Trying to unlock the secrets of the West’s monarch butterflies, writer and naturalist Robert Michael Pyle logged over 9,500 miles in his beloved 1982 Honda Powdermilk. In his Chasing Monarchs travelogue, Pyle starts by the Similkameen River in Canada, traveling south along the Columbia and Snake rivers, through the Great Basin, up onto the Colorado […]
Wildlife
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
Who speaks for the sheep?
Desert bighorns are caught between waterholes and wilderness
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
Forests on a forced diet
Hungry Washington office keeps Forest Service funds from reaching the ground
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Barberry bush beats bacteria
A compound from a barberry bush found on Colorado’s Western Slope is helping researchers fight antibiotic resistance. Some bacteria, particularly those that cause staph infections, can become resistant to antibiotics by pumping the drug out of cells before it begins to work. Colorado State University professor Frank Stermitz and Tufts University professor Kim Lewis discovered […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Help search for snakes
Hikers, bikers and river rafters should be ready to capture – with cameras, that is – any scaly-skinned critters sunning themselves on Grand Canyon rocks. Nikolle Brown, also known as “the Snake Lady,” needs help documenting reptile sightings for her Snakes of the Grand Canyon Identification and Distribution project. Brown, a seasoned wildlife biologist for […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
The bees’ needs
Golf courses are becoming a great place to learn about the birds and the bees. A Portland, Ore.-based group says that with a little encouragement, native pollinators such as bees and beetles will easily inhabit golf courses. Only a small percentage of any golf course is used by golfers, and the rest has great potential […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Vulgar yet valiant
For most of us, a quick glimpse of a plane as it drones overhead on its way to a wildfire is all we’ll ever see of smokejumpers or the work they do, but Murry A. Taylor’s Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper’s Memoir of Fighting Wildfire in the West, offers insight into their hectic lives. Taylor, who […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Killing Coyote
The human hordes are still at it, roaming the last of the Big Open with their guns and traps and poisons, trying to wipe out yet another of their fellow creatures. This time, the target is the resilient trickster himself, coyote. Doug Hawes-Davis frames his latest documentary film, Killing Coyote, with the Calcutta, a coyote-killing […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Government writes wolf success story
NATION The federal government has declared its wolf recovery program a success. With wolf numbers at nearly 3,500 today – up from practically zero in the 1950s – the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed on July 11 to downlist the gray wolf from “endangered” to “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in most of […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Buddhist temple hits a snag
CALIFORNIA While a Buddhist temple may be a place of tranquility, plans for a new retreat center in a canyon have environmentalists fuming and suing. The controversy began after San Bernardino County unanimously approved a 1998 proposal by Ling Yen Temple Inc. to build a 10-building retreat and a 600-car parking lot. Now, a Pasadena-based […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Loggers win one
WASHINGTON A county jury says the state of Washington must pay a logging company almost $10,000 an acre if it wants to protect spotted owls on private land. SDS Co. was forced to halt logging on 232 acres of its land in 1992 after state biologists found evidence of an owl nest in the area. […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
In New Mexico, a surprising proposal rises from the flames
For 11 years, Santa Fe’s Forest Guardians have been unflinching in their opposition to logging on the Southwest’s national forests. But this June, they blinked. Following the Cerro Grande fire that swept through Los Alamos, Forest Guardians released its first-ever proposal for cutting trees. The proposal calls for thinning and prescribed burning in Santa Fe’s […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Colorado blazes fuel forest restoration efforts
Front Range communities work to protect their water supply from post-fire soil erosion
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Environmentalists challenge aerial gunning program
COLORADO Shooting coyotes from the air came under fire this spring. Twenty environmental groups sent a letter to Colorado Bureau of Land Management Director Ann Morgan demanding a halt to aerial gunning in the state until the agency studies its effects on wildlife. “Aerial gunning needs to stop because of the biological impact and the […]
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Caterpillar concoction causes concern
OREGON, WASHINGTON The U.S. Forest Service is using ground-up caterpillars and another biological insecticide to target an infestation of tussock moths on national forests in the Pacific Northwest. In a widespread outbreak in the 1970s, the moths defoliated trees across 700,000 acres in Oregon and Washington. The agency hopes that the caterpillar concoction, which carries […]
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Protesters rock roadless area hearings
MONTANA Hundreds of logging trucks and busloads of protesters circled downtown Missoula, Mont., June 21 to rail against the Forest Service’s proposal to protect 43 million acres of its roadless forests. About 2,000 people from all corners of western Montana joined a barbecue and rally sponsored by the timber and off-road-vehicle industries. Loggers and millworkers […]
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
The basin has a much-ballyhooed plan
NORTHWEST No one’s holding their breath, but approval may be close for an interagency plan outlining management of 63 million acres of federal land across Idaho, eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and western Montana (HCN, 6/23/97: New plan draws hisses, boos). In the works for over six years, the hefty and ballyhooed Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem […]
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Los Alamos fire offers a lesson in humility
The Cerro Grande fire in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico blackened 42,869 acres, destroyed the homes of 400 families, and penetrated the security of Los Alamos National Laboratories more effectively than any Cold War enemy. In much the same way that the Cerro Grande restarted ecological succession on the scorched slopes above Los […]
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Fires illuminate our illusions in the Southwest
Air, earth, water and fire. In the dry Southwest, the ancient fundamentals emerge clearly, and act upon each other in plain sight. When the wind moves rapidly above the earth after water has been scarce, little fires become big fires, and big lessons. For a few days after the fire at Los Alamos, the usual […]
Posted inJune 19, 2000: Accidental refuge: Should we save the Salton Sea?
Crawdads colonize the West’s waterways
Down South, they call them ‘Cajun popcorn.’ In the West, they’re a menace.