Last week, the Idaho Statesman newspaper published an article about recreational vehicle impacts on wolverines in the Payette, Boise, and Sawtooth National Forests. The piece focused on a study investigating questions about the extent to which snowmobilers and Snowmobilers, backcountry skiers, and advocacy groups all have a stake in the outcome of this study. The […]
Wildlife
Posted inGoat
Of routes and rotors
Before migrating to Paonia, I spent time in the backwoods of southwestern Oregon, occasionally on the porch of a cabin with a colony of bats living under its shingles. Each afternoon, the walls began to creak and moan like old floorboards. Then the bats — hundreds of furry clamshell bodies — would slip out, unfurl, […]
Posted inGoat
Attack of the dromedaries
It’s sunrise on the Colorado River, and a dozen sand-colored lumps stir by the banks. Bodies rise on spindly legs. Mouths open with a sound like pulling dentures. In a flash of gums, twelve sets of teeth clamp down on the nearest tamarisk plants. Chomp. Chomp. Leaves, bark and thorns disappear in a rhythm of […]
Posted inGoat
The Bighorn-Butterfly Effect
Little wings can compel broad change, but it certainly doesn’t hurt when they are backed up by the possibility of a head-butt, litigious or otherwise. The presence of endangered Quino checkerspot butterflies and Peninsular bighorn sheep on 51,000 acres of the San Jacinto Mountains–and the appeals of several prominent conservation groups–has prompted the U.S. Forest […]
Posted inGoat
Protection for jaguar spots
The mysterious jaguar, which ranges across Central and South America, has only been recorded in the southwestern U.S. a handful of times. The last known cat on this side of the border died last spring after being trapped. But jaguars once ranged from Louisiana to California, and could again, say conservationists — if only their […]
Posted inGoat
Floral fizzle?
Climate change is sucking the color from the Sonoran Desert. The winter flowers that generally carpet the ground — white woolly daisies, Mexican golden poppies, purple Arizona lupine — are still in hiding. Their seeds lie dormant in the soil, waiting for the rains that are necessary to spark growth. It usually takes at least […]
Posted inDecember 21, 2009: Wind Resistance
Condors not damned by dams
The article about David Moen (a research associate of the Oregon Zoo) and his search for evidence that condors once nested in the Columbia River Gorge states that “scientists blame its decline largely on deforestation and the impact of dams on salmon” (HCN, 10/12/09). For clarity, we would like to point out that this is […]
Posted inGoat
There’s gold in that there test-tube
Ten years ago, we ran a story about green groups suing the National Park Service over its plans to allow “bioprospecting” in Yellowstone. Private companies have made millions from heat-resistant microbes they’ve collected from the park’s thermal features (for example, Thermus aquaticus produced an enzyme used in DNA fingerprinting). Now, the Park Service is proposing […]
Posted inDecember 21, 2009: Wind Resistance
The messy mix of energy and sage grouse
Will turbines deal a deadly blow to the imperiled bird?
Posted inRange
How to Deal with a Deer Invasion
My mother has a tough decision to make. Her recent city newsletter informed her that the deer must die, and it’s up to her to decide how they croak. Bountiful, Utah has a mule deer problem—they’ve invaded. When I visited home this summer, I’d probably see at least one deer every week. They’d dart across […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Fish tales of yore
Before Glen Canyon Dam plugged up the Colorado River in 1963, locals in the Upper Basin states of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming reeled in fish so giant and so good to eat that they still tell stories about them. The fish they caught — squawfish, razorback suckers, humpback chubs and bonytail chubs — are all […]
Posted inGoat
Doggone it
The black-tailed prairie dog won’t be protected under the Endangered Species Act, the feds announced today. Despite the fact that the ‘dogs now occupy about 3 percent of their original habitat, and despite plague, poisoning and “varmint hunts”, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service says populations are increasing. That’s good news for farmers, ranchers, and […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Don’t pet the animals
Joan Nutt, 63, was visiting family in Florissant, Colo., when she got close to a deer “in an attempt to pet it.” The animal attacked, and though Nutt “grabbed hold of an antler to try to fend it off … it knocked her down before she could get away.” Nutt, who suffered numerous lacerations, was […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
For the birds
In response to your article “Audubon Feathers Fly in Arizona,” I want to make it clear that at no time has Desert Rivers Audubon taken a formal position on the land-swap issues described in the article (HCN, 10/12/09). We share many of the same concerns regarding the issues as the other Audubon groups in Arizona. […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
The hunt is on
Despite protests, wolf hunts go forward in Idaho and Montana
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
How wild is a managed wolf?
Another wolf made the news last month: SW266M received capital punishment in Wyoming for the crime of eating woolly domestic mammals. His “name” means he was the 266th male wolf captured and tagged in southwestern Montana. His record yielded the further information that he was born in May 2007 on the east side of the […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Bruins’ “Car of the year”
As everyone knows, bears are quick learners, and thanks to a scholarly article in the Journal of Mammalogy, we now know what vehicles in Yosemite National Park they prefer to rip and rend in their search for fast food. “The bears seem to base their decision on ‘fuel efficiency,’ ” writes Rocky Barker — “that […]
Posted inRange
Saving Tortoises one Student at a Time
“When I saw the night sky for the first time in the Mojave National Preserve I felt like a layer of film had been peeled away from my eyes,” says David Lamfrom, the Barstow based field coordinator for the National Parks Conservation Association. “I want the kids who live in the high desert to realize […]
Posted inRange
Back at the Table, Again
The creation of Washington State’s current logging regulations may have been less spectacular that the infamous spotted owl timber wars of the early 90s (the President didn’t have to intervene, for instance), but they were still righteously complicated. Ten years ago, when salmon hit the endangered species list, stakeholders sat down to create a multi-trick […]