You wipe the sweat out of your eyes with a sap-stiffened glove, clinging tightly with your other hand to the one live branch, thick as a hammer handle, that is keeping you up here and alive, 30 feet or so above the rocky earth, while your boots struggle to balance on twigs and your knees […]
Wildlife
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Tribes try selective fishing to boost catch without harming wild salmon
“Power up!” yells Capt. James Ives as a pulley motor begins hauling a heavy fishing net onto the Dream Catcher‘s deck, here on the Columbia River in northeastern Washington. Three crewmembers from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation fold the net, piling its floats on one side of the boat and pleating its lead-weighted […]
Posted inGoat
A caribou rescue?
About a decade ago, I spent one lucky summer traipsing through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with six other young women. Towards the end of our trip, caribou began trickling through the valleys. ” ‘Bou!” we’d point and shout almost every time we glimpsed one. We knew what was coming: Thousands upon thousands would soon […]
Posted inGoat
Autopsy of an Aspen
Cross-posted from The Last Word on Nothing. In the rural Rocky Mountains where I live, we disagree about a lot of things — politics, religion, water, Tim Tebow — but we all agree on aspen. We love them, especially when they turn blaze-yellow in the fall, and we’d like them to stick around. So in […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
A ‘ragtag team’ of scientists, rangers and citizens works to save whitebarks
Our management of whitebark pine has a melancholy history, shaped by ignorance and mistakes as well as by the determination to rescue a species we have sent into a downward spiral. Foresters accidentally introduced white pine blister rust, an Asian fungous disease, to North America around 1900, by importing infected pine seedlings for tree plantations. […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Inside the world of whitebarks
The climbers Whitebark pinecone-pickers are working in at least 19 national forests, three national parks and some wildlife refuges, as well as some Canadian forests, in the hope that the seeds they obtain can be used to grow whitebark pines that are resistant to white pine blister rust — and perhaps, if the research progresses […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Bearly hanging on in the North Cascades
The following two comments were posted at hcn.org in response to Nathan Rice’s feature story, “The Forgotten Grizzlies” (HCN, 11/14/11). “The forgotten grizzlies” seems to suggest two things: (1) More research would somehow improve the chance for the grizzly bear to come in to the North Cascades. (2) More money would somehow allow the introduction […]
Posted inWotr
A ski town contributes mightily to paleontology
One morning last July, as Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper looked on, scientists supervised the hoisting of a 10,000-pound cast of a Columbia mammoth skeleton — rocks included — onto a flatbed truck for shipment to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. After 60 days of intense digging, the scientists and scores of volunteers attracted […]
Posted inWotr
A frantic lion meets the border wall
I recently moved from Sasabe, Ariz., a tiny town located next to the border wall dividing the United States from Mexico. The wall was built of bars 15 feet tall and looked like a long prison cell. It ran four miles east until it hit an arroyo on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and […]
Posted inGoat
Mining claim markers kill thousands of Nevada birds
From the unintended consequences department comes a sad tale of dying birds in Nevada mining country. Across the Silver State, hundreds of thousands of plastic pipes used to mark mining claims kill untold thousands of birds, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Birds fly into the pipes looking for a place to nest and, unable […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Parsing ‘Pristine’
The thing that bothered me most about Emma Marris’ essay was the suggestion toward the end that we should “look to the future and create more nature instead of clinging to disappearing scraps of seemingly untouched land” (HCN, 10/6/2011, “The mirage of the pristine”). How exactly does she propose that we go about creating nature? […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Western game wardens go after poachers
A thick autumn snowfall still carpeted the ground when Colorado district wildlife manager Tom Knowles got the tip that put him on the trail of the “Missouri boys.” The informant, a hunter named Michael Xavier, said that three men who had licenses only for cow elk had killed at least one bull elk in Rio […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
The forgotten North Cascades grizzly bear
Scott Fitkin started his career chasing ghost bears. As a biologist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in the late ’80s, he stalked grizzly bear sightings in the Cascade Mountains. Over two decades, he verified a few tracks but never glimpsed a grizzly or even a photograph of one. Until this June. That’s […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Behind the scenes in the lives of captive wolves
When we started the 2 o’clock tour at the Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center in the mountains above Colorado Springs, the wolves were napping, just as wild wolves do in the middle of the day. A woman in jeans and cowboy boots served as guide for our group — eight random travelers, most of whom […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Daniel Marlos shares his knowledge and love of the insect world
In early June, Daniel Marlos, an eccentric, cherubic-faced Los Angeleno, received an intriguing message from a friend: “If there weren’t two little, scrawny legs, I wouldn’t think it was a living thing!” she said, describing a creature loitering on her porch. She emailed Marlos a photo of a tawny, wingless insect, its legs cartoonishly splayed […]
Posted inRange
Jack rabbit surprises
A small mention in a column in my local newspaper last week sent me scurrying to Google and other databases to find out more. The topic? A recent decline in the black-tailed jack rabbit (Lepus californicus) population. Okay, it’s not that I’ve ever been all that interested in jack rabbits, though now I’m kind of ashamed of that. […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Forgotten Fossils
On page 3 of the recent issue appear “snapshots” of four national park units’ paleontological resources (HCN, 10/17/11, “A fossil-fueled survey”). Among those highlighted is the 2010 discovery of Barnum Brown’s dinosaur dig sites in Big Bend National Park. After six years as chief ranger of that park (1977-’82), I was assigned to Buffalo National […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
In the weeds
Amy Whitcomb’s essay really puts the job of eliminating invasive weeds from federal lands into perspective (HCN, 10/17/11, “Among the processes of place”). I have been doing the same for the National Park Service since 2006, traveling all over the Southwest, mostly trying to eliminate tamarisk (saltcedar) and Russian olive. Currently, I am in the […]