Church visit by a mountain goat Did you hear the one about a goat that walked into a church? If this sounds like a line from a joke, read on. As a subscriber to my blog or if you've perused my writing, you know that I’m a fan of the mountain goat. There’s so much to admire about these beasts of the peaks that inhabit remote, rugged realms. They’re adapted to survive there. And it’s the only place they live. Yet on rare occasions, an itinerant goat can be found

Tilcayo cat New species of animals and plants continue to be found and catalogued around the globe. Yet, it's been more than a century since the last new species of cat has been discovered. Until now. In the depths of Bolivia's Yungas cloud forest lives the tilcayo cat (Leopardus tilcayo) , a gorgeously spotted cat the size of a small house cat. It was likely known to the people native to this remote region. Now the world has one more species of wild feline to admire, tr

Every three days, someone is killed for defending nature. In 2025, watchdog group Global Witness documented 124 such deaths worldwide, a toll that is likely but a fraction of the total because repression and armed conflict make many killings impossible to document. The victims include Indigenous People, small-scale farmers, and community organizers who peacefully protect forests, farmlands, waterways, and natural ecosystems from harm. The perpetrators of environme

Enacted in 2001 with broad bipartisan support, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule protects 45 million acres of national forest lands across the US. Now the Trump admistration proposes to rescind this rule and open these wildlands to road building, logging, mining, and other commercial uses. Until September 21, the public can comment on this proposed action to deep six a bedrock conservation measure before a final decision is made. In my April 2 blog post this year, I

Wood stork parent and young My wife, Diana, came across this amazing conservation story in a most unusual place, The Times of India. Yes, India, the country. This is a story of how a couple purchased a 45-acre property -- a cypress swamp -- adjacent to their Florida home to keep it from being developed. Their dedication to nature illustrates that conservation does not always begin with a national park or a huge organization. Sometimes it starts when two people

Okay, this one is just for grins. And because the diversity and ingenuity of nature is so inspiring. When I was in the Peruvian Amazon a number of years ago, we took a nighttime walk along a forest path through the jungle. Why? Cuz some species only come out at night. Of the creatures we observed in the glow of our headlamps, the most fascinating and ingenious to me was a net-throwing spider. This small predator weaves a rectangular web that it then grasps with its

During my 22 years working at the National Elk Refuge (NER) in Wyoming, I and others dreaded the day that chronic wasting disease (CWD ) would reach the NER where 7,000 to 8,000 elk congregate each winter. The herd is supplementally fed alfalfa hay to support this number of elk which exceeds the habitat's carrrying capacity (available natural food resources). The crowding of elk at feedsites facilitates the transmission and maintenance of several diseases. But none h

Over the years, Diana and I have noticed the steady decline of insects where we live in southwest Montana. Bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, and even flies (we don't get to pick and choose), are all far scarcer. Some of the more charismatic species, like butterflies, are finally receiving research attention. And the findings are truly discouraging. Researchers investigating the status of 114 species of butterflies in the United States found that populations are decl

One of the excuses the Trump administration offered for moving to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule that protects over 60 million acres of US Forest Service lands -- our lands -- was to provide more road access to fight wildfires. But a new study published in the journal Fire Ecology , and summarized in Inside Climate News , reviewed the history of wildfire ignitions from 1992 to 2024 and found that wildfires were four times more likely to ignite within 50 meters of a road tha

A mountain goat in Montana In a status review of Montana's mountain goats that a colleague and I completed in 2017, we found that Montana's native mountain goat populations had declined 70% since the previous statewide assessment 70 years earlier. Yes, 70%! We attributed much of the decline to excessive sport harvest of the species during the mid-1900s. A lack of reliable population management data, limited knowledge of the species' population biology, human habitat