Eli Francovich

Born with a rare birth defect, one which prevented the formation of his sacrum, Tyler Byers has used a wheelchair his entire life. The father of three is an avid racer, last year he completed six marathons. He kayaks and skis. He’s climbed and generally looks to be outside, with his children, as much as possible.

An influential commission overseeing the management of state fish and wildlife has two new members, both of whom are retired biologists.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 jux…