MONTANA A gun owners’ group is trying to shoot down a ban on prairie dog hunting, imposed by the Bureau of Land Management to preserve habitat for the endangered black-footed ferret. The Montana Shooting Sports Association is frustrated by what it sees as a violation of the right to bear arms. “What part of ‘shall […]
Wildlife
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Marijuana’s boring sibling
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Hemp and marijuana are fraternal twins: While they look similar, the plants are actually quite different. Agricultural hemp has only miniscule amounts of the psychoactive ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) that exists in marijuana; those trace levels are not enough to induce a chemical high. Cultivated […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Ghost of the Selkirks fading fast
Funding woes and predation have last U.S. caribou herd on the ropes
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Buyout for bears
IDAHO Everybody knows that sheep and grizzlies just don’t get along. The predator-prey antagonism has been especially acute in Idaho’s Targhee National Forest, where five grizzlies were relocated and 34 domestic sheep killed from 1996 to 1998. One sheep herder suffered a grizzly mauling. But bear-sheep conflicts on the Targhee promise to diminish in the […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Moose-slinging ends
UTAH Utah’s emergency program to relocate moose by air has been grounded. A heavy early snowfall brought a larger than usual number of moose down close to Interstate 80 in search of food, and drivers struck and killed seven of the animals in December alone. These accidents, combined with an anticipated increase in traffic during […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Condor program laden with lead
Carcass-feeding condors dying from bullets
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Running for cover on the Rio Grande
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. LOWER RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas – Spanish explorers who came here in the 16th century found a jungle of cedar elm and sugar hackberry hung with moss. They called the river Rio de las Palmas, the River of Palms, because of the sabal palm […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Attention, wolves: I’m what’s for dinner
Like many Western states before it, Colorado is considering a plan to bring the wolf back to its former turf in the Centennial State. Among the general public, support for the plan is significant: A study by a Washington, D.C., polling firm found that 68 percent of Coloradans asked were in favor of putting wolves […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
The Eucalyptus: Sacred or profane?
Only God can make a tree, but any ecological illiterate can plant it in the wrong place. Ansel Adams understood this. On running tree-planting Boy Scouts out of California’s Marin Headlands, the photographer declared: “I cannot think of a more tasteless undertaking than to plant trees in a naturally treeless area, and to impose an […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2002: Last dance for the sage grouse?
Last dance for the sage grouse?
GUNNISON, Colo. – The way to see sagebrush is not as most people do, through the windshield of a vehicle speeding toward someplace else. Slow down and get out of the car; walk in the midst of it. Then the sagebrush in the cold, dry Gunnison Valley can have a scraggly beauty. It rolls across […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2002: Last dance for the sage grouse?
Chick-a-boom-boom at the lek
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Male sage grouse congregate on leks for the same reason young men go to singles bars: They’re hoping to get lucky. For the grouse, sex is very much a one-night stand, which explains why the males gather in late winter at traditional sites to […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2002: Last dance for the sage grouse?
Can cows and grouse coexist on the range?
Brad Phelps remembers sage grouse numbering in the hundreds in the uplands of his family’s 700-acre cattle ranch when he was a teenager. “Twenty years later, it was 12 birds,” Phelps says. But Phelps, a fourth-generation rancher in the Gunnison Valley and a member of the Colorado Wildlife Commission, doesn’t think the grouse’s problems can […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Biologists caught in the crosshairs
WASHINGTON In December, headline writers were delighted by the metastasizing controversy over samples of lynx fur, purportedly collected from two national forests in Washington state. “Fur furor,” one paper called it. “Fur flies,” wrote another. Government agencies, though, found the fracas far from funny. Seven wildlife biologists, both federal and state, submitted hair samples to […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Cat trouble dogs Flagstaff
ARIZONA Ever since the Arizona Game and Fish Department killed two mountain lions on the edge of Flagstaff last fall, residents have been grappling with the hard facts of life on the edge of the forest. Game and Fish contracted with the federal Wildlife Services agency to kill the two lions, one Sept. 16 and […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Judge puts kibosh on logging plan
The Forest Service’s rush to cut Montana’s burned Bitterroot forest
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Will listing hurt the Colorado lynx?
Broad federal plan may leave Southern Rockies population out in the cold
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Quincy collaboration heads to court
CALIFORNIA The Quincy Library Group has given up on collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service. Nearly nine years after developing a controversial management plan for 2.4 million acres of national forest land in Northeastern California, the coalition of environmentalists and civic and timber industry leaders has suspended its monthly meetings with agency officials. It now […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
A price tag for protest
OREGON Sitting in trees to save them may become a costly pastime, if the Oregon Department of Forestry has its way. Since August, protesters have prevented logging in the Tillamook State Forest by occupying platforms in the boughs of giant trees, and the department is considering an unusual method to deal with them: charging protesters […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Pesky pike persist
CALIFORNIA They’re back. More than 5,000 spiny-tongued predatory pike are once again haunting the waters of northeastern California’s Lake Davis. Planted illegally in 1994, the voracious exotic fish resurfaced just 18 months after the California Department of Fish and Game spent $2 million poisoning the reservoir to get rid of them (HCN, 5/25/98: How California […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Griz numbers a mixed bag
WYOMING Federal biologists say the threatened Yellowstone grizzly bear population is healthy and increasing. This year, biologists counted 42 females with cubs in the grizzly bear recovery area, which encompasses Yellowstone National Park and surrounding areas for a total of 9,202 square miles, according to biologist Mark Haroldson. Last year, they counted only 35 bears […]