Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. BOISE – John Thornton, a hydrologist for the Boise National Forest, remembers staring out of the helicopter in disbelief. Below him, a major wildfire was raging, devouring trees and brush. But what caught his eye […]
Wildlife
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Excerpts from Flame and Fortune; Quote from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. The fire-as-war metaphor fails, as all metaphors must. It fails first because, without a human antagonist, the moral drama centers within people, not between them. Firefighters get killed but don’t kill. The metaphor fails more […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Salmon plan attacked
The federal government is shopping around its latest plan for saving endangered Snake River salmon, and environmentalists aren’t buying it. Like its predecessors, the 1995 draft biological opinion for the operation of the federal hydropower dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers relies heavily on flushing juvenile salmon downstream with water from upstream reservoirs in […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Utah wilderness bill under way
Utah’s congressional delegation has once again promised a Utah BLM wilderness bill, and this time – to the dismay of environmentalists – it may be able to deliver. Gov. Mike Leavitt, representatives Enid Greene Waldholtz, Jim Hansen, and Bill Orton (the lone Democrat), and senators Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch are all working on a […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Grass-roots strategy for salmon
Hoping to sway the outcome of a pending federal recovery plan for Snake River salmon, 45 environmental and fishing groups have come up with a plan of their own. The groups, all members of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition, recently presented their 45-page recommendation, Wild Salmon Forever, to the National Marine Fisheries Service. It […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Want to sponsor a wolf?
The nonprofit Wolf Education and Research Center, in Ketchum, Idaho, has begun a new program encouraging people to contribute directly to the annual costs of returning wolves to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. It supports logistical expenses, estimated at over $500,000, which include radio collars and tracking equipment as well as field operations. The […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Trumpeter swans play through
Trumpeter swans have set up housekeeping in Utah for the first time in recorded history, with three of the swans settling in at a golf course near St. George. State wildlife officials discovered the swans after golfers complained that the birds, which can grow to six feet from tail to beak, interfered with their game. […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Called on the carpet
Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt was called before the House Resources Committee Jan. 26 to defend the government’s $6.7 million wolf restoration program. Republicans, who now dominate the committee, charged that state and individual rights have been subordinated to the federally protected wolves. “I strongly believe, Mr. Secretary, that not only have your wolves […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
From freedom to FedEx: Wolf B13 killed
SALMON, Idaho – Just nine days after her release into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, a Canadian wolf found her way out of central Idaho’s maze of steep snow-covered mountains. Sixty air miles from where she had been set free, the wolf trotted straight into Gene Hussey’s cattle herd about 25 miles south […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Freed wolves roam up to 20 miles a day
Note: this article is a sidebar to a news article titled “From freedom to FedEx: Wolf B13 killed.” Fourteen remaining Canadian wolves released last month into a central Idaho wilderness are giving U.S. Fish and Wildlife trackers a run for their money. Two wolves have left Idaho and headed north into Montana. One was about […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Forest activists retrench and grope for support
Nearly 400 West Coast forest activists who gathered in Ashland, Ore., last month were faced with a sobering civics lesson: Their foes in Congress and statehouses throughout the West had captured the populist high ground. The fourth Western Ancient Forest Conference, sponsored by the Ashland-based environmental group Headwaters, is an annual gathering of the forest […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Idaho salmon suit angers locals
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 […]
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
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 […]