Mexican wolves caught in the crossfire of the battle over public lands.
Wildlife
Posted inDecember 24, 2007: Last chance for the Lobo
A river sacrificed
In Washington, helping one fish has meant harming another
Posted inDecember 24, 2007: Last chance for the Lobo
The troubled times of the Mexican wolf
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Last chance for the Lobo.” PRE-1970 Mexican wolves extirpated from the Southwestern U.S. by private, state and government control campaigns. 1970s 1976 Mexican wolf listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. 1977-1980 Five wolves captured in Mexico to establish a captive breeding program. […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lost Cause
A snake in the grass
In Zero at the Bone, Tucson writing instructor Erec Toso describes how his brush with death reveals the poison in our daily lives – complacency. Summer rains wash over the desert; life stirs, and snakes wait for prey. When vacation ends, Toso dreads returning to work at the University of Arizona – the traffic, the […]
Posted inWotr
A political fish-kill is in the making
Grayling are artifacts from the Pleistocene, little fish of big country with flanks of pink and silver and sail-like dorsal fins trimmed with orange and splashed with red, white, turquoise, green and neon blue. Fluvial grayling, the race that dwells in rivers, are common in the Arctic and sub-arctic, but in the Rocky Mountain West, […]
Posted inWotr
Trees for two: A mother and son saw together
In old Forest Service photos, a trail crew was always young men with crew cuts, their white t-shirts tight against their lean bodies. What would those men make of us, a mother-son team swaying together over a crosscut saw? My ponytail is going gray and 19-year-old Lee wears a stained shirt with the sleeves ripped […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2007: Beetle Warfare
Beetle Warfare
What happens when an exotic bug is brought in to fight an exotic weed?
Posted inNovember 26, 2007: Beetle Warfare
A former Hot Shot looks at the West’s wildfires
The recent wildfires that burned 600 square miles, razed some 3,000 homes, killed 14 people and forced the evacuations of over a half-million Southern Californians shared one characteristic: All the homes burned were so close to public land that fire moved easily from hillsides covered with chaparral into subdivisions packed with natural vegetation. I’ve seen […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2007: Beetle Warfare
Field notes from the front steps
Back in early spring, when just a few buds had cracked open, the world was constrained by a strip of pavement, a lawn, the driveway with the basketball hoop at the end, the dusty colors of sidewalk chalk. The Mission Mountains, Sapphires, Bitterroots – sheltering bears, mountain lions, and elk – were visible from various […]
Posted inWotr
Bears in the burbs, cougars in the chicken coops, oh my!
A recent lockdown at my daughters’ elementary school in Boulder, Colo., brought horrific images to mind. But it was no big deal: merely a bear seen near the playground. Ironically, an outdoors program was under way, complete with kayak pool, climbing wall and mountain-bike course. The Iockdown is typical of how wildlife interactions can so […]
Posted inWotr
Condors – the best air show in the West
If you’re standing on the Vermilion Cliffs at sunset, looking south towards the Grand Canyon, there’s a good chance you might see a wonder of the West, the California condor. As this largest bird in North America glides over 3,000-foot-high cliffs, its wingspan of 10 feet wide makes its presence unmistakable. In other places along […]
Posted inWotr
A wolf tale that’s all too true
Here’s a news item you might recall, though it never got much play in the Lower 48: Alaska wildlife officials targeted more than 600 wolves for death by aerial gunning during the 2006-2007 season. In just a few months, they’d gotten close, killing 560. And as an inducement to hunters, state officials said they’d pay […]
Posted inWotr
A former Hot Shot looks at the West’s wildfires
The recent wildfires that burned 600 square miles, razed some 3,000 homes, killed 14 people and forced the evacuations of over a half-million Southern Californians shared one characteristic: All the homes burned were so close to public land that fire moved easily from hillsides covered with chaparral into subdivisions packed with natural vegetation. I’ve seen […]
Posted inWotr
Since when did hunting become target shooting?
It started over the long Labor Day weekend and went on from dawn to dusk — the constant report of gunfire echoing against the Organ Mountains here in southern New Mexico. Another dove-hunting season had descended upon us, and all lovers of wildlife could do was wait for it to end while so-called hunters blasted […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2007: L.A. Bets on the Farm
Sniffin’ out scat for conservation
NAME Wicket OCCUPATION Scat detection dog AGE 3 HOBBIES Playing with balls, chasing the stream from a hose Go to work,” Aimee Hurt calls. It’s a cool August afternoon in Montana’s Blackfoot Valley. Dressed in an orange vest and bear bells, Wicket begins sweeping across the trail, running in wide arcs, jumping downed trees, traveling […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2007: L.A. Bets on the Farm
Safe crossing
Armed with new research, traffic engineers are finding ways to stop highway carnage
Posted inArticles
Preble’s mouse protection jumps to Colorado
In Wyoming, the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse may soon be regarded as just another rodent, but in Colorado, the mouse will continue to block the path of bulldozers. On Nov. 1, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to remove Wyoming’s Preble’s mouse populations from the protection of the Endangered Species Act. Colorado’s populations, however, […]
Posted inArticles
Black-footed ferrets are saved from extinction, but where will they live?
In late October, biologists in Arizona’s Aubrey Valley spent five nights in a row trapping and tagging black-footed ferrets, considered “the most endangered mammals in the United States.” They found 29, which means that there are probably about 70 ferrets altogether in this reintroduction area south of the Grand Canyon. According to Jeff Pebworth, wildlife […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2007: Which Way West
‘Men standing in the shadows began to weep’
Two authors explore wildfire deaths and liability
Posted inArticles
Apache trout swim ‘full stream’ ahead
It is a pre-meditated killing, cold-blooded in every sense. Before night descends, the conspirators make final calculations. The next morning, they return with the lethal poison. Hundreds die, but to one federal agency their deaths are not in vain – the victims are non-native fish, taken out by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as […]