Mixed rain and snow is falling as WC writes this blog post. WC has lost track, but this probably Third Winter, following First and Second False Spring. Still, there’s more daylight, even in these middle latitudes, and some of the more excitable flora are starting to green up. And, of course, March is over, meaning…
The Arctic Ringed Seal is one of five subspecies of the Ringed Seal, a circumpolar sea mammal dependent on sea ice and snow drifts on top of the sea ice. The Arctic Ringed Seal is threatened across its entire range as polar sea ice vanishes. The females pup – give birth and nurse their new…
A reader noted that almost all of the bird species in Saturday’s regular Return of Bird of the Week series are species of Least Concern according to the International Union for Conservation – one of the organizations that attempt to monitor endangered species. What, that reader asks, are some of the species that are not…
Most readers are likely familiar with the plot of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: Juliet, to avoid marriage to a man she doesn’t love (and committing a bigamy she cannot disclose), takes a potion that makes her seem dead. Romeo, finding her cataleptic, thinks she is dead and takes poison and dies. Juliet, waking from the…
It’s an over-used metaphor today. But, until 1986, it was a real thing: canaries were used to detect toxic gases, especially carbon monoxide, in underground mines. Songbirds have high metabolic and respiration rates, making them more sensitive to toxic gases. Canaries adapt well to caged life, and have a pleasant song when off-duty. So underground…
Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom of the sea. Now, as he was sinking – had he the gold? or the gold him? John Ruskin, Unto This Last…
So you want to see jaguars in the wild? As these things go, it’s pretty simple. Fly to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Then take a local flight the 2.5 hours to Cuiabå, in south-central Brazil. Then drive or hire a guide or driver to drive the 150 kilometers along the teeth-rattling Transpantaneria, the Trans-Pantanal Highway. Which…
When boundaries between nations are drawn, they often ignore the rivers that flow across those boundaries. And that can lead to some very serious environmental problems for the nations on the downstream side of that arbitrary international boundary. WC will illustrate the problem with two examples. In Alaska, the Stikine River, along with the Taku…
WC was raised on salmon. Canned salmon, frozen salmon, fresh salmon, smoked salmon, dried salmon; growing up in Alaska, it was the most abundant, least expensive food and WC ate a lot of it. Based on nearly 70 years of eating all five Pacific species of salmon, there’s no question in WC’s mind that king…
WC is a member of the Board of Directors of Idaho Conservation League, which has strongly held, public views on this issue. In fact, WC will quote ICL’s position later. WC wants to be very clear that the views expressed in this blog post are WC’s, not ICL’s, and that ICL bears no responsibility for…
In 2014-2015, when large areas of the North Pacific were warmer than at any time in recorded history, there was a massive die off of Common Murres across the North Pacific region. Some 62,000 dead Common Murres were found, projecting to a total die off of as many as a million birds. Almost all of…
Sometimes it seems to WC he has been fighting Pebble Mine forever. But it’s only been 21 years. As has been reported here before, it’s the wrong mine, in the wrong kind of ore in the wrong place. It also seems to WC that the mine project has been “killed” at least ten times, but…
You know, we really shouldn’t need to have a Save the Eagles Day. We ought to do it without any special reminder or ceremonial day. To borrow a Robert Heinlein phrase, eagles are like pretty girls and butterflies: sufficient unto themselves and need no excuse. But in this modern world, today two-thirds of the eagle…
Today is the 50th Anniversary of the creation of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. It coulda shoulda woulda been a national park, and enjoy better protection that the limited benefits of being a national recreation area, but at the time half a loaf was all that was possible in Idaho’s perennially weird politics. If it…
Imagine running one of the great American marathons. Or, if you are in the kind of shape I am in, imagine jogging, then walking, and in the end possibly crawling to the finish line of an American marathon. Whatever your condition, by the time you reach the finish line you’d be in dire need of…
It’s been a while since WC wrote about a BUCIP – a Big, Ugly, Complicated and Intractable Problem. The typical BUCIP is complicated, with multiple sides, entrenched stakeholders and packed with emotional positions. The problem of wild horses in the West is a classic BUCIP. Wild horses1 are an introduced species, not native to North…
DEIJ, for anyone show has been living under a rock, is “diversity, equity, inclusion and justice,” and it is a powerful and developing theme in many national and international current events. In the context of conservation, DEIJ raises issues of environmental justice, acknowledgement of historic treatment and mistreatment of races and people of color, recognition…
A gold mining dredge operated along 5.5 miles of the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River from 1940-1942 and 1946-1952. Effectively, the valley floor was turned upside down chasing gold. The dredge is an historic monument now, open for tours during the summer. The heirs of the men who ran the dredge are weirdly proud;…
In a weird, ritualized exercise, a kind of would-be attempted magic, each year the Idaho state legislature adopts a Joint Resolution condemning the very idea of breaching the four Lower Snake River Dams. The resolution is packed with lies, half-lies and distortions. It also simply ignores the proposal from their fellow Republican Rep. Mike Simpson…
There’s a place just a few hours drive from Boise where the old magic still works. You want to get there on an early spring morning while it’s still dark. Park, stay in your vehicle, but roll the windows down. It will be cold in the pre-dawn darkness, but the reward is hearing that strange…
WC has participated in a fair number of Christmas Bird Counts. For non-birders, the Christmas Bird Count is an annual census of birds, a citizen science project that has been held during the Christmas holidays for some 120 years now. It provides one of the longest baseline studies of populations of bird species across North…
U.S. District Judge David Barlow – a Trump-appointed federal judge – killed the Bureau of Land Management’s plan to lease 59 parcels in Utah’s Uinta Basin for oil and gas development. His December 10 decision was a very near thing, and serves as a lesson in both the consequences of greed and the serious deficiencies…
WC has written before about what Prof. Marc Urban called Climate Change and the Escalator to Extinction. But always in the context of birds. The problem is even worse for plants, who can’t very well pick up their roots and move to a higher, cooler location as climate change alters the habitats for which they…
Okay, the good guys won. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that determines whether a permit for a mine should be issued, denied such a mining permit to Pebble Limited Partnership. The Corps determined that Pebble Mine “would not comply with the 404(b)(1) Guidelines” – the Clean Water regulations – “and would…
Mark Hamilton, past president of the University of Alaska and a man WC formerly respected, gave a presentation on behalf of Pebble Mine in late September. He told his audience to “trust the process.” Seriously? Anyone interested in the Pebble Mine project has seen Environmental Investigation Agency’s secret videos and read the reports where the…
The California Condor captive breeding program is a qualified success. From a low of 22 birds, all in captivity, there are now more than 500 birds, some 200 in the wild. That’s a very impressive recovery, and a credit to a lot of hard-working folks at The Peregrine Fund, San Diego Zoo and Los Angeles…
A long time ago, WC was stuck defending a young bank robber. It was court-appointed; there was no option for declining. The 20-year old bank robber had three accomplices, all of whom were testifying against WC’s client. The District Attorney wouldn’t make a plea offer, for reasons completely unrelated to the bank robbery charge. So…
Silver Creek, in southcentral Idaho, is one of the state’s great conservation success stories. Managed – rescued, in fact – by The Nature Conservancy, it is a highly successful model of what can be done when collaboration is successful. It started in 1976 when the local community urged The Nature Conservancy to purchase 479 acres…
The Cassia Crossbill, Idaho’s sole endemic species, is found only in the South Hills and Albion Mountains, south of Twin Falls, Idaho. Its range is limited to about 70 square kilometers – a little over 170,000 acres, all in the Rocky Mountains Lodgepole Pine forests. As WC writes this post, more than 100,000 acres of…
Migrating birds are dying by the hundreds of thousands, maybe by the millions. We don’t know why. All across New Mexico, lethargic, dying birds are being reported. Oh, there are lots of theories, probably as many as there are ornithologists: that they are starving because of depressed insect populations, forced by wildfires to migrate before they…
Wickersham's Conscience 
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