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 […]
Wildlife
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 […]
Posted inGoat
The view from above
This weekend, I sweated up to the top of Oh-Be-Joyful pass, a charmingly named ridge in Raggeds Wilderness near the town of Paonia, where I live. From there, my comrades and I could see mountains upon mountains — and way down below, the green slash of the valley where we live. Forty years ago, the […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Save a chimney, save a swift
Doesn’t look like it’s going to be a great night,” Larry Schwitters says, sitting in his car outside the Old Selleck Schoolhouse, about 40 miles southeast of Seattle. It’s nearly sunset, the sky is cloudless and warm. “It’s too nice for swifts,” he grouses. “If there were going to be a lot of them, they’d […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Smokey Bear: From cute to buff, and in between
The icon’s many images changed over the years alongside the Forest Service’s changing attitudes toward wildfire.
Posted inGoat
Beetle Evolution
The tamarisk leaf beetle is an unlikely citizen of Utah. And until recently it wasn’t found there. The tamarisk-munching bugs that now inhabit Utah, Colorado, and other parts of the West have their roots in Eurasia and hail from northwestern China and Kazakhstan. Scientists brought their ancestors to the U.S. in 2001 and set them […]
Posted inGoat
Got rabies: skunks are top carrier in Colorado
Skunks get a bad rap. Of course, not every animal douses targets with rancid juice from their anal glands from 10 feet away, so perhaps it is deserved. In Colorado the striped mammals have recently earned a new form of notoriety that adds to their stinky status: They’ve jumped into the lead as the main […]
Posted inGoat
Critical habitat under scrutiny
Endangered leatherback sea turtles can thank the Endangered Species Act for the government’s decision to add a chunk of ocean on the West Coast to their protected habitat earlier this year. In January, the feds expanded the graceful sea dweller’s critical habit to 41,914 salty square miles off California, Oregon and Washington. The leatherback is […]
Posted inArticles
On the prowl with Oregon’s pygmy owls
On his first Father’s Day as a parent, John Deshler is in Portland’s Forest Park. When I called several days ago, he was checking on a northern pygmy-owl nest site, carrying 5-month Henley with him. “My baby’s been good luck,” Deshler says. “I don’t bring her out here very often, but we did find a […]
Posted inWotr
A different voice on the phone
The television and photos he posts online show a wall of flames, smoke plumes billowing in the air like ominous storm clouds. It’s hot as hell outside, with record high heat, and the wind is blowing. And my young son is out there on a fire line somewhere, because much of the state of Colorado […]