So you think wildlife biology is a science? Sure it is, if estimating wild turkey populations by counting the birds that run across the road in front of your truck is “science.” In Stalking the Big Bird, an often-amusing tale of his 27 years with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, biologist Harley Shaw reveals […]
Wildlife
Posted inWotr
Lions and tigers and wolves, oh my, even in the Midwest
Don’t look now, but there may be a couple of keen eyes within a placid suburb or rural Midwestern neighborhood. In fact, they might be up a tree. That’s where Nebraska’s most recent mountain lion was spotted earlier this year. The 100-pound animal was lounging comfortably in a tree in South Sioux City, across the […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
For salmon, a crucial moment of decision
Ruling could set in motion dramatic changes on Northwest rivers
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Bringing back the wolf = bringing back the habitat
The wolf today inspires polarized emotions. It is viewed by some as a slavering, rapacious killing machine; by others, as the noble symbol of a lost wilderness. In the fascinating Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone, biologist Douglas Smith and nature writer Gary Ferguson seek to sort myth from reality. They describe […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
The Singing Life of Birds
The Singing Life of Birds Donald Kroodsma, 482 pages, hardcover: $28.00. Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Have you ever wished you could distinguish the song of a wood thrush from that of a hermit thrush? Kroodsman’s new book combines his personal observations of birds with scientific descriptions of how they develop their songs. Accompanying diagrams show the […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Wild Echoes: Encounters With the Most Endangered Animals in North America
Wild Echoes: Encounters With the Most Endangered Animals in North America Charles Bergman, 325 pages, softcover: $21.95. University of Illinois Press, 2003. Biologists know that human activities are causing thousands of species to go extinct. According to Bergman, our attitudes contribute to extinction just as much as our automobiles do. By imagining animals as separate […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Tax credits make eco-logging pay
The trouble with logging these days is that it’s hard to make a profit while still looking out for forest health. That may change, at least in some depressed Northwest timber towns, thanks to a federal program that usually helps blighted urban neighborhoods. In May, the U.S. Treasury Department gave $50 million in federal tax […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
For sale: Your local ranger station?
Budget cuts and forest thinning force agency to trim down
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
A massive restoration program may have nothing left to save
Food chain collapsing in the California Delta
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Former refuge manager takes heat for saving frogs
A federal biologist who was trying to save an Arizona frog from extinction recently found himself facing criminal charges. The Chiricahua leopard frog once hopped from central Arizona to western New Mexico. But habitat loss, predation by exotic bullfrogs and fishes, and drought had reduced the population to a few small ponds in the Altar […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Beehive state may get new wilderness — and more
Wilderness advocates in Utah have long butted heads with rural county commissioners and the state’s conservative congressional delegation. Last May, in an attempt to resolve the impasse, then-Utah Gov. Olene Walker announced county-by-county discussions on land use, including potential new wilderness areas (HCN, 6/21/04: Lame-duck governor moves deadlocked wilderness debate). Now, the state may see […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Unsalvageable
With environmentalists fuming, logging companies grousing, and timber rotting, the Bush administration tries to save face — and a sliver of its grand plans to log the Northwest’s forest sanctuaries
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
In the Washington woods, managers face a catch-22
Critics say that by trying to please everyone, new rules could fail fish and wildlife
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
In-house wisdom, or White House meddling?
Forest Service insiders say the President’s Council on Environmental Quality added new corporate rules to the agency’s planning program
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
Wilderness wallows in rural county
After months of considering whether to support the creation of a Badlands Wilderness about 20 miles east of Bend, Ore., the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners voted 3-0 in late March to do nothing, effectively leaving the proposal in limbo. It could have been worse, says commission chair Tom DeWolf. “They can take solace in […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
On the Colorado, a grand experiment meets Mother Nature
“It’s really hard to kill fish with water,” says Joe Shannon, a professor of aquatic ecology with Northern Arizona University. But a recent experiment intended to help native fish in the Colorado River might have done just that. In November, officials from the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center released a 90-hour flood from Glen […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
For this logger, twisted trees are the future
In a corner of his airy shop near Silver City, N.M., Gordon West is working out the kinks in Southwestern forestry. In a small way, of course: Everything he does is intended to work in a small way. West, a middle-aged logger, woodworker and builder, is testing a long metal machine that resembles an overgrown […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
Blades, birds and bats: Wind energy and wildlife not a cut-and-dried issue
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Winds of Change.” If you think wind energy is a good alternative to fossil fuels, but you also care about wildlife, you’ve probably worried about the possible “lawnmower” effect of spinning wind turbines on birds and bats. At least some of that concern […]
Posted inWotr
Hullabaloo in the hook-and-bullet press
As a hunter, fisher and full-time outdoor writer, it pains me to admit that most hunting-and-fishing magazines are right down there with supermarket tabloids. You can tell the really important articles by the number of exclamation points after the title, as in: “Sportsmen’s group in all-out battle for shooting and hunting rights!!!” Fact-checking departments are […]
Posted inWotr
Spring comes grudgingly to Wyoming’s high desert
Although I expect more heartless wind and freezing nights, I think winter’s tight grip has been loosened. Summer lies ahead.