Reprinted from Waco Tribune-Herald March 9, 2019
By Steve Holmer, American Bird Conservancy
Wildlife experts concluded in 2015 that the Greater Sage-Grouse, an iconic bird of the West, did not require listing under the Endangered Species Act, thanks to then-new federal management plans with added conservation requirements. Many conservation groups, including American Bird […]
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By Laura Cunningham, California Director, Western Watersheds Project
A controversy has irrupted in a volcanic caldera used for livestock grazing in the scenic Eastern Sierra region of California.
Ditch irrigation is a common use of wet meadows along the eastern front of the Sierra Nevada, where snowmelt streams pour into basins and connect to rivers […]
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By Erik Molvar
Credit: Photo by Steve Stevens courtesy Flickr Creative Commons
A federal court has ruled that a Wyoming statutes designed to suppress the collection of “resource data” by nonprofit environmental groups and other members of the public violates constitutional free speech rights, and consequently the court struck down the two state […]
Continue Reading →By Laura Cunningham, California Director
Western Watersheds Project
An environmentally harmful bill is swiftly moving through the House of Representatives. HR 6687 would change the enabling legislation of Point Reyes National Seashore to extend the leases of commercial for-profit dairies and ranches, with no environmental review of cattle grazing impacts.
The bill, introduced by Jared […]
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By Scott Lake, Idaho Director
Western Watersheds Project
The Idaho Rangeland Resource Commission has been claiming that wolves killed a record number of livestock last year. But that’s misleading, because Wildlife Services, the secretive federal agency in charge of killing wolves in Idaho, is using a new method to verify wolf kills that is […]
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My name is Erik Molvar, and I am Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project (WWP), a nonprofit conservation group that advocates for the protection and restoration of wildlife and watersheds throughout the western United States. WWP specializes in solving environmental problems caused by livestock grazing on public lands.
I hold a Master of […]
Continue Reading →LAS VEGAS— Conservation groups have called on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to round up and remove the cattle of rancher Cliven Bundy, who has been illegally grazing his livestock on public lands for two and a half decades.
U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro on Monday dismissed all charges against Cliven Bundy and his sons […]
Continue Reading →by Erik Molvar, Western Watersheds Project
The Trump administration has just launched a process to dismantle the greater sage-grouse land-use plan amendments that were put in place in 2015 to avert an Endangered Species listing for the bird. The emerging consensus is that this move undermines wildlife conservation, and represents yet another attack on […]
Continue Reading →by Erik Molvar, Western Watersheds Project
On Monday, President Trump took his first trip to Utah to sign a proclamation gutting the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments to make way for drilling, mining, and other commercial exploitation fundamentally incompatible with protecting fragile and priceless treasures.
In his speech before an invitation-only crowd […]
Continue Reading →When members of the Arizona Game and Fish Commission’s recommendation board met last week, they interviewed four candidates for the commission’s open seat. All four were white males and most had strong ties to extractive industries on public lands, including mining and livestock. Not one had a wildlife conservation biology background and none […]
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