Field Reports
WILDLIFE CONSERVATION
New elk center opens
The new Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation visitor center in Missoula is a hands-on experience: Lift a bull elk antler, touch early-American fleshers, try your bugling skills — and learn something about one of the West’s signature big-game species.
The facility, which opened this week, is just north of I-90’s Reserve Street Exit west of Missoula.
Touch a button and learn the bleat and squeal of a newborn calf, the bark of its mother, and the grunt and bugle of an adult male, or go to another site and test your tracking skill.
The Habitat Neighbors game features wildlife cards of animals, plants and habitats. Visitors can slide a card under the scanner to see on-screen facts and photos about the natural history of the species, its habitat needs, its relationship to elk and more.
The center includes world record elk mounts and Western art along with a 30-seat theater, a hunting heritage exhibit and information on the role hunters and anglers have played in protecting wildlife habitat across the country.
Foundation officials expect more than 100,000 visitors at the center each year. Info: elkfoundation.org or call (800) CALL-ELK.
Rich Landers
HUNTER EDUCATION
Accident spurs review
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game is reviewing how youth hunting clinics are run after a Pocatello man was shot recently while helping with a pheasant hunt.
“These clinics are very important for the department’s and the local community’s attempts to help young citizens safely and responsibly begin their participation in hunting opportunities,” Mark Gamblin, department regional manager. “We did have, as always, a pretty thorough pre-safety introduction before they went out into the field.”
Bob Naleid, 78, was volunteering as a dog handler during the pheasant hunt at Sterling Wildlife Management Area near Aberdeen when he was struck in the lower extremities by a shotgun blast. He was hospitalized and released.
It was the first of two scheduled youth hunt sessions involving about 40 children. The hunts were canceled after the incident.
Associated Press
BACKCOUNTRY SKIING
Pioneer dies in Andes
A Redmond man regarded among the world’s best backcountry ski photographers died in a skiing accident in Argentina, his family said.
Carl Warren Skoog, 46, was descending the steep southern face of 22,210-foot Mount Mercedario in the Argentine Andes with longtime ski partner Rene Crawshaw of Chilliwack, British Columbia, on Oct. 17, when he slipped on a 42-degree slope and fell 4,500 feet.
“It wasn’t extremely dangerous,” Crawshaw said. “He just fell somehow, and he just couldn’t get his ice pick in to stop him.”
Crawshaw trekked out of the remote terrain for more than a day to get help.
Skoog and Crawshaw had planned to document the harsh terrain made famous by the 1972 plane crash of a Uruguayan rugby team that had to resort to cannibalism to survive 10 weeks until they were rescued.
Skoog’s work has been published in various magazines, including Skiing, Powder and Backcounty, which has posted the nine cover shots Skoog took for the magazine along with a tribute.
In July 1997, Skoog and three friends became the first to ski the treacherous Mowich Face on Mount Rainier’s northwest flank.
“That’s arguably the most extreme skiing ever off the summit,” said Mike Gauthier, the park’s lead climbing ranger.
Associated Press
GEOLOGY
From floods to volcanoes
Two free lectures will offer insight to the outdoors around us:
Nov. 9: “The Ongoing Eruption of Mount St. Helens, slide show by Willie Scott of the USGS Cascade Volcano Observatory, 7 p.m., at Spokane Community College Lair Student Auditorium.
Nov. 8: “John Mullan, The Mullan Road and Ice Age Flood Geology,” program by Bill Youngs, EWU history professor, 6:30 p.m., Room 137 at the EWU the Science Building in Cheney. The Science Building is immediately south of the high, round dorms.
Rich Landers
WILD EDIBLES
Mushrooms sicken boy
A 16-year-old Sheridan, Wyo., boy recently was hospitalized overnight after eating what he thought were hallucinogenic psilocybin mushrooms during lunch, authorities said.
The boy picked the mushroom in a yard that had several mushroom varieties, including one that is considered poisonous.
Associated Press
WILDLIFE HABITAT
Ag cuts hurt wildlife
Cuts in agriculture conservation programs recommended by the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee will set back wildlife conservation efforts, environmental groups say.
One cut will reduce the amount acreage in the Conservation Reserve Program, which encourages farmers to conserve fragile lands in return for annual federal payments, by nearly 8 percent. Overall, farmland conservation programs would be cut by more than $1 billion in the budget reconciliation bill.
“The CRP has played an integral role in economic vitality, conservation, and general well-being of our nation’s farmers and ranchers,” said Tom Franklin, conservation director with the Izaak Walton League of America.
“CRP is a proven results-oriented conservation program that has created millions of acres of valuable wildlife habitat and enhanced water quality by reducing soil erosion,” he added. “Cuts in CRP and other farmland conservation efforts will be a serious setback for conservation, water quality, and further diminish outdoor recreation opportunities for millions of Americans,” he said.
Rich Landers