Millions of people who discovered the outdoors at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic have returned to parks, state forests and waterways. What they don’t know about ticks and other bugs could make them dangerously ill.

A spike in the state’s tick population is coinciding with unprecedented participation in hiking, camping, fishing and ...Read more

In 2019, the California Air Resources Board commissioned a report from Cal Maritime with a title that would cause the eyes of even the most nerdy bureaucrat to glaze.

The name of the 135-page thicket of tables and diagrams?

“Evaluation of the Feasibility and Costs of Installing Tier 4 Engines and Retrofit Exhaust Aftertreatment on In-Use ...Read more

IN NORTH-CENTRAL MINNESOTA — Fishing stories often are not only about fishing. Frequently misunderstood as tales of conquest, or attempts at conquest, the best of these yarns instead often regale the vagaries of family or friendship, or sometimes the settling of scores whose origins defy recollection. "Many men go fishing all of their lives ...Read more

Los Angeles Angels superstar Mike Trout proved as good with a fishing rod while in the Twin Cities as he is with a bat, catching outsize northern pike and largemouth bass on his day off July 21, along with teammate Dylan Bundy.

The pair hooked with guide Josh Stevenson, owner of Blue Ribbon Bait in Oakdale and Mighty Musky Guide Service, to ...Read more

It's unclear whether John Helland knew who Max Weber was or that Weber, a German sociologist who died in 1920, developed the first modern theory of bureaucracies.

Weber argued that bureaucracies are the most efficient way to organize human activity, and Helland, who spent nearly four decades laboring in Minnesota's Capitol, likely would concede...Read more

Changes are coming for landowners who want to remove problem deer and the hunters who remove them.

At next week’s meeting of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, the board is expected to approve new rules for the “red tag” program, which provides special harvest permits on lands enrolled in the Agriculture Deer Control Program. The changes ...Read more

No early symptoms, no cure, always fatal, remains in the environment for decades and is rapidly spreading among wild and fenced deer throughout the United States.

The public remains largely unaware of, or unconcerned about, a serious problem that some media dismissively call “zombie deer disease.” But conservationists understand that if ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Within a few weeks, northern Minnesota black bears preparing for hibernation will scrounge for 12,000 calories a day worth of food, a search that might lead the ravenous bruins to trash cans and bird feeders, due to a shortage of berries and nuts caused by the state's ongoing drought.

In southern Minnesota, meanwhile, ring-...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Wolves were first hunted some 10,000 years ago, and the fact that people are still weighing the merits of this practice demonstrates if nothing else humans' fascination with argument. The first known wolf bounty was offered in the sixth century B.C., and between then and the early 1900s, when the U.S. government accelerated its ...Read more

I became a conservationist in the shadow of my grandfather in the mid-1960s. I was about 4, holding his hand in his Swisshelm Park backyard, peering through the chain link fence off a bluff overlooking the dull orange Monongahela River.

“Stinks like rotten eggs, doesn’t it, Catbird?” he said. My father’s father was the only one who ...Read more

Summer's bounty in the Minnesota outdoors feels, well, almost normal as public health improves. In that spirit and on the eve of Independence Day weekend, the freedom to embrace the breadth of outdoors possibilities is refreshing. From engaging with wildlife (indoors and out) to learning or refining paddling skills, to shooting clays and hiking,...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota state parks will be in business without interruption the rest of the year, thanks to a deal struck between Republicans and DFLers.

But domestic deer farms also will still be in business, continuing the chronic wasting disease (CWD) threat they pose not only to the state's 1 million wild whitetails, but to a Minnesota ...Read more

It's not about the fish. It's not even about the beautiful, peaceful surroundings of a swiftly running river. At least not entirely.

For 64-year-old Janice Azebu, of Lafayette, Calif., it's about the challenge.

"I used to spin cast," Azebu says, "but fly fishing is a wonderful new challenge. Knowing the river, picking the right fly, casting ...Read more