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 […]
Wildlife
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
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 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 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 […]
Posted inWotr
Alien life, it turns out, is much closer than Mars
Driving out Highway 167 north of California’s salty Mono Lake, you whiz by a jeep trail that heads for a crescent shore known as Ten Mile Beach. Few people find it, fewer still swim there. Once the bottom of the lake, this wide beach was gradually exposed as Los Angeles diverted the lake’s tributaries, starting […]
Posted inWotr
Yes to wolves, but not so many
As a hunter, conservationist and also a supporter of wolves taking their rightful place in the West, I take issue with the position of most environmental groups on this matter. By just about every scientific metric, wolves have recovered in the Northern Rocky Mountains. At last count, we had a wolf population of 1,700 plus […]
Posted inRange
When emotion drives the wolf debate, research suffers
By Steve Bunk, 1-27-11 All the information out there, informed and uninformed, surely has raised awareness that wolves are important to many of us, whether by their presence or absence. But how good are we at recognizing and using accurate information to shape our opinions? As a former science journalist, what’s become clear in the […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Llamas and coyotes and bears, oh my
THE WEST We’ve always relished the anecdote about the brand-new Wyoming congressman who made the mistake of bringing his border collie to Washington, D.C. Border collies originally hail from the English-Scottish borderlands, and they are super-smart and quintessentially alert: They live to round up animals, including ducks and people — virtually anything that moves if […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2011: Serendipity in the Desert
The latest: Northern spotted owl
Update on HCN’s coverage of owl management in the Northwest
Posted inGoat
Canis lupus update
“People freak out, flat-out freak out, when a wolf shows up.” That’s Douglas Smith, leader of the Yellowstone wolf project, quoted in our story last year (“Prodigal Dogs“) about the return of gray wolves to Colorado. And some people freak out enough to kill roaming wolves, despite the penalty — up to a $100,000 fine […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2011: Serendipity in the Desert
Lessons from coyote country
After reading “Trickster moves to town,” I came to the conclusion that a lot of people who live in or near coyote country have little understanding of what it means to coexist with wild animals (HCN, 12/20/10). I lived in a subdivision southeast of Santa Fe, N.M., for more than 10 years and had numerous […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2011: Serendipity in the Desert
Trickster’s territory
The self-important folks of Greenwood Village need an emergency dose of irony — and quick (HCN, 12/20/10)! Continuing that ignoble American tradition of forcing the indigenous off their land, they really can’t complain when Mr. Trickster tries to take back what is rightfully his. I must say, Mr. Coyote is far more patient and understanding […]