The popular impression of Timothy Treadwell, who died in Alaska just over two years ago, is that he was a delusional crackpot who deserved his fate: to be killed and eaten by a bear. News coverage painted him as a foolish amateur bear biologist — well-intentioned but not very bright — who paid with his […]
Wildlife
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
The Ardent Birder
The Ardent Birder Todd Newberry and Gene Holtan 214 pages, softcover: $14.95 Ten Speed Press, 2005. Professor Todd Newberry and artist Gene Holtan have produced a whimsical, fun book about the “lovely madness” that possesses bird watchers. Useful tips abound: how to host a birding field trip, what gear to bring, ways to identify a […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
Hear Him Roar
Hear Him Roar Andrew Wingfield 240 pages, softcover: $19.95 Utah State University Press, 2005. Puma concolor, the mountain lion, meets Homo dingus dongus, the urban dweller who is all for wild nature — as long as it’s predator-free. Set in Sacramento, Calif., this is a tensely told novel about the inevitable conflict between humans and […]
Posted inWotr
Wheelchairs and wilderness can coexist
Sometimes, life can change dramatically in the blink of an eye. The biggest change in my life came seven years ago, when I was backcountry skiing in the Hoover Wilderness near Yosemite. I missed a turn on a steep icy slope and fell into a rocky gully. In that ugly tumble I crushed my spinal […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
The little wilderness that could
New Mexico conservationists build support from the ground up, and win one
Posted inWotr
Lessons from a porcupine
Nights were frosting already when the porcupine came down the hill and started nosing around our yard. This year, I started explaining to the porcupine how my mood generally follows the trend of the season. I told him I’d like him to understand a little about the condition of the world and how that relates […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Declining seabird may drop off the endangered list
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in October that it will move forward with plans to remove the marbled murrelet, a small seabird, from under the protective wing of the Endangered Species Act. The robin-sized bird, which lays its eggs on the moss-covered branches of old-growth trees, has hampered Northwest logging for more than […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Imperfect Pasture: A Century of Change at the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Imperfect Pasture: A Century of Change at the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming Bruce Smith, Eric Cole and David Dobkin 156 pages, softcover: $14.95 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Grand Teton Natural History Association, 2004. The National Elk Refuge near Jackson, Wyo., is either a conservation success, or, as the scientist-authors of […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
She wins friends for lions, wolves and bears
Janelle Holden is in the business of changing minds — including her own. Holden, the coexistence director for the nonprofit Predator Conservation Alliance, grew up on a cattle ranch on the Great Plains, just east of the Rocky Mountain Front. When grizzly bears began moving into the area in the 1980s, her father was far […]
Posted inWotr
When a forest goes feral, it’s time for volunteers
Wallace Stegner once wrote that the worst thing that can happen to a piece of land, short of coming into the hands of an unscrupulous developer, is to be left open to the unmanaged public. His great fear seems to be coming true. With the downsizing of the federal workforce and the increasing mountain of […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
Toothy nuisance moves north
Global warming may be one of the reasons behind the recent appearance of football-sized, orange-toothed aquatic rodents in the Skagit River Valley of northwestern Washington. Nutria, beaver-like creatures native to South America, are notorious for destroying flood-control levees and chewing through wetlands in the Southeastern United States. Fur entrepreneurs brought them to this country in […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
Cougar Management Guidelines
Cougar Management Guidelines Cougar Management Guidelines Working Group 137 pages, softcover: $21.95 WildFutures, 2005. Wildlife managers and citizen activists alike will find this book useful. It collects current cougar research into a set of guidelines for managing these secretive and increasingly rare big cats. Full of charts and figures, the book explores topics such as […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
Forest Service tries to teach greens a lesson
Agency attempts to bend court order to halt minor projects, but is knocked back
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
The end of something really big
As soon as we read about the dead whale, it was clear we were about to take a field trip. “Let’s go,” said my friend Nathan, peering at a newspaper photo of a giant beached vertebrae. He’s a sculptor, so he has an artist’s appreciation for bones. Besides, his mother had recently cracked one of […]
Posted inWotr
Wilderness bill is a test for common-sense conservation in Idaho
For solitude and inspiration, we seek out wilderness on our public lands, where the road ends and the trail begins, where, by law, we leave our mechanized contrivances and walk, float or ride in on horseback. Wilderness, a gift of nature, remains today because of laws, and where protective laws don’t yet exist, the values […]
Posted inWotr
Idaho wilderness bill is another Teapot Dome giveaway
It sounds like a paradox, but a congressional designation of wilderness can actually harm what is wild. I believe that will come true if Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson’s bill, the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act, becomes law. Whether we like it or not, once that law is passed, the law of unintended […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
Salvage logging speeds up
The timber industry and environmentalists can agree on one thing: The Forest Service’s Biscuit Fire salvage logging program has been a fiasco. Despite accidentally allowing logging in a botanical reserve, the agency has sold just one-fifth of the timber it promised (HCN, 5/16/05: Unsalvageable). Now, two Oregon Republicans have a plan to prevent similar […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
Restoration-by-poisoning plan shot down
Just hours before the California Department of Fish and Game was to poison a stream in the Sierra Nevada — part of an effort to restore a threatened trout — a federal court halted the project. The plan called for killing all fish in an 11-mile stretch of Silver King Creek and Tamarack Lake, then […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
The Ghosts of Yosemite
Scientists from the past bring us a message about the future
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
Pombo takes on the Endangered Species Act
‘Critical habitat’ is likely a thing of the past