NAVAJO DAM, N.M. – It’s a Thursday morning in October, and I count 58 vehicles in the parking lot next to the “Texas Hole” of the San Juan River. A mile or so downstream of the 402-foot high dam, this stretch of water is named for the Texans who used to fish for trout here […]
Wildlife
Posted inDecember 23, 2002: In search of the Glory Days
Forest planning gets a facelift
Critics say the new look will turn national forests into lawsuit magnets
Posted inWotr
The view from ground zero at Oregon’s biggest fire in 100 years
This Halloween I camped in the frozen ash near ground zero of the 499,968-acre Biscuit Fire, the nation’s largest wildfire of 2002, and the biggest in Oregon for a century. My wife was not wild about the idea. The Pacific Northwest’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian, had just promoted a three-part feature on Biscuit, billing it […]
Posted inWotr
Some lessons about coyotes stick in your mind
A friend from Nevada, an environmentalist, wrote me recently to say she’s been reading the minutes of the Nevada Wildlife Commission, which is using M-4s to kill coyotes in cases of “livestock predation.” The commission is now talking about whether to allow the cyanide guns in “cases of game predation,” otherwise known as doing what […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Silver state gets a little wilder
NEVADA For wilderness boosters who’ve spent years trying to convince the rest of the country – and more than a few of their fellow Nevadans – that the desert around Las Vegas is not a wasteland, Nov. 5 brought some good news. President Bush signed the Clark County Public Lands and Natural Resources Act into […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Farewell, whoopers, Western skies aren’t big enough for you
BOSQUE DEL APACHE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, N.M. – It’s dusk, and a distant rainstorm has left a double rainbow in the late-October sky. I sit near the banks of the Rio Grande, waiting for the sandhill cranes to arrive from the nearby fields where they feed all day. Right now, about 1,000 of them have […]
Posted inWotr
A message to environmentalists from a wildlife biologist
I should confess up-front that. although I’m an environmentalist and a wildlife biologist at a Western university, I admire ranchers. I should further confess that I live on a small piece of property near real ranches– ones big enough to be home to cattle and the shy kind of wildlife you don’t see on smaller […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Wild horses could go to Mexico
The Bureau of Land Management has more wild horses and burros than it knows what to do with. Officials estimate that over 45,000 live on Western range with a carrying capacity of only 27,000 (HCN, 03/02/98: Colorado BLM going wild?). This year, with rangelands battered by severe drought, the question of where to put the […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Golden trout swimming in troubled waters
CALIFORNIA Though it appears on the state flag, the California grizzly bear was annihilated from the state decades ago. Now, the state fish, the California golden trout, could disappear. The historical range of the trout is limited to two drainages in the southern Sierra Nevada: the South Fork of the Kern River and Golden Trout […]
Posted inWotr
One big thing I’ve come to know about hunting
After he shot off his big toe, my dad lost all interest in guns. He lived to fish, but he never took me hunting. When I came of age I bought an army surplus British .303 rifle and went forth into the Colorado hills above Loveland to hunt. I had no idea how, really. I […]
Posted inWotr
There’s nothing like watching a grizzly bear in the wild
We heard them long before we saw them. My husband and I were watching a grizzly feeding on the slope across the drainage from us when weird howls drifted through the valley. The bear heard the strange sounds, too, and eased into the brush at the base of a berry patch. The noises came again, […]
Posted inWotr
Sea coasts rough sailing for breeding birds
Thirty thousand birds called common murres stand in penguin-like suits atop a single sea rock, crammed as tightly together as commuters on a bus. All drone tones as low and somber as monks: arg-arg-arg-arg-arg-arg-arg-arg. With a spotting scope, I watch the murres raise their chocolate heads, puff out their white breasts and point their bills […]
Posted inWotr
What we don’t know about wildfire can hurt us
Fires still rage across the West. Grim-faced federal officials report over 6 million acres burned, twice the 10-year average. President Bush declared most of Colorado a disaster after Gov. Bill Owens pronounced the burned area in his state a “nuclear winter.” This news hits outdoor-loving Americans in the gut as we assume all natural resources […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Shadow creatures
SEATTLE, Wash. – It doesn’t seem too difficult to trap a crow. Especially if you’re armed with a remote-controlled, rifle-powered, 25-foot-square net and a heap of stale white bread. Especially if you’ve seen the crow in question almost every day for the past six years. Especially if it lives just a couple of wingflaps from […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Deer, elk disease doesn’t scare hunters
Tests show chronic wasting disease is more widespread than once thought
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Forests could lose environmental review
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Bush undermines bedrock environmental law.” While the Bush administration has focused its efforts to “streamline” environmental reviews on energy and transportation projects, the next big showdown will take place in the national forests. Tweaking the National Environmental […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Rural residents bring fierce friends
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Even beyond the suburbs, crows dog their human benefactors. In the old-growth forests of the Olympic Peninsula, just across the Puget Sound from Seattle, University of Washington graduate student Erik Neatherlin has found that crows are taking full advantage of the leftovers at crowded […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
The message of 30,000 dead salmon
Call me a radical, but I think fish need water. I’d hazard a guess that most Americans would agree, since it’s just plain common sense. But when it comes to the over-promised waters of the Klamath Basin in southern Oregon and Northern California, common sense often seems to fly out the window. As a scientist, […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Wildlife Service bows to home builders
The California red-legged frog, star of Mark Twain’s, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, is bouncing between good news and bad. Once the most abundant frog in California, the species declined in the mid-1800s, when Gold Rush miners devoured it for protein. By 1996, the frog had disappeared from over 70 percent of its […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Have you ever seen the cranes?
The Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge straddles the Rio Grande south of Socorro, N.M., and serves as the wintering grounds for thousands of sandhill cranes and snow geese. Witness this rare spectacle at the 15th annual Festival of the Cranes, a six-day event organized by the Friends of the Bosque del Apache that coincides […]