With thick fur and snowshoe-like feet, wolverines are well-adapted to live in snow caves and run straight up mountains. Their high elevation lifestyles have helped them stay out of harm’s way in recent decades, and stage a slow comeback from the rampant carnivore persecution of the early 1900s. Though elusive and tenacious, they won’t be […]
Wildlife
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Ranchers, enviros and officials seek a middle path on public-land grazing
Moving beyond stalemate to meaningful reform in Utah.
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Can a grazing buyout program ease life for wolves and ranchers?
A fledgling effort in New Mexico’s ‘Yellowstone of the South.’
Posted inGoat
For native birds, cities may spread disease while still providing sanctuary
Ours is an increasingly urban nation – over 80 percent of the U.S. population now dwells in cities and towns, a figure that’s only rising. Nowhere is that trend more pronounced than in the West: Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Denver are among the country’s fastest-growing cities. Our metropolitan migration has environmentalists and planners dreaming of […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Postcard from a livestock sperm bank
Your one-stop shop for bison semen, oyster embryos and testicular turkey tissue.
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Terrorized by coyotes, denied a school lunch, and a controversial superbowl ad
UTAHIf you’re like us, you’ve occasionally fallen behind in paying your credit card or utility bills. And maybe you’ve had to face the consequences, perhaps nasty letters from a collection agency or a robo-caller with a vague accent demanding that you make an “arrangement.” But the folks at Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
The Latest: Ecoterrorist in Vail fire is sentenced
Backstory In 1998, the Vail, Colo., ski resort was growing, and so were the tensions around it. Some accused the rich of monopolizing public lands for pricey recreation; others saw Vail’s planned expansion as encroaching on habitat essential to the rare Canada lynx. That October, members of the radical Earth Liberation Front set fire to […]
Posted inGoat
Owls react to megafire and climate trends in central Colorado
In the 1980s, when ecologist Brian Linkhart first started digging around in old woodpecker holes in Colorado for flammulated owls – fuzzy, black-eyed creatures weighing just one to two ounces – his research was all about the birds. He wanted to understand if and where the secretive little animals were breeding – questions he pursued […]
Posted inGoat
Policies and pollinators: How the feds deepen the precipitous decline of monarchs
The numbers are in from Mexico, and they ain’t pretty. Every fall, monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles from the Great Plains to their winter grounds in central Mexico, where they’re scrupulously counted by the World Wildlife Fund. In 1996, the overwintering monarchs blanketed 45 acres of forest. This year, they cover only about 1.6 […]
Posted inGoat
Troubleweeds: Russian thistle buries roads and homes in southeastern Colorado
J.D. Wright pauses to check in with his wife of 51 years. “Do you remember, Mama, when that wind was?” After a few minutes perusing her cellphone photos, she reports back: Tumbleweeds first buried the house on November 17. The gusts screamed up and there they were, piled so deep over the doors and windows […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
The great Flathead fish fiasco
State and tribes disagree over how to tackle an exotic species’ takeover of a Montana lake.
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
Putting blue gums in their place
Your article on the invasive Tasmanian blue gum on the California coast was well-written and carefully researched (“Beauty or Beast?” HCN, 12/23/13). However, it fell into a common journalistic trap: “A says this; on the other hand, B says this.” This journalistic “fairness” doesn’t illuminate the subject. I am smitten by the genus Eucalyptus. I traveled to Australia in […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
Location matters in the war on lake trout
Lake trout aren’t just found in low-elevation lakes with large recreational fisheries, like Montana’s Flathead Lake. For more than two decades, they have thrived in the crystalline, icy waters of Yellowstone Lake, in the heart of Yellowstone National Park. Biologists believe someone introduced lake trout to Yellowstone Lake back in the 1980s. Since then, the […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
The Latest: Yellowstone bison get no vaccination or additional grazing land
BackstoryYellowstone National Park’s bison have long been prisoners, hazed back to the park or slaughtered whenever they head for lower winter range. That’s because half the herd tests positive for exposure to brucellosis, an abortion-causing disease that ranchers fear will spread to cattle (although outbreaks around Yellowstone have been traced to elk). In 2011, however, […]
Posted inGoat
In a new study, megafauna more likely to feel climate impacts than smaller species
Climate change has always picked winners and losers from the animal world. Some, like unbearably cute, mountain-dwelling pikas are already retreating from lower, warmer elevations in places like Yosemite National Park, and heading for cooler heights. Beyond existing research on how climate change is responsible for certain species, like pikas or polar bears, shifting elevation, […]
Posted inGoat
From bison to birds, the National Park Service rethinks its approach to migratory species
Imagine, if you will, that you’re a Kittlitz’s Murrelet – a tiny seabird, feathered in salt-and-pepper. It’s summer, or what passes for summer in a field of Alaskan glaciers, and you’re relaxing in the lap of luxury: Kenai Fjords National Park, where nobody can shoot you, set their dog after you, or lay a finger […]
Posted inArticles
Are Yellowstone grizzlies ready for delisting?
A recent study of the bears’ diets has spurred a move toward ending endangered protections.
Posted inGoat
49-million-year-old cockroach fossils discovered in Colorado
Three years ago, Slovakian paleontologist Peter Vrsansky found a surprise in a shipment of fossils from Rifle, Colo. Hidden in the collection was an unexpected new peek into the insect world during the Eocene epoch, 50 million years ago. Vrsansky discovered four new species of Ectobius cockroach that are five million years older – and […]
Posted inWotr
Who speaks for the sage grouse?
Across the West, politicians and oil and gas industry spokesmen are wringing their hands, shaking their heads and saying “no” to Bureau of Land Management proposals to set aside large swaths of land for the greater sage grouse, and for federal plans to list the separate Gunnison sage grouse as an endangered species. Colorado Gov. […]
Posted inGoat
New Year brings protections for California bobcats and atonement for a Joshua Tree conservationist
Wolves in several Western states entered 2014 in the crosshairs of hunters, but California’s bobcats got a reprieve – thanks in large part to one Joshua Tree landowner and conservationist. The Bobcat Protection Act of 2013 (AB 1213), introduced in March by Santa Monica assemblyman Richard Bloom (D), went into effect January 1. It prohibits […]