While major disagreements remain, Pombo claims consensus
Wildlife
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Reality Check
Misinformation, spin abound in endangered species debate
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Spotted owl or red herring?
Pretty much everyone agrees that logging on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest has declined by 80 percent since its heyday in the mid-1980s. Job losses in the region’s timber sector over the past two decades number in the tens of thousands. But don’t blame the critical habitat rule, or even the Endangered Species Act. […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Fishermen blamed for salmon troubles
Salvation for the Northwest’s endangered salmon will come through further cuts in fishing, according to a senior White House official. James Connaughton, head of the Council on Environmental Quality, announced at Portland’s Salmon 2100 conference in January that salmon recovery will have to come through curbing fishing, along with upgrades to outdated hatcheries, which may […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Energy company stakes out wildlife refuge
Iridescent dragonflies, shimmering wetlands, and the many imperiled species that call a southeastern New Mexico wildlife refuge home may soon have a new neighbor: gas wells. Yates Petroleum Co., based in Artesia, N.M., told U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials last month it plans to drill two wells in Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge — […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Wilderness: The new anti-nuclear weapon
On Jan. 6, President Bush signed into law the first new Utah wilderness area since 1984 — and made it a little harder for nuclear power plant operators to ship radioactive waste to a nearby Indian reservation. The new Cedar Mountain Wilderness protects some 100,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land about 45 miles […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Public acres for sale
President Bush revives proposal to sell desert and forest land
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Snowy middle ground
Wilderness advocates and snowmobilers come to terms in Montana
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
In hunting camp, the closet is closed
I saw Brokeback Mountain at the historic Wilma Theatre, just a short walk from my home in downtown Missoula. Built in 1921 by producers of a Wild West show, it’s a place where cowboy humorist Will Rogers once performed. Between the old sound system and my bad ears (courtesy of my time in the Marine […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Fishering
In a part of Oregon where everybody says there have been no fishers for years, the writer stumbles across one of these rare and beautiful animals.
Posted inWotr
Who’s afraid of the big bad dog?
Shock waves are still spreading over the news that last November, a Canadian was apparently killed by wolves. The conservationist mantra has always been that healthy wolves don’t kill humans. But in this case, which happened in Saskatchewan, evidence indicates that they did: A 22-year-old man was found mauled and partially eaten in an area […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Critical Habitat: The Inside Story
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “High Noon for Habitat.” 1973 — Congress passes the original Endangered Species Act. Section 7 says that federal agencies must ensure that any federal action “doesn’t cause destruction or modification of habitat” that is deemed critical for a listed species. 1975 — The Fish […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Stalking the boojum in the Sonoran Desert
From afar, the Sonoran Desert is a stonewashed, monochromatic expanse. Look closer, and you’ll swear that fantasy writer Lewis Carroll did the landscaping. Two rainy seasons each year give the Sonoran Desert stunning biodiversity and some pretty quirky plant species — many so specialized to a particular place that budding naturalists are likely to need […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
High Noon for Habitat
In Southern California, a host of imperiled wildlife lies in the path of America’s worst urban sprawl. The battle over the last patches of habitat is ringing through the halls of Washington, D.C.
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Dr. Sharon and the lion hunters
NAME Sharon Seneczko VOCATION Small-animal veterinarian AGE 45 HOME BASE Custer, South Dakota KNOWN FOR Educating the public about mountain lions. SHE SAYS “Nobody is looking at the value of wild animals until they’re gone. That’s why I’m stepping up to the plate now. We have to leave a place for wildlife.” Inside a veterinary […]
Posted inWotr
Oregon’s academic food fight in the cafeteria of ideas
It isn’t often an academic dean gets up in public and apologizes for participating in an effort to suppress the work of a graduate student. But that’s exactly what Oregon State University College of Forestry Dean Hal Salwasser recently did. “I profoundly regret the negative debate that recent events have generated,” he wrote in a […]
Posted inWotr
Idaho seems set on killing wolves
Last week, I was thrilled to find four sets of wolf tracks carved in the snow in our back pasture. Two nights previously, wolves killed a neighbor’s black Lab within 200 yards of the owner’s house. I feel bad about that dog. We have Labrador retrievers, too. When I let them out in the morning, […]
Posted inWotr
It’s true: Guns don’t kill people
When I was in sixth grade, my entire class was marched into the school gym for Hunter Safety class. There, for several class periods, the public school system helped us understand the difference between the deer we could shoot and the ones we shouldn’t, the ethics of “shooting your wife’s deer” (which always made me […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2006: The Killing Fields
First fatal wolf attack recorded in North America?
Conservationists have long assuaged the public’s fear of wolves by saying that there have been no documented instances of a healthy wild wolf killing a human being in North America. Until now, that is. On Nov. 8, a search party found the partially consumed body of 22-year-old Kenton Joel Carnegie in the woods of northern […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2006: The Killing Fields
Judge orders litigating enviros to pony up
A federal judge is forcing environmentalists to back their challenge of a logging project with cold, hard cash. In November, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ordered a halt to logging on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, outside of Butte, after three environmental groups appealed the judge’s earlier decision to allow the 2,600-acre timber harvest. Then, on […]