When Idaho Gov. Butch Otter said last month he wanted to bid for the first wolf tag offered to hunters in his state, it prompted predictable righteous indignation. Newspapers across the nation, including the New York Times, expressed doubts that the federal government could turn control over Idaho’s remarkably productive wolf population to people like […]
Wildlife
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
Why operation of wildlife refuges shouldn’t be privatized
Through the years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t been known for a willingness to stand up to political pressure. So I was surprised in mid-December when the agency took back control of the National Bison Range in Montana. Until then, it had been operating the refuge jointly with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
The great wilderness compromise
What would Zahnie do?” I asked myself that question as I hiked into the White Cloud Mountains of central Idaho. I’d come here to report on an ugly internecine fight among environmentalists over the fate of this would-be wilderness of rock and ice, high meadows, pine forests and alpine lakes. Both sides invoked the name […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
Salmon Justice
An interview with U.S. District Judge Jim Redden, who’s given uncooperative federal agencies clear warning: Submit a viable salmon restoration plan for the Snake/Columbia River Basin, or face the possible breaching of four major dams.
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
History of a decline
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Salmon Justice.” Pre-European settlement: The Columbia/Snake River Basin produces between 10 million and 16 million salmon, making it the most bountiful salmon spawning ground in the world. 1933: President Franklin Roosevelt authorizes Bonneville Dam about 40 miles east of Portland, Ore., the first major […]
Posted inWotr
Sharing jurisdiction is the worst thing for thenation’s bison range
Through the years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t been known for a willingness to stand up to political pressure. So I was surprised in mid-December when the agency took back control of the National Bison Range in Montana. Until then, it had been operating the refuge jointly with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai […]
Posted inWotr
Injustice on the Great Plains
I wasn’t born soon enough to be a cowboy on the West’s old open range. But for the last 10 years, I’ve been lucky enough to help gather a herd of up to 500 bison every fall on 30 square miles of Montana prairie. I live on the reservation, though I’m not a Native American, […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Of salvage logging and salvation
Salvage is a word that is much in the air these days, not just in the woods, but also in the lecture halls of universities and in the marble corridors of Washington, D.C. It is a word of power, a soothing word implying many virtues: prudence and profit, rescue and redemption, both exploitation and, somehow, […]
Posted inWotr
Christmas fuels the ‘bough industry’ in Washington
When my parents were first married, my father wanted to name their newly created logging company “Moonscape Logging.” Thankfully, my mother nixed that idea, although it was an apt description of the clear-cutting that happened on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in the ’70s and ’80s. Once logs were taken out of the forest, whatever remained got […]
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
River Redux
Thanks to a historic and grudging compromise, water and salmon head back to the San Joaquin River, six decades after they were taken out.
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
They should shoot horses, shouldn’t they?
Our national obsession with keeping “wild” horses and burros on public lands that are incapable of supporting them has always struck me as bizarre, especially since it’s the result of our alleged love for them. Ask most any wild horse advocacy group and you’ll be told that wild horses are native wildlife and anyone who […]
Posted inWotr
Of salvage logging and salvation
Salvage is a word that is much in the air these days, not just in the woods, but also in the lecture halls of universities and in the marble corridors of Washington, D.C. It is a word of power, a soothing word implying many virtues: prudence and profit, rescue and redemption, both exploitation and, somehow, […]
Posted inWotr
Watching with wonder a parliament of snowyowls
One by one as the afternoon shadows stretched across the winter fields a few miles north of Pablo, in the Flathead Valley of western Montana, the parliament of snowy owls began to fly up to sit on the neighboring fence posts. Along the dirt roads circling the fields, cars were already pulling over and spotting […]
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Conspiring with caddisflies
“He hath ribbons of all the colours i’ the rainbow; inkles, caddisses, cambrics and lawns.” —from The Winter’s Tale, by William Shakespeare Name Ferg (no first name, no last name, just Ferg) Vocation Father of two, a Renaissance man who draws, paints, sculpts, composes poetry, plays music, and makes jewelry from beetle carcasses. Age 40 […]
Posted inWotr
How bizarre: Wild horses have become sacred cows
Our national obsession with keeping “wild1” horses and burros on public lands that are incapable of supporting them has always struck me as bizarre, especially since it’s the result of our alleged love for them. Ask most any wild horse advocacy group and you’ll be told that wild horses are native wildlife and anyone who […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Tribal religion trumps eagle protection
Judge’s ruling regarding ceremonial eagle killing could send case to Supreme Court
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Bred for success
The nonprofit Peregrine Fund has mastered the captive breeding of birds of prey. But has its single-minded focus blinded it to the importance of habitat?
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Terms of endangerment
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Bred for success.” Species in the Wild Endangered — An animal or plant species in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range. Endangered species such as the Mexican long-nosed bat and the masked bobwhite receive strict protection from harassment, […]
Posted inWotr
A Utah resort town welcomes 300,000 foreigners
In Moab, Utah, a town constantly visited by jeepers and hikers from all over the world, the arrival of 300,000 beings from Kazakhstan hasn’t received much press. But as the newcomers flutter in and make themselves more at home, people are starting to take notice. Diorhabda elongata is their sexy name, and most of us, […]
Posted inOctober 30, 2006: Peace Breaks Out In New Mexico's Forests
In search of greener pastures
Name Laina Corazon Coit Age 55 Vocation Hemp ice cream maker Home Base Near Briggsdale, Colo. Noted for Working to create Colorado’s first green burial grounds, on the eastern prairie She says “I’m for earthworms. We intend to use every possible way to make sure the land remains sacred to the grave sites and the […]