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"Forest Service"
The Supreme Court recently ruled in an 7-1 vote (Justice Stephen Breyer recused himself) that the EPA regulations about water pollution as mandated by the Clean Water Act did not apply to sediment and other pollution from logging operations. The timber industry is rejoicing over the ruling. But citizens should be less sanguine than industry. [...]
Continue Reading →Sequester looks almost certain. What now happens to public lands?
The New York Times article linked below discusses the effects of the now almost certain sequester on the national parks . Most people who follow this issue know that they are chronically underfunded when it comes to resource protection. The Parks aside, what about [...]
Continue Reading →Once again, it’s $1.35/AUM — just a token fee-
Like last year, the USFS and the BLM have announced that the 2013 grazing will a mere $1.35 per animal unit month (AUM).
In a news release, the agencies wrote: “An AUM or HM – treated as equivalent measures for fee purposes – is the [...]
Last week Rep. Ken Ivory, R of West Jordan, Utah, came north to Idaho, up out of the smog (worst in the country), to tell Idaho’s lawmakers that they should make a play to take over the U.S. public lands like Utah has proposed to do.
Controversial proposal rejected on Jan. 22 by Forest Service-
In a news release the Jackson Hole Alliance celebrated the end of the proposal to combine national forests in Idaho and Wyoming that include some of the West’s best wildlife and scenery. There is still on the table, however, the idea that perhaps the headquarters (the [...]
Continue Reading →Plans to combine the Caribou-Targhee and the Bridger-Teton spark criticism-
Once there was the Teton National Forest and the Bridger National Forest in Wyoming. Next door in Idaho their was the Caribou National Forest and the Targhee National Forest.
Seeking efficiency, and perhaps other goals, a generation ago the U.S. Forest Service combined the Bridger [...]
Continue Reading →Past efforts to grab national forests, parks, wildlife refuges led by livestock industry. Now it will be Koch Bros, oil, GOP-
Some call our public lands “American’s common treasure,” but the love of our land expressed in many forms, and the freedom they provide, have not stopped what are sometimes called “sagebrush rebellions” every decade [...]
Continue Reading →Badly managed cattle devastate the most remote public lands-
“Till the cows come home” . . . that phase usually means a long time. That’s how it is on most of public lands of the Western United States. The cattle are put out before the grass and forbs (perennial flowers) are sturdy and ready for [...]
Continue Reading →A big victory for conservation after years of political then legal wrangling-
For many years U.S. national forest users battled over development of those areas with no roads (“roadless areas”). As the more economically valuable roadless area were developed first, those that remained were usually developed only because of ever increasing federal subsidies. Roads in [...]
Continue Reading →With little hope that they will prevail in Idaho District Court people are asking why the Idaho Wool Growers Association, American Sheep Industry Association, Public Lands Council, and sheep ranchers from Wyoming and Colorado have begun litigation now. According to the latest gossip, the woolgrowers hope for a Romney Administration in 2013. The woolgrowers think that, [...]
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