Camas prairie
The name camas prairie refers to several distinct geographical areas in the western United States which were named for the native perennial camassia or camas, including regions in the states of Idaho, Montana and Washington. Camas bulbs were an important food source for Native Americans. Named for the blue flowering camas—an important food source for all Native Americans in the interior Northwest—the Camas Prairie is a traditional Nez Perce gathering place in north central Idaho. From the Nez Perce National Historical Park: Camas Prairie is interpreted at a highway pullout on the north side of U. S. Highway 95, about six miles south of Grangeville; this large prairie was a Nez Perce gathering place, where camas roots were harvested for thousands of years. Several nontreaty bands gathered at Tolo Lake in early June 1877 in anticipation of moving to the Nez Perce reservation. In response to the forced move and other hostile actions, several young Nez Perce people took actions that precipitated the Nez Perce War.
Camas Prairie is a large area privately owned, that extends many miles between the Salmon and Clearwater River drainages. Most of the area is agricultural and the northern section is within the Nez Perce Indian Reservation. Similar to the opening of lands in Oklahoma, the U. S. government opened the reservation for white settlement on November 18, 1895. The proclamation had been signed less than two weeks earlier by President Cleveland; the area was home to the second subdivision of the Camas Prairie Railroad, known as the "railroad on stilts" due to its numerous trestles, most of which were timber. Breakheart Pass, a 1975 film starring Charles Bronson, was filmed on portions of the railroad on the Camas Prairie; the railroad ceased operations in the late 1990s. For more information: National Park Service - Nez Perce U. S. Forest Service - Nez Perce In southern Idaho, east of Mountain Home, the high plain of Camas County around Fairfield is locally called the "Camas Prairie." Camas Prairie Centennial Marsh Wildlife Management Area Glacial Lake Missoula Camas Perma Sanders County Camassia Natural Area in West Linn Camas Valley Dishman Hills Natural Resources Conservation Area in Spokane County, Washington Camas Palouse prairie Visit North Central Idaho – Camas Prairie Eye of Idaho – Around Camas Prairie Idaho Public TV – Camas Prairie Railroad Historical Museum at St. Gertrude Monastery of St. Gertrude Glacial Lake Missoula.org – Camas Prairie ripple marks in Montana
Idaho County, Idaho
Idaho County is a county in the U. S. state of Idaho, the largest by area in the state. As of the 2010 census, the population was 16,267; the county seat is Grangeville. Previous county seats of the area were Florence and Mount Idaho. Idaho County's oldest non-native settlements are ghost towns. Discovery of gold occurred in succession at Elk City and Florence during the spring and summer of 1861. At the time, all of the settlements were within Washington Territory. Thousands flocked to Florence; as a result, Idaho County was founded 158 years ago as a region of Washington Territory in 1861, named for a steamer called Idaho, launched on the Columbia River in 1860. It was reorganized by the Idaho Territorial Legislature on February 4, 1864. In this context, the Idaho Territory and the State of Idaho are both preceded by the county name. Settlements at Cottonwood, Mount Idaho, Warrens were established in 1862; the Warrens settlement was a fractured settlement as a result of settlement there by both Union and Confederate affiliated miners.
The Union affiliated miners on the northern edge of the settlement named their portion of the settlement Washington while the Confederate affiliated miners named their portion Richmond. Richmond dwindled by 1866 and Washington went on to become the county seat in 1868 and was the name of the settlement used in most government documents during the period of settlement. Out of all these settlements, only Cottonwood went on to become one of Idaho County's seven incorporated cities. Idaho Territory conducted a census in 1863 and another in 1864. Population data was returned for both years for Warrens, Elk City, Slate Creek, Clearwater Station, Newsome. For 1864, data was returned for the settlements of Mount Idaho, Miller's Camp, Cottonwood. Between 1863 and 1864, Idaho County saw a decrease from 1,601 residents to 955. Settlement at White Bird occurred some time prior to 1870 as a precinct under the same name is listed with 71 inhabitants at the 1870 census. Efforts to force White Bird's band of Nez Perce tribesmen to the Nez Perce Reservation led to a battle at White Bird in 1877.
The town was established in 1891. Grangeville emerged as a town at the 1880 census with 129 residents, it was incorporated as a city in 1904. Ferdinand and Kooskia were settled starting in 1895 and along with Cottonwood and Stites, were all incorporated prior to 1920. Development of Riggins started prior to 1930 with Riggins Village being incorporated in 1948. Idaho County's boundaries have changed more times than any other Idaho County with changes occurring on 20 separate dates over the county's first 57 years; the majority of those changes were from boundary realignment with only three counties taking territory from Idaho County at their creation. Originating at 75,789 square miles, its original boundary under Washington Territory contained the southern portion of Idaho County, Idaho's 34 southern counties, part of Ravalli County and parts of Fremont, Park and Teton counties in Wyoming. Boise was partitioned off in January 1863 with the Payette River being the primary dividing line. In 1864, two separate acts transferred the portion in Montana to Missoula County, established the southern boundary at 44° 30' latitude, made slight adjustments in the northern boundary to define the county as one of Idaho Territory's seven original counties.
Three boundary adjustments were made with Nez Perce and Ada between 1866 and 1867 and Lemhi was created in 1869 from territory east of the junction of the Middle Fork and main Salmon Rivers. In 1873, the southern border was moved north to the divide between the main Salmon River with the Payette River and Middle Fork of Salmon River, bringing the county to its smallest historical land area of 2,901 square miles; the boundary adjustment of 1875 created a county similar to present Idaho County containing an area of 8,165 square miles. Between 1879 and 1885, one change added territory on the Camas Prairie from Nez Perce while another brought back territory in present-day Adams, Valley and Lemhi counties in the south. In 1887, territory was exchanged with Boise County dividing present Valley County between the two counties. One change in 1889 transferred territory to Custer County while another change finalized the county's northern border at its present location; the southern border began to take shape after two changes in 1891 and 1895 exchanged territory between Washington and Idaho counties.
Adjustments with Lemhi in 1903 and 1911 and the creation of Valley County in 1918 brought the county to its present boundary. Idaho County is one of seven counties in the United States that has the same name as the state in which it lies; the other six are Arkansas, Iowa, New York and Utah. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 8,503 square miles, of which 8,477 square miles is land and 26 square miles is water, it is the largest county by area in Idaho. The southeast portion of the Nez Perce Indian Reservation is in the county's northwest corner. There are 4,431,720 acres of National Forest land within the county, more than in any county outside of Alaska. National Forests and their acreage within the county are: Nez Perce National Forest 2,224,091; the Nez Perce National Forest is located within the county's borders, is the largest National Forest lying within a single county. Ida
Bald eagle
The bald eagle is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle, its range includes most of Canada and Alaska, all of the contiguous United States, northern Mexico. It is found near large bodies of open water with an abundant food supply and old-growth trees for nesting; the bald eagle is an opportunistic feeder which subsists on fish, which it swoops down and snatches from the water with its talons. It builds the largest nest of any North American bird and the largest tree nests recorded for any animal species, up to 4 m deep, 2.5 m wide, 1 metric ton in weight. Sexual maturity is attained at the age of four to five years. Bald eagles are not bald; the adult is brown with a white head and tail. The sexes are identical in plumage; the beak is hooked. The plumage of the immature is brown; the bald eagle is both the national bird and national animal of the United States of America. The bald eagle appears on its seal. In the late 20th century it was on the brink of extirpation in the contiguous United States.
Populations have since recovered and the species was removed from the U. S. government's list of endangered species on July 12, 1995 and transferred to the list of threatened species. It was removed from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife in the Lower 48 States on June 28, 2007; the plumage of an adult bald eagle is evenly dark brown with a white tail. The tail is moderately long and wedge-shaped. Males and females are identical in plumage coloration, but sexual dimorphism is evident in the species, in that females are 25% larger than males; the beak and irises are bright yellow. The legs are feather-free, the toes are short and powerful with large talons; the developed talon of the hind toe is used to pierce the vital areas of prey while it is held immobile by the front toes. The beak is hooked, with a yellow cere; the adult bald eagle is unmistakable in its native range. The related African fish eagle has a brown body, white head and tail, but differs from the bald in having a white chest and black tip to the bill.
The plumage of the immature is a dark brown overlaid with messy white streaking until the fifth year, when it reaches sexual maturity. Immature bald eagles are distinguishable from the golden eagle, the only other large, non-vulturine raptorial bird in North America, in that the former has a larger, more protruding head with a larger beak, straighter edged wings which are held flat and with a stiffer wing beat and feathers which do not cover the legs; when seen well, the golden eagle is distinctive in plumage with a more solid warm brown color than an immature bald eagle, with a reddish-golden patch to its nape and a contrasting set of white squares on the wing. Another distinguishing feature of the immature bald eagle over the mature bird is its black, yellow-tipped beak; the bald eagle has sometimes been considered the largest true raptor in North America. The only larger species of raptor-like bird is the California condor, a New World vulture which today is not considered a taxonomic ally of true accipitrids.
However, the golden eagle, averaging 4.18 kg and 63 cm in wing chord length in its American race, is 455 g lighter in mean body mass and exceeds the bald eagle in mean wing chord length by around 3 cm. Additionally, the bald eagle's close cousins, the longer-winged but shorter-tailed white-tailed eagle and the overall larger Steller's sea eagle, may wander to coastal Alaska from Asia; the bald eagle has a body length of 70–102 cm. Typical wingspan is between 1.8 and 2.3 m and mass is between 3 and 6.3 kg. Females are about 25% larger than males, averaging as much as 5.6 kg, against the males' average weight of 4.1 kg. The size of the bird varies by location and corresponds with Bergmann's rule, since the species increases in size further away from the Equator and the tropics. For example, eagles from South Carolina average 3.27 kg in mass and 1.88 m in wingspan, smaller than their northern counterparts. One field guide in Florida listed small sizes for bald eagles there, at about 4.13 kg. Of intermediate size, 117 migrant bald eagles in Glacier National Park were found to average 4.22 kg but this was juvenile eagles, with 6 adults here averaging 4.3 kg.
Wintering eagles in Arizona were found to average 4.74 kg. The largest eagles are from Alaska, where large females may weigh more than 7 kg and span 2.44 m across the wings. A survey of adult weights in Alaska showed that females there weighed on average 5.35 kg and males weighed 4.23 kg against immatures which averaged 5.09 kg and 4.05 kg in the two sexes. An Alaskan adult female eagle, considered outsized we
Salmon River (Idaho)
The Salmon River is located in Idaho in the northwestern United States. The Salmon is known as "The River of No Return", it flows for 425 miles through central Idaho, draining a rugged, thinly populated watershed of 14,000 square miles and dropping more than 7,000 feet between its headwaters, near Galena Summit above the Sawtooth Valley in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, its confluence with the Snake River. Measured at White Bird, its average discharge is 11,060 cubic feet per second, it is one of the largest rivers in the continental United States without a single dam on its mainstem. Cities located along the Salmon River include Stanley, Challis, Salmon and White Bird. Redfish Lake and Little Redfish Lake near Stanley, which flow into the river via Redfish Lake Creek, are the terminus of the longest Pacific sockeye salmon migration in North America; the lower half of the river provides the time zone boundary for the state, with northern Idaho on Pacific time and the rest of the state on Mountain time.
The Salmon River flows through the mountains of central and eastern Idaho. The main stem rises in the Sawtooth Range at over 9,200 feet in elevation, several miles northwest of Norton Peak. For the first 30 miles, it flows north through the Sawtooth Valley turns east at Stanley, receiving the Yankee Fork shortly below that point and the East Fork further downstream; the river flows northeast, receiving the Pahsimeroi River at Ellis and the Lemhi River at Salmon, Idaho east of the Lemhi Range. North of Salmon, the river is joined by the North Fork, before turning west into over 200 miles of continuous canyons through the Salmon River and Clearwater Mountains – some of the most rugged and isolated terrain in the contiguous United States. Exhibiting upwards of 7,000 feet of vertical relief, the Salmon River canyons are some of the deepest in the U. S. surpassing the Grand Canyon and second only to the Snake River's Hells Canyon on the Idaho–Oregon border. Here, the river is joined by the Middle Fork and South Fork.
Ten miles downstream of its confluence with the Middle Fork, the Salmon River becomes the dividing line for the two time zones in Idaho: Mountain time to the south, Pacific time to the north, bisecting the state at 45½ degrees north latitude. The river turns abruptly north at the confluence with the Little Salmon River at Riggins, about 87 miles above its mouth. From there the river flows due north, with U. S. Route 95 on its east bank until a few miles before White Bird; the Salmon River is the longest river system contained within a single U. S. state. The Salmon River area has been home to people for at least the last 8,000 years. Much of the area was inhabited including the Nez Perce; the river was considered sacred ground and a rich source of food for the indigenous people of the area, who relied on the abundant salmon species and other wildlife. In August 1805, just after crossing the Continental Divide of the Americas and Clark ventured down the Salmon River, but found it to be too rough to be navigable.
Clark wrote:... I shall in justice to Capt. Lewis, the first white man on this fork of the Columbia Call this Louis's river.... The Westerly fork of the Columbia River is double the size of the Easterley fork & below those forks the river is... 100 yards wide, it is rapid & Sholey water Clear but little timber. The honor didn't last long. Clark had thought that the Salmon River was the Snake River, thus he called it the "Westerly fork of the Columbia"; the Snake River retained the variant name. In the 1860s, placer deposits of gold were found along the river, a gold rush began. Miners came to the area. Many historic and present day mines can be seen while traveling along the river. Several national forests and Sawtooth National Recreation Area provide for numerous recreation opportunities within the river's watershed. Two segments are protected as Scenic Rivers; the Middle Fork was one of the original eight rivers designated Wild and Scenic in 1968, is considered the "crown jewel" of the Wild and Scenic system.
The Salmon is a popular destination for whitewater kayaking and rafting. The canyons of the Salmon allow for magnificent views of the complex geology of the region; the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Area includes one of the deepest canyons in the continental United States, which at 7,000 feet of vertical relief, is deeper than the Grand Canyon. Both the Middle Fork and Main Fork travel through the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Area; the Middle Fork is about 110 miles long. The Middle Fork raft trip run ends 7 miles prior to the beginning of the Main Fork run; the South Fork of the Salmon flows through Payette National Forest and enters the Wild and Scenic Main Fork at Mackay Bar. The Main Fork raft trip ends ab
Ecoregion
An ecoregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area, smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than an ecozone. All three of these are either greater than an ecosystem. Ecoregions cover large areas of land or water, contain characteristic, geographically distinct assemblages of natural communities and species; the biodiversity of flora and ecosystems that characterise an ecoregion tends to be distinct from that of other ecoregions. In theory, biodiversity or conservation ecoregions are large areas of land or water where the probability of encountering different species and communities at any given point remains constant, within an acceptable range of variation. Three caveats are appropriate for all bio-geographic mapping approaches. Firstly, no single bio-geographic framework is optimal for all taxa. Ecoregions reflect the best compromise for as many taxa as possible. Secondly, ecoregion boundaries form abrupt edges. Thirdly, most ecoregions contain habitats. Biogeographic provinces may originate due to various barriers.
Some physical, some climatic and some ocean chemical related. The history of the term is somewhat vague, it had been used in many contexts: forest classifications, biome classifications, biogeographic classifications, etc; the concept of ecoregion of Bailey gives more importance to ecological criteria, while the WWF concept gives more importance to biogeography, that is, distribution of distinct biotas. An ecoregion is a "recurring pattern of ecosystems associated with characteristic combinations of soil and landform that characterise that region". Omernik elaborates on this by defining ecoregions as: "areas within which there is spatial coincidence in characteristics of geographical phenomena associated with differences in the quality and integrity of ecosystems". "Characteristics of geographical phenomena" may include geology, vegetation, hydrology and aquatic fauna, soils, may or may not include the impacts of human activity. There is significant, but not absolute, spatial correlation among these characteristics, making the delineation of ecoregions an imperfect science.
Another complication is that environmental conditions across an ecoregion boundary may change gradually, e.g. the prairie-forest transition in the midwestern United States, making it difficult to identify an exact dividing boundary. Such transition zones are called ecotones. Ecoregions can be categorized using an algorithmic approach or a holistic, "weight-of-evidence" approach where the importance of various factors may vary. An example of the algorithmic approach is Robert Bailey's work for the U. S. Forest Service, which uses a hierarchical classification that first divides land areas into large regions based on climatic factors, subdivides these regions, based first on dominant potential vegetation, by geomorphology and soil characteristics; the weight-of-evidence approach is exemplified by James Omernik's work for the United States Environmental Protection Agency, subsequently adopted for North America by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. The intended purpose of ecoregion delineation may affect the method used.
For example, the WWF ecoregions were developed to aid in biodiversity conservation planning, place a greater emphasis than the Omernik or Bailey systems on floral and faunal differences between regions. The WWF classification defines an ecoregion as: A large area of land or water that contains a geographically distinct assemblage of natural communities that: Share a large majority of their species and ecological dynamics. According to WWF, the boundaries of an ecoregion approximate the original extent of the natural communities prior to any major recent disruptions or changes. WWF has identified 867 terrestrial ecoregions, 450 freshwater ecoregions across the Earth; the use of the term ecoregion is an outgrowth of a surge of interest in ecosystems and their functioning. In particular, there is awareness of issues relating to spatial scale in the study and management of landscapes, it is recognized that interlinked ecosystems combine to form a whole, "greater than the sum of its parts". There are many attempts to respond to ecosystems in an integrated way to achieve "multi-functional" landscapes, various interest groups from agricultural researchers to conservationists are using the "ecoregion" as a unit of analysis.
The "Global 200" is the list of ecoregions identified by WWF as priorities for conservation. Ecologically based movements like bioregionalism maintain that ecoregions, rather than arbitrarily defined political boundaries, provide a better foundation for the formation and governance of human communities, have proposed ecoregions and watersheds as the basis for bioregional democracy initiatives. Terrestrial ecoregions are land ecoregions, as distinct from marine ecoregions. In this context, terrestrial is used to mean "of land", rather than the more general sense "of Earth". WWF ecologists divide the land surface of the Earth into 8 major ecozones containing 867 smaller terrestrial ecoregions; the WWF effort is a synthesis of
