Editor’s note: These stories were produced for High Country News by students in the University of Montana’s online news class. They will be running over a period of two weeks in the Range blog. See a list of all the stories here. By Rachel Seidensticker Plastic netting lines the winding gravel road at the MPG […]
Wildlife
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Growing grizzly population conflicts with USDA sheep research station
The recovery of Yellowstone’s grizzly bears has been remarkable. When the species was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, there were just 136 wandering in and around the national park. Now, there are more than 600. And though a federal court confirmed in November that the population should remain protected, it’s […]
Posted inWotr
It’s time 23,000 elk got off the dole
In western Wyoming, feeding elk seems as normal as long winters, Grand Teton views and oil and gas wells. But of the 1 million elk that now roam North America, only 3 percent are fed by government employees, and three-fourths of those animals are fed in Wyoming at the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole, […]
Posted inRange
Tribes use funds to restore westslope cutthroat trout
Editor’s note: These stories were produced for High Country News by students in the University of Montana’s online news class. They will be running over a period of two weeks in the Range blog. See a list of all the stories here. By Russell Greenfield On the west-facing foothills of the Mission Mountain Wilderness, about […]
Posted inGoat
Good news for pine, bad news for spruce
For years now, towns in the Mountain West have watched as the green needles of their surrounding lodgepole pine forests turned a burnt orange. That orange signifies the tree’s death from pine bark beetle, a native pest whose populations have been boosted by climate change, resulting in the killing of enormous swaths of trees across […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
A young wolf wanders the West
As 2011 came to a close, a wolf that biologists call “OR-7” made history by loping across the Oregon border into Northern California. He was the first wild wolf seen in that state since 1924. But that’s only one of OR-7’s milestones. Two months earlier, he became the first wolf in over 50 years to […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
John Mionczynski: naturalist, accordionist, and Bigfoot expert
ATLANTIC CITY, WYOMINGOn an overcast August afternoon, John Mionczynski is crouched underneath an aspen by the porch of his one-room log cabin, attending to his motorcycle’s broken headlight. Over 30 years ago, he assembled this machine using pieces from four different BMWs — a 1951, ’53, ’63 and ’65. He named it “Serendipity.” “Whenever I […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
Captivity, clarified
We would like to provide a more thorough insight into our facility, the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center, than was presented in “Possessing the Wild” (HCN, 11/14/11). The author’s description of our tour guides “tossing treats into wolves’ enclosures to hear their jaws snap shut” was a misinterpretation. We do not put our animals on […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
The suburban squeeze
I find the perilous journey across Wyoming’s energy fields to be far less harmful to the well-being of pronghorns than the rampant development along Colorado’s Front Range and elimination of their habitat entirely (HCN, 12/12/11 & 1/9/12, “Perilous Passages”). Try finding a pronghorn anywhere south and west of Greeley, in a huge range that they […]
Posted inRange
Alaska wildlife woes raise red flags “outside”
Anyone who cares about wildlife should pay attention to a scandal unfolding in Alaska. Earlier this month, Alaska Fish & Game Division of Wildlife Conservation director Corey Rossi resigned under allegations that he systematically falsified bear hunting records and violated guiding regulations shortly before being appointed to the agency in 2008. If convicted, Rossi is […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: industry grows and species croak
Updated 1/27/2012 Breaking: Presidential candidate Marvin E. Quasniki, from the Henson Company, kicked off his Nevada tour this week. He’s a puppet from Nevada, a turquoise farmer from Tonopah and a crude entrenchment of old ideas whom you don’t completely trust speaking around your children. ENERGY Water’s a key element of the nuclear energy equation. […]
Posted inWotr
Feeding the deer
I live in a California mountain town that’s perched on a ridge that ascends toward the higher Sierras. The place was initially called Dogtown, and it boasts the distinction of being the site where California’s biggest-ever gold nugget was found. The town was supposed to be called “Magnolia,” but the poor spelling and/or penmanship of […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
What the flock?
I just finished reading HCN’s Dec. 12th issue, and discovered, on the back page, within Betsy Marston’s letter-perfect column no less, the unexpected: an aggregation of sheep referred to as a “herd.” “Holy sufferin’ sheep dip,” I blurted. “How can it be?” But then as I backtracked through the same report, I discovered that I’d […]
Posted inRange
Home, home on … a significant portion of its range
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House There’s potentially change in the works for the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the public can weigh in on it through February 7. The proposed draft rule by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA)—the two federal […]
Posted inGoat
Sheep vs. bear, agency vs. agency
In many ways, the tale of Yellowstone’s grizzly bears is one of remarkable success. When the species was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, there may have been as few as 136 of the bruins wandering in and around Yellowstone National Park. By 2006, there were more than 500, and in […]
Posted inGoat
Video of trapped bobcat riles Las Vegas
If you’re interested in how animals struggle when they’re caught by trappers — and how trappers think and act — here you go: This video was made by Tracy Truman, a lawyer and longtime trapper who serves as an adviser on “wildlife matters” to the Clark County government (around Las Vegas) and the Nevada Wildlife […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Words and Clouds
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Our corner of the western Great Basin is tucked into the rain shadow of the Sierra crest, which knocks the bottom out of those big, wet storms that rise in the Pacific and cross […]
Posted inGoat
Genetically modified or no, farmed salmon a risky proposition
Get ready, folks: A genetically modified salmon, AquAdvantage, may soon be approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in U.S. commercial fish farming. That is, assuming that an opposition bill that made it halfway through Congress last session doesn’t derail the 15-year permitting process, and fierce opposition from environmental groups doesn’t convince the […]
Posted inGoat
Ungulate roundup
As 2012 begins, the various native ungulate species of the West are getting transplanted to new turf – and thinned out by diseases on their home ranges. Here’s a roundup of recent news about bighorns, pronghorns, deer, elk and bison. In southern Colorado, recently-transplanted desert bighorn have joined forces with an existing bighorn band. In […]