim margins
Loggers say forest restoration work doesn’t put much food on the table
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
National Fire Plan vs. the Healthy Forests rule changes
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The War on Wildfire.” THE NATIONAL FIRE PLAN What is it? A 10-year strategy, launched in 2000 by Western governors, to attack overgrown forests and to increase fire protection for communities Key players Former Govs. John Kitzhaber, D-Ore., and Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho Rule changes […]
Posted inWotr
Ocean fishing ban will be a drastic step
Sometime during the first week of April, regulators will decide whether to close a 700-mile stretch of the California and Oregon coasts to commercial salmon fishing, and much of the West Coast will learn whether locally caught king salmon will show up at fish markets this summer. At first blush, it seems like a case […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
ESA talks end in stalemate
While major disagreements remain, Pombo claims consensus