The ongoing feral horse debate is a prime example of a small special-interest group getting its way and creating an unsustainable public program (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). Feral horses are a serious threat to our native ecosystems. Research has shown that areas inhabited by feral horses have fewer plant species and less grass and overall […]
Wildlife
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
What’s wild?
I consider the recent article on wild horse management one of your best (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). It seems that some people are adamant that horses have no place in the wild. Others consider them equivalent to deer, elk and other wildlife. How long does a species have to be here to be considered […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
A sampler of wildlife tech
PingersRadio transmitters, sometimes called “pingers,” are a classic monitoring method. Powered by batteries, they transmit very high frequency signals that are picked up by antennas or satellites. Until recently, the batteries’ weight and size couldn’t be reduced enough to use transmitters on small animals and fish. But now, says Doug Bonham, a freelance circuit-board designer […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
BLM’s equine quagmire
It’s unconscionable that current policy has tripled the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse and burro program budget since 2000 to a massive $76 million. Dave Philipps’ fine piece of reporting mentioned many of BLM’s management strategies, such as roundups, adoption, fertility control and sanctuaries (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). A few more were overlooked, […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
The right tributary
Yesterday I took a long walk up a cold stream in search of bull trout. I didn’t really expect to see fish. Instead, I’d come to see redds — the gravel nests in which fish lay eggs — because I’d been trying to write a story about salmon and realized I knew nothing whatsoever about […]
Posted inGoat
When deer attack dogs
I was innocently working away in my office (living room) when the barking began. We live in a medium-sized town in southwestern Colorado, where owning a dog seems to be a prerequisite, and every canine in the neighborhood was going off about something, resulting in a cacophonous symphony. Our dog, Princess (no, we didn’t give […]
Posted inRange
Trouble In Mind
Two images stand out from photographs I’ve taken here in northwestern Montana in the last couple months. One is from hunting for deer in November, the other from hunting a Christmas tree last weekend. The snowshoe hare in mid November is practicing “mind over matter.” He trusts his natural camouflage to keep him safe, even […]
Posted inWotr
Salmon must have water in the Klamath and Trinity rivers
Though it happened a decade ago, no one living near the Klamath River will ever forget the massive fish kill that wiped out at least 60,000 salmon trying to swim up the river to spawn. What happened that summer was the largest known fish kill in the West, caused by disease resulting from a combination of shallow […]
Posted inGoat
Gone hunting wolves
By the time you read this blog, I will be on my second day of hunting gray wolves in Montana. An old friend of mine in Livingston introduced me to some ranchers in Paradise Valley to write a story of their hunt. We will be trudging through a wilderness of snow on horseback, hoping to […]
Posted inGoat
The bark beetle feedback loop
Trees, you might say, are nature’s ultimate do-gooders. A compound in the bark of Pacific yew trees fights cancer. Dead trees become nurse logs, nurturing forests’ next generation of fungi and vegetation. In the ocean, rotting leaves boost the growth of plankton, fortifying the foundation of the sea’s food chain. Living leaves scrub the air of […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Cowtowing to ranchers
While this article was informative and generally balanced, it only hinted at the intensity of cattle grazing and how it compares to the wild horse population (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). The BLM factsheet on grazing states that in 2011, BLM lands were authorized to support 8.3 million animal unit months (AUMs). The BLM estimates […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Altered amphibians
This August, University of Colorado-Boulder disease ecologist Pieter Johnson made a ghoulish discovery in an Oregon pond: an “octo frog,” with eight hind legs. It was a particularly disturbing example of the kind of amphibian malformations Johnson has recorded in 17 states, six of them Western, since 1996. A common, period-sized flatworm, Ribeiroia ondatrae, plays […]
Posted inWotr
Washington wipes out a wolf pack
A wildlife tragedy began in Washington state on Aug. 7, when the state Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that a wolf in the Wedge Pack had killed a calf on a ranch close to Canada. Afterward, the rancher said that wolves were continuing to kill or maim his cattle. Wildlife staffers examined his claim […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Is there a way through the West’s bitter wild horse wars?
On a sunny spring day, T.J. Holmes creeps up a dusty arroyo in southwestern Colorado. The 41-year-old former journalist and mountain-bike champ wears beat-up jeans, her blonde curls unfurling from a sun-bleached visor and a big gun slung over one shoulder. The chalky hills of Disappointment Valley look as if they deserve their name. This […]
Posted inWotr
Planting the millionth tree
The Arbor Day Foundation sent me a Tree Survey a few months ago. At least it called itself a survey, but it turned out to be more of a pitch for donations in the form of a questionnaire. Still, I decided to finish reading the thing before I tossed it in the wood burner with […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
BLM “ecosanctuaries” unlikely to provide relief for wild horses
On a crisp May morning, Madeleine Pickens, a 65-year-old businesswoman and the soon-to-be-ex-wife of billionaire financier T. Boone Pickens, steps out onto the weathered porch of her old Nevada ranch house wearing taut white riding pants, suede boots and movie-star glasses under glossy platinum hair. She points briskly, using a dachshund mix named Tommy that […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Feds reluctant to kill wild horses
If caring for captive wild horses costs so much, why not just sell them for slaughter? It’s the “simple solution,” former Bureau of Land Management wild horse and burro program chief Don Glenn, now working for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, told a federal advisory panel this spring. “It makes no sense for the taxpayers […]
Posted inRange
Like a rogue net
Oregon’s salmon politics have taken a curious turn. In late September several sportfishing groups publicly disavowed Measure 81, a voter initiative they had earlier sponsored to ban gillnets on the Columbia River. The reversal followed an announcement by Oregon governor John Kitzhaber that gillnets were his latest cause du mois and he wants them gone […]