Packs of hungry wolves are decimating Wyoming’s 35 herds of elk — right? Wrong. And yet that’s what some people continue to claim, even as studies repeatedly disprove the accusation. Nearly three decades of the data displayed in Wyoming’s annual reports show that elk numbers, elk harvests and hunter success rates have steadily increased in […]
Writers on the Range
Posted inWotr
Go beyond dams to save salmon
Amid the drumbeat of litigation that surrounds Columbia River salmon and the ever-present debate over dam-breaching, it’s easy to miss one remarkable achievement: We now have a salmon-protection strategy that most of the region agrees on. That has never happened before. Most of the affected Native American tribes support it. Three of the four Northwest […]
Posted inWotr
The salmon’s last best hope
If ever there were a news story that supported physicist Hugh Everett’s theory of parallel universes, surely the debacle over the looming extinction of Columbia and Snake river salmon is just that story. While Everett was a doctoral student at Princeton University, in 1957, he devised an elaborate mathematical proof for the premise that an […]
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The battle against beetles
Four summers ago, I enlisted in the war against the pine bark beetle raging on Wyoming’s Togwotee Pass. I started to fight by inspecting every pine on the two-acre lot where my partner and I spend much of the summer. Sawdust at the base of one tall lodgepole indicated that the humpbacked killers had already […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
Renewables: The Final Frontier
Why historian Vaclav Smil thinks there are no easy solutions to our energy problems
Posted inArticles
Still wild
Not far from my house in the high desert of northern New Mexico is a large tract of land run by the Bureau of Land Management. Some years ago, two horses were dumped there and left to fend for themselves. Nobody looks after them, but they seem to do pretty well. They have the Galisteo […]
Posted inWotr
Finally, a burger with a taste of place
Some 12 million people visit the Grand Canyon every year, but any “foodies” among them tend to be disappointed when they arrive at the rim. Where in all this luscious landscape, they ask, is anyone serving food that tastes of this place? Why do so few restaurants in Arizona’s canyon country feature the range-fed beef […]
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And you think times are tough
At a yard sale, I bought several boxes containing nearly a half-century’s worth of American Heritage magazines, that richly illustrated compendium of the nation’s history through good times and bad, with special attention paid to the droughts, downturns and disasters that tried the souls of our forebears. I paid $10 for more than 600 magazines. […]
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The lands less traveled are a treat
After a late-February snowstorm left western Colorado frosted with white, I decided to check out the cross-country skiing at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. It turned out to be an experience I can only call “manicured.” I drove to the visitor center on a paved road, then skied along a well marked trail […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
And you think times are tough
At a yard sale, I bought several boxes containing nearly a half-century’s worth of American Heritage magazines, that richly illustrated compendium of the nation’s history through good times and bad, with special attention paid to the droughts, downturns and disasters that tried the souls of our forebears. I paid $10 for more than 600 magazines. […]
Posted inWotr
Volunteers work to slow down kitten killing
For animal rescue volunteers and shelter workers, spring means “kitten season” — an increase in cat mating, kitten births and deaths by euthanasia. These deaths take a toll on people, too. Karen Walther, who manages an animal shelter in Elko, Nev., knows how tough it is to look in an animal’s eyes and be directly […]
Posted inWotr
This wilderness bill is a homespun vision for the West
Growing up in Montana, we always heard about national forests as places of “multiple use.” When I was a kid in the 1950s and 1960s, that meant everything from hiking and backpacking to hunting, grazing, selective logging, fishing and catching glimpses of wild animals. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, however, we saw more and […]
Posted inWotr
Why I say “no” to a regional wilderness bill
Wyoming folks are cantankerous souls, with independent notions about where they can go and what they ought to be able to do when they get there. We love wild country, but a lot of us also love our four-wheelers, snowmobiles and four-wheel drive pickups. We don’t have anything against drilling, logging or grazing on the […]
Posted inWotr
You don’t need a gun to enjoy a national park
When I was 11 years old, I papered the walls of my bedroom with pages from gun catalogs. It was an attempt to convince my father that I really wanted a gun. He eventually gave in when I was 12 or 13, and I’ve owned guns ever since, even carrying one or more in the […]
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Army targets southeastern Colorado rangelands
Ranchers feel under siege from site expansion
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Bring on the chickens
There is nothing funnier than a hen running. She clucks so seriously, leaning so far forward, wings spread out, moving that wide load on quick, skinny legs. I know chickens are getting trendy these days, but the main reason I keep yard chickens is for the laughs. My daughter was a colicky baby, and for […]
Posted inWotr
The movie-magic West rides again
This time of year, you’re bound to see photos of ranchers branding cattle, along with all those newspaper pictures of graduations and proms. And why not? A photographer can find a picture waiting everywhere, of neighbors helping neighbors, handsome cowboy types with spurs and coiled lariats, little kids wearing Wranglers and big hats. There’s smoke […]
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Government capitalism can be a very good thing
This year marks the 70th anniversary of an important event in western Colorado: the first annual meeting of the Gunnison County Electric Association. The group had only 116 members when it started and just $275 in the bank, but it went on to bring electric power to the area’s ranches, thanks to the federal government’s […]
Posted inWotr
When neighbors become cops
It’s a frustrating dilemma for many who conserve — watching other people squander the resource you’re trying to save. Maybe you’ve installed a low-flush toilet and a low-flow showerhead, but how can you convince that wastrel down the street to fix her sprinkler and stop using a hose for a broom? Don’t worry, help is […]
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The real Washington vampire story
Vampires are taking the West by storm, descending on rural communities like Forks, Wash. Is this a reference to Twilight, the now cult-classic book and movie? No, in this case, the malevolent outsiders are agents of ICE, which stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Border Patrol. There is a strong parallel here […]