Eli Francovich

I fell in love with journalism, fully and undeniably, while being threatened with bodily harm in a bar in Troy Montana. It was the kind of dive that, growing up in North Idaho, I thought I knew well. Elk racks stapled to the walls, a saddle, perhaps never used, in a corner. Newspaper clippings of hard-nosed men standing next to dead animals. Bud Light and Miller Hi Life posters slowly peeling downward, the humidity of a thousand drunks over a thousand nights loosening it all. Pool tabs and a juxebox. Cigarette smoke pooled above it all, haze upon haze.

Nia Patton took this image of a male wood duck swimming in the shallows of the Pend Oreille River on April 17.

Somewhere on Whitworth’s 200-acre campus last spring, a baby owl fell from its nest as a stiff wind blew it from the relative safety of home.

Some area anglers have been illegally fishing for trout ahead of Saturday's Washington trout opener. 

The annual Lake Pend Oreille State of the Lake meeting will be held in-person on April 13, the first time the meeting has been held in person since 2019 due to the pandemic. 

Washington biologists have confirmed the existence of a wolf pack on the western flank of Mount Spokane. The pack was confirmed during the state's annual wolf survey and has a minimum of four members. 

When a derailed train spilled beer and clay into the Clark Fork River Sunday morning, Stephen Smith jumped on the chance to go fish.

A panic-inducing video of a snowboarder buried head first in deep snow at the base of a tree has gone viral and highlights the importance of staying within eyesight of skiing and boarding buddies. 

Rescuers plucked a frozen and disoriented hiker from Mica Peak on March 17 after searching throughout the night.

A Spokane woman and angler is featured in the Montana Fishing Film Festival.

49 Degrees North Mountain Resort is extending its operating schedule. Originally the resort was set to close April 9, however a good late season snowpack, combined with more snow in the forecast and snowmaking has allowed the resort to stay open longer, according to Rick Brown the director of skier and rider services for the resort. 

From staff reports

Washington’s appointed wildlife commissioners are one step closer to confirmation before the state senate, a step that, while required by law, has not been taken since 2018.

Mount Rainier is the best mountain climbing spot in the United States, according to a combination of Instagram hashtags and online reviews ranking a geographic marvel that's been around for half-a-million years, minimum.  

In late August 2020, Garmire, a Washington native who now lives in Bozeman, Mont., started hiking on the Colorado Trail with the intention of breaking the Fastest Known Time on the 486-mile trek from Durango to Denver. Nine days and 12 hours later he finished, averaging more than 50 miles a day. Toward the end of the adventure he slept an hour or less a night. Garmire had to carry all his own food and water and could receive no outside help to qualify for the FKT. However, a film crew did track his movements creating a documentary about the endeavor. That film "Free Outside" will play at the Garland Theater March 27 (see sidebar). 

Washington fishery managers plan to change the Lake Roosevelt sturgeon fishery to a fall fishery in 2023, a move designed to protect wild adult sturgeon.

Buck Domitrovich took this photo of a rough-legged hawk leaving its perch east of Davenport, Washington, on Sunday. It will be flying back north and won’t return until late October or November, he wrote.

In a broad, snow-kissed valley near the impossibly wide Columbia River two biologists hunt for disease amidst signs of slaughter. It’s late January and Annemarie Prince and Ben Turncock, two Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists, are digging through the corpse of a deer looking for its lymph nodes. It’s bloody and smelly work since he deer most likely was killed by coyotes, an animal not known for tidy eating habits.

State lawmakers interviewed three Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife commissioners Thursday.

The Kootenai Environmental Alliance’s Wild & Scenic Film Festival comes to Coeur d’Alene on Friday, March 24 at the Schuler Auditorium on the North Idaho Community college campus at 880 W. Garden Ave.

Hers was a childhood immersed in nature, unencumbered by the distractions of television and free from the shackles of formal schooling or, for that matter, electricity. Sent to find moss to insulate her family’s ramshackle log cabin north of Sandpoint, Ammi Midstokke rambled through cedar groves, passing “fairy tale creeks” and generally soaking up the natural world. Later she would scribble it down in her journal, an innate curiosity and propensity for detail blooming.

On Tuesday,  a Yellowstone National Park wildlife biologist on a radio telemetry flight observed the first grizzly bear of 2023 to emerge from hibernation. The adult bear, estimated at 300-350 pounds, was seen near the remains of a bison carcass in Pelican Valley, in the central-eastern part of the park, according to a park release.

A nationwide hunting advocacy group is attempting to give the boot to a Washington wildlife commissioner for serving on another volunteer board.

The following is an interview with Steve Parker, a new Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Commissioner representing an eastern Washington position. Parker is a retired fisheries biologist who spent much of his 45-year career with the Yakama Nation and lives in Yakima County. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.