UTAH Perhaps you saw the Portlandia episode where an animal-loving couple, upset about a dog tied up outside a chi-chi restaurant, searches for its owner, tries to feed it upscale goodies like mussels, then finally releases the dog, much to the owners’ dismay. That’s sort of what happened in Salt Lake City, Utah, not long […]
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Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Turning dead deer into good soil
Viewed from several yards away, the fragments of fur and bone woven through the pile of woodchips gave it an oddly debonair appearance, like some sort of macabre tweed. We didn’t detect a whiff of anything nasty — until we walked downwind of a recently disturbed mound. “That must be the five deer we picked […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
As it goes high-tech, wildlife biology loses its soul
In 1978, I was researching one of my first wildlife stories, working along the North Fork of the Flathead River in northwestern Montana, one of the wildest places in the Lower 48. A wolf was believed to be prowling into Montana from British Columbia –– an important discovery if true, because wolves had been absent […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Can the oyster industry survive ocean acidification?
For four frustrating months in 2007, Mark Wiegardt and his wife, Sue Cudd, witnessed something unsettling at their Oregon oyster hatchery: tank bottoms littered with dead baby oysters. Usually, the larvae are grown until they’re three weeks old and a quarter of a millimeter in size — 10 million bunched together are roughly the size […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Salazar’s horse sensitivity
Idaho: No return policy on this one … For good reason. Courtesy Ron Spiewak COLORADO Should you bump into Interior Secretary Ken Salazar anytime soon, you might ask him about his future plans, his family’s well-being, or even his hat. (How does he decide whether to wear black or white?) But whatever you do, don’t […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
The environmentalists’ whitebark pine air force
In the summer of 2009, the Natural Resources Defense Council and EcoFlight conducted a comprehensive aerial survey to assess the damage mountain pine beetles were causing in whitebark pine forests in the Yellowstone National Park region. They devised a Landscape Assessment System — a low-flying airplane using “geo-tagged oblique aerial photography to assess the cumulative […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Producing more power means using more water
Locked up inside the 6 million years of sediment that makes up the Green River Formation, which extends across mostly public lands in Colorado and Utah, may be the equivalent of a few trillion barrels of oil. Even if only half of it is recoverable, the oil shale of the Mountain West could one day […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Of faith and frostbite: a review of True Sisters
True SistersSandra Dallas341 pages, hardcover: $24.99.St. Martin’s Press, 2012. In the 2012 presidential election, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emerged from the shadows with the first Mormon candidate for the nation’s highest office. Colorado writer Sandra Dallas’s 11th novel examines the history of a religion not widely understood outside its Utah base, […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Up the road and a world away: A review of Elsewhere, California
Elsewhere, CaliforniaDana Johnson276 pages, softcover: $15.95.Counterpoint, 2012. Dana Johnson’s thoughtful and affecting first novel, Elsewhere, California, is narrated by a girl named Avery, whom we first meet as a child growing up in South Central Los Angeles in the ’70s and ’80s. When her brother is threatened by gangs, their parents decide to move to […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Good news and goodbyes
HCN contributing editor Michelle Nijhuis has won a 2012 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in the magazine category. Michelle’s story “Crisis in the Caves,” published in the July/August 2011 issue of Smithsonian magazine, reported on white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has decimated bats in the northeastern U.S. and is poised to spread across the […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
BLM’s equine quagmire
It’s unconscionable that current policy has tripled the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse and burro program budget since 2000 to a massive $76 million. Dave Philipps’ fine piece of reporting mentioned many of BLM’s management strategies, such as roundups, adoption, fertility control and sanctuaries (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). A few more were overlooked, […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Distracted in Green River
Right from the title — “The outsiders: What are a bunch of hipsters doing in Green River, Utah?” — Emily Guerin establishes that her article will be concerned not with issues, but with appearances. It is a shame. Issues of acceptance and identity — persistent in small, economically downtrodden Western communities — are real and […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
A sampler of wildlife tech
PingersRadio transmitters, sometimes called “pingers,” are a classic monitoring method. Powered by batteries, they transmit very high frequency signals that are picked up by antennas or satellites. Until recently, the batteries’ weight and size couldn’t be reduced enough to use transmitters on small animals and fish. But now, says Doug Bonham, a freelance circuit-board designer […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Round ’em up
The ongoing feral horse debate is a prime example of a small special-interest group getting its way and creating an unsustainable public program (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). Feral horses are a serious threat to our native ecosystems. Research has shown that areas inhabited by feral horses have fewer plant species and less grass and overall […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
What’s wild?
I consider the recent article on wild horse management one of your best (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). It seems that some people are adamant that horses have no place in the wild. Others consider them equivalent to deer, elk and other wildlife. How long does a species have to be here to be considered […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
A new measure of poverty shifts rankings in the West
Thumbnail photo CC via Flickr user Palmspringsdude. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A new measure of poverty shifts rankings in the West.
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Weird and wacky White House petitions
Last month, when the Bureau of Land Management announced the proposed lease of over 20,000 acres for gas development in Colorado’s North Fork Valley, locals took their displeasure straight to the top: They petitioned President Obama to make the BLM take the leases off the table until it’s done updating its 23-year-old land management plan. […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Will Navajos approve a Grand Canyon megadevelopment?
GAP, Arizona — For over 50 years, residents of this western sliver of the Navajo Nation have watched tourist traffic zoom by on Highway 89, headed for the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell and southern Utah’s national parks. Except for a single gas station and a few ramshackle jewelry stands, there’s little here to attract vacationers’ […]