A whole lot of Rocky Mountain Westerners are concerned about President Bush’s recent proposal to cut the U.S. Forest Service budget. Out our way, the land is not an abstraction. The numbers in the Forest Service budget aren’t abstractions, either. They mean something real to our land and to our lives, and a cut of […]
Wildlife
Posted inWotr
Toxic bison
Updated March 11, 2008 With bison populations in Yellowstone National Park estimated at a near-record 4,700 animals this snowy winter, buffalo have begun pushing out of the park in earnest, and the usual winter shout-fest is underway. Fine, but the real problem posed by Yellowstone’s brucellosis infection, and the park’s refusal to realistically deal with […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
CSI: Critter Crime
An Oregon laboratory thwarts wildlife crime around the world
Posted inArticles
Sheep station to explore environmental hoofprint
For nearly a century, the Department of Agriculture’s Sheep Experiment Station has grazed over 6,000 sheep on 100,000 acres of public land in Montana and Idaho west of Yellowstone National Park. Yet the research center has never formally assessed its ecological impact on this mountainous habitat for native wildlife species. This month, in response to […]
Posted inArticles
Go blue, save some green
The mountain pine beetle is about the size of Lincoln’s head on a penny. In the last 10 years, it’s devastated 1.5 million acres of lodgepole pine in Colorado, a half-million in the past year alone. The swaths of dead trees color the mountainsides a sickly orange-brown. Now, communities in the hardest-hit areas are scrambling […]
Posted inWotr
A hunter goes lobbying
A few weeks ago, I set out with a small group to lobby Oregon’s Republican Sen. Gordon Smith. The visit was set up by the national Wildlife Federation, and our goal — a long shot — was to convince the senator to sign on as a co-sponsor of the Lieberman-Warner bill to control greenhouse-gas emissions […]
Posted inArticles
Crying ‘fowl’
Over the past 5 years, one of the West’s emblematic birds, the greater sage grouse, has been batted like a shuttlecock between environmentalists and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At issue is whether the chicken-sized bird, once found in sagebrush plains from Canada to Arizona, should be listed as threatened or endangered. If the […]
Posted inWotr
Gone geese
For the better part of a week, I’ve been driving around with the carcass of a Canada goose in the bed of my pickup. It lies there with the spare tire, the snow, the blue plastic box of emergency clothes, and an assortment of crushed pop and beer cans from last summer. Because of the […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Two weeks in the West
“God gave man the ability to manage wildlife.” — Wayne Wright, an Idaho Fish and Game commissioner, in the Idaho Statesman. The political animals – the kind that walk on two legs and thump their chests while exhaling promises – could fill this page. But hip-deep in the campaign season, you might like a break […]
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Hank, the non-cow dog
A story in my local Montana paper, the Missoulian, described the growing problem of family pets harassing wildlife and livestock. It seems that the expansion of urban life into the wild is taking its toll on deer, elk, cattle and all kinds of burrowing creatures. The story really hit home as my dog Hank, aka […]
Posted inArticles
The fur is flying
Michael Moss’ 64-acre goat ranch sits on the edge of BLM land in southwestern Oregon. It’s “healthy cougar country,” he says, and he’d like it to stay that way. That’s not something you’d expect to hear from most livestock owners, but Moss is a member of Goat Ranchers of Oregon, a group that advocates smart […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
Nevada stakes its salmon claim
Snake River dams run up against a powerful alliance in an unlikely place
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
The Chaparralian
California’s raging fires fuel one man’s fight for the much-maligned “elfin forest”
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
Standing outside, late, in a charcoal forest
When my bladder provokes me out of the cabin, the Montana night is deep. The door closes behind me. I step down two stairs to the frozen, scoured ground. It is warm and breezy. The wind sounds like river current moving among the black stalks of tree trunks. An acrid hint of fire is in […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Treehuggers and treecutters unite
Small foresters in Washington get a break that might just keep them in business
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Madame Merian and her passion for metamorphosis
In Chrysalis, Montana writer Kim Todd travels to Amsterdam and Surinam and brings back the story of a pioneering field scientist, one whose intellectual descendants still wander the modern West. Todd traces the 17th-century life of Maria Sibylla Merian, the daughter of a German printer, who defied convention to become one of the most diligent […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
My short tenure with a blind pigeon
There is a blind pigeon – a pigeon born without eyeballs – living in my house, and I’m not very happy about it. It’s my mother’s fault; she has a new habit of adopting these eyeless creatures, which are hatched in the barn rafters at my family’s ranch. When the mama bird is done feeding […]
Posted inArticles
The Appeal Deal
The West’s national forests remain in legal limbo. For four years, the U.S. Forest Service has been trying to overhaul the rules that govern the creation of forest plans, the “blueprints” that describe how each forest will be managed and protected. And for the past two years, the process has been locked in federal court. […]
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A country cousin visits the big city
Many people dread a call from their mechanic, since it usually means spending more money — perhaps the transmission really is shot or a battery has to be replaced. But recently, after my partner picked up her car, I received a call from our mechanic about a very different subject. Our answering machine picked up […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2007: Last chance for the Lobo
Boodog roasting on an open fire
How to cook a marmot, Spokane’s tastiest resident.