I knew my chances were slim. Only a handful of salmon make it into the Idaho mountains this close to the Montana border. The fact any do at all is remarkable. I was standing six hundred and twenty-four river miles from the Pacific, upstream from eight major dams, three and a half thousand feet above …
How to Keep Returning Wildlife Wild
For the latest post on the Plastocene, I'm linking to a piece I published yesterday in The Atlantic on the complicated question of how to keep wildlife wild on a crowded planet. We go to restoration sites in Italy and the UK, before bringing the lessons back to Montana. Saving nature clearly ain't what it used to …
An Owl with a Parachute
I never knew a northern spotted owl could parachute vertically through the forest. This delightful image came from a researcher who spent eight years studying the owls in the Oregon Cascades. He had personally witnessed a descent and could hardly contain his excitement when he told us about it. To find the reticent Strix for …
Why Montana’s Not That Different
Jetlag gets you up early. On the first day back from a trip to Europe, I found myself alert in bed at 5.30 a.m. wondering how exactly I was going to fill the time till breakfast. A casual jog around the neighborhood would not normally be my first choice but it felt like a good …
When People, Dogs, and Fungi Form an Inseparable Whole
This was the third time I had witnessed Andrea, the gruff Italian woodsman and truffle hunter, working closely with his dog Zara. Zara is a short-haired pointer, an awkward-looking blend of floppy ears, long legs, and bountiful canine energy who just happens to be excellent at sniffing out the black truffles that lie beneath the …
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Biodiversity Loss and (What is Not) Rocket Science
It’s the habitat, stupid! Such a well-worn phrase – or something close to it – could serve as a tag line for the alarming report on biodiversity loss released in summary form this week by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The report doesn’t mince words about the fact that human impacts …
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Of Moose and Sturgeon: Lessons from the Ragged Edges of the Anthropocene
A mother and calf moose were found bedded down in an alleyway in downtown Missoula, Montana this last Friday morning. They were resting up somewhere between a law office and a bank. People showing up for work at the end of the week were warned to look both ways before they ran across the street …
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We Are All Part-Moose
“Okay, let’s do this.” These were my self-directed words of encouragement as I decided to take the right turn and head one final time up the hill of the outer ski loop. I had been keeping my eye on the clock as I had to pick my wife up from the airport in less than …
The Endangered Species Act and the Extinction of Cultural Wisdom
It wasn’t long after the Trump administration’s proposal to weaken the Endangered Species Act hit the headlines that a story emerged about a surprise encounter between two Irish fisherman and a striking piece of Earth’s history. Raymond McElroy and Charlie Coyle were fishing for pollan in Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland in September when their …
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Orangutans, Human Landscapes, and the Processes that Made them Both
In a recent article in Anthropocene Magazine about the future of orangutans, Brandon Keim observes “the key to their survival is us not killing them.” You would be forgiven for thinking that Keim is a master of the blindingly obvious after he offers a statement like this. We all already know that orangutans don’t fare …
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