Idaho says no to grizzlies An Idaho agency has become the biggest opponent of a plan to bring grizzly bears back to the state. At the Idaho Fish and Game Commission’s January meeting, Twin Falls member Fred Wood said that the group should tell the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service it “flat-ass’ opposes the agency’s […]
Wildlife
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Go native
Native plants are enjoying a new celebrity with Western gardeners, landscapers and conservationists. But just what makes a plant a native? Art Kruckeberg, a botanist at the University of Washington and a founder of the Washington Native Plant Society, says the short answer is this: Natives are plants that were here before European contact. The […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
A tragic blend of wild and domestic
“Rowdy,” born in a cage at a Texas roadside circus and sold as a wolf-hybrid pup to a 10-year-old boy in Colorado, used his mouth the way people use their hands. As he grew larger, Rowdy would drag the boy around his pen by an arm or a leg. It was all in good fun, […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
‘Ugly’ addition must go
When it comes to enforcing scenic easements on private property within Idaho’s Sawtooth National Recreation Area, the Forest Service plays hardball. The agency went to U.S. District Court in March 1995, when it discovered a barn-style addition to Kenneth and Sharon Walker’s A-frame. The Forest Service had paid previous owners of the property $26,000 in […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Sting nets bird killers
In today’s booming black market for migratory bird parts, a single bald eagle feather can fetch $100. Given such prices, it’s not surprising that a two-year U.S. Fish and Wildlife sting operation netted 35 individuals and businesses allegedly involved in the killing and selling of protected migratory birds in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. The […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Hunters need young blood
Generation X doesn’t hunt. That’s the conclusion of a National Shooting Sports Foundation’s recent survey, which found that only 8 percent of hunters are between the ages of 18 and 24, down from 17 percent in 1986. The last decade has seen the percentage of hunters in the 25-34 age bracket drop as well, down […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Injunction lifted in the Southwest
A 16-month logging injunction on national forests in New Mexico and Arizona was lifted by a federal judge Dec. 4. Judge Roger Strand ruled that the Forest Service had completed a biological opinion on how its forest plans would affect the threatened Mexican spotted owl. The decision means the agency can proceed with logging in […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Not Mary’s little lamb
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. We who drink in rhymes about Mary’s little lamb and Bo Peep’s docile flock with our mothers’ milk have a hard time seeing wild sheep objectively. Our perceptions of this animal are inevitably colored by the stupid, meek, defenseless creature domestication made of it. […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Desert sheep aren’t exactly thriving
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The discovery 300 years ago of a pile of over 100,000 horns at a native village in what is now Arizona suggests that the four subspecies of wild sheep collectively known as desert bighorns were once as numerous as their alpine relatives. Desert sheep, […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Is Craig’s bill Salvage Rider II?
One of the hottest environmental topics of the last Congress – forest management – is back, and, if early reaction is any gauge, it hasn’t cooled down any. Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, R, whose Energy and Natural Resources Committee produced the controversial salvage logging rider two years ago, recently drafted a massive bill that would […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Green hate in the land of enchantment
A hate movement has grown up in northern New Mexico, fueled by decades of Forest Service mismanagement and sensational media coverage (HCN, 12/25/95). It has fostered an unusual alliance across racial barriers to oppose conservation on federal lands. The political alignment became visible more than a year ago during a Christmas candlelight demonstration organized by […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Bringing back the bighorn
The West’s native sheep scramble for a foothold
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Macho rams ‘take a walk on the wild side’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In the social system of wild sheep, the ram with the largest horns rules. Not only does he breed most of the ewes, but he is followed around by an admiring throng of lesser males. It is not surprising, then, that bighorn rams are […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
El Lobo to return
Once considered as endangered as the species itself, the proposal to restore Mexican gray wolves to the Southwest now appears to be back on track. After the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service released its final environmental analysis on the reintroduction of “el lobo” Dec. 27, biologists moved 10 of 149 captive Mexican wolves to New […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Western raptors on the rise
Some birds of prey in the West are fighting back. The Salt Lake City-based group, HawkWatch International, recently compiled up to 18 years’ of data on the birds collected from sites in Nevada, Utah and New Mexico and found a fast rate of growth among merlins, ospreys and peregrine falcons. The average annual population increase […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Bison deaths spur lawsuit
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Mont. – As temperatures dip to 30 below, park rangers are rounding up and shipping to slaughter all bison that approach private land on the park’s northern border. It’s the start of a new management plan that has generated controversy and a lawsuit. “It’s a sad day when it comes to this […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Hunters get standing
Hunters in Colorado recently won a legal victory in a dispute over expanding a state prison. The hunters and their environmental allies challenged Colorado’s use of state park land in Rifle for the prison, charging that money collected from fishermen and hunters through taxes on guns and other equipment had purchased the land. The federal […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Dombeck takes on a new agency
Michael Dombeck spent his first hour as the new chief of the U.S. Forest Service greeting agency employees in Washington, D.C., as they headed to work. For some who had never glimpsed former Chief Jack Ward Thomas, it was a comforting gesture. But it also became clear that old guard members of the agency should […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Bees under siege
The West’s unsung pollen ranchers struggle against mites, economics and an old killer from the sky
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Emerging from the shadows
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. TUBAC, Ariz. – Gary Nabhan squats down in the field of crooked-neck squash, reaches inside a large orange blossom and exclaims, “I got one.” “Don’t worry; this guy can’t sting,” Nabhan says, holding a tiny bee between his fingers. That’s because it’s not a […]