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 […]
Wildlife
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 […]
Posted inRange
A future of jellyfish?
Consumers and scholars alike find themselves adrift in a sea of contested claims about the state of oceans, fisheries, and fish. It is a symptom of an era in which we are overwhelmed by the pace and scope of change. We are utterly reliant on complex systems to supply both the commodities that sustain our […]
Posted inGoat
Wolverines in the Wallowas
After almost two decades of silence, the North American wolverine (Gulo gulo) is confirmed to be back on the prowl in the mountains of Oregon. Two of the feisty carnivores, dubbed “Iceman” and “Stormy,” were caught on remote camera feasting on hunks of bait meat in the Wallowa Mountains — the first verified wolverine sightings […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Today’s garden plants can be tomorrow’s invasives
On a misty summer morning, ecologist Christy Brigham sinks down to the sand at Point Mugu State Park, part of the patchwork of federal, state and private lands in Los Angeles County’s Santa Monica Mountains. She watches a darkling beetle forage among rare dune plants — lacy, lavender sand verbenas and beach primroses, which resemble […]
Posted inGoat
More desert tortoises found at Mojave solar project
On Friday, April 15, the Bureau of Land Management issued a notice ordering the “immediate temporary suspension of activities” for part of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station construction site in the Mojave Desert (see HCN story “High Noon,” May 9, 2009). The reason: More desert tortoises, a federally threatened species, have been found in […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
A textbook recovery
This letter is in response to an online-only piece from our community blog, the Range, entitled: Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? You’d be hard-pressed to find a biologist who would characterize the Northern Rockies wolf population as anything other than recovered. This is a textbook case of how recovery is supposed to work. […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Gone wolf-crazy
This letter is in response to an online-only piece from our community blog, the Range, entitled: Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? As an ecologist, it’s frustrating to see so many folks so wolf-crazy. Don’t get me wrong: I like wolves. I remember all the times I’ve seen wolves fondly. But, as Smith says, […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Quit yer whinin’
This letter is in response to an online-only piece from our community blog, the Range, entitled: Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? In all the years that this hysteria against wolves has gone on and escalated, it’s impossible not to conclude that it comes from some really scary (and scared) pathology, an atavistic enmity […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
The “ribbit” heard ’round the world
Your piece on the Pacific chorus frog was a nice tribute to this amphibian survivor and its champions (HCN, 3/21/2011). Mention of its “ribbits” — only males call — deserves amplification. In 1951, Stanford University professor George Myers published an article in which he noted how the movie industry had spread the call of this […]
Posted inGoat
Western pine beetles munch eastward
Now that the mountain pine beetle has chewed through some 70,000 square miles of forest in the western States and Canada, it seems the voracious pest is expanding its palate. Beetles in Canada were recently discovered attacking jack pines (Pinus banksiana) for the first time, a break from their usual diet of lodgepole (Pinus contorta), […]
Posted inRange
Colorado may extend bear season
Colorado’s official state mammal is the bighorn sheep, but if you go by which wild critter gets the most attention from state government lately, it would be the black bear. In 1992, state voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative which eliminated the spring bear-hunting season by outlawing bear hunting between March 1 and Sept. 1. The […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Critter contraceptives
In the 1960s, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service researchers used hormone-laced bait to prevent New Mexico coyotes, the “little bad guys of the Western Plains,” from reproducing so effectively. It worked pretty well: Up to 80 percent of treated females didn’t get pregnant. But those females had to consume meds repeatedly throughout the breeding cycle, […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Don’t plant a pest
Some of the worst invasive ornamental plants, where they’re found in California and their ecological damage rating Giant reed, ArundoFound in: Riparian areas; central west, great valley, northwest, Sierra Nevada, southwest, Sonoran and Mojave deserts.Ecological damage rating: High Fountain grassFound in: Coastal dunes and scrub, chaparral, grasslands; central west, great valley, southwest, Mojave and Sonoran […]