As anybody who has followed the Oprah Winfrey beef libel trial knows, mad-cow disease has never been found in American cattle. Deer and elk, though, are another matter. Chronic wasting disease, a cousin to the mad-cow plague that decimated British cattle herds, has been identified in deer and elk in three Western states. Infected animals […]
Wildlife
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Shooting down high-tech hunting
-Our tools for the pursuit of wildlife improve faster than we do,” said Aldo Leopold in his 1949 book A Sand County Almanac. But even the far-seeing Leopold might not have anticipated hunting 1990s style: Hunters locate game with airplanes and two-way radios, track animals before dawn with infrared night-vision goggles, aim with electronically illuminated […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
‘Ghost roads’ haunt forests
In his announcement of the Forest Service’s 18-month road-building moratorium on Jan. 22, Chief Mike Dombeck admitted that there are over 60,000 miles of unmapped “ghost roads’ in national forests (HCN, 2/2/98). This was no news to members of the Bozeman, Mont.-based Predator Project, whose Roads Scholars program has been documenting these roads in the […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Backyard birds
A new report by the Colorado Division of Wildlife helps backyard birders care for what they’re watching. For instance, cleaning feeders with soap and rinsing with a dilute bleach solution followed by plain water can help prevent the spread of diseases like avian pox and salmonellosis. And if you take a few months off from […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Note: two sidebar articles, titled “A difference of opinion over numbers” and “For some, horse meat ain’t all bad,” accompany this feature story. BRITTON SPRINGS, Wyo. – From the top of the ridge we can hear the helicopter droning behind pastel desert hills, and see the distant slopes of the Pryor Mountains just across the […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
A difference of opinion over numbers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. People have been bickering about how many wild horses live in Nevada ever since 1992, when horse lover Michael Blake, author of Dances With Wolves, conducted a census there. His observers found only 8,324 — less than one quarter of the BLM figure. Agency […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
No, ma’am, this isn’t Mississippi
When people think of catfish, they’re more likely to imagine roadside cooking shacks in Mississippi than desert streams. But that could change now that the native Yaqui catfish has been restored to Arizona. In October, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released 350 of the blue-gray fish in the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge near […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
When green becomes red
Red ink is red ink, but the U.S. Forest Service and The Wilderness Society color their images of commercial logging on our national forests in grossly different shades. The Forest Service says it made $16 million from commercial timber sales in Oregon and Washington in fiscal year 1996. The Wilderness Society estimates the agency lost […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Working the Watershed
Richard Manning’s article “Working the Watershed” (HCN, 3/17/97) could easily have been titled “Overworking the Watershed.” It described efforts to restore salmon fisheries and oyster beds to Willapa Bay, a part of southwestern Washington state that has been logged and logged and logged again. Now the neighboring, and similarly overworked, Chinook watershed is the subject […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Scat dogs earn their keep
Moja and Molly aren’t ordinary Labrador retrievers – they earn their keep by locating animal scat for senior scientist Sam Wasser of the Center for Wildlife Conservation in Seattle, Wash. “This is going to completely revolutionize the science of animal monitoring,” Wasser said. Wasser has trained the dogs to sniff out bear and wolf droppings […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Fore! on the Inyo National Forest
For the first time in its history, the U.S. Forest Service says a golf course will be built on agency land. The owners of the Snow Creek golf course in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., have a permit to turn 95 acres of sagebrush on the Inyo National Forest into a “back nine,” despite the opposition of […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Wolves go wild in the Southwest
In the fall of 1917, Stanley P. Young rode into the Canello Hills in southern Arizona, saddlebags packed with the tools of his trade: steel-jawed traps, metal stakes and chains, leather gloves and a bottle of odiferous wolf lure. The hired gun for the Bureau of Biological Survey was following a pair of wolves whose […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
The spotted owl has a new enemy
Last May, a birdwatcher in California’s Redwood National Park found the partially eaten body of a spotted owl lying in the trail. Nearby he saw the killer – an agitated barred owl, the feathers of its victim still clinging to its talons. Barred owls and spotted owls are cousins, both woodland owls, with large, dark […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Heart of Home: People, Wildlife, Place
For many years I was a vegetarian, an avid anti-hunter, who cursed the arrival of the orange-clad mob in the fall that violated everything that was pure and gentle. I was cheered on by many writers, including Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, who urged a gentle alliance with nature, not a violent blood sport. […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Confessions of an Eco-Redneck
Certain books come along once in a generation that change the lens through which we view the natural order. Now there’s Steve Chapple’s Confessions of an Eco-Redneck – Or How I Learned to Gut-Shoot Trout & Save the Wilderness at the Same Time. Well, OK, maybe it’s not a paradigm changer. For one thing, Chapple’s […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Zoologist says listing process is endangered
Ronald Nowak, a national-level Fish and Wildlife Service zoologist, has resigned from his position in protest, claiming the agency has “fought tooth and nail to avoid doing its job” of protecting the Canada lynx and other sensitive species. Nowak calls the lynx – a cousin of the bobcat – -one of the most blatant examples […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Road ban proposal eroded by exceptions
The Forest Service has overseen the addition of more than 380,000 miles of roads to national forests – a network more than twice the size of the national highway system. Now, the Clinton administration wants to call an 18-month halt to the construction of new roads in roadless areas. Forest Service spokesman Alan Polk says […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Rabies, Lyme Disease, Hanta Virus, oh my!
RABIES, LYME DISEASE, HANTA VIRUS, OH MY! Some of the furry creatures that scamper around camp aren’t as harmless as they seem. E. Lendell Cockrum, who has spent his life studying animals and the diseases they carry, has written a book telling why. The title spells it out: Rabies, Lyme Disease, Hanta Virus and Other […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Wanted: More Colorado Natives
WANTED: MORE COLORADO NATIVES Trout Unlimited wants to see more wild trout in Colorado’s rivers and lakes and fewer diseased fish. If a new Wildlife Commission policy becomes a reality, the nonprofit group may get its wish. Issued in November, the state policy emphasizes restoring streams and native trout like the Colorado cutthroat – a […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Some cattle ranchers sell out to hunting
GREAT FALLS, Mont. – Cattle rancher John Bodner didn’t have to worry about monitoring hunters last fall on his spread in the foothills of the Little Belt Mountains in central Montana. He left that to an outfitter. “The outfitter is like a game warden,” said Bodner, who won’t say how large a ranch he runs. […]