Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Utah, Wyoming , Colorado poll. Arizonans stand out-
Generally speaking Arizona is not thought of as a state especially friendly to environmental policies. Of course a state’s reputation on such things is the result of the real attitudes of the people as channeled by politicians and interpreted by the media.
In early January [...]
Continue Reading →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 →On December 1st, at a presentation given by Bob Budd about the Wyoming Core Habitat Plan for sage grouse, it was pretty obvious that the livestock industry has things pretty much locked up with the agencies and politicians. The presentation was given in one of the big, new hearing rooms in the basement of the [...]
Continue Reading →REVA (H.R. 3432) Would Provide Cash Option for Grazing Permittees
Conservationists hailed the introduction of the Rural Economic Vitalization Act (H.R. 3432) in Congress, a bill that would allow federal grazing permittees to voluntarily relinquish their grazing permits back to the managing federal agency in exchange for compensation paid by a third party. The bill [...]
Continue Reading →Inevitable result of using private donations to make up for congressional funding shortfalls?
Tossing empty water bottles into the Grand Canyon is just the kind of thing people hate to see, but it happens all the time anyway. About a third of the trash is empty convenience water bottles. As a result, the Park began [...]
Continue Reading →Denial of Livestock Industry’s Petition for Writ of Certiorari seals the fate of Bush era grazing regulations on 160,000,000 acres of public land
On Monday, October 3rd the United States Supreme Court denied consideration of an appeal by the Public Lands Council of prior federal court decisions won by Western Watersheds Project that overturned the [...]
Continue Reading →Western Watersheds Project wins initial court victory
Western Watersheds Project (WWP) has won a federal court order overturning the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Resource Management Plans (RMPs) for the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho and the Pinedale Field Office in Wyoming. These two plans affect management on over 2.5 [...]
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 →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. [...]
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