If you think the word “slut” insults women, how about the use of the word “virgin” to describe a forest that’s never been logged? It’s a commonly used term. Dictionary.com, for instance, defines “virgin forest” this way: “a forest in its natural state, before it has been explored or exploited by man.” Still, I was […]
Wildlife
Posted inGoat
Biofuel crops invade gas tanks, habitat
From bindweed to tamarisk, invasive weeds are a scourge of many Western communities; certainly not something anyone wants more of. Yet a clause in newly proposed bill to promote biofuels energy may open up a loophole that would send federal dollars to pay farmers for planting and growing certain highly invasive plants as bioenergy feedstocks. […]
Posted inGoat
All noisy on the Western front
First, a bit of shameless self promotion: High Country News recently launched two brand new monthly podcasts! Rants from the Hill, the audio version of Michael Branch’s essays on life in Nevada’s high desert, which have appeared on our Range blog for the past year or so, will be available at the beginning of each month. […]
Posted inGoat
Snakes on a plain
Ever heard of The Orianne Society? I hadn’t either until I stumbled across their website recently while searching for “rattlesnakes” and “oil and gas development”. Founded in 2008, The Orianne Society is a relative newcomer to the wildlife conservation scene. Its mission: to conserve the world’s rare and imperiled reptiles and amphibians.
Posted inArticles
The sound of silence
There are few places left in the world where you can experience the sounds of nature uninterrupted by planes, cars, off-road vehicles. Scientists are now working to quantify the impact of all that noise on the natural world, and to monitor how soundscapes — the collection of sounds in a landscape made by critters, wind, […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Loggers give unique Oregon ponderosa pine a lifeline
On a gray February afternoon, rain falls in huge drops on Chuck Volz’s 65-acre property near Springfield, Ore. It drips from the brim of his faded camouflage baseball cap and rolls off his tan jacket as he walks down a muddy path crisscrossed by deer hoofprints. He stops at a young ponderosa pine and frowns: […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: field changes, from football to strawberries
For avid news hounds, this week saw some shake-ups, showing us that we can be ever surprised. Let’s start with the important stuff. TEBOW TRADED FROM THE DENVER BRONCOS! The West will lose Bronco quarterback Tim Tebow, whose “polarizing skill set” brought us some of the most memorable football moments of 2011. Thus, Tebowmania heads eastward, […]
Posted inWotr
Deadly handouts, dependent deer
My neighbor feeds deer. He says he’s actually feeding birds so that his disabled wife and her pre-teen daughter can enjoy watching them. But when he tosses chunks of stale white bread out in his front yard, it’s not just crows, ravens and starlings that come to call. (And why anyone would think it was […]
Posted inGoat
Carrots for conservation
A new conservation program that gives landowners incentives to improve habitat for lizard and prairie chicken.
Posted inRange
Wildlife on working lands get a leg up
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Rural landowners in the West, and in several states back East, just got a big incentive to protect seven vulnerable species on their property. Working Lands for Wildlife, a new partnership between the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was announced last week. The money […]
Posted inGoat
The mystery of Death Valley’s missing pupfish
Updated 3/12/12 3:01 p.m. The Devil’s Hole pupfish is arguably one of the cooler species around. These tiny iridescent blue fish, just a bit over an inch long, live in one place only, a deep pool in the Amargosa Valley of west Nevada, in a place called Ash Meadows, an outpost of California’s Death Valley […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: solar flares and hoot owls
Temperatures rose here in our home base of Paonia. Perhaps it was the solar flare. The dawning spring added a tinge of anxiousness to our office seats as thoughts of Frisbee and barbeque and mountain tipi trips distracted our work. Like many small rural towns, Paonia fosters diverse friendships. New social ecology research from Wellesley […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Predators aren’t the problem
It is a human problem that we would intentionally put imported and non-native livestock in areas that are a natural home to predators and then define the predators as problematic (HCN, 2/20/12, “Bears in sheepland”). As long as these sheep and grizzlies can share the same area without the bears being destroyed, keeping the Sheep […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Science, illuminated
I am writing to thank HCN and Hillary Rosner for the article “The Color of Bunny” (HCN, 2/6/12). This piece seems to me the epitome of good science writing. It lays out the questions the science is addressing and the reasons those questions are important. Moreover, it provides insight into the process of science — […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Black bears named “Blue,” pink Chinese dust
MONTANA A 200-pound black bear with a flair for home decorating denned this winter in the crawlspace beneath a family cabin at Georgetown Lake, west of Butte, Mont. Once dug in, the bear noticed the stairs and a trap door above it, reports the Billings Gazette, and proceeded to break open the door and wander […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: environmental antiheros and solar booms
Picking apart the news through the hurried swoosh of this stunted week, I leaned back in my rickety desk chair for a few minutes to consider which rugged individualist in this day and age concerns me more. Is it the ironman fugitive on snowshoes who vanished in the powdery woods of Southern Utah nine years […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
I don’t love my dog
There’s a dead fawn outside my front door. The sweet young body is completely covered in tall grass, which means this is a mountain lion kill, which means that the mountain lion responsible is going to come back for the next few mornings and nights to finish eating. I must admit that, although I’m reflexively […]
Posted inGoat
Of tooth, claw and plane: Making my peace with predator control
Updated 3/6/2012 A troubling item appeared in the news last month, troubling to this news consumer and, if they could read, troubling to the predators of Alaska. Out of a desire to save caribou, moose, elk and in particular musk oxen, the state’s Board of Game now allows state officials to shoot bears from planes […]
Posted inWotr
This is a winter of snowy owls
It took only two hours for me to reach the apparent miracle that was occurring near Flathead Lake in Polson, Mont.: Snowy owls had turned up here after flying all the way from the Arctic, and everybody in the town of about 4,000 seemed to know about it. I’d never seen these spectacular, two-foot-tall birds, […]
Posted inGoat
Evolve or die
Cross-posted from The Last Word on Nothing. Updated 2-21-2012 to correct image of chipmunk. Several years ago, on a soggy but majestic mountain afternoon, I hiked into the Yosemite backcountry to meet UC-Berkeley mammalogist Jim Patton. Patton and his colleagues at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology were retracing the steps of renowned naturalist Joseph Grinnell, […]