BackstoryScientists have known for years that frogs and toads are in rough shape. Nearly a third of all amphibian species face extinction — including the boreal toad, once common in high mountains around the West (“Toads on high,” HCN, 8/22/11). Climate change, habitat loss and disease are all factors in the decline; chytrid fungus, which […]
Wildlife
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
The latest: Channel Island foxes rebound
BackstorySouthern California’s Channel Islands are home to cat-sized foxes (Urocyon littoralis) found nowhere else in the world. After DDT killed off the islands’ native bald eagles in the 1950s, golden eagles moved in, preying primarily on feral piglets but snatching up tiny foxes, too. Disease further shrunk fox populations. When the foxes were listed as […]
Posted inGoat
Gray wolves to be removed from endangered species list
Gray wolves no longer face the threat of extinction, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Calling the recovery “one of the most remarkable success stories in the history of conservation,” FWS Director Dan Ashe announced today the agency is proposing to remove all of the nation’s wolves from the endangered species list, turning […]
Posted inWotr
Made in the American West, consumed in China
This spring, the Gulf of California’s shores near the mouth of the Colorado River were littered with dead bodies. They weren’t casualties of the drug trade; instead, they were victims of another international market — the Asian desire for wildlife. Chinese demand for the swim bladders of the giant totoaba fish, thought to aid fertility, […]
Posted inGoat
Frogs and toads in trouble
There hasn’t been a lot of feel-good amphibian news lately (except this video of a happy toad getting a back scratch) as increasing numbers of frogs and toads succumb to mysterious ailments. Now, we have a way to quantify all that doom and gloom, thanks to a new study in the online journal Plos One. […]
Posted inGoat
Tiny foxes rescued from extinction
The story of Channel Island foxes could have been one about extinction. Some time in the last decade we might have written about how several unique populations of four-pound, foot-tall carnivores ceased to exist in their only known home, southern California’s Channel Islands National Park. We’d wonder what went wrong, and how we allowed the […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
War Bird: An essay on robot hummingbirds
Probably he was bigAs mosses, and little lizards, they say were once big.Probably he was a jabbing, terrifying monster.— D.H. Lawrence, “Humming Bird” The other day, a friend of mine sent along a story he thought I’d enjoy. It described how some engineers had developed a robot they called the Nano-Hummingbird. Barely 3 inches long […]
Posted inWotr
Elwha, a story of today’s West
The heart of the new book, Elwha: A River Reborn, is a photograph of Elwha Dam taken in 2010, one year before it came down. Framed by canyon walls and a mossy rock garden, two thin cascades, leaking through the dam, join and fall down into the Elwha River, to embrace a dark pool just below […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Could an Alaska mining project jeopardize Earth’s largest bald eagle gathering?
Mineral exploration threatens the Chilkat River, the chum salmon and the raptors that rely on them.
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
The Latest: Quagga mussels invade Lake Powell
BackstoryIn the 1980s, invasive quagga and zebra mussels hitchhiked on ocean vessels from Eastern Europe to northeast North America. There, the thumbnail-sized bivalves proliferated, clogging water intake pipes, crusting boats, wreaking havoc on ecosystems and causing billions of dollars in damage. Measures were taken to prevent their westward spread, but in 2007 quaggas arrived, eager […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Wanted: Wolves in Colorado
Being an avid elk hunter in Colorado, I hope the trapping and hunting pressure on wolves in Wyoming brings some of them here (“Wolf bycatch,” HCN, 4/29/13). The presence of wolves in Colorado might reduce the number of cattle that overgraze national forest land and ruin the riparian habitat for six months of the year, […]
Posted inGoat
Eat more insects
When I was in middle school my Dad and I were catching grasshoppers for fishing bait, but we ended up in the kitchen frying them instead. Since it’s hard to go wrong deep-frying anything, they were kind of tasty, like popcorn. In a Calvin and Hobbes-inspired move, I decided to take some to school and […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
BLM teams with researchers to protect midget faded rattlesnake
Summer snake hunting in western Colorado is a race against the sun. The reptiles emerge early from their dens to soak up dawn’s dull warmth. But once the hillsides hum with heat, they’ll split for the shadows. “We better get going,” says biologist Josh Parker of Georgia’s Clayton State University when I meet his small […]
Posted inRange
It’s Endangered Species Day!
Today, the third Friday in May, is Endangered Species Day. Passed by a unanimously-supported Senate resolution several years ago, the holiday is intended to encourage us “…to become educated about and aware of threats to species, success stories in species recovery and the opportunity to promote species conservation worldwide.” The Endangered Species Act (ESA), which […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
In the field with a Montana couple hunting wolves
We’re hunting wolves on an Arctic December morning in Montana, just north of Yellowstone National Park. Ryan Counts and Becky Frey lead me along a hillside above a shelf of open grass and sage known as Decker Flats. The local hunter gossip pinpointed a pack in this area the final day of elk hunting season, […]
Posted inRange
The danger of too much screentime, in and out of the woods
In an Earth Day podcast, new Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell expressed her concern over the growing divide between people and nature. She pointed to “screen time,” and to other distractions that keep kids, in particular, from exploring their outdoor environments and from developing a general curiosity about the natural world. Children and adolescents […]
Posted inGoat
What’s killing bees?
Normally, the Colorado bee swarm hotline starts ringing in mid-April. By May 1, a call is coming in every other day. And by the 15th, “somebody opens up the bee floodgates and they start swarming like the devil,” says Beth Conrey, president of the Colorado Beekeepers Association, who fields the calls on her cell phone. […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
Other voices: the debate on wolf hunting from both sides
“Overall, they’re making it too easy to kill wolves. (It’s) persecution of wolves on a huge level. … I think we’re on the road to re-listing wolves in the Rocky Mountains.” — Marc Cooke, president of Wolves of the Rockies “The hunting has put such intense pressure on the packs, they’re dispersing, they’re disrupted; the […]
Posted inGoat
Grizzlies back from the brink?
Grizzly bears in the lower 48 were put on the endangered species list as threatened in 1975, a time when the survival of six bear populations in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington seemed tenuous. But thanks to decades of vigilance, the bears are doing much better, with about 1,400 to 1,700 in the lower 48, […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the hill: Trapping the bees
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert, published the first Monday of each month. Several years ago, at just this time of year, I had to go back East for a few months of work. When I returned home to the […]