For the six months or so of the year that grizzly bears are active, they have one thing on their mind: food. And they need lots of it. To survive the long winter months of hibernation, a four- to six-hundred-pound adult grizzly bear must be constantly eating whenever it has the chance, a process known […]
Wildlife
Posted inGoat
Oh deer
For the last 10 years, Western Ecosystems Technology, Inc. — an environmental and statistical consulting group — has been studying the mule deer that winter on the Pinedale Anticline. Over the first four years of the study, But the latest data, just released in a new report [pdf], makes those increases look like a temporary […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Once I caught a fish thi-i-i-i-i-s big
UTAH There he was, an eight-point buck, stranded on a narrow ledge five feet above Lake Powell. What could two law enforcement officers — one from Utah, the other from the Glen Canyon National Monument — do? They didn’t want to tranquilize the mule deer, so after making it leap into the water, the two […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Them! and Us
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Some of you may be fortunate—or perhaps unfortunate—enough to recall the 1954 science fiction film Them!, which, much like Earth First!, had the audacity to include the exclamation point in its title. A classic […]
Posted inOctober 1, 2010: Dancing with Climate Change
The birds and the bee(tle)s
The end of a controversial tamarisk biocontrol program may be good news for habitat
Posted inRange
Feline justice
Life is full of many painful decisions, but ending a beloved pet’s life has got to be right up there among the worst. Last Saturday morning saw us staring at x-rays on a monitor in our vet’s office, dutifully listening to her description of the effects of fluid on the lungs and dreading where all […]
Posted inGoat
The woodpecker and the owl
How is a black-backed woodpecker like a spotted owl? Well, if an environmental group has its way, the woodpecker will join the owl as a species whose protection changes forest management on a broad scale. The spotted owl, which depends on old-growth forests, was federally listed as threatened in 1990. Subsequently, logging across the Northwest […]
Posted inGoat
A Wyoming wonder
In 1999, we published a feature story that followed biologist Jonathan Proctor around the northern Great Plains as he tried to convince ranchers that prairie dogs are beneficial for their land. Proctor’s a tall guy, but his task was undoubtedly taller, if not colossally unrealistic. Affectionately termed “range rats” by some, prairie dogs are one […]
Posted inRange
Another angle on wolves
Chip Ward, who used to write for High Country News, has just published an informative piece on wolf recovery in Yellowstone — essentially calling it a success story that nobody appears to want to take credit for. One interesting angle: Wolves improve the water supply. How? When there are no wolves to worry about, elk […]
Posted inRange
Native discovery could save important fish
The scientific discovery of an ancient stress hormone by a tribal member could lead to the survival of the most ancient of the native fish in the Pacific Northwest, the Pacific lamprey, an eel like fish that evolved more than 500 million years ago. David Close, Ph.D. is a Cayuse and a member of the […]
Posted inWotr
Some neighbors behave like boors
Every year, they break into hundreds of homes on the northwest shores of Lake Tahoe in California, and once inside, they leave destruction in their wake — not to mention piles of poop. Homeowners, frantic to protect their castles, employ elaborate schemes to thwart these powerful animals. They buy mechanical dogs that bark at anything […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Beyond beefalo
By the end of the 19th century, North America’s many millions of bison were reduced to just a few hundred. They’ve since recovered to around a half million, most raised as livestock and crossbred with cattle. Now conservationists manage over 60 herds, such as the one at the American Prairie Reserve in Montana, to restore […]
Posted inRange
Mystery Salmon
Pull up to any fish buying station in the Salish Sea and you will likely spy many stupid grins. The reason, as Mary Ellen Walling crowed last week, is that “The Sockeye are back!” The news is as good as it gets in this long suffering fishery. In the last few decades sockeye runs have […]
Posted inBlog
Adopt-a-gelding?
I’ve been thinking about horses lately. Actually, I think about horses a lot, often when I should be thinking about something else, like work. Usually my thoughts involve my eccentric gelding, Rex, and other horses that I know. However, some recent coverage of the wild horse roundups in Nevada and California has reminded me of […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Kind words for a much-maligned mammal
The Wolverine WayDouglas Chadwick278 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Patagonia Books, 2010. Wolverines do not have a romantic history. Early trappers and pioneers loathed these carnivores for their elusive, gnarly behavior. Tall tales were told about vicious, crotchety beasts hunting humans in the woods, and by the early part of the 20th century, traps and poisons had ravaged […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Righteous gluttony
In the produce section of the grocery store the other day, I saw apricots on sale for 99 cents a pound. They sat in a bin between grapes from Chile and cherries from the Flathead Valley of Montana. I don’t know where the apricots came from. I selected six and put them in the shopping […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Up fur debate
Steel-jaws, conibears, snares: Endangered species and pets in the West have been injured and killed by these “body-gripping” traps, triggering a wave of recent public concern. After six Mexican wolves were hurt in New Mexico, leaving two with leg amputations (including AM871, alpha male of the Middle Fork Pack, captured by a trail cam at […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Murmuration intimidation
WASHINGTON A bank officer who has earned the title “Duck Man” did it again for the third year in a row in Spokane: He saved the day by helping ducks fly away. Joel Armstrong watched a nest outside his office window until he realized that the ducklings were itching to take off. But the little […]
Posted inRange
Spread of Bighorn Sheep Pneumonia Continues
By Jule Banville, NewWest.net guest blogger 8-23-10 The deadly spread of pneumonia in Montana’s bighorn sheep population picked up momentum west of Anaconda, where a hunter alerted Fish, Wildlife & Parks of possible disease in the Lost Creek population. Biologists killed four sheep and confirmed through lab work they were infected. FWP announced the latest […]
Posted inRange
From payment to prevention
Restoring wolves to their native habitat in the West hasn’t been easy. Some were opposed to the idea from the start, including ranchers who already viewed wild predators as a threat to their livelihoods. That’s why compensating ranchers for losses to wolves was an integral part of promoting tolerance, even before wolves were reintroduced. Wolves […]