Feature: The Hunt for A Dead Ram
Bighorns had been missing from the Cochiti Canyon area since the 1880s, and a lot of people and agencies have been working to get them back since around 2001. The first of three translocations started in 2014. The last one was in March 2017 when the state added 344 more bighorns. Rominger and I hatched a plan to go and check in to see how things were going with the budding herd. I met up with at the New Mexico Game Fish complex in Santa Fe, and then he pointed the truck west towards the canyon and New Mexico’s Jemez herd.
Published with Fair Chase magazine for their winter 2017 edition.
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Op-Ed: Massive Fires in Glacier National Park
"Yesterday’s air quality rating in the nearby town of Columbia Falls, Montana, reached a particulate matter (PM) level of 278, according to the World Air Quality Index Project. That’s nearly three times the 100PM level that is considered hazardous to human health. But there’s no place to get away from it. About 90 miles south of here, the town of Seeley Lake has had “hazardous” air since August 1 due to wildfires. That’s a month of taking in toxic air with every breath."
Published with Outside Magazine in September 2017.
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News: Fraser Corsan's attempt at four world records
The Brit simply loves to fly. “You can coast above the clouds, next to them, through the holes in them,” he says. Which is why, over the course of two jumps he’ll perform this spring, he wants to glide faster, longer, farther, and from higher than anyone has before. Here’s how.
Published in the June 2017 Outside Magazine.
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Podcast: Surviving Mom (a Grizzly attack)
Deep in the backcountry of Glacier National Park, two trail dogs embark on an epic hike. Crappy weather pushes them off their plan, which is about when two of the cutest little grizzly bear cubs you can imagine cross in front of them. “And then you think, where’s mom at?” Jon Bentzel and Micah Nelson talk with producer and fellow trail dog Charlie Ebbers about what happened when they found mom, or rather, when mom found them. Experience a hardcore Montana truth: Whenever someone survives a bear attack, that’s probably a pretty good story.
(Published May 24, 2017 on Wyoming Public Media's HumaNature Podcast, LastBestStories.org, and featured in the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
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Interview: Jack Ward Thomas, the last interview
Editor’s note: Bigger than life, Jack was an iconic leader, a cross between Teddy Roosevelt and John Wayne, with a little Edward Abbey thrown in—who, as you will see in this interview, didn’t hold back and said what needed saying. I was fortunate to have him as one of my mentors as a Ph.D. student in forestry and wildlife. He helped me blaze a trail through wolf recovery and natural resources management. His death is an enormous loss to conservation. We are fortunate to have Charlie Ebbers’ candid interview with the great man. —Cristina Eisenberg
Published in the Spring 2017, Whitefish Review
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Interview: A talk with the mountain photographers of BBC's Planet Earth Two
'If the spotters did spot a cat first thing, or if we knew where one approximately was the day before, we’d start out with the camera kit before sunrise and hike to where the spotters were looking for the cat. This could be a two-hour hike up as much as 3,000 to 3,500 vertical feet to some spots."
Published with Outside Magazine in February 2017.
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Book Review: World, Chase Me Down
Throughout the book, Crowe is driven by revenge, ambition, and the continual search for a better life, but he is continually duped by his pride, lust, and tendency to compromise. In real life, he was rumored to go by the creed, “The simple, honest life? That game ain’t worth the candle. Being miserable ain’t the same as being good.”
Published with Outside Magazine in February 2017.
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Enterprise: A story about President Obama, wildlife conservation funding and guns.
"So, as people bought out their local gun shops—many out of fear that they had to buy weapons now, before Obama could ban semiautomatic weapons or institute limits on ammunition and high-capacity magazines—one of the most important means the federal government uses to manage land and wildlife grew stronger. And even though Obama never succeeded in those efforts, gun sales continued to rise. In fact, Obama’s tenure has brought more money to state wildlife agencies than any other president and more than twice that of President George W. Bush."
Published with Outside Magazine in January 2017.
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Landscape Potrait: Cimarron Grasslands
Pronghorn ghost away into the summer mirages here, while mule deer and whitetails wander through sagebrush and yucca. Increasingly rare lesser prairie chickens still boom and dance here each spring among the many black-tailed prairie dog colonies.
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