You sleeping relick of the pastif I but had my wayI’d cloth(e) your framewith meat and hidean(d) wake you up to day. – C.M. Russell, 1908 Montana cowboy artist and favorite son Charles M. Russell penned those wistful words underneath a sketch he made of a sun-bleached buffalo skull poking through prairie grass. But that was 104 years […]
Wildlife
Posted inWotr
Safari Club and the NRA aim to gut wilderness
This April 17, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Sportsmen’s Heritage Act, which promised “to protect and enhance opportunities for recreational hunting, fishing, and shooting.” Actually, this bill takes an ax to the 1964 Wilderness Act. Over 30 House Democrats voted in favor of H.R. 4089 because they did not want to be seen as “anti-hunting.” Now, our U. S. […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: more wildfires and lizards
Here’s the High Country NewsBurning Man story you all have been waiting for. Thousands of scantly clothed artists and gypsies voyage out to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada for a week to build a city, burn a hundred-foot, wooden man and vanish without a trace. BLM offices in Winnemucca, Nevada, which manage permits for […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Surveying the oft-snubbed (and very cool) spider with citizen scientists
It’s Saturday morning in early May at the Bluff Lake Nature Center, a modest suburban oasis in northeast Denver. An eager posse of spider hunters clusters around its intrepid leader, Paula Cushing, a petite woman with a dark braid, deep-set eyes and a fearless affection for eight-legged creatures. “Without spiders, we’d be up to our […]
Posted inWotr
Fire on the mountain
I have grown accustomed to stinging eyes, an itchy nose and a raw throat. Smoke is always heavy in the air, especially in the morning after cool nights have pushed it down to the deepest part of the Gila River Valley, where I live. Despite all this, I have to confess that I take some […]
Posted inGoat
Temporal shift
But a recent study published in the current issue of the journal Ecology suggests that the Earth’s warming climate is jeopardizing the bird and lily’s temporal bond. According to the researchers, earlier snowmelt in the mountains (brought on by warming temperatures) has, in turn, led to a blooming shift in the lily, the first blossoms […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
L.A.’s wild underbelly
By publishing such an indispensable, comprehensive account of an issue that has been all but forgotten by local news organizations, HCN has filled a critical role in keeping an accurate narrative of the sediment management issue in Los Angeles alive and well (HCN, 5/14/12, “Los Angeles Against the Mountains”). As Emily Green so eloquently explained, […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Let gravity do its thing
This round of the sediment management plan won’t provide a sustainable solution to the problem (HCN, 5/14/12, “Los Angeles Against the Mountains”). But now is a good time to make the case for long-term solutions. For that, we’re going to have to rethink the flood control system, or rather, remember it as a functioning riparian […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
On the hunt for abalone poachers in Northern California
Last spring, Don Powers steered his government-issue pickup down Highway 1, the thin ribbon of blacktop that hugs California’s North Coast. The sun shone bright, the scent of salt hung on the wind, and the world felt rapturous. In fact, a crackpot preacher Harold Camping had prophesied that the Rapture would actually take place then […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Three cheers for Emily Green
You have done us all a great service by publishing a very important story about the oak woodland and the sediment dump (HCN, 5/14/12, “Los Angeles Against the Mountains”). I consider myself a member of the “environmental” community in Southern California, and I am an avid HCN reader. It is good to see a piece […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Dancing with wolverines
When a wolverine splayed his huge clawed paw onto my shoulder, the tip of each powerful nail pressing firmly, I was filled with a reckless elation. But I remained still, because I recalled that wolverines have a special molar angled sharply inward that allows them to tear muscle and hide from carrion, pulverize bone. A […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: wildfires and water depletion
If only Billie Holiday were here to sing that solemn “Summertime” song. The living is easy compared to winter, but the environment for this week’s Roundup is harsh. Wildfire broke out across the West, especially in New Mexico, where the Whitewater Baldy Complex fire has burned 190,262 acres, and as of yesterday at 4:30 p.m., […]
Posted inGoat
The power and plight of the parasite
As the April census indicates, the recovery programs have been a great success, pulling the magnificent bald-headed birds–which sport wingspans of nearly 10 feet and which can live for more than 60 years–from the brink of extinction. But in the process, another, somewhat less charismatic creature, has been wiped out: Colpocephalum californici, an avian chewing […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Dead trees, biodiversity, and the black-backed woodpecker
The ruins of scorched or beetle-killed forests may not seem like ecological havens. But myriad species depend on standing dead or dying trees, including the black-backed woodpecker, which haunts skeletal forests in the West, Alaska and Canada. Its ebony dorsal plumage blends in with the charred tree trunks on which the bird rummages for juicy […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
L.A. activists try to stop woodlands from becoming sediment dumps
The list price was $1.125 million in August 2011, when Sotheby’s International Realty held the first open house for 1674 Highland Oaks Drive, in the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia. Scented candles burned, classical music played and the air conditioner ran as potential buyers milled through the home’s three bedrooms, living room and combination den/dining […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: fires start, wildlife die
It’s Friday and that means it’s time for a roundup of some of the important Western news of the week. Our interns are all missing in action, one of the editors is in the Grand Canyon and another is in the canyons of New York City, and so I’m taking on this update. And then […]
Posted inRange
Make anglers allies for endangered species
The prism of clear river water can distort and magnify the size of a fish, an effect amplified by adrenaline and nostalgia. Still, I remember one fish big enough to shake my whole view of the world. I was of that tender age when one believes one’s father to be capable of anything except failure. […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Bark beetle kill leads to more severe fires, right? Well, maybe
The lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forests of the Intermountain West are reeling under a one-two punch: more frequent and severe wildfires, and an epidemic of tree-killing bark beetles. Once-green forests are filled with red dying trees and patches of gray dead ones. From a distance, the effect is oddly beautiful. Up close, people often experience […]
Posted inGoat
Fire wise
In 2002, the Rodeo-Chediski fire burned over 430,000 acres across the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, two national forests and private land in central Arizona. It was a momentous year for wildfire. Over seven million acres burned nationwide. In response, Congress drew up, and President Bush signed, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. Its stated goal: to […]