Setting off a firestorm of local protest in Idaho, a federal judge ruled Jan. 9 that the Forest Service should temporarily halt mining, grazing, logging and road-building activities on six national forests. U.S. District Judge David Ezra said that the agency had to stop all ongoing activities until it consulted with federal biologists about effects […]
Wildlife
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
It takes a thief
An eel-like parasite that devastated the lake trout population of the Great Lakes may one day swim in Yellowstone Lake. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it may consider introducing sterile sea lampreys to control invasive lake trout discovered there last summer (HCN, 9/19/94). “At at this point we’re not ruling out any proposals,” […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Wolves gain support
The wolf is welcome in Colorado, say 70 percent of the respondents in a recent statewide survey. The study polled 1,452 residents and found that a majority on both sides of the Rockies support the reintroduction of the gray wolf. The results on the Western Slope surprised researchers, who had expected the region’s livestock industry […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Behemoth sturgeon struggle to survive
At the turn of the century, horses were sometimes needed to haul 20-foot white sturgeon from Idaho’s Snake River. Today, fish behemoths like that are found only in historical photo archives, although nine-foot-long lunkers are known to survive. The story of the demise of America’s largest freshwater fish reads much like that of the Snake […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
The wolves are back, big time
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – Badged officers blocked traffic as the lengthy motorcade approached. Reporters and photographers crowded both sides of the road, and satellite dishes atop television stations’ trucks stood ready to beam the scene to the rest of the world. At a “media center’” occupying a cavernous gymnasium, banks of telephones were ready […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
One bullet prompted regret
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The wolves are back, big time. LANDER, Wyo. – The wolf head on the wall tucks its ears and bares its teeth at all who enter the living room of this 85-year-old retired sheep rancher. This aging trophy with broken teeth is perhaps the […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
This mating is no game
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The wolves are back, big time. Federal biologists are playing matchmaker. When six more gray wolves were trundled into Yellowstone Jan. 20, one male was introduced to a prospective new mate, and biologists hoped the two wouldn’t fight. They didn’t. Although the wolves postured, […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Wolves may not need Big Brother
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The wolves are back, big time. Some veteran wolf biologists call the designated federal restoration a big mistake. “They don’t need to reintroduce wolves,” says Diane Boyd, who for the past 15 years has studied wolves as they have migrated down from Canada and […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Canada provides $2000 wolves
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The wolves are back, big time. ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOUSE, Alberta – Someday, perhaps not too far off, residents of the region around Yellowstone National Park may know wolves the way Gerald Gustavson knows wolves. “It’ll happen one day, when you’re out in the forest, […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Not much fuss over wolves in Canada
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The wolves are back, big time. ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOUSE, Alberta – Canadians who live around wolves have a simple attitude toward the predators: No big deal. As fierce debate continues in the United States over the place of wolves, Canadians who live with the […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
In surprising ways, wolves will restore natural balance
When wolves arrived in Yellowstone last month, it was as though a boulder were tossed into a lake: the ripples began to spread, and eventually they will touch everything. As trucks carrying the predators entered the park, coyotes nearby began to howl; now they yip and sing almost every hour near the wolf pens. “I […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Option 9 survives
In a rare environmental victory for the Clinton administration, a federal judge upheld the president’s plan for protecting wildlife and allowing some timber cutting in the federal forests of the Pacific Northwest. Judge William Dwyer of Seattle, who said in 1991 that federal land managers had committed “deliberate, systematic” violations of environmental laws, ruled Dec. […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Wilderness trader cashes in
When the Forest Service agreed to give developer Tom Chapman 110 acres near the ski town of Telluride, Colo., in exchange for his wilderness inholding on the Gunnison National Forest, critics were outraged. They said taxpayers would lose valuable public land while Chapman stood to gain a huge profit. Apparently, the critics were right. Chapman, […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Are grizzlies safe?
Grizzly bears in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem have “recovered” and no longer need protection under the Endangered Species Act. That’s the opinion of a federal team known as the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, which decided in December to support the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s decision to petition for delisting the bear. “People should keep […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Imported wolves lope off into Idaho wilderness
Editor’s note: After being trapped, caged, tested for disease and analyzed by genotype by having blood and tissue taken, inoculated, ear-tagged, radio-collared and tranquilized, they were loaded up for a plane ride south. This was a trip more than a decade in the making – restoring wolves to the West. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, on […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
So far, wolf reintroduction survives legal challenge
Wolves arrived in central Idaho and Yellowstone last week after evading enemies in courtrooms and legislatures around the region. The frenzy of last-minute legal maneuvering preceding their return has fragmented opinion on both sides of the issue and bewildered onlookers. Five months ago, to block the wolves’ return, the American Farm Bureau and the Mountain […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Yellowstone bison guts pile up
On the day after Christmas, bison migrating downhill from Yellowstone National Park’s northern range once again met gunfire in Montana. Caught in a power struggle between the National Park Service, whose policy of “natural regulation” has allowed their numbers to grow to an estimated 4,300, and the livestock industry, which is worried about disease, more […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Forest Service may finally evaluate grazing
As the Clinton administration backpedals in the nation’s capitol from grazing reforms, an environmental lawsuit is moving ahead in Montana. A federal judge will soon decide whether the Forest Service must do analyses for 150 allotments where ranchers run livestock on the Beaverhead National Forest. Last March, the National Wildlife Federation and its Montana affiliate […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Timber sale killed
A federal judge in Denver recently ordered the U.S. Forest Service to shelve a timber sale a decade in the making. Judge Lewis Babcock told the Forest Service on Nov. 17 to abandon a 240-acre timber sale at Long Draw in Colorado’s Arapahoe-Roosevelt National Forest. He said the Forest Service illegally favored clearcutting over less-intrusive […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
A penchant for pee
It’s Miller Time for mountain goats in Colorado’s San Juan National Forest when hikers and hunters head home. The goats come down from the high country to congregate at campsites where visitors have urinated. Driven by a craving for salt, the animals have torn up the tundra in the forest’s Weminuche Wilderness. “It’s a strange […]