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 […]
Wildlife
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 […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
The perilous journey of Wyoming’s migrating pronghorn
On a blustery spring day, I crouched behind sagebrush at the edge of the Green River in western Wyoming, waiting for pronghorn to pass by on their northern migration. Occasional snowflakes fluttered into the steel-colored water. I pulled my arms inside my down jacket, zipped to the chin. Hours went by. Then, across the river, […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Protecting wildlife corridors remains more theory than practice
updated Dec. 30, 3011 Every May for the past five years, Jackson Hole, Wyo., has celebrated the return of 300 or so Antilocapra americana to nearby Grand Teton National Park. The revelry is not just to honor the animals for completing their remarkable 120-mile-long seasonal migration. It also salutes a Herculean communal effort: the 2008 […]
Posted inGoat
Insects — the neglected 99 percent
This December, the Xerces Society celebrated its 40th anniversary. Not bad for a group that champions the spineless. No, the Xerces Society isn’t a fraternity of bank executives or mortgage lenders. It’s a Portland, Oregon-based non-profit dedicated to the protection of invertebrates, animals that lack a physical (rather than metaphorical) backbone. Animals like earthworms, bumblebees, […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Of (captive) wolves and men
“Possessing the Wild” illustrated two truths: First, the birth of any wolf into captivity is a tragedy (HCN, 11/14/11). Despite their close genetic relationship to dogs, wolves are not suited to living with people. Second, there is no universal captive wolf or wolf-dog experience. The vast majority of animals do not live in the facilities […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Stitching habitat together across public and private lands
In October 1983, ahead of an unusually harsh winter, groups of pronghorn in south-central Wyoming began what should have been a routine journey to their sage-freckled winter range on the Red Rim near Rawlins. But a newly completed, five-foot-tall, 28-mile-long woven wire fence blocked the way. Rancher Taylor Lawrence said he’d erected it around the […]
