“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. In a 2006 article [PDF] in The American Naturalist, a small herd of perfectly respectable conservation biologists advocates a bold ecological restoration project they call “Pleistocene Rewilding.” The concept itself is outrageously wild. First […]
Wildlife
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
(Don’t) Let it burn
This summer, Forest Service firefighters are stomping out wildfires they might have let burn in other years. A ‘temporary’ policy change requires local foresters to get permission from their regional supervisors for anything but full suppression, owing to fears that the current hot, dry conditions could cause remote fires to rage out of control. And […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
Madrona Murphy responds
Unfortunately, camas cultivation in the San Juan archipelago effectively ended more than 150 years ago. All the same, this study was extensively informed by interviews with living Coast Salish families with ancestry in the islands or ties to the islands, as well as unpublished field notes of interviews conducted 25 to 65 years ago with […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
Misleading omissions
‘The Secret Gardens‘ is offensive and misleading in that it makes it seem as if the Coast Salish lived only in the past (HCN, 8/6/12). It makes no mention of the modern Coast Salish tribes who no doubt know a lot about these camas patches. Has botanist Madrona Murphy contacted any of the Duwamish, Jamestown, […]
Posted inArticles
Rantcast: Bringing back the mammoths
Rants from the Hill are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in rural Nevada. They are posted at the beginning of each month at www.hcn.org. You can subscribe to the podcast for free in iTunes, or through Feedburner if you use other podcast readers. Each month’s rant is also available in written form. Musical credits for Rantcast: Bumper sticker sloganeering, licensed under […]
Posted inGoat
That sweet autumn air
As darkness comes earlier to western Colorado, summer’s stillness gives way to a restless fall. The skunks start chemical wars, mountain lions assassinate kids (of the caprine variety) and bears burglarize fruit trees in our own backyards. These are signs of a changing season, one where my colleagues are all victims or gleeful voyeurs of […]
Posted inRange
Hope on eight legs
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Sometimes when I grow weary of news of natural disasters, wars and political squabbling, I flirt with the idea of creating a Great News Network (GNN) which only reports positive events. Effervescent anchorpeople with gleaming smiles would talk of ceasefires, people and pets rescued from peril, Rover landings, that […]
Posted inWotr
A once-proud conservation group has lost its way
Recently, the family of Olaus J. Murie demanded that the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation cancel the organization’s Olaus J. Murie Award. The surprising reason? The foundation’s “all-out war against wolves is anathema to the entire Murie family.” I sympathize with the family’s position for several reasons. In 1999, while working for the Elk Foundation, I […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Saving threatened Utah prairie dogs — on private property
When Curt Bagley learned he could get paid for the prairie dogs digging up his land, he had a change of heart toward the varmints he’d grown up shooting. On his family’s cattle ranch in Greenwich, Utah, they’d had to learn to live with the destructive rodents since 1973, when Utah prairie dogs were federally […]
Posted inGoat
El regreso de la tortuga grande
Updated 8/19/12 The bolson tortoise was extinct. Or at least it was supposed to be. Then, in 1959, wildlife biologists stumbled upon an area in northern Mexico where the locals were watering chickens from the empty shells of “tortuga grande,” or the bolson tortoise. The small, resident population was enough to seed a revival of […]
Posted inWotr
Even pests have a purpose
It’s a remarkable achievement: According to a census in April, the number of California condors, one of the largest and most endangered birds in the world, has reached 405, including both wild and captive birds. That’s the most condors to exist on the planet since recovery of the species began in the 1980s, when only […]
Posted inWotr
Just don’t call the condors wild
The success of the California condor captive breeding program is easily exaggerated. From the standpoint of the number of young birds that have been hatched — over 400 of them — there’s no question that it’s a stunning achievement. But beyond that, some observations are in order. In particular, it seems reasonable to question the […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Sleuthing swifts in Indiana
I couldn’t help but smile while reading about Larry Schwitters’ pursuit of Vaux’s swifts (“Swift sleuth,” HCN, 7/23/2012). One of our favorite restaurants near downtown Indianapolis is the Rooftop Restaurant at Fountain Square, atop an old five-story brick building with a magnificent view of the downtown skyline and Midwestern sunsets. In the back of the restaurant, […]
Posted inWotr
“Friending” nature
As someone who writes about nature and the West, I’ve been urged to get more involved with social media. “Search out your readers” I am told; don’t just sit back like a wallflower too shy or too proud to dance. But as a writer in rural Silver City, N.M., I have to wonder: Who wants […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
In search of camas, a Native American food staple
Skull Island sits in Massacre Bay, in Washington’s San Juan archipelago. Here, in 1858, Haida raiders killed a band of Coast Salish and left the bones behind. I can think of other, perhaps more cheery spots to look for flowers, but Madrona Murphy’s enthusiasm is unstanched. “Look!” she calls as our boat nudges against shore. […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
The Salt Pond Puzzle: Restoring South San Francisco Bay
FREMONT, CALIFORNIA We were on patrol. Caitlin Robinson-Nilsen, a young biologist in shades and a ponytail, steered the 4WD Explorer along a muddy levee in Fremont, Calif., and I rode shotgun, staying vigilant. She surveys snowy plovers –– adorable, six-inch, two-ounce, skittering shorebirds, with black collars and eye-patches –– as the waterbird program director for […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Goat man in the forest
Utah: is it too late to back up? Photo by Lillian Houghton. THE WEST It was such a sweet story at first: A man in a hairy white goat suit with fake horns who appeared to be trying to join a mountain goat herd in the Wasatch Mountains some 40 miles north of Salt Lake […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
Hail the ab
Thank you for the superb article on the plight of red abalone along the Northern California Coast. (HCN, 6/11/12, “Gastropodan Crimes”). Growing up in Crockett, in the San Francisco Bay Area’s East Bay, my brother and I spent more than a few days of our youth out in that frigid, four-foot-visibility water, being knocked around by […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
Historic plant cultivation in Northwest native tribes
The idea that the Coast Salish and other Northwest Native Americans cultivated plants was disputed until relatively recently. Famed anthropologist Franz Boas and his disciples argued that Native Americans didn’t need to cultivate plants thanks to abundant salmon runs; they could subsist on wild forage instead. According to Doug Deur, an anthropologist at Portland State […]
Posted inGoat
Buzz of the Undead
If you were a honeybee, you might scare your children into obedience with tales of the phorid fly, a creature whose depravity sinks to deep depths. Picture this: you’re going about your business, pollinating flowers and the like, when one of these devils swoops in, clamps down on your abdomen and, using a spiked injector […]