When the first winter storms buried northeast Montana last November, the thousands of pronghorn antelope that spent the summer around the state’s border with Alberta and Saskatchewan started making their way south. Normally, they move into the north side of the state’s Milk River valley and find enough sagebrush sticking out of the snow to […]
Wildlife
Posted inWotr
Ordinary wild
The cougar looks thin, his narrow belly dragging close to the ground as he slinks along. Paws as big as saucers on the oil-spotted concrete. Mouth agape in a terrified pant below wild, shifting eyes. Shifting at cars that whoosh by, shifting at men who flicker at the edge of his vision – some pursuing, […]
Posted inGoat
Fire and ice
Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice. Those opening lines of the old Robert Frost poem seem to apply to the West’s public lands this spring. As out-of-control wildfires scorch the Southwest, more northerly regions are still waiting for the snow to finish melting; both problems are shutting down forest access. […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Whither the ESA?
Thank you to HCN and Hal Herring for the outstanding article on wolves (HCN, 5/30/11)! I saw my first bald eagle in the wild in 1982, my first black-footed ferret in 1983, my first lynx in 1978, and my first wolf in 1980. Due to increased public awareness of the importance of these species and […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
God bless the “dickybird fellows”
I guess I’m really naive: I thought the only way environmentalists had ever gained any substantial ground in protecting places or species was by starting at the far-left extreme (HCN, 5/30/11). Unfortunately, if it wasn’t for “dickybird fellows” — as Professor Emeritus Valerius Geist from the University of Calgary called environmentalists in Hal Herring’s story […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
More Wolf side effects
One group that was not discussed in Hal Herring’s recent article on the delisting of wolves in the Northern Rockies were the non-ranching farmers, those who raise alfalfa, corn or other crops (HCN, 5/30/11). Elk damage to crops has been a serious issue in the West since elk numbers began recovering from overharvest years ago. […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
How the gray wolf lost its endangered status — and how enviros helped
Augusta, MontanaIn September of 1995, I worked on a trail-building crew along the edge of Little Blackfoot Meadows, in the Helena National Forest near Elliston, Mont. It was a big piece of roadless country, mostly lodgepole pines over a lush carpet of whortleberry bushes. The meadows were a sunburnt dun color, and the willows along […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
The One-Eyed Squirrel of Ooh-Aah Point
It was a mid-July morning during my fifth summer on Grand Canyon National Park’s trail crew, and I arrived at the worksite on the South Kaibab Trail to find an old woman — memory casts her with doughy white skin and frumpy teal-colored clothes — perched on a rock on the side of the trail. […]
Posted inGoat
Ordinary wild
The cougar looks thin, his narrow belly dragging close to the ground as he slinks along. Paws as big as saucers on the oil-spotted concrete. Mouth agape in a terrified pant below wild, shifting eyes. Shifting at cars that whoosh by, shifting at men who flicker at the edge of his vision — they’re clearly […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
Richard Reynolds, raptor man
The main cabin at Big Springs Field Station in northern Arizona’s Kaibab National Forest isn’t the prettiest; there’s paint chipping from the floors and mouse poop in the corners. But the decorations cost about $9 million and took 20 years to collect. Oversized graphs, tables, maps and aerial photos crowd each other for wall space. […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
Wolverines in unexpected places
On April 17, biologist Audrey Magoun and husband Pat Valkenburg discovered intriguing tracks in Oregon’s snowy Wallowa Mountains. Five days later, Magoun downloaded photos from a remote camera and realized the creature had company: Two hungry wolverines stared back from her screen, gnashing hunks of bait meat. It’s the first confirmed evidence of Oregon wolverines […]
Posted inGoat
Lead bullets find a champion in Tester
Last January, three endangered California condors were found dead in Arizona. The cause of death: lead poisoning. After eating carrion riddled with spent lead ammunition, the birds’ digestive systems likely shut down, starving them to death. Since condor reintroduction began in Arizona in 1996, 15 have died of lead poisoning; in California, 18 condors have […]
Posted inWotr
It may be High Noon for tumbleweed
Conjure up the lonesome sound of a harmonica in a dusty Western town where gunmen with jingling spurs reach for their six-shooters at high noon. The scene would be incomplete without a few tumbleweeds rolling past. But here’s the truth: Tumbleweed doesn’t belong on the Western plains. An exotic also known as Russian thistle, it […]
Posted inRange
To shoot, or not to shoot, at Rocky Mountain NP
By Larry Keller, 05-17-2011 The elk of Rocky Mountain National Park are wildlife’s couch potatoes. Rather than roam widely throughout the 415-square-mile park and the land outside it, they are content to laze around in meadows, eating, sleeping and mating. With no predators, they can afford to be slackers. Many of them saunter into the […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Get rid of the grass, or else
For years, I owned vacant beachfront property in California. Every February I would receive notice from the local fire department to weed my property and make certain there was no pampas grass (HCN, 4/18/11) on it, else the fire department would do it for me and charge an outrageous fee. I was impressed that the […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Yellowstone bison get more room to roam
Updated 5/13/11 Two extra-wide, ankle-busting, road-blocking cattle-guards; 900 feet of jackleg fencing tied into rock outcroppings and other natural obstacles; a handful of heavy-duty gates: All to ensure that Yellowstone’s renowned wild bison can roam more freely than they have in years. Starting in full next winter, the animals will be permitted on 75,000 acres […]
Posted inGoat
On the move in Yosemite
During one of my all-time favorite reporting trips, in the summer of 2005, I hiked through a chilly Yosemite rainstorm to meet up with University of California-Berkeley mammalogist Jim Patton. Patton — a veteran field biologist with more shipwreck stories than any one person should have — was retracing the century-old steps of Joseph Grinnell, […]
Posted inGoat
An endangered species truce
The Jemez Mountains salamander: 28 years. The New Mexico meadow jumping mouse: 26 years. The lesser prairie chicken: 13 years. That’s how long these three species have been awaiting potential listing under the Endangered Species Act; there are 248 other species in the Act’s virtual antechamber too, and half have been languishing there for more […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Invasive ignorance
It’s so hard to get the public to take invasive plants seriously and to avoid using and spreading them (HCN, 4/18/11). I’m disappointed with the scarcity of native plants and the availability of invasives at many nurseries. It’s just like grocery stores selling seafood that’s on the Red List of Threatened Species. However, there has […]