Yavapai Ranch Land Exchange called a bad deal for public, spur for sprawl
Wildlife
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
My great-grandfather the crow killer
The one time I met my great-grandfather was unexpectedly, at the Grand Canyon. It was on an overcast March day when I was 18. I wasn’t looking for any relatives. I was just trying to take photographs. I’d never visited the national park, and so my grandfather, Frederick, had driven my 11-year-old brother and me […]
Posted inWotr
The passing of a Yellowstone Cinderella
It’s mating season for wolves in Yellowstone, and the alpha male of the Druid Peak pack sits alone on a snowy ridge, howling mournfully. His mate, whose only name was the number 42, is dead. One of Yellowstone’s oldest wolves at eight, 42 was killed by a rival pack the previous night. She was also […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Salmon get a break from pesticides
WEST COAST Protection for the Northwest’s salmon just took a major leap forward. In a landmark ruling, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour banned the use of 38 pesticides near streams that host threatened and endangered runs of salmon and steelhead in Washington, Oregon and California. The ruling follows a July 2002 decision, in which Judge […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Big cats on the block
In The Beast in the Garden, David Baron weaves a compelling parable of man and animal, of the Old West and the New West, of wildlife that is no longer wild. Looking back at the history of mountain lions in Boulder County, Colo., over the past 150 years, he writes about our changing relationship with […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Solving the puzzle of chronic wasting disease: Veterinarian Beth Williams
LARAMIE, WYOMING — Stacks of histopathologies — gray folders filled with the tissue of dead animals — litter the floor of Dr. Beth Williams’ office at the University of Wyoming’s State Veterinary Lab in Laramie. Crowded into the office with a computer and a microscope table, they leave little room for Williams herself. The morbid […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2004: Mending the Nets
Would quotas save the seas, or just big business?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Mending the Nets.” Far from the high seas, a storm of controversy is raging over a tool that some say is the solution to a chaotic, ecologically damaging system of fisheries management — but that others say could send small-boat owners under. Currently, fishermen […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2004: Mending the Nets
Restoration evolution
“Ecological restoration” has a good ring to it. So good, in fact, that the two words are used by everyone from the environmentalists at The Nature Conservancy to the heads of America’s biggest corporations. While conservation groups look to restoration as a way to hasten the recovery of native ecosystems harmed by agriculture or industry, […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2004: Mending the Nets
Mending the Nets
After years of a disastrous free-for-all on the sea, one Oregon fishing community searches for a sustainable future
Posted inFebruary 2, 2004: Mending the Nets
Wilderness areas for the ocean
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Mending the Nets.” In the absence of good science about how much fishing a healthy ocean can handle, some fishermen and many environmentalists say a cautious approach is best. They want to place specific swaths of the sea off-limits to fishermen. These “no-take marine […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2004: Mending the Nets
A new breed of marketers gives fishing towns a leg up
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Mending the Nets.” COOS BAY, Ore. — Abandoned fish-processing plants cling to the harbor’s edge in this town of 15,000 along the Oregon coast. Less than 20 years ago, there were nine places where local fishermen could sell their fish. Now there are four. […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
A bear book that tames the fear factor
“Wyoming is bear country,” Tom Reed writes in Great Wyoming Bear Stories, a book of yarns from the wild high county in and around Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks — land he calls the grizzly bear’s “last, best stronghold.” Unlike the authors of the many “slasher” bear books on the market, Reed writes with […]
Posted inWotr
To lions, we may be just a link in the food chain
A 100-pound mountain lion can kill an 800-pound elk. Keep that in mind the next time you go hiking in cougar territory. If you are alone and unarmed, and one of these powerful predators attacks you — intent on killing and eating you, rather than merely trying to drive you away from its offspring or […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Warm-water native fish are left out in the cold
Little is being done to pull the Southwest’s native fish back from the brink of extinction, according to an independent team of biologists. The study of a dozen warm-water fish in Arizona’s Gila River Basin found that half the species no longer exist in wild populations, while five species occupy less than one-fifth of their […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Wilderness activists look on as the Bush administration gives oil and gas drillers first crack at the West’s last wild lands
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
In New Mexico, a homegrown wilderness bill makes headway
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Two decades of hard work, plowed under.” In the face of the Interior Department’s top-down decision to stop looking for new wilderness areas on federal land, some communities are working to protect wilderness from the bottom up. Sidestepping White House-appointed bureaucrats, wilderness advocates are […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Proposed wilderness on the auction block
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Two decades of hard work, plowed under.” The following areas, which are proposed by citizens for wilderness protection, will be up for grabs during the BLM’s January/February 2004 lease sale. WIA = wilderness inventory area CWP = citizens’ wilderness proposal New Mexico (Jan. 21) […]
Posted inWotr
Bark beetles are gnawing their way through our ponderosa-pine forests
When Mike Wagner took Northern Arizona University students to the site where he was trapping bark beetles near Flagstaff, he expected to show them a simple lesson: Once freed from a funnel-trap, the insects would find a juniper tree and burrow into it. But as the entomologist tipped the trap, thousands of beetles poured out, […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Massive logging plan shakes Northwest
One of the largest timber sales in history uncovers old animosity, and undermines the Roadless Rule
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Fires take toll on San Diego’s wildlife
Rare butterfly is likely extinct, while imperiled gnatcatcher loses a chunk of habitat