Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife has protected a lot of Western land and species. It’s also killed a lot of coyotes (and can’t wait to go after some wolves).
Wildlife
Posted inJune 25, 2007: Predator hunters for the environment
The resurgence of hook-and-bullet conservation
When mule deer populations plummeted across much of the West in the 1990s, some sportsmen took aim at a familiar target. Kill the coyotes, which are adept at finding fawns in the grass, they said, and the herds will rebound. Here in western Colorado, the state Division of Wildlife responded with a five-year study on […]
Posted inArticles
Making a killing to save Arizona’s desert bighorn sheep
Updated June 30, 2007 A mountain lion paid the ultimate price for his gluttony after helping himself to too many servings of lamb and venison near southwestern Arizona’s Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. Earlier this month wildlife officials killed the lion as it guarded the fresh carcasses of two desert bighorn sheep and a mule deer. […]
Posted inWotr
Going wild in the city
A skunk, red-tailed hawk, rabbits, squirrels, robins — all have dined in my city yard, within sight of Wyoming’s Capitol dome. But when we moved to this corner of a busy one-way street in Cheyenne, Wyo., 15 years ago, the yard was a mess. The parkways, those supposedly green spaces between the street and sidewalk, […]
Posted inJune 11, 2007: Brave New Hay
Piscatorial theology
My father was raised on a farm on the shore of Montana’s Flathead Lake at the turn of the last century. The local rivers were all trout streams then, teeming with salmon, cutthroat and rainbow. For Dad, fly-fishing was more than a passion — it was a religion, one that lasted all his life. My […]
Posted inArticles
A gold mine in the Colorado wilderness?
A grandfathered mining claim passed down through generations has trumped the Wilderness Act. For the mine owners it’s a victory; for others the potential mine raises concerns over wilderness protection and mining regulations. For nearly 60 years, Robert and Marjorie Miller of Montrose, Colo., have tried to re-open the Robin Redbreast Gold Mine in southwestern […]
Posted inArticles
In the Arizona desert, feathers are flying
Earlier this month, while bald eagle chicks were testing their wings in the Arizona desert, the fight to protect them took an ugly turn. Environmentalists accused government bureaucrats of suppressing science to avoid protecting the Arizona bald eagle as a separate population under the Endangered Species Act, but officials say they were following the law. […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Longing for a buried past
If you have heard of the Yaak Valley in northwest Montana, and if you know of the threats to its particular wildness, it’s probably because you’ve read a plea for its protection by Rick Bass. Bass’ fierce love for the Yaak has not always been good for his fiction. “It bleeds just like blood throughout […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Weathering the academic storm
Dan Donato’s controversial study on salvage logging turned his life upside-down
Posted inWotr
Knee-jerking in western Colorado
In 1917, during the height of anti-German propaganda in this country, the essayist H.L. Mencken wrote a history of the bathtub. He said President Millard Fillmore had installed the first bathtub in the White House — a brave act given that medical professionals believed bathtubs to be “certain inviters of phthisic, rheumatic fevers, inflammation of […]
Posted inWotr
Ducks on the walls
“My baby’s got the most deplorable taste/but her biggest mistake is hanging over the fireplace/She’s got ducks, ducks on the wall!” That song by the Kinks rankles: What’s the matter with ducks on the wall? During my 15 years as a Wyomingite, I’ve learned that ducks make especially nice ornaments, winging toward windows or flapping […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Tipping the scales towards native species
When biologist Phil Pister used buckets to rescue the last Owens pupfish from an evaporating pool, he knew that if he “tripped over a piece of barbed wire,” the species was history. Thirty-eight years later, the pupfish survives only because scientists move the fish pool-to-pool and constantly trap predators. In Unnatural Landscapes, Ceiridwen Terrill, a […]
Posted inWotr
They shoot horses, don’t they? Not any more
Imagine a proposal to scatter millions of pounds of poisoned meat around the United States, close to human populations. Much of it would be accessible to scavengers including eagles, hawks, coyotes, foxes and badgers, as well as to dogs and cats. An animal feeding on the poisoned meat would probably die. This scenario is likely, […]
Posted inWotr
Wilderness is the place that can make or break you
Beyond the end of most any road in southern Utah rests the crucible for my soul –? the beauty, ecological abundance and sanctuary of our public lands. With the Bunsen-burner intensity of its noontime sun, desert wilderness burns off the ephemera of my life, and there remains only the essence of emotion — awe that […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
An endangered Endangered Species Act?
Top management at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tries a regulatory overhaul, outraging environmentalists
Posted inArticles
Ravens to threaten tortoises nevermore
The last person to see a raven feasting on baby tortoises in the California desert may be a federal agent, looking through the scope of a rifle. Ravens have been charged with contributing to the decline of the threatened desert tortoise, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to restore balance by shooting, […]
Posted inWotr
The decline of logging is now killing
If the connection between logging and closing libraries isn’t clear to you, then you don’t live in Oregon. Here, the connection is the stuff of crisis, the subject of daily news stories and of increasingly desperate political maneuvering. It is a crisis that reveals much about changing expectations and attitudes concerning government services, taxes and […]
Posted inWotr
Too much can be asked of a river
What do China’s Yangtze, India’s Ganges and America’s Rio Grande have in common? All share the dubious distinction of making a “Top 10” list compiled by the World Wildlife Fund of rivers in trouble. On the lower Rio Grande, where the river forms the border between the United States and Mexico, the challenges include widespread […]
Posted inApril 2, 2007: Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields
Lewis’ Web
NAME: Randy Lewis VOCATION: Professor of microbiology MARRIED: To his high school sweetheart CURRENT FUNDERS: National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Air Force BREAKTHROUGHS: Sequenced genes for several Rocky Mountain arachnids, including cat face, garden, wolf, jumping, and brown widow spiders. KNOWN FOR: Wearing gray or tan Wranglers. FAVORITE TIME OF DAY: Lunch. “It’s […]
Posted inWotr
Wolves have a reputation that’s larger than life
Ever since he ate Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma and blew down the houses of two-thirds of the little pigs, the wolf has been Big and Bad. Everyone knows what big teeth he has. But can those gleaming incisors explain the startling decline of elk herds in the Yellowstone area? Some people think so. Hunters […]