Oregon bill would allow mountain bikers and chain saws in ‘wilderness’
Wildlife
Posted inWotr
A lesson in consensus from contentious Idaho
I can’t get too worked up about the national election’s impact on Western land issues. I don’t live in a state where oil and gas development is roaring through publicly owned lands the way it’s doing in Wyoming and Colorado. Democrats still have enough votes in Idaho’s Senate to stop legislation that fundamentally changes the […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Keepers of the Flame
GILA NATIONAL FOREST, New Mexico — In April 2003, a thunderstorm built over southwestern New Mexico’s Black Range. Clouds darkened the skies above soft-shouldered hills and steep canyons covered by dense thickets of juniper and piñon pine and galleries of tall ponderosa pine. Sometime around 2:00 in the afternoon, lightning struck on Boiler Peak, northwest […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Saving wildlife, one animal at a time: Veterinarian Kathleen Ramsay
ESPAÑOLA, New Mexico — Kathleen Ramsay found her calling in a veterinary school lab, when a man brought in a golden eagle caught in a foothold trap. “He threw the trap and chain at me, with the eagle flapping in the trap,” she says. “(That’s when) I decided … to help animals that could no […]
Posted inWotr
The political science of salmon non-recovery, 101
If the 13 endangered salmon runs on the Columbia and Snake rivers go the way of the dodo on our watch, the responsibility for this denouement cannot be laid at the feet of the five Columbia River Indian tribes or their allies in the biological and aquatic sciences. For two decades, in courtrooms and at […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Wolves are welcome in one Western state
Oregon may soon be the first Western state to independently welcome back wolves following their near eradication and reintroduction in the Lower 48. In September, a citizen panel of ranchers, hunters, wildlife activists and others presented the state Fish and Wildlife Commission with a blueprint that would allow eight or more wolf packs to move […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Wolf pack wiped out for ‘surplus killing’
During the night of June 29, the nine wolves in the Cook pack took part in what biologists call a “surplus killing” north of McCall. They killed 70 sheep, far more than they could eat. In all, the pack — Idaho’s largest — reportedly killed more than 190 sheep the past two summers. The U.S. […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Trout wriggles into a sagebrush rebellion
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raised the stakes in a conflict between environmentalists and Elko County, Nev., in June, when it proposed critical habitat for the endangered bull trout along the Jarbidge River. The agency proposed designating 131 miles of streams in Idaho and Nevada as critical habitat — which sets aside land essential […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Wandering into wolf territory
The long-running political battles over wolf reintroduction in the West can seem fixed in amber: Environmentalists usually stand on one side and cattle growers on another, with the state and federal governments suspended somewhere in between. But as historian Jon Coleman makes clear in Vicious: Wolves and Men in America, these positions solidified only recently. […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Dams will stand, salmon be damned
The Bush administration’s new salmon plan offers a whole new spin on the Endangered Species Act
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Hunting: It’s not about the gun
I killed my first deer on an October morning, two days after my 14th birthday. I was hunting on my grandmother’s ranch in south-central Colorado, and I can still see that deer, ghost-gray in the dawn, its form more like smoke than animal. I remember how my chest was tight and my arms and legs […]
Posted inWotr
Presidential candidates try to look svelte in blaze orange
Ernest Hemingway said every writer needs a “shockproof B.S.-detector.” My B.S.-detector has been getting a workout, as the presidential candidates have been hunting for votes this autumn. In particular, they are seeking the votes of the 47 million Americans who hunt and fish. In a race this tight, politicians see this as a bloc as […]
Posted inWotr
Bring on that old lanky dog (and be sure to eat the elk)
For my son’s last day of summer vacation, I took off from my veterinarian practice, and off we went to northern Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. We climbed around on some boulders, got rained on and we saw elk, lots of elk. I have seen my share of elk throughout the West, but this particular […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 2004: Life After Old Growth
For endangered species, survival no longer enough
For 18 years, whenever the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had to decide whether a proposed development violated the Endangered Species Act, the agency applied a basic standard: Will it affect the survival of an endangered species? From now on, that’s not good enough, two federal courts have ruled. Instead, the Fish and Wildlife Service […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 2004: Life After Old Growth
Utah’s wilderness warriors reply
We’d like to thank High Country News for highlighting Utah’s redrock wilderness and recognizing the value of protecting this uncommon landscape. However, we disagree with some of HCN Associate Editor Matt Jenkins’ essay which criticizes Utah wilderness advocates based on an erroneous perception that there is a stalemate on Utah Bureau of Land Management (BLM) […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 2004: Life After Old Growth
Life After Old Growth
The battle over the Northwest’s ancient forests has again taken center stage, but behind the scenes, some locals are pushing for peace
Posted inSeptember 27, 2004: Life After Old Growth
A timber town learns to care for the forest
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Life After Old Growth.” LAKEVIEW, OREGON — Perched on the easternmost edge of Oregon timber country, where scattered mountain ranges fade into the high desert, the hamlet of Lakeview is an apparition. All indications suggest that it should be dead and gone, a casualty […]
Posted inWotr
The bear has been misleading people for 60 years
Smokey Bear celebrated his 60th birthday this summer, and the ageless advertising icon wandered out of the woods for an elaborate birthday bash. He was feted by a crowd that included Dale Bosworth, chief of the U.S. Forest Service, and children of firefighters who sang happy birthday to him. Smokey, who never speaks, was also […]
Posted inWotr
Another fish kill on the Klamath seems to be coming
Unfortunately, it’s business as usual in the Klamath watershed, where all the conditions are in place for yet another fish kill similar to the one that occurred in the fall of 2002. It’s another dry year, with the same low flows in the river that caused the deaths of at least 34,000 salmon two years […]
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For wilderness, small can be beautiful
As the 40th anniversary of the Wilderness Act approaches Sept. 3, there is a temptation to talk about iconic places such as the John Muir Wilderness in California or the Bob Marshall in Montana. But out in the middle of a worked-over oil and gas patch south of Vernal, Utah, lies the White River, a […]