Speaking Freedom to Roam

Freedom to Roam had a significant success last year when I was invited to testify to the House subcommittee on National Parks, Forest and Public Lands, giving them a multimedia presentation on the need for wildlife corridors. The result? Funding for corridors research made it into the Cap & Trade bill that passed the House last year.

Coming Back

It’s fall here, the leaves are shimmery red and gold, and the high season for getting work done in Patagonia is just about over. We’re leaving Valle Chacabuco to drive two days north to Pumalin. It’s nearing lunchtime and we’re pressed to get on the road.

Coming Back

Mexican wolves – smaller and often redder than their northern cousins, the Rocky Mountain gray wolves – have been having a hard time trying to recover down in New Mexico and Arizona. Physically, it’s harsher country – drier and rockier, less productive than the northern Rockies – and it’s also a less-accepting place sociologically.

Monarchs, Migration and Tiny Tags

Wander through Ontario’s Presquile Park any fall day and chances are you’ll see monarch butterflies – lots of them. Presquile is a launching pad for nature’s most intrepid insect: from here the monarchs will fly nearly three thousand miles in about six weeks, logging up to 200 miles a day, to get to their overwintering site in the Transvolcanic Mountains of Mexico.

Walking with Pronghorn

The best way to get a sense of what the world is like for wildlife that migrate is to migrate with them. Last fall I set out with Joe Riis, a 24-year-old photographer from South Dakota, to walk the celebrated Path of the Pronghorn.

George Archibald: Dances with Cranes

“The whooping crane is doomed to extinction,” the noted ornithologist Edward Howe Forbush predicted flatly in the early 1900s – and there was precious little to suggest otherwise.

Ranching with Grizzlies

One of the models for eco-friendly ranching has been put into practice by Karl Rappold, whose 13,000-acre ranch I visit after a late November storm turns the Rockies white. Founded in 1882, the ranch is located on the Montana Front, a sparsely populated, magical belt of country where the Great Plains meet theupthrust of the Rockies.

Love Your Mother – Mother Nature – And All Her Creatures

As a young man, however, I decided to leave all that behind and head for the bright lights of big cities. I started my network career in California where my wife Meredith and I took long backpacking trips on the Pacific Crest. Even as my career was centered in cities, I longed to return to the West – and so I did.

Finding Space for Tule Elk

Movement turned my eye down the gulch to the right. Out of the coyote brush rose a burly bull elk in full battle regalia. It was almost February and he was now solitary, waiting only for his giant rack to fall. His gaze was fixed on mine, looking for a sign that would tell him if I was friend or foe. One bipedal step was all it took to send him on his way.

Escape to a Wilder Wild

Not long ago, a powerhouse of a wolverine named M3 won our hearts, and we began to imagine what it would be like to be one. Our make-believe wolverine lives far to the north in deep snow and freezing cold many months each year, where she is trying hard to cope with her changing world . . .

The Return of the Moose

One reason we Easterners don’t think of our place as especially wild is that we can barely see it. The deciduous forest is effective camouflage. If you’re hiking the Appalachian Trail, you’re in a tunnel maybe 80 feet wide – that’s the edge of your vision.

The Wolverine Way

To catch wolverines for a radio-tracking study in Montana’s Glacier National Park, we picked out spots where paw prints converged in the winter backcountry and set about building stout box traps from spruce and fir logs. The walls were eight inches thick. That didn’t keep some of these animals from tearing their way out in a matter of hours.

Paths to Survival

For many wild animals, to roam means to survive. Seasonal migration between habitats is a pattern passed from generation to generation of eagles, waterfowl, elk and hundreds of other species. To locate a new place to survive and breed, the young of many species must roam far and wide. And freedom to roam often determines whether or not wild creatures can adapt to change.

A Bear's Journey: Traveling 50 Miles Back Home

See a map showing what a bear typically encounters on a 50-mile journey through the Rockies.

The Bear Who Crossed The Freeway

It is a few hours before sunrise, still cool in these early days of summer on the northwest corner of Yellowstone Park. At the base of a lodgepole pine, a grizzly bear looks out to the west. He lifts his head at the sound of a distant vehicle shattering the silence of the night.

Enviro Essay Archive

While we believe that actions usually speak louder than words, we also value the power of story telling and the clarity and intimacy that good environmental writing can bring to our community. Our environmental feature stories are such testaments, reflections, rants and raves. Colleagues, activists and friends are here, lending their voices to our stubborn and ongoing work for wilderness preservation.