Outdoors

Stop-and-go traffic is the norm when Alan McCoy is birding. Especially on the relatively empty back roads near his home south of Spokane.

LEWISTON – Deer and elk hunters worried that the animals they harvested may have chronic wasting disease have a new testing option but it comes with important caveats.

BILLINGS – A female grizzly has explored a vast swath of Yellowstone National Park since being translocated to the region in July while her male counterpart has been more of a homebody.

More cases of chronic wasting disease have been found in northeast Washington, including one outside the hunting unit where the diesease was first found.

Fly fishing

I used to be a runner. But that was like three weeks ago.

An eagle returns home with a salmon in this photo by Jerry Rolwes from the north shore of Lake Coeur d’Alene.

SNOQUALMIE PASS, Wash. – Successfully loading the two-person Edelweiss Chair at Alpental ski area is an exercise in hand-eye-butt coordination.

Crunch time is coming for my least favorite hunting season of the year: Christmas shopping.

LEWISTON – Hunting chukars always holds the potential for something to go amiss.

BILLINGS – The next step in wild bison restoration is for the citizens of Montana to encourage Custer Gallatin National Forest officials to “realize their objective of more bison on forest lands,” according to Rick Wallen.

If Washington State University is the beating heart of Pullman, then the South Fork of the Palouse River is its circulatory system. The river is joined on the east end of town by Paradise Creek and on the north end by Missouri Flat Creek. That’s three forks, which is significant because before it was called Pullman, the town was known as Three Forks.

Spokane’s pre-eminent cross country ski race is just two months away, and competitors can begin signing up now.

Ice fishing

Maybe the world and its struggles have become too big for me.

Fish Lake reflects its surroundings during the first week of December in this photo by Melaine Williams.

Observers of the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission see it as a body hampered by polarization, dysfunction and conflict, according to a draft report produced by the William D. Ruckelshaus Center.

LEWISTON – The raw number of adult salmon returning to the Columbia River has increased over the past 40 years, but is still not meeting regional mitigation goals, and wild fish protected by the Endangered Species Act remain at risk of extinction.

BILLINGS – For more than a decade a passionate debate has reverberated within Yellowstone National Park’s scientific community regarding wolf reintroduction.