For more than a decade, biologist Brian Woodbridge watched hundreds of Swainson’s hawks raise their young in the fields of Butte Valley in northern California. Each fall, the birds headed south, but Woodbridge spotted a strange pattern. “I noticed that some years a lot more adults returned from migration than others,” he says. “That really […]
Birds
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Coffee is bad for birds
You pour yourself a cup of coffee and listen for the chirp and twitter of birds outside. But as you sip, you notice the quiet: What’s happened to the songbirds? The answer could be right in your cup. Songbird populations are dropping as foreign coffee plantations “modernize” to keep up with America’s thirst for the […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Sting nets bird killers
In today’s booming black market for migratory bird parts, a single bald eagle feather can fetch $100. Given such prices, it’s not surprising that a two-year U.S. Fish and Wildlife sting operation netted 35 individuals and businesses allegedly involved in the killing and selling of protected migratory birds in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. The […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Western raptors on the rise
Some birds of prey in the West are fighting back. The Salt Lake City-based group, HawkWatch International, recently compiled up to 18 years’ of data on the birds collected from sites in Nevada, Utah and New Mexico and found a fast rate of growth among merlins, ospreys and peregrine falcons. The average annual population increase […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Crane hunt is contested
Idaho approved a sandhill crane hunt last month to appease farmers who are losing barley and potatoes to the birds. The state plans to distribute 20 permits to shoot the lanky, long-necked cranes this September, but it is not yet clear who will do the killing. State officials would like to use the permits to […]
Posted inJune 10, 1996: Outdoor Education
Salvage logging rider barrels into a shy seabird’s world
Even though the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated 3.9 million acres of land along the Oregon and Washington coast as “critical habitat” for the marbled murrelet in late April, nothing changed for the Citizens Murrelet Survey Project. The members of the Corvallis, Ore.-based group continue their routine of getting up at 4:30 a.m. and […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Of raptors and rifles
Rancher Jim Maitland waded through chest-high waters in mid-November on a rescue mission, but not to save a calf. The creature struggling in a southwestern Oregon river was a young golden eagle that had been shot. After Maitland used a potato sack to rescue the raptor from a riverbank, it thanked him by gouging his […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Bird Brains
-If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows.” * Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, c. 1880s Like coyotes, some members of the crow family have long been considered vermin. Scruffy crows steal crops; ravens rip into garbage; magpies and jays steal eggs and nestlings from “innocent” […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
`Goddamn goshawks’
Last summer, loggers discovered a nest with two rare goshawk fledglings on the Headquarters timber sale, west of Laramie, Wyo. With permission from the Forest Service they cut trees within yards of the nest, causing the adults to abandon the nest and the fledglings to die. Environmentalists blasted the agency and loggers for failing to […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Condors ready for takeoff
CONDORS READY FOR TAKEOFF California condors, giant vultures that can fly over 100 miles in a day, met with limited success when they were released by federal biologists in California three years ago. The endangered birds seemed inexorably drawn to human activities: Four birds died in collisions with power lines, another from drinking anti-freeze. Now, […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Non-native bird ruffles feathers
Conservationists clipped the wings of a controversial plan to introduce a non-native game bird into southwestern Colorado. Although the state Division of Wildlife hoped to release 40 ruffed grouse in the San Juan-Rio Grande National Forest in April, four environmental groups and two individuals sued the Forest Service to stop the transplant. The day after […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Reward offered in rampage of eagle poaching
Federal agents suspect that a slew of eagle-poaching incidents in southeast Idaho is linked to the lucrative illegal wildlife trade. Fifteen dead golden eagles have been found in the last two weeks in wetlands on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation. Since December 1992, 41 dead golden eagles have been found in southeast Idaho. All the […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Trumpeter swans play through
Trumpeter swans have set up housekeeping in Utah for the first time in recorded history, with three of the swans settling in at a golf course near St. George. State wildlife officials discovered the swans after golfers complained that the birds, which can grow to six feet from tail to beak, interfered with their game. […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Hawk sees opportunity, snatches it
Taking a nap on the rocky banks of the Flathead River in Montana can be dangerous, especially if a snake has the same idea. When hiker Bill Gustafson, 17, of Columbia Falls took a break to snooze in the sun July 5, he fell asleep bare-chested. A non-poisonous garter snake then slithered onto his warm […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Oil, feathers and EPA
Thousands of birds flying across the Western plains each year fatally mistake oil pits for bodies of water. Once the birds land, their feathers become coated and they die. In its first attempt to address the problem, the Environmental Protection Agency recently fined Texaco Refining and Marketing Inc. and four other companies $300,000 and ordered […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Silent swans in Yellowstone
For the first time in recorded history, Yellowstone National Park trumpeter swans added no young to their flock last summer. The decline in cygnets parallels a decrease in the adult population from almost 500 last year to 277 this year. Ruth Shea, of the Idaho Fish and Game Department, believes a major cause is competition […]
Posted inOctober 18, 1993: A lost land grant: Can it be reclaimed?
Victory for raptors
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Victory for raptors.
Posted inAugust 23, 1993: Timber theft: Logging firms rob a lax agency
Prairie birds take a nosedive
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Prairie birds take a nosedive.