Black-tailed praire dog. Photo by George Wuerthner
Years ago, I went out of my way to visit the Thunder Basin National Grassland. With a name like “Thunder Basin,” how could I resist.
The Thunder Basin National Grassland is located in northeastern Wyoming in the Powder River Basin between the Big Horn Mountains and […]
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There’s an organized campaign underway to get wild horses off America’s western public lands, and the livestock industry is both its primary salesman and beneficiary. It’s all about the money and expanding the livestock industry’s stranglehold on western public lands.
The livestock industry has cooked up a cock-and-bull story about how wild horses are the […]
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Coexistence: 1: to exist together or at the same […]
Continue Reading →With the election of Joe Biden, we have a leader who recognizes that we need to use science to effectively deal with the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss.
To address these twin threats to the planet’s stability and integrity, the president-elect supports the goal of using science-based decision-making to protect 30 […]
Continue Reading →Cattle grazing Grand Staircase Escalante NM, Utah. Photo by George Wuerthner
Livestock production is one of the most ubiquitous human activities around the globe. It is particularly detrimental to arid lands, and much of the western public lands are arid. Typically most livestock advocates, which also includes far too many conservation organizations, […]
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We do not want those whose first impulse is to compromise. We want no straddlers, for, in the past, they have surrendered too much good wilderness and primeval areas which should never have been lost.
– Bob Marshall on the founding of the Wilderness Society
There is an unfortunate tendency on the part […]
Continue Reading →The Clear Lake National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is likely not on everyone’s radar. The refuge lies on the California-Oregon border to the southwest of Klamath Falls, Oregon. Part of the Klamath Basin National Refuge system, Clear Lake, is one of many natural lakes in the area that are important staging areas for migratory waterfowl on […]
Continue Reading →The National Park Service has released its management plan for Agriculture in the Point Reyes National Seashore. That is right—agriculture in a national park system unit. The decision to continue livestock production in Point Reyes National Seashore demonstrates once again why allowing any commercial resource use in our parklands compromises the primary goals of our […]
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In a recent news story, the Sacramento Bee speculated that cattle grazing might be a “secret weapon” to fight fire. The story presents the dangerously simplistic claim that cattle grazing reduces fire risk, based on an unpublished study funded by the California Cattle Council, the results of which have yet to be subjected to the […]
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My colleague at Western Watersheds Project, Talasi Brooks, put out this press release yesterday after reviewing the results of a public records request to Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG). She discovered some truly horrifying stats on the wolves killed in Idaho since January 1, 2020 by IDFG, Wildlife Services, and recreational killers […]
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