NCBA complains about the use of “best available science” and the mandate to protect sensitive species.
In a news release published yesterday, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) complained that the new proposed US Forest Planning Rule is too onerous to public lands ranching. In their press release they imply that science does [...]
Continue Reading →Wolf delisting rider and most of the highly unpopular giveaways to polluters and abusers of our public lands are defeated-
The conference report on the 2012 appropriations bill for most non-defense expenditures has been finalized. Instead of merely appropriating more or less money for agencies many ideologically loaded amendments or riders were added, mostly by [...]
Continue Reading →U.S./B.C. herd of 50 to finally get critical habitat-
Woodland caribou, far more rare than the well known barren ground caribou, have kept a tiny toehold in the United States in the Panhandle of Idaho. Even that sometimes slips and the herd spends its time just to the north in British Columbia. About 600 square [...]
Continue Reading →In an implicit acknowledgement that public lands ranching is often incompatible with native species viability on public lands, Margaret Soulen Hinson provides more hyperbolic rhetoric at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands:
Public Lands Council Press Release:
RANCHERS WARN U.S. FOREST POLICIES THREATEN LIVESTOCK GRAZING
Nov. [...]
Steve Gallizioli, retired Wildlife Management Division Chief of the Arizona Game and Fish Department, talks about an early experience with how politics within the Forest Service negatively affects their management of public lands.
This video is an excerpt from an interview conducted as research for Western Turf Wars: The Politics of Public Lands Ranching.
Continue Reading →On September 14 and 15 Katie Fite and I visited the Miller Creek Allotment on the Mountain City Ranger District of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest to check out the riparian areas there. What we found was just a horrible mess that any land manager should be embarrassed about enough to actually do something about but, [...]
Continue Reading →Hiker outraged at bovine caused mess at what is arguably Idaho’s most beautiful alpine lake-
The Pioneers are the second highest mountain range in Idaho. They are of beautiful, hard glaciated rock, carved into giant peaks, spires, lake-filled cirques and waterfalls with wildflower meadows some of the time before the cattle reach them. Livestock grazing [...]
Continue Reading →GOP-backed bill tries to give Homeland Security a pass on environmental laws within 100 miles of international borders for “national security”
The “National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act (H.R. 1505),” is slowly moving in the GOP-controlled House. So far hearings have been held. Supporters say it would help border patrol activities by waiving 36 [...]
Continue Reading →Don Oman describes the livestock management and environmental conditions that he encountered on the Twin Falls District (southern Idaho) of the Sawtooth National Forest upon his becoming the district ranger in 1986.
Oman was raised on a Montana farm and went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in forest management from the University of Montana. [...]
Continue Reading →Twin Falls Ranger District’s Trout Creek, habitat for the Yellowstone cutthroat trout, was among the locations found damaged by livestock grazing when Don Oman became the district ranger in 1986. In this video, Mr. Oman describes the dramatic environmental improvement that occurred after livestock were excluded from a short segment of the creek.
Don [...]
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