The salmonid industrial complex

This past summer, an ecologist named Erik Beever sent me a new paper he’d published on a class of critters you might call charismatic invaders: introduced species that are at once ecologically disastrous and deeply beloved. Erik and his coauthors offered a few examples, some you’ve heard of — like wild horses — and some […]

Fish of a feather

The teetering, hundred-year-old collection of wooden buildings that form my father’s fishing club in backwoods Quebec is arranged in a row like a Wild West town, where mosquitoes are the hostile locals. To reach his favourite fishing spots, Dad sometimes has to stop his motorized quad in front of downed trees and change into Kevlar trousers to chainsaw […]