Wildlife

Wilderness, as the conservationist Aldo Leopold put it, is “the very stuff America is made of.” As pioneers settled our continent, their encounter with wilderness shaped our national character. Today, as Americans flock to our national forests, parks and other federal lands, many seek the wilderness, savoring its scenic splendors and a quiet that’s increasingly […]

The first time I stood on the shores of Great Salt Lake, I spotted something pink in the midst of what seemed like a bazillion different species of bobbing waterfowl. “Are there supposed to be pink flamingos in Utah?” I asked my biologist wife while looking through a pair of binoculars. “It’s plastic,” she said, […]

Perhaps it was an act of intentional deception when the U.S. Forest Service used old photos of a Montana timber lease to make the case for logging in California to reduce fire danger. It’s just as likely, however, that laziness and bureaucratic ineptitude are to blame. Either way, the incident raises doubts about the agency’s […]

Carter Niemeyer raises a shotgun to his shoulder and squeezes the trigger. An instant later, a rubber bullet bounces off a cardboard target. Niemeyer, Idaho’s coordinator for wolf recovery, is demonstrating non-lethal means of stopping wolves from preying on livestock. His audience is 200 Westerners at a meeting of the North American Interagency Wolf Conference. […]

Hi, my name is Amy, and I’m a wolfaholic. I know others like me are out there. They’re driving cars with bumper stickers crying “Little Red Riding Hood Lied.” Their walls display dreamy paintings of wolves that look gentler than Gandhi. My wolfaholism manifests itself in a different way: I’m addicted to watching wolves. It […]

Houses march to the Wyoming skyline like fat clouds stacked in a troubled sky. There’s open space, too, long sweeps of it, mostly irrigated, mostly covered with cows or alfalfa. The ranches are keeping this country open but every year a new ranch is “ranchetted,” chunked up like cheese, sold, fenced, housed. This is the […]