One group that was not discussed in Hal Herring’s recent article on the delisting of wolves in the Northern Rockies were the non-ranching farmers, those who raise alfalfa, corn or other crops (HCN, 5/30/11). Elk damage to crops has been a serious issue in the West since elk numbers began recovering from overharvest years ago. […]
Departments
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Whither the ESA?
Thank you to HCN and Hal Herring for the outstanding article on wolves (HCN, 5/30/11)! I saw my first bald eagle in the wild in 1982, my first black-footed ferret in 1983, my first lynx in 1978, and my first wolf in 1980. Due to increased public awareness of the importance of these species and […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
How the gray wolf lost its endangered status — and how enviros helped
Augusta, MontanaIn September of 1995, I worked on a trail-building crew along the edge of Little Blackfoot Meadows, in the Helena National Forest near Elliston, Mont. It was a big piece of roadless country, mostly lodgepole pines over a lush carpet of whortleberry bushes. The meadows were a sunburnt dun color, and the willows along […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
The One-Eyed Squirrel of Ooh-Aah Point
It was a mid-July morning during my fifth summer on Grand Canyon National Park’s trail crew, and I arrived at the worksite on the South Kaibab Trail to find an old woman — memory casts her with doughy white skin and frumpy teal-colored clothes — perched on a rock on the side of the trail. […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Back on your feet
NEVADA What helps someone survive an ordeal that would most likely kill anyone else? Rita Chretien, 56, should know. She and her husband, Albert, 59, who own an excavating company, were on their way from British Columbia to a trade show in Las Vegas when they lost their way in the mountains of northeastern Nevada […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
Greening a city … and pushing other colors out
San Francisco, CaliforniaThe Hunters Point Naval Shipyard covers 500 acres on San Francisco’s southeastern flank, jutting out into the bay like the fletching of a giant arrow. Acquired by the U.S. Navy in 1940, it was once one of the West Coast’s largest shipyards, at its World War II peak employing up to 17,000 people, […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
Wolverines in unexpected places
On April 17, biologist Audrey Magoun and husband Pat Valkenburg discovered intriguing tracks in Oregon’s snowy Wallowa Mountains. Five days later, Magoun downloaded photos from a remote camera and realized the creature had company: Two hungry wolverines stared back from her screen, gnashing hunks of bait meat. It’s the first confirmed evidence of Oregon wolverines […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
The cost of righteousness
I have a friend named Gina who is a great marriage counselor. Gina is roly-poly and effervescent — her mere presence disarms uptight people. With a Ph.D., an M.D. and decades of experience, she’s an empathetic listener, expressing just enough of her own opinions to create a genuine conversation and strive for breakthroughs. She’s very […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
Did I mention she can cook?
Debbie Sease was a welcome face on the cover of High Country News (5/2/11). The story didn’t mention two singular aspects of her career. She and the other graying conservationists in the story have all have been extraordinary mentors for many, many others. I got to know Debbie working at the Sierra Club many years […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
Idolizing Ed
Call me humorless, but I was disturbed when I read Michael Branch’s essay about the boulder he and his buddies sent smashing downhill (HCN, 5/2/11). His joyous description of the event, in which he channels Ed Abbey’s ribald style perfectly, strikes my sober ear as just another chapter of the bad old story of humans […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
Chill out with HCN and some chili
We’d like to invite our Colorado Western Slope readers and friends to a potluck chili feast following our late-spring board meeting. Come meet other HCN fans and our staff and board members. The fun starts at 6 p.m. on Friday, June 10, at the Town Park here in Paonia. We’ll provide the chili — hot, […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
Richard Reynolds, raptor man
The main cabin at Big Springs Field Station in northern Arizona’s Kaibab National Forest isn’t the prettiest; there’s paint chipping from the floors and mouse poop in the corners. But the decorations cost about $9 million and took 20 years to collect. Oversized graphs, tables, maps and aerial photos crowd each other for wall space. […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
Watts of memories
Paul Larmer’s comments about his early years in D.C., and how many lobbyists stayed connected with the West through High Country News, brought to mind my early years with the Bureau of Land Management (HCN, 5/2/11). In the early ’80s, as James Watt ascended to the position of Interior secretary, I got my first taste […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
The endless atlas: A review of Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas
Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas Rebecca Solnit167 pages, softcover: $24.95.University of California Press, 2010. San Francisco author Rebecca Solnit’s latest release, Infinite City, can be loosely described as an atlas of her hometown. But Solnit is interested in far more than geographical representation, as she writes in the book’s foreword: “An atlas is a […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
A Gem City Atlas: Novel maps of Laramie, Wyoming
What is Laramie? This winter, creative writing graduate students at the University of Wyoming teamed with Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas author Rebecca Solnit and cartographers Ben Pease and Shizue Seigel to answer that question. The series of maps and essays that resulted provide a nuanced portrait of place — one that pairs missile […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
An interview with Carter Niemeyer, author of “Wolfer: A Memoir”
Carter Niemeyer is a wildlife biologist who started his career doing predator control and ended it working on wolf recovery in the northern Rockies. His new book, Wolfer: A Memoir, chronicles his years capturing, tracking, relocating and killing wolves for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Idaho Department of Game. The gray wolf’s […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Walking in the body of being
In 1656, 23-year-old Baruch Spinoza, a Portuguese Jew in Amsterdam, was excommunicated by his community and formally cursed to the end of his days. The young man’s supposed heresies were likely related to a burgeoning pantheism, which he would later develop more fully — the idea of God as an infinite being who contains everything […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Lady Liberty v the Statue of Libertines
MONTANA So far in the West, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is the only one who kills bad bills by whipping out his custom branding iron, which spells out VETO. The latest Tea Party proposals that have flamed out include a bill making it harder for people to register to vote, another to permit the use […]