On May 3, a wolf slipped through the frame of a remote camera in southwestern Oregon, a blur of black and brown. The next day, under the cover of darkness, it stared directly at a camera, eyes aglow, and did something ordinary that, under the circumstances, was an extraordinary sight: It squatted and peed. This […]
Wildlife
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
Hunting for conservation dollars
State wildlife agencies struggle to broaden funding as their duties expand.
Posted inGoat
Should the humpback whale stay on the endangered species list?
In the early 1960s, the situation seemed dire for humpback whales. A century of industrial hunting had reduced the North Pacific population to around 1,000, a minuscule fraction of historic levels. Extinction, once unthinkable, appeared not only possible, but likely. Five decades after the International Whaling Commission imposed a moratorium on hunting in 1966, however, […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
A bear named Irene
Grizzlies make a tenuous comeback in Montana’s Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem.
Posted inWotr
How to cook a rattlesnake – if you have to
A neighbor in New Mexico once told me that it’s bad luck — not to mention bad form — to kill a rattlesnake. Unfortunately, he told me this after I’d already killed one. It was sleeping in the garden, beneath a tomato plant, when my wife noticed it. There’s something about a snake in the […]
Posted inWotr
When a rattler comes to call
I first noticed the Panamint rattlesnake when her head moved just beneath my feet. I hadn’t stood on her, not yet; I stood on the edge of our concrete doorstep with my bare toes drooping west, pointing to the Sierra Nevada mountains, six inches above the glacial alluvium around our home. The snake — whom […]
Posted inGoat
The biggest wildlife crossing you’ve never heard of
Nestled in the Cascade Mountains of central Washington, winding along a 15-mile stretch of interstate is the largest wildlife connectivity project you’ve never heard of. Deer, elk, mountain goats, bobcats, black bears, foxes, mink, otters, cougars and wild turkeys roam the region’s old growth forests, mountain meadows, streams and glacier-covered peaks. But all too often, […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Video of epic mule deer migration
Mulies on the move in western Wyoming.
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Genetic techniques turn up new species – and help conservation
The discovery of a small fish in Montana and Idaho may have big implications.
Posted inGoat
Joshua trees may be migrating north in response to climate change
Last spring, Joshua trees put on a magnificent show in the Mojave Desert. Nearly all at once nearly all of them bloomed, sprouting dense bouquets of waxy, creamy-green flowers from their Seussian tufts of spiky leaves. The bloom was so sweeping and abundant — and such a contrast to the typical pattern, where only a […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Mulies on the move
Scientists discover a surprising migration in western Wyoming.
Posted inGoat
Wildlife and rodenticides: The new silent spring?
The Griffith Park mountain lion, discovered wandering the urban wilds above Los Angeles in the late winter of 2012, has been celebrated like none other of its kind. While mountain lions menace suburbs in Colorado and distress ranchers in Arizona, in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California, the rare cougar is widely viewed as […]
Posted inWotr
Neighbors who visit my backyard in the dead of night
Not long ago, in the middle of the night, I woke to the sound of snickering outside my bedroom window. I lay still, ransacking my brain for ideas on who might be out there, playing a trick on me, though by this point I had a fairly good idea of the culprits. I reached for […]
Posted inWotr
My chickens lay their own Easter eggs
My first baby chicks arrived 10 years ago, just after midnight on Easter Sunday. The post office, of course, was closed, but I got the call to come get them, as happens when live animals are shipped. I’ve been rocking a flock ever since. Those who raise backyard chickens will inevitably go through an obsessive […]
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Backpacking with monster skeeters
An Alaska encounter with the fiercest of the 176 mosquito species that roam the U.S.
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Strange little museums and zoos enliven the region
British ColumbiaAs you wander the West, keep an eye out for the tiniest, quirkiest museums and zoos tucked in unexpected and obscure spaces. They often provide outsized amusement and – fair to say – unrivaled learning experiences. You can see, for instance, “Canada’s largest ant farm,” along with hulking tarantulas, Malaysian rainbow frog beetles and […]
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Best place to see a crowd of grizzlies
A few tourists get close to amazing numbers of bears catching salmon at Alaska’s McNeil River Falls.
Posted inGoat
Threatened lynx are bycatch in Idaho trapping resurgence
Last January, in the snowbound mountains that crease northern Idaho’s Boundary County, an unnamed trapper found what he thought was a live bobcat in his baited wire cage. He shot the creature on sight, hoping for a pelt that would fetch up to $2,000 on the fur market. But when he lifted the carcass from […]
Posted inWotr
Save sagebrush, and good things happen
High in the Desatoya Mountains east of Fallon, Nev., and just east of Route 50 — famously dubbed “The Loneliest Road in America” by Life Magazine in 1986 — a curious congregation gathers in the predawn light. It is a congregation made up of two parts: one, of sage grouse, preparing to strut their stuff […]