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Despite recent population increases in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, gray wolves occupy only a small fraction of their historic habitat.

Despite recent population increases in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, gray wolves occupy only a small fraction of their historic habitat.

Today the AP reports that the genetically unique Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit is essentially extinct. Presently, the only known bunnies are in captivity. The last male has died, leaving two females. The Tri-City Herald presaged this news with an editorial on the rabbit’s plight just a week ago. It’s a shame that the majority of endangered-species crusades revolve around the majestic, calendar-quality animals like bears, whales, caribou and wolves. The...

 New wolf numbers released this afternoon from US Fish and Wildlife: Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming now host an estimated 1,020 wolves, a stunning 21 percent increase in just a single year. Since reintroduction in the mid-1990s, gray wolf numbers have grown at an astonishing pace, faster even than the most optimistic prognostications. Idaho continues to shelter more wolves than any other state in the West with about half the total....

In the Washington Post today, an ominous headline for endangered species: "The True Cost of Protection?" Dust off your sense of outrage, fellow taxpaying Americans, because as the article informs us, protecting endangered species cost $1.4 billion in 2004. So magnificent is that figure that the writer sneeringly suggests that king salmon are so called because recovering them cost the princely sum of $160 million in ’04. By the tenor...

From the wilderness of British Columbia comes an innovative conservation tactic about which I am strongly… ambivalent. Raincoast Conservation Foundation is acquiring the guide-outfitting hunting rights to five areas along the central BC coast, a remote area of vast wilderness that is home to the rare "spirit bear," among other species. The angle here is probably obvious: Raincoast bought the rights in order to put a stop to hunting. Raincoast...

Wolf populations are continuing to grow in the northern US Rocky Mountains. New wolf census data shows a steadily rising population, especially in Idaho where remote habitat-rich wilderness is ideal for expanding wolf numbers. After being extirpated in the early 20th century, wolves were reintroduced into central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s. (A few wolves had also begun re-colonizing Montana.) I’m always inspired simply by the raw...

More evidence of ecological restoration via the wolf, this time in Canada’s Banff National Park. Researchers there found that when wolves disappeared from areas with heavy human presence, elk populations spiked and the ecosystem changed: Willow trees, river-loving birds called willow warblers and American redstarts, and beaver dams once were common in Bow Valley and surrounding areas. But in the areas where wolves remained scarce and elk populations mushroomed, these...

If you’ve been following Eric’s pieces on sage-grouse, goats, wolves, orcas, salmon, caribou, and other Northwest critters, you may have gathered that Sightline is doing research on wildlife in Cascadia—and what it tells us about the health of our natural heritage. In fact, as we described in a Cascadia Scorecard News article this week, Sightline is introducing a wildlife index as part of the Cascadia Scorecard project. The index tracks...

An excellent article on wolf reintroduction in Orion magazine. The main focus is on the evolution of our psychology and values around wolves. Here’s a sneak preview: …the culture of the west continues to be transformed gradually by an influx of people holding different, perhaps more modern, values. The old-timers are fading away and, like it or not, the new west is taking hold. Surveys show that if you’re about...