The U.S. Senate last Friday proposed a 350-page budget bill with one particularly furry paragraph: Section 1709. Before the end of the 60-day period beginning on the date of enactment of this division, the Secretary of the Interior shall reissue the final rule published on April 2, 2009 (74 Fed. Reg. 15123 et seq.) without […]
Wildlife
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Life after lava
Biological diversity thrives around Mount St. Helens
Posted inGoat
Mustang management gets an overhaul
Roughly 37,000 wild horses and burros roam the West’s public lands — about 40 percent more than the feds think those lands can sustain. But the Bureau of Land Management’s efforts to round them up and adopt them out have been costly, ineffective and unpopular, with critics charging that horses are unnecessarily harmed and even […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Western wildlife commissions on the chopping block
In Washington and New Mexico, state wildlife commissions could become a thing of the past. As part of their budget-trimming measures, both states’ legislatures are considering bills that would do away with the commissions’ power to set regulations and policy for managing fish and wildlife. In theory, wildlife commissions, found in every Western state, allow […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Wild lives and wildlife
IDAHO Some poachers don’t understand the meaning of the word, or maybe they just can’t accept that they can be caught in the act. Rex Rammell, a Republican who recently ran for governor of Idaho, was stopped by a state Fish and Game agent last November just as he was hauling out an elk he’d […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Jeff Rice on documenting the West in sound
Hear the sounds Jeff Rice collects around the West and learn about why he does it. You can catch High Country Views approximately every other week. Available via our RSS feed, and for download now through iTunes.
Posted inGoat
First Signs of Spring
We asked our HCN Facebook community what signs of spring they were seeing (or looking for) in their corner of the West. Several of you mentioned birds, including western meadowlarks — which have already started singing in earnest here in Western Colorado — sandhill cranes and and mountain bluebirds. Beth Pratt, who took the photo […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Jeff Rice collects nature’s noises
Some people collect butterflies. Others amass dolls or antique cars. Armed with a microphone and recorder, Jeff Rice chases the West’s natural sounds — from the hooting of owls to the buzzing of Great Basin rattlesnakes. A relative newcomer to nature field recording, Rice worked in audio production for about 15 years. As a radio […]
Posted inRange
Forests will recover from pine beetle
If you took a survey to determine the most unpopular insect in the Rocky Mountains, the answer might well be not the disease-carrying wood tick, but the mountain pine beetle. Actually, it wouldn’t even be close, because the tick is an eight-legged arachnid, like a spider, rather than a six-legged insect. And it’s the pine […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
How my thoughts on wolves have changed
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA The wolves that periodically venture into the valley behind my home are blood-thirsty killers. That’s what I admire about them. They evolved to near perfection in their ecological niche, and they are lucky. They are not forced to contemplate whether their lifestyle serves nature well. People, well: People are different. Our greatest evolutionary […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Palin, politics, and Alaska predator control
On the day we fly to Game Management Unit 16, the sun is shining and the air is crisp and the mountains glint from their summits. Out the side window of the Alaska Wildlife Trooper Supercub, 20,320-foot Mount McKinley, also known as Denali, gleams through a ribbon of cumulous. Up front, past Sgt. Mark Agnew’s […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Audio librarian Jeff Rice captures the sounds of the West
Jeff Rice discusses how he collects sound and plays some of the sounds from the Western Soundscape Archive
Posted inRange
Climate Models Suggest Tough Future for Wolverines
By Kylee Perez, 2-17-11 Wolverines are notoriously difficult to find in the wild. As climate change begins to threaten their dens in the United States, researchers say the animals could become even more rare. New studies from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the U.S. Forest service suggest that climate change will begin to […]
Posted inRange
Will new brucellosis rules let the bison roam?
by Holly Fretwell As hundreds of bison make their annual winter migration out of Yellowstone National Park, most are hazed back into the park. Others are captured, quarantined, and occasionally slaughtered. This year, more than 500 bison are being held by state and federal officials. If the bison test positive for brucellosis, a disease that […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Cultural exchange
OREGON Someday, there may be a Disney movie based on a black bear named Windfall who didn’t know she was a bear because she was brought up to be a princess, doted on by two loggers in the dense backwoods of Coos County, Ore. Writing in the Medford Mail Tribune, Mark Freeman says the father-son […]
Posted inGoat
“What’s good for the rancher is good for the grouse”
Last spring, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the greater sage grouse deserved listing under the Endangered Species Act, but declined to extend federal protections because resources were limited and other species were in more peril. At the time, the decision looked like the kind of politically savvy, centrist maneuver that has become […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West – Image 5
At about 4 p.m. every Winter afternoon, a small herd of mule deer meanders from the sagebrush and snow-clad flanks of Western Colorado’s Mt. Lamborn onto the numerous irrigated pastures below. There, they eat everything they can — dried grass, alfalfa and exotic weeds — to combat the nightly cold and the lingering effects […]
