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 […]
Wildlife
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 […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Forest protection under the knife
Industry pushed Bush administration to revise Northwest Forest Plan
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Dead fish clog the low-flowing Klamath
Interior Department denies responsibility for dead salmon and steelhead
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
Golfers may oust eagles
WYOMING A developer’s plan to install a golf course and 71 houses along the Snake River near Jackson has raised convoluted legal questions that sound more like bad jokes. One example: How many eagles does it take to build a golf course? That question came up when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service granted Dick […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
Crawdads get the boot, but not the boil
ARIZONA At Arizona’s Fossil Creek this August, concerned locals took a bite out of an invasive crayfish population. Two years ago, under pressure from local environmental groups, power provider Arizona Public Service agreed to remove a 90-year-old dam from the creek, which provides important habitat for native fish like Gila and roundtail chubs, desert and […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
It’s open season on New Mexico’s bears
Despite dire warnings, state maintains an extended hunting seaason
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Traveling dunes
It is the largest dune complex in North America, spreading across 1,000 square miles, from Southern California to Mexico. It’s also the locale of the 32,240-acre North Algodones Dunes Wilderness area, where rare species of plants and animals thrive in the basins and flats of the dunescape (HCN, 12/18/00:Feds fight chaos in a desert playground). […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
A modest forest proposal for President Bush
President Bush just whistled through southern Oregon for a quick look at our catastrophic wildfires and a high-profile policy address at a county fairgrounds. He repeatedly told a cheering crowd that he’s for “common sense” forest management to stem “endless litigation.” His boldness inspires me to come right out and say it publicly: I, too, […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2002: Backlash
The other firefighters
DURANGO, Colo. – “One neighbor’s house and one cabin were destroyed near here,” says Todd Swanson, surveying the blackened area behind his house outside this bustling college town. “But the thinning kept the fire back from my place until the slurry bombers were able to come and put it out.” In April, as a prologue […]