In July, the Bureau of Land Management rounded up the vast majority of Utah’s Onaqui wild horse herd. Pressed by a lawsuit, the Bureau’s Salt Lake Field Manager testified under oath that an emergency roundup was necessary because wild horses were in poor and declining health and would need to be euthanized if left […]
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** Guest post by Richard Spotts**
An open letter from a former Bureau of Land Management employee to Secretary Deb Haaland.
Dear Secretary Haaland:
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in your Interior Department is broken and I know how you can and should fix it.
BLM’s dominant management culture has long been (and […]
Continue Reading →Restoration of wild bison will require large landscapes. Photo George Wuerthner
Bison were critical ecosystem influences on grasslands of North America, particularly in the Great Plains “bison belt.” They provided prey or carrion for wolves, grizzlies, other smaller predators and scavengers, and food for humans. In addition, bison grazing patterns influenced vegetation […]
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A letter from Richard Spotts, retired Bureau of Land Management employee RE: Cliven Bundy’s chronic trespass grazing must end and how to do it Dear Secretary Haaland and other DOI officials:
Cliven Bundy’s more than a quarter century of blatant and destructive trespass livestock grazing on federal lands must come to an end. Enough […]
Continue Reading →The Sonoran Desert National Monument was designated in 2001, but livestock grazing persisted until 2015. Now the BLM wants to restock a portion of this national monument. Photo George Wuerthner
The Sonoran Desert National Monument is a spectacular representation of the Sonoran Desert landscape managed by the Arizona office of the Bureau […]
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The Sonoran Desert National Monument was established in 2001 with very specific terms about how grazing should be managed on these lands. The Proclamation basically said that grazing should be permanently banned from parts of the monument and could only continue on portions of the monument where it was found to be compatible with resource […]
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The aftermath of the Las Conchas Blaze in 2011 in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. Photo George Wuerthner
An excellent overview of wildfire issues was published in the Revelator. https://therevelator.org/wildfire-archive/
I encourage folks to review it.
I especially appreciate the linkage of recent large fires to drought and […]
Continue Reading →Thinned lodgepole pine forest on Oregon’s Deschutes National Forest. As often is the case, thinning puts more “fine” fuels on the ground which can promote fire spread. Photo George Wuerthner
Montana Senator Daines announced that he intends to reintroduce wildfire legislation co-sponsored by California Senator Diane Feinstein that, among other things, would […]
Continue Reading →Dairy and beef cattle are grazed at Point Reyes National Seashore sixty years after the properties were purchased by American citizens. Photo George Wuerthner
Fences. Everywhere I went during a recent trip to Point Reyes, I encountered fences. Why are there fences in a national park unit? They exist to facilitate the […]
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