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 […]
As it goes high-tech, wildlife biology loses its soul
Posted inRange
Natural resources and the fiscal cliff
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House As even people living in a cave know by now, if Congress doesn’t strike a deal soon, some combination of automatic tax hikes and draconian budget cuts will kick in. As early as January 2, the first round of sequestration cuts will be triggered. I’ve heard little discussion […]
Posted inGoat
Predator control ain’t easy
I recently returned from a wolf hunt. The trip was part of my research for an upcoming story on how wolves, once endangered, are now being managed in the Rocky Mountains. Our experience of managing predators in the West goes far beyond wolves, however. There’s plenty circulating in the news on this topic right now; […]
Posted inGoat
The future of our forests
I recently got an email from a reader who was considering moving to Flagstaff. With its excellent bike trails, university, and a populace full of outdoor nuts, it sounded like a pretty nice spot. So he paid a visit, and while there, sought out the answer to a big question: “I needed to know when 100 […]
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 inWotr
A no-nonsense kitchen for Christmas
Based on the variety of ice cream scoops on the market –1,529 available from Amazon alone — you might conclude that the world faces a crisis of improperly excavated ice cream. I think it’s more a symptom of our love affair with cooking gadgetry combined with our ever-larger kitchens. We now easily accommodate toys like […]
Posted inGoat
Protecting the Piceance
The dirt roads cutting across the Piceance Basin, a lucrative oil and gas reserve in northwestern Colorado, spread like veins, running through patches of green shrubs and tracing the tops of hard ridgelines. Some lead to active drill sites, with metal rigs thrusting skyward. Others end at patches of brown earth that show signs of […]
Posted inWotr
Recreation calls the shots in Moab
Last August, I read that construction would soon begin on a proposed $9 million “Moab Transit Hub and Elevated River Bikeway.” I’d caught only a snippet of the plan a couple years ago. The news story called for a three-mile “bikeway” partially suspended over the Colorado River. There were references to piers and girders and cantilevers. […]
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 inGoat
The End is nigh (or at least it’s really dry)
This won’t be news to most of you fair readers, but just in case you’ve been paying attention to real problems and have missed it: The End is nigh! That’s right, the world’s end is just weeks away. After all, what else could it mean that the Mayan calendar ends on that day? Nothing, except […]
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 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 inGoat
The name game
Enviros are dreaming – not of a white Christmas (which seems unlikely around most of the West, given ongoing drought) but of a greener White House. A president’s re-election often creates an exodus of Cabinet secretaries, as some decide to leave for other opportunities and others are asked to step down. Hencewith, some outright speculation […]
Posted inGoat
Dispersing the toxicity
It’s every coastal community’s nightmare. An off-shore oil rig explodes, a tanker runs aground, and the name of their town — Homer, Alaska, say — becomes synonymous with the latest disaster of our oil-besotted age. When such a disaster does happen, oil spill responders are faced with many choices about how to contain the spill […]
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’ […]
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
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
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
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 […]
