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 […]
Wildlife
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 […]
Posted inGoat
The price of a loud world: How road noise harms birds
Last fall, a team of researchers from Idaho’s Boise State University hiked into the mountains outside of town with backpacks full of batteries and speakers. The unusual cargo was not for a backcountry dance party, but rather for a unique experiment to determine the impact of road noise on migratory birds. The scientists hung speakers […]
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
Eucalyptus: Beauty or Beast?
Restoration pits these exotics against California natives. But for some, they’re a natural.
Posted inArticles
Bison roundup at Rocky Mountain Arsenal refuge
At least 20 animals were removed from the herd to let habitat recover.
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
A forester searches for a kinder, gentler eucalyptus
On a drizzly winter day in San Francisco, a pickup truck loaded with eucalyptus seedlings pulls up to a bare hillside in the Presidio, a former U.S. Army base turned national park. A crew of shovel-wielding men starts moving across the slope, planting knee-high trees in tight formation. Dressed in a bright red rain suit, […]
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
A native butterfly finds merit in a nonnative tree
Every fall, starting around October, tens of thousands of monarch butterflies from across the West make their way to eucalyptus groves along the California coast. There, in a quasi-torpid state, they clump together in clusters, dangling from high branches like living chandeliers. Early in the new year, they once again take wing, sailing inland to […]
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
Moving words and sacred salmon
Ray Ring’s article on the Alaska salmon ecosystem was the most moving thing I’ve ever read in HCN (“Ecosystems 101,” HCN, 11/25/13). I worked on a commercial salmon-fishing boat in Alaska one summer and have since considered these species to be absolutely sacred. It seems developers always have a price tag to put on the […]
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
Studying – and saving – ecosystems
“Ecosystems 101” was full of exceptional details (HCN, 11/25/13). It is quite true that long-term field monitoring has until recently been the hardest research to keep funded. Thirty consecutive field seasons on glaciers in the North Cascades – which feed less-than-pristine salmon streams – and the ongoing but not particularly successful salmon restoration programs indicate […]
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
The Latest: First federal prosecution of wind farm bird deaths
BackstoryDespite their clean-energy appeal, wind farms have a reputation for mowing down birds and bats. Much of the “bird blender” blame rests with one of the first farms, poorly placed on Altamont Pass near San Francisco (“Birds, blades and bats,” HCN, 5/02/05). But even with wildlife-friendly siting and better turbine technology, hundreds of thousands of […]