COTTONWOOD, Idaho – Sister Carol Ann Wassmuth grabs one of the ropes dangling from a ceiling at St. Gertrude’s Monastery. “If you pull too hard, the bell flips all the way over,” she says, demonstrating how to summon 78 Benedictine sisters to midday Mass. Soon, three bells send a joyful sound across the high plains. […]
Wildlife
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
Does a wilderness bill include a driveway?
Colorado Republican Sen. Wayne Allard hopes that a new wilderness bill will sail through Congress this year. But wilderness advocates have a big bone of contention: a road into the area that Allard wants to keep open. The Spanish Peaks Wilderness bill would designate 18,000 acres of wilderness in San Isabel National Forest, located on […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
Road ban stops a timber project
The Forest Service ban on road construction in roadless areas was proposed more than a year ago (HCN, 2/2/98) and went into effect at the beginning of March. Now, it’s finally having an impact on the ground. Last month, Dixie National Forest officials canceled a controversial timber sale because it conflicted with the 18-month nationwide […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
‘Duck cops’ ruffle feathers
According to a confidential survey compiled by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), many law enforcement agents at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say their program is corrupt, understaffed and underfunded. “Protection of our resources is not as important as pleasing special groups,” said one special agent in the survey. “Our biologists and refuge […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
All about salmon
Our society’s struggle to save salmon in the Northwest is documented in daily headlines, but to read about the complexities of saving salmon, you might look to A Snapshot of Salmon in Oregon. This 24-page tabloid from the Oregon State University Extension Service begins with the past, the ancestors of today’s salmon that date back […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Wanted: HCPs with teeth
NATION Wanted: HCPs with teeth To win cooperation from landowners, over the last decade the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has embraced Habitat Conservation Plans for saving endangered species on private lands (HCN, 8/4/97). It’s an effective alternative to a “shoot, shovel and shut up” approach, say agency representatives. Critics continue to insist that the […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
State says no to new wildlife
The next time the federal or state government wants to reintroduce wildlife on public lands in Colorado, the state Legislature wants it to ask nicely. On April 22 – Earth Day – Colorado Gov. Bill Owens signed the measure requiring the Legislature’s consent before agencies can restore threatened and endangered species to the state. Critics […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Caution: Desert Tortoise Crossing
If a desert tortoise crosses your path and you don’t mind your manners, you could face fines of up to $100,000 or one year in jail. Due to urbanization and development, the animal, listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, has lost an extensive amount of its habitat in Arizona, California, Nevada and southern […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Lynx reintroduction links unexpected allies
SOUTH FORK, Colo. – “They’re back!” yelled wildlife biologist Gene Byrne in February, as a lanky-legged lynx, trapped in Canada, bounded from a cage in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. “They never left,” another Colorado Division of Wildlife officer, Bill Andree, said quietly. That exchange was symbolic of the lynx’s return to the Southern Rockies this […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
The fall of an Arizona saguaro
In the dead of a late winter night in Arizona, my wife, Joyce, awakened me. “I think I heard the cactus die,” she whispered. So, we dressed, found the flashlight and trekked down the driveway to the road at 2 a.m. It had fallen. About four feet up from the ground the trunk had splintered. […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Spinning back the bison
The trouble with being a handspinner is that people are always giving me bags of fiber: a plastic bag full of hair from their ever-shedding malemute; a paper sack containing coarse waxy hanks of hair from a pet Angora goat. I never turn them down. Most handspinners are hoarders by nature; we go to fiber […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
Don’t trust everything you see
MISSOULA, Mont. – A few years ago, Chuck Bartlebaugh photographed a young girl in Yellowstone National Park, standing about 10 feet in front of a bull elk whose head was submerged in the tall grass. The girl stood with her back to the elk, facing away from the camera. The girl’s mother noticed Bartlebaugh, and […]
Posted inApril 26, 1999: Visionaries or dreamers?
Counties put a bounty on coyotes
The price of a movie ticket or six gallons of premium gasoline is now the going rate for a pair of coyote ears in two southeastern Colorado counties. Baca County now pays $7.50 per coyote, the first bounty in Colorado in almost 30 years. Since January, the bounty has brought in 412 pairs of ears. […]
Posted inAugust 16, 1999: Standing up for the underdog
Standing up for the underdog
On a sunny fall day about a year ago, Jonathan Proctor arrived in the prairie community of Chadron, Neb., for an evening of proselytizing. Though groomed to become a Lutheran minister like his father, the boyish-looking 31-year-old had not come to town to save souls. His was a more difficult task. He would try to […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Now, salmon in the backyard
Where roads cross the flowing waters of Kelsey Creek, a six-mile-long stream contained entirely within the city of Bellevue, Wash., signs inform motorists: “This is a salmon stream.” Some residents are surprised. Kit Paulsen, who leads the city’s salmon education program, says, “A number of people have called to say they didn’t know there was […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Montana won’t bend for bison
The Montana Department of Livestock continues to play hardball with bison leaving Yellowstone National Park despite urging from federal agencies to let the animals roam. In mid-March, state workers removed protesters blocking a Forest Service road near West Yellowstone, Mont., and arrested six members of the group, Buffalo Field Campaign. That cleared the way for […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Is trapping doomed?
The day after Christmas 1997 is a day that Liz Kehr shudders to remember. Kehr and her husband, Kevin Feist, live in the Flathead Valley in northwestern Montana, snug against Glacier National Park. It’s a place where publicly owned land stretches for miles in all directions, though in the past 10 years the valley has […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Trapping in the United States
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Long before Europeans came to the North American continent, natives were using traps to catch animals and fish. Eskimos used whalebone nooses to snare waterfowl, the Hopis used dead-fall rock slabs to kill fox and Aleutian Indians used barbed spikes to catch bears. According […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
A Wyoming trapper seeks pelts, and beauty
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. You can hear the pleasure in his voice. “Look at those beauties. Hello, ladies, hello, you beautiful things,” says Tom Lucas. Five bighorn ewes wander away from us, only slightly alarmed at two humans in their territory. “I just love seeing wildlife.” Tom Lucas […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
In the ’90s, trapping still has a role
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The heyday of the mountain man lasted only a few decades, ending in the 1830s, when both the market and the supply of beaver fizzled out. But the tradition lives on. In towns around the West, and even in the Midwest, “mountain men” celebrate […]