It sounds like common sense — require ranchers in wolf-recovery areas to clean up their dead cattle, so that the predators don’t develop a taste for livestock. Now, that may happen in eastern Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. The forest is included in the struggling Mexican wolf reintroduction program. Only about 50 Mexican wolves now roam […]
Wildlife
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
The creation of wholeness
Finding Beauty in a Broken WorldTerry Tempest Williams416 pages, $26.Pantheon Books, 2008. When asked to accompany artist Lily Yeh to Rwanda to help create a memorial to the country’s genocide victims, author Terry Tempest Williams initially refused. Perhaps best known for her book Refuge, which draws a profound emotional parallel between her mother’s losing bout […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Only the scared survive
The Better to Eat You With: Fear in the Animal WorldJoel Berger304 pages, hardcover: $29.University of Chicago Press, 2008. Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing PredatorsWilliam Stolzenburg288 pages, hardcover: $24.99.Bloomsbury, 2008. A world without fear sounds nice, doesn’t it? Liberated from our dread of nosy bosses, […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Crying Fowl
After reading “Conservation Quandary,” your feature on owls, I flipped to the cover page to see if I was reading the April Fools’ edition (HCN, 8/18/08). When I realized this wasn’t a joke, my first reaction was anger that we are wasting tax money to save spotted owls from other owls. After re-reading the article, […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
Not even the privileged can deter a porcupine
When folks build homes (or mansions) next to wilderness, they are often shocked to learn that the wilderness is, in fact, wild. Critters they once thought of as cute and charming are suddenly villainous and voracious, devouring flower beds, tunneling under irrigation systems, even munching on pricey trees dropped into the landscape by crane. And […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
Fifty summers and 360 degrees
One woman’s lifetime spotting fires
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
Dust on the rocks
Last summer, Constance Silver spent a week examining the world-renowned rock art in Utah’s Nine Mile Canyon, a two-hour drive south of Salt Lake City. Tucked into the rugged Tavaputs Plateau, the place contains upwards of 10,000 images, painted and pecked onto sandstone walls. Many of them are visible from the curving, roughly graded road. […]
Posted inWotr
Not even the privileged can deter a porcupine
When folks build homes (or mansions) next to wilderness, they are often shocked to learn that the wilderness is, in fact, wild. Critters they once thought of as cute and charming are suddenly villainous and voracious, devouring flower beds, tunneling under irrigation systems, even munching onpricey trees dropped into the landscape by crane. And one […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
A spotty future
Regarding your recent barred owl story, it’s hard not to shake my head (HCN, 8/4/08). I wonder how good we will ever be at playing God with the animal kingdom. We shoot ’em, then we bring them back, but only where we want them (buffalo). We trapped them for their fur and took them to […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Crash of the cottonwoods
Iconic trees decline on the West’s overtaxed rivers
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Know your owl
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Hostile takeover.” There are minor differences, but the two species are similar. Both are large owls with dark eyes and round heads lacking ear tufts. The easiest way to tell them apart: The barred owl is larger and paler in color. This article appeared […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
When endangered foxes are on the menu
Editor’s note: This is a sidebar to “Hostile Takeover.” The Channel Islands, a chain off the coast of Santa Barbara, illustrate just how much a non-native species can roil the ecology of a place, changing predators into prey and throwing unfamiliar species into competition. During the 19th century, settlers brought pigs to the islands. Some […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Catastrophe or nature’s process
In The Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens Edited by Charles Goodrich, Kathleen Dean Moore, and Frederick Swanson124 pages, softcover: $15.95. Oregon State University Press, 2008. Twenty-five years after Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, Oregon State University sponsored a four-day trip into the blast zone. Scientists, writers, artists and academics came […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
The wandering lepidopterist
It’s a sadly typical spring day in Seattle, all scudding clouds and spitting rain even though the forecast promised sun. On top of that, Dr. Robert Michael Pyle has some bad news. “Marsha won’t be joining us,” he says. I’m sorry to hear it. Marsha has been at Pyle’s side for more than 30 years, […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Hostile takeover and a conservation quandary
Barred owls are driving threatened spotted owls out of their territory. Is it time to shoot them?
Posted inWotr
The next fires will be anytime, all the time
The warm wind of July 14, 1988, signaled the beginning of a remarkable series of fires that burned into Americans’ consciousness. Before that day, the managers of Yellowstone National Park and nearby national forests were confident that their efforts to restore natural fire were a success. After that day, the concept of the natural would […]
Posted inGoat
Utah fishermen no longer required to levitate
In Utah, as in many states, the public has a right to use the water in rivers for recreation. But the land underneath the state’s rivers is often privately owned. So what happens when someone touches the bottom? The question floated all the way to the Utah Supreme Court thanks to Kevin and Jodi Conatser, […]
Posted inJuly 21, 2008: A fractured party
Manufactured homes for the birds
In California, frequent wildfires force conservationists to get creative
Posted inArticles
We thought we were safe
I live close to tall trees in Northern California, and on the afternoon of June 12, I held our mare, Millie, and watched wildfire advance toward the draw not 1,000 away where my wife and I had almost finished building our home. We’d been working on the house for almost four years. The wind pushed […]