Currently viewing the category:
"Department of Interior"
Many rural counties with sizeable amounts of federal lands within their jurisdictional boundaries depend on federal payments to support basic services like fire, police, schools, and the like.
The main programs include the Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILT), Refuge Revenue Sharing, Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act (SRS). One of the […]
Continue Reading →The major national monuments of the last 20 years on the chopping block
President Trump has just signed a much-predicted executive order that mandates a review of all the national monuments established since 1996 that are larger than 100,000 acres.
National monuments are established under the Antiquities Act of 1906 that gives Presidents the power […]
Continue Reading →
A memo leaked today orders all of the bureaus of the Department of Interior, which includes the Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Bureau of Indian Affairs, and others, to clear nearly every decision or correspondence with the Office of the Executive Secretariat […]
Continue Reading →Bears Ears in SE Utah and Gold Butte near Mesquite, Nevada declared to be national monuments
Gold Butte National Monument is near where Cliven Bundy ran his illegal cattle. I’ve been there. It is scenic and historical, and has obviously been abused by local troublemakers and general lack of recreational management. I see it is […]
Continue Reading →The Department of Interior recently released its Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy whose goal is to reduce range fires in sagebrush ecosystems critical to sage grouse. The plan correctly identifies that cheatgrass is a major threat to the bird, as well as the sagebrush ecosystems. Cheatgrass is an exotic annual plant that greens up early, […]
Continue Reading →CHEYENNE, WY. The Center for Biological Diversity and Western Watersheds Project have called for an investigation and the release of more public information about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s authorization to kill four members of the Pinnacle Peak wolf pack in Wyoming. The Service recently authorized the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s […]
Continue Reading →BOISE, Idaho— Western Watersheds Project applauds yesterday’s announcement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife that the slickspot peppergrass (Lepidium pappilliferum) will remain protected as “Threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. Political meddling from the livestock industry and its friends in the state of Idaho kept this plant from being protected for over a decade.
Slickspot peppergrass […]
Continue Reading →
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report last week detailing the extent to which the United States Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have failed to follow agency regulations in documenting and penalizing unauthorized or trespass livestock grazing on federal public lands. The report, entitled Unauthorized Grazing: Actions Needed to Improve Tracking […]
Continue Reading →
Ongoing harm to Mojave desert tortoise is unacceptable
Hailey, IDAHO –A coalition of conservation organizations today pressed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to stop Cliven Bundy’s cattle from continuing to trample Mojave desert tortoise habitat in southeastern Nevada in accordance with the agency’s commitments under the Endangered Species Act and as authorized by […]
Continue Reading →Rarely given more than minimal herding, Bundy’s cattle seem now to be on their own-
Many people argue that Nevada, the driest state, is really no place for cattle, grass-loving creatures that they are. Nonetheless, herds of widely spaced cattle have pummeled the landscape there for over a hundred years.
For a generation Cliven Bundy […]
Continue Reading →
