Why is this shrimp fishery nearly conflict-free?
Wildlife
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Consider the sparrow
The Urban BestiaryLyanda Lynn Haupt337 pages, hardcover: $27.Little Brown, 2013. Most communities across the West, urban and rural, are home to the animals in Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s new book, The Urban Bestiary, a collection of joyful meditations on the fauna that scamper over our lawns and roost on our power poles. While eastern gray squirrels, […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Paying for conservation
Hunters and anglers have largely been footing the bill for wildlife and conservation (“Hunting for conservation dollars,” HCN, 5/12/14), yet we’re continually under attack by environmental and animal rights groups who have so far refused to assist in funding wildlife management (minus the rare exception of Defenders of Wildlife, which compensates ranchers for livestock killed […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
The Latest: Kill invasive lake trout to save native bull trout?
State and tribes disagree.
Posted inGoat
Bark beetle video series says there’s hope amid the carnage
The mountain pine beetle is perhaps the most infamous creepy-crawly in the Western United States. No larger than a grain of rice, the bug drills into trees and infects them with a blue fungus that makes them die of thirst. They’ve bored and left for dead millions of trees and affected 30 million acres in […]
Posted inGoat
Climate change expedites hybrid trout takeover
When two species mate, their offspring end up with undignified new names like ‘pizzly’ (a grizzly and polar bear pairing) or ‘sparred owl’ (for barred owl and spotted owl hybrids). But the more rare species in such couplings face a far worse fate – hybridization can be a path to extinction. That’s why hybridization is […]
Posted inGoat
Are invasive species really that terrible?
The West’s approach to managing invasive species has, for the most part, been a straightforward one: eradicate them swiftly and at all costs. Spray ‘em, poison ‘em, net ‘em, douse ‘em with fungus, and, when all else fails, eat ‘em – whatever the method, the important thing is that the invader is sent packing. But […]
Posted inGoat
New California shrimp: A reminder of the West’s undiscovered biodiversity
In 2010, Ed Hendrycks, a research assistant at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, was poring through his museum’s collection of caprellids with José Guerra-Garcia, a researcher visiting from Sevilla, when the Spanish scientist noticed an unusual specimen. One of the caprellids – tiny crustaceans whose slender, translucent bodies have earned them the nickname […]
Posted inWotr
Idaho has declared a war on wolves
Nearly 20 years ago, I served on the team that carefully captured and released the first wolves in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. Though this reintroduction effort was heralded internationally as a significant American achievement in the recovery of endangered species, we’re in a far different place today, and especially in Idaho. The state has […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Alaska’s wildlife war
The federal government pushes back as the state ramps up predator control.
Posted inGoat
ESA changes could help protect sage grouse on private land
In an increasingly subdivided and trailblazed West, southeastern Oregon’s Harney County is a place that can still make you feel small. From the empty blacktop two-lane highways 78 and 20, broad grasslands rise to sagebrush-studded mesas and hills that crest and break to the blue horizons like the landlocked waves of a parched sea. Drive-fast-with-your-windows-down […]
Posted inGoat
Feel-good salmon farms
Standing on a grated metal platform above a fiberglass tank, I’m entranced by silvery salmon gliding through a current of recycled freshwater. The salmon are lively and occasionally jump when a large feed bin, meticulously set with a timer, rains down an exact amount of feed pellets. Everything is designed to help the fish grow […]
Posted inGoat
Against all odds, wolf OR7 may have found a mate
On May 3, a wolf slipped through the frame of a remote camera in southwestern Oregon, a blur of black and brown. The next day, under the cover of darkness, it stared directly at a camera, eyes aglow, and did something ordinary that, under the circumstances, was an extraordinary sight: It squatted and peed. This […]
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
Hunting for conservation dollars
State wildlife agencies struggle to broaden funding as their duties expand.
Posted inGoat
Should the humpback whale stay on the endangered species list?
In the early 1960s, the situation seemed dire for humpback whales. A century of industrial hunting had reduced the North Pacific population to around 1,000, a minuscule fraction of historic levels. Extinction, once unthinkable, appeared not only possible, but likely. Five decades after the International Whaling Commission imposed a moratorium on hunting in 1966, however, […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
A bear named Irene
Grizzlies make a tenuous comeback in Montana’s Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem.
Posted inWotr
How to cook a rattlesnake – if you have to
A neighbor in New Mexico once told me that it’s bad luck — not to mention bad form — to kill a rattlesnake. Unfortunately, he told me this after I’d already killed one. It was sleeping in the garden, beneath a tomato plant, when my wife noticed it. There’s something about a snake in the […]
Posted inWotr
When a rattler comes to call
I first noticed the Panamint rattlesnake when her head moved just beneath my feet. I hadn’t stood on her, not yet; I stood on the edge of our concrete doorstep with my bare toes drooping west, pointing to the Sierra Nevada mountains, six inches above the glacial alluvium around our home. The snake — whom […]
Posted inGoat
The biggest wildlife crossing you’ve never heard of
Nestled in the Cascade Mountains of central Washington, winding along a 15-mile stretch of interstate is the largest wildlife connectivity project you’ve never heard of. Deer, elk, mountain goats, bobcats, black bears, foxes, mink, otters, cougars and wild turkeys roam the region’s old growth forests, mountain meadows, streams and glacier-covered peaks. But all too often, […]