Highlights from wildlife busts on the Western front
Wildlife
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
The Butterfly Sting
How a federal wildlife agent brought down one of the world’s most notorious insect thieves.
Posted inGoat
The Trouble with Wilbur
There’s nothing like a feral pig to blur the line between free food and pest management. Days after the Arizona Daily Star published a map showing feral pig populations around the state (along with a note that Arizona doesn’t require licenses for hunting feral pigs), a dozen hunting parties converged on one of the hot […]
Posted inGoat
Oh, deer
Living where “the deer and the antelope roam” may be fine in theory, but I’d prefer that the roaming happen somewhere besides my small back yard. Alas, this winter and spring, muley doe and two fawns appear back there with some regularity — two or three times a week. It’s not as though […]
Posted inWotr
Winterkill
Not far from where I live, in northwestern Montana, the land opens up and the people disappear. Skiing through tall trees toward a ridge, we see two ravens chasing a magpie through a glade up ahead. A moment later, three bald eagles appear, all sitting at the very top of trees. These normally quiet woods […]
Posted inGoat
Big cats come and go
In early March, a mountain lion chased a Jack Russell terrier into a house near Salida, Colo., surprising a woman and her five-year-old son, who sat coloring with crayons at the kitchen table. Luckily, they were able to dash into a bedroom. When Division of Wildlife officials arrived and subdued the lion, they found the […]
Posted inRange
Hunting season may be over but wolves are hardly in the clear
Yesterday marked the close of the first official hunting season for wolves ever to take place in America’s lower 48 states. More than 250 wolves were killed as a result of Montana and Idaho’s hunting seasons and more than twice that number have been killed overall since wolves lost federal protections in May of 2009. […]
Posted inGoat
Grasshopper plague expected this summer
Fires, floods, drought, blizzards, avalanches — life in the West can be rather challenging. And now a plague of locusts. Well, not exactly. Just plain old grasshoppers, whose population has been growing in parts of the West, and might peak this year, causing hundreds millions of dollars in crop and other damage. The population boom […]
Posted inRange
HCN Reader Photo: Spring blooms
We asked readers to add images of spring to our Flickr pool, and you graciously obliged. This picture, from user lenfwilcox, is of an aprium blossom in Fresno, California. Aprium, we understand, is a cross between an apricot and a plum. It sounds delicious and looks delightful! Continue sharing your images with us on Flickr; […]
Posted inWotr
Nevada hunters need to study their Aldo Leopold
Question: When does a state wildlife commission turn into a death commission? Answer: When it does what Nevada did last December. That’s when the Nevada Wildlife Commission approved a $212,000 raid on the state’s Heritage Fund, a reserve dedicated to wildlife conservation projects. But instead of conservation, the Nevada Wildlife Commission redirected the Heritage Fund […]
Posted inRange
Wolf conflict, take 452
Outfitters and ranchers often complain that environmental advocacy groups harness money from urban coastal dwellers to interfere in the lives of hard-working westerners. What if this money was harnessed instead through a program similar to the duck stamp initiative, in which those concerned about protecting carnivores pay into a fund that would directly assist communities […]
Posted inRange
HCN Reader Photo: Eagle in Winter
After a bit of a hiatus, we’ve reinstated our weekly reader photo with this inspiring image from Paul Larmer. Add your photos to our HCN reader pool on Flickr.
Posted inGoat
Name that fish
Quah-rah, Ulken, Anchovies, Olthen’, All-Can, Uth-le-chan, Uthulhuns, othlecan, ulichan, fathom-fish, Oulachan, “those little finny swarming beings of the deep,” Oolá-han, uthlecan, ulluchans, Ulachans, oolachan, Hoolakans, Hooligan . . . If this list is any indication, frontiersmen had a hell of a time figuring out what, precisely, to call this thing. In 1856, when Dr. William […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
Ewe-haul
About 50 years ago, state wildlife officials decided to try to restore bighorn sheep to Wyoming’s Seminoe Mountains. Between 1958 and 1985, they brought in six new batches — 236 total — from the more prolific Whiskey Mountain herd to the northwest. But the Seminoe herd failed to sustain itself, and by last fall, there […]
Posted inGoat
Ladybugs and Lear
I ran into an article today about “a harbinger of bad insulation . . . good fortune and an early spring,” which stirred a memory from a few years ago, an episode out of doors. On a Friday in September, three friends and I drove east from Reno on I-80 into the Nevada desert to […]
Posted inRange
Sage Grouse Must Wait
Ever spent hours waiting for assistance in a doctor’s office while other, more urgent patients were seen first? Then you can imagine how some of us feel about Friday’s decision to leave the sage grouse hanging about in the waiting room. On March 5, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) concluded that the sage grouse, […]
Posted inGoat
No ESA for sage grouse
You might be all in a tizzy about whether Avatar or Hurt Locker will win the big Oscar on Sunday. But a lot of folks in the Interior West — and enviro wonks from all over — were focused this week on a much bigger announcement: Will the greater sage grouse get federal protection under […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
The bald eagle paradox
When the recovery of one species endangers another