Wildlife News
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This past week the Biden Administration reversed a permit approved by the Trump Administration that would have allowed the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority to construct a 211-mile industrial road through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve to access copper and zinc deposits in Northwest Alaska. Except for the route across…
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Twenty-seven states (at last count) now have “right to hunt and fish” constitutional amendments. These laws are an attempt to secure public hunting, trapping, and fishing rights in perpetuity. They also help secure the future of traditional state wildlife governance & management that caters almost exclusively to people who engage in hunting, trapping, and fishing…
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An important question regarding sagebrush ecosystems, and species that rely upon them like sage grouse has to do with exactly what constitutes the fire rotation in sagebrush habitat? And a corrolary question is do current fire management policies emulate these historical conditions? William Baker’s paper, Scaling Landscape Fire History: Wildfires Not Historically Frequent in the…
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Giant Sequoia May Require High-severity Blazes for their surival. Photo George Wuerthner During the summer of 2020 and 2021, with one of the most severe droughts in California’s recent history, wildfires charred thousands of acres in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the mountain range’s magnificent sequoia groves were among the areas burned. I recently visited…
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On August 16, 2020 record heat spread across California. In Death Valley the temperate reached 130 degrees. But even places on the coast, normally cool due to off shore currents, reached records seldom seen. In Santa Cruz, on Monterey Bay, the temperature rose for two days to 107 degrees. The rising temperatures gave rise to…
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American Prairie and the Restoration of Great Plains Wildlife Eastern Montana’s northern plains are what some disparagingly call fly-over country. Once you leave the beautiful, forested mountains for which Montana is named, two-thirds of the state’s eastern portion is plains. It’s the kind of place where you can see a storm coming 50 miles away.…
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The interview concerns a paper published about a plan to rewild the West that came out a year or so ago, putting back some of the pieces in the West, including beaver and wolves. The interview was recorded shortly after the publication, but is available recently. The introduction has one minor correction. I no longer work for…
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A previously thinned portion of the area charred by the Dixie Fire, which despite active forest management across much of the burn area, became one of California’s largest blazes. Photo George Wuerthner The Wilderness Society (TWS), founded to promote wildland preservation, has shifted its mission and focus to promoting logging and other activities that destroy…
