Beavers play an important role in North America and its ecology. Beaver dams provide enormous benefits for all kinds of wildlife. In the West, they are very beneficial to trout by providing slower water refuges where the fish can grow to larger sizes, thus producing more eggs and offspring. The riparian vegetation that grows […]
Continue Reading →A guest article by Mike Settell
On June 26th, 2010, I inspected the South Fork of Mink Creek to document conditions of the Box Canyon road culvert that was being plugged by beaver. Like many roads throughout the west, the South Fork Road parallels the creek and so problems with the road-creek interface are, at best, […]
Continue Reading →This is a story about beaver being reintroduced to places in southeast Idaho where they have been wiped out. Because of the natural abundance of aspen and willows in Eastern Idaho, the area is naturally better beaver habitat than points north, such as central Idaho and Yellowstone.
In the past, many beaver dams were deliberately […]
Continue Reading →Killing Thousands of Animals Each Year Violates Environmental Laws
BOISE, Idaho— Five conservation groups filed a lawsuit today over the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s failure to fully analyze and disclose the impact of its “Wildlife Services” program in Idaho, which kills thousands of wolves, coyotes, foxes, cougars, birds and other wild animals each year at […]
Continue Reading →Boise, Idaho. Four conservation organizations today filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program over its large-scale, often secretive killing of wild animals in Idaho. The program kills millions of animals nationwide every year, and in 2013 killed more than 3,000 mammals in Idaho alone via aerial gunning, […]
Continue Reading →On September 14 and 15 Katie Fite and I visited the Miller Creek Allotment on the Mountain City Ranger District of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest to check out the riparian areas there. What we found was just a horrible mess that any land manager should be embarrassed about enough to actually do something about but, […]
Continue Reading →Made by Man (Active Restoration)
Dan McCormick combines art, ecology, and engineering to build sculptures that simulate a natural process/feature (ex: beaver dam) of a typical watershed that filters sediment, recharges a floodplain, establishes riparian vegetation/wildlife habitat and promotes general watershed health.
When people actively work ~ say, planting willows or spreading seed ~ to […]
Continue Reading →I read this article a couple of weeks ago. Someone had slipped it beneath the office door and upon returning from lunch, I sat down and took the time to read it.
The World at Gunpoint – Derrick Jensen, Orion Magazine
Finally we get to the point. Those who come after, who inherit whatever’s […]
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My name is Erik Molvar, and I am Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project (WWP), a nonprofit conservation group that advocates for the protection and restoration of wildlife and watersheds throughout the western United States. WWP specializes in solving environmental problems caused by livestock grazing on public lands.
I hold a Master of […]
Continue Reading →The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is taking comments on the proposed listing of the Distinct Population Segment (DPS) of Arctic grayling (Thymallus arcticus) under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Following the status review, the Service will either publish a proposed rule to protect the Arctic grayling under the ESA, or a withdrawal from candidate […]
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