Currently viewing the category: "Public Lands"

 

High-severity blazes are critical to healthy forest ecosystems. Photo George Wuerthner 

I read yet another study circulated by UC Davis and doggedly promoted by the national media, encouraging more prescribed burning, thinning, and forest manipulation to reduce large high-severity blazes characterized as “bad.”

The headline from UC Davis proclaims that […]

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Yellowstone was established in 1872 primarily to protect the unique geological thermal features of the park. Photo George Wuerthner  I see almost weekly repetitions of the myths or revisionist history about Yellowstone and critiquing conservation efforts in general, primarily coming from Anthropocene boosters which now include many in leftish politics. In the long run, I […]

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Did Native American use of fire make it so that wild country never really existed?

When reporting about wildfire, current stories in the media often claim that in prehistory, fire was deliberately set by tribal groups so often that big or severe wildfires hardly existed. So, if that practice is restored today, […]

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The Richfield Ranger District of the Fish Lake National Forest in Utah released its draft reauthorization for grazing the Southern Monroe Mountain allotments in Sevier and Piute Counties.

The economic analysis of its reauthorization document is typical of many Forest Service and BLM grazing decisions, whereby the agency emphasizes livestock grazing as an […]

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A BLM (U.S. Bureau of Land Management) decision to allow livestock grazing to grow up to three times in the Owyhee Country of southwest Idaho has been blocked for now by a Dept. of Interior judge. Dickshooter Cattle Company, owned by J.R. Simplot an Idaho-based agricultural conglomerate, asked to increase cattle grazing by up to […]

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Thinning/logging at Newberry Crater National Monument, Deschutes National Forest, Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner 

One of the arguments alleged by proponents of thinning or logging forests is that it will reduce the size of wildfires and hence carbon emissions from blazes. Proponents argue that more trees survive a fire if there has […]

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Lowery Ruins, part of the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner 

Livestock grazing threatens the integrity of Colorado’s Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. Located in SW Colorado near Cortez,  President Clinton established the 176,000 acre Monument in 2000 to protect one of the highest concentrations of archeological sites […]

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COMMENTS DUE IMMEDIATELY — BY JAN. 21

This alert written by Stephany Seay

TAKE ACTION! Comments Needed on Montana’s 2022-2023 Bison Hunt Regulations! This is a great opportunity to raise our voices for Yellowstone’s imperiled Central herd, the last truly wild, migratory buffalo left in the country. It is also an […]

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Fire Suppression Myths

On January 11, 2022 By

Hardly a day goes by when we don’t hear in the media and from the Forest Service that fire suppression is responsible for the intensity and size of wildfires.

According to proponents, a “hundred years of fire suppression” has permitted the build-up of fuels, and by their assertion, more fuel results in larger conflagrations.

However, […]

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Approximately 5700 cows graze national park lands at Point Reyes National Seashore. Photo George Wuerthner

A federal lawsuit against the National Park Service (NPS) at Point Reyes National Seashore was filed on January 10th by four environmental organizations. The lawsuit contends the National Park Service in a new management plan for the […]

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Quote

‎"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour."

~ Edward Abbey