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. […]
Wildlife
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
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Good night, sweet trees
Sudden Aspen Decline is like a Shakespearean tragedy
Posted inGoat
Charismatic pest control
First, check out Michelle Nijhuis’ new HCN story “Prodigal Dogs”, about the likelihood that gray wolves have returned to Colorado of their own volition, finding space to exist, or even breed, on a private ranch in the northwest part of the state. Then, get a load of this lupine scenario: In the February issue of […]
Posted inWotr
Those are our buffalo, pardner (CON)
The buffalo skull that adorns the Montana state quarter is supposed to honor a majestic animal. In truth, it more accurately stands for the state’s abysmal treatment of these icons of the West. Over the years, thousands of bison leaving Yellowstone National Park have been hazed and killed on the grounds they might be diseased […]
Posted inWotr
Yellowstone bison win a temporary home (PRO)
Sometime soon, a stock truck will pull alongside a prison-like fence in the upper Yellowstone River valley of Montana. Moments later, a gate will open and dozens of Yellowstone National Park bison will be herded like cattle onto the truck, just like some 1,400 of their wild brethren back in the bleak winter of 2007-08. […]
Posted inGoat
Rubber Slugs and iPhones
Big news for anyone who’s ever gone sprinting and hollering through the woods after the disappearing rear of an enterprising black bear: We’ve now got a scientific assessment of bear hazing. Rachel Mazur, of Sequoia National Park, has a paper in last month’s Journal of Wildlife Management on what the National Park Service likes to […]
Posted inRange
It’s time to put aside the fairytales
It’s tough being a wolf these days. Despite barely having recovered from being indiscriminately hunted to near extinction during the last century, wolves continue to face the rampant persecution and vitriol of yesteryear from legislators, corporations, citizens and even state and federal governments. Most recently, Utah’s Senate has passed a bill that (if enacted) would make […]