As the nation remains preoccupied with the war against terrorism, President Bush has been carrying out a less visible assault on another front: our national forests. Most of the attacks over the last year have been below the radar — in arcane rules, stealth riders and misnamed legislation. In this many-fronted assault, big timber is […]
Wildlife
Posted inWotr
Fire policy in the form of Smokey and the Bandit
Among the spectacles swirling around Southern California’s recent wildfires, we had now-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who rose from body-building to movie screens and into politics on the principle of self-reliance, beseeching Washington, D.C., to cushion Californians from the toll of the flames. There was also California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who rose with […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Bee kind, please redesign
If you dread mowing the lawn, maybe you should just give it up altogether next year. Native pollinator insects — bees, butterflies and others — are declining across the nation because of land-management practices that range from vast single-crop farm fields to manicured urban lawns. This is very bad news, because despite their tiny size, […]
Posted inWotr
Our publicly owned forests are being subverted
As the nation remains preoccupied with the war against terrorism, President Bush has been carrying out a less visible assault on another front: our national forests. Most of the attacks over the last year have been below the radar — in arcane rules, stealth riders and misnamed legislation. In this many-fronted assault, big timber is […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Activists raise a stink over outhouse
In the latest skirmish over a long-disputed dirt road in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Elko county-rights activists are fuming over the Forest Service’s decision to clean a remote outhouse. The county and the Forest Service have clashed since 1995, when the agency closed a 1.5-mile stretch of South Canyon Road after most of it was […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
The West loses a conservation elder
Perhaps all showdowns between environmentalists and industry appear to be clashes of mythic proportion, but the unfolding story of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge seems particularly so, a world-class drama whose players include migratory birds, caribou, polar bears, native Alaskans, eco-activists, oil executives and politicians. The outcome of this mythic tale is yet unscripted. But […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
A revival on Hart Mountain
The antelope refuge looks better than it has in decades, but managers seem stuck in the past
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
It’s ‘bombs away’ on New Mexico saltcedar
State begins an aerial assault on a water-sucking weed
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Behind the scenes, pressure and doubt
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “San Diego’s Habitat Triage.” The Center for Biological Diversity and its allies weren’t the only ones who found serious problems with the San Diego Multiple Species Conservation Program. Inside the Fish and Wildlife Service, two biologists, who have since left the agency, harbored private […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
A grizzly attack that was bound to happen
One of the most egotistical notions humans have is that we can “commune” with unpredictable wild animals. News headlines over the last couple of weeks have revealed the depth of our folly. During Siegfried and Roy’s Las Vegas nightclub act, a tiger turned on trainer Roy Horn. Doctors say Roy remains in serious condition. And […]
Posted inWotr
Salmon go swoosh in the Northwest
It was Saturday, and we had shopping to do: groceries, eyeglasses, yard tools, and as we crisscrossed Portland to find deals, we were sucked into malls, lured by displays to purchase jeans and sports paraphernalia. Then, in the middle of the overcast Oregon afternoon, in the heart of Northwest cool known as the Pearl District, […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Pygmy-owl may lose protection
Arizona’s cactus ferruginous pygmy-owl may no longer be endangered, according to an August ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The three-judge panel concluded that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to prove that 18 pygmy owls in Arizona are distinct from a much larger population of owls in Sonora, Mexico. In […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Back down the fireline
In a new book, Fire and Ashes, author John N. Maclean leads readers through three sweaty-palmed stories about human encounters with wildfire. Maclean returns to the ground his father, Norman Maclean, covered in the 1992 book, Young Men and Fire. He joins the last living survivor of the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire in Montana to […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
In the field with fire
Federal spending on fire suppression is wildly out of control, forests are increasingly unhealthy — and everyone seems to have an opinion about how to fix the problem. A Season of Fire, by Seattle-based journalist Douglas Gantenbein, is one of the latest titles about fire in the West, and refreshingly, he doesn’t glamorize firefighters or […]
Posted inWotr
A grizzly attack that was bound to happen
One of the most egotistical notions humans have is that we can “commune” with unpredictable wild animals. News headlines over the last couple of weeks have revealed the depth of our folly. During Siegfried and Roy’s Las Vegas nightclub act, a tiger turned on trainer Roy Horn. Doctors still don’t know if he will survive. […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Return of the King
Scientists finally have the seed they need to restore the beleaguered white pine — now they need a place to plant it
Posted inWotr
We need a sensible approach to fight wildfires
It’s the sweet time of year in northern Montana, late drying-out summer, easing into the rains of autumn, and in the soft low green hills of the Yaak Valley, on the Kootenai National Forest, the mornings are tinged, not unpleasantly, with the smell of wood smoke. Objects take on a golden glow, illuminated by the […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Timber companies borrow a tool from environmentalists
Conservation easements help protect private forests — and keep logging jobs alive, too.
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Hell’s fires burn in the Northern Rockies
If hell has mountains, they must look like the Northern Rockies. As my fire spotter and I fly an insignificantly small airplane over our territory in western Montana, we weave through brown tendrils of wind-shredded smoke that curl around granite peaks. Sudden explosions of dark ash rise into the air above stands of trees as […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Extinction – by the clock
It isn’t easy being a cheerleader for a bottom-feeder, but I’m feeling up for the task. Montana’s two varieties of sturgeon — a miraculous, prehistoric fish that feeds at the bottom of lakes and rivers —have recently been given an expiration date, an official prediction of when they’ll become extinct. A doomsday clock all their […]