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 →Appeals courts says elk feeding is not illegal, but risky-
This issue is closely related to the Wyoming wolf plan story because Wyoming just loves feeding elk, and dragging along the federal government to feed them too
Conservation groups appealed the loss in their effort to stop elk and bison feeding on the National Elk [...]
Continue Reading →Mike Hudak interviews Don Oman, a 35-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service, about his experience working with the agency as a part of Hudak’s series of interviews compiled for Western Turf Wars: The Politics of Public Lands Ranching
Don Oman, a 35-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service explains how political pressure initiated [...]
Continue Reading →iPhone App centered around Yellowstone Bison Conflict
Buffalo Haze, a just released iPhone app, is a game premised on the controversial Yellowstone buffalo issue by simulating the yearly hazing practiced by wildlife managers.
Every year bison naturally roam outside of Yellowstone National Park to graze on grasses at lower elevations. Wildlife managers haze the bison [...]
Continue Reading →Conservationists have been putting in a lot of hours for a lot of years on the Green Mountain Common Allotment – and rightfully so; At 522,000 acres it’s the largest unfenced public land grazing allotment in the country, and it’s a landscape that’s been brutalized by livestock for far too long.
Green Mountain grazing decision [...]
Continue Reading →To Convene a ‘Wildlife Congress’ in 2012
Some in the state (see: groups like Sportsman for Fish and Wild[sic]life) like to suggest that the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) operations are paid for exclusively by sale of hunting and fishing licenses and tags and so, the logic goes, hunters and anglers ought have [...]
Continue Reading →State parks explore deal with The North Face, other companies, to ease budget crunch
You’ve probably seen it at a public school near you; Coca Cola score boards, exclusive to Pepsi product vending machines in the hallways between class. Now, Idaho managers are seeking to find ways to commercialize state parks in an effort to raise [...]
Continue Reading →Recently, Western Watersheds Project won a court victory halting corporate livestock ranching on 450,000 acres on the Jarbidge Field Office, BLM in southern Idaho. It was a sweet victory for sage grouse, wildlife, and other environmental values in southern Idaho – but it may or may not be short-lived.
Later this month, the Idaho [...]
Continue Reading →“Reduced grazing saves carbon”
A few years ago we discussed a Wohlfahrt study in the Mojave Desert which strongly suggested that desert ecosystems may play a significant role in sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere and sinking it into the soil. Studies in Germany likewise demonstrated that human impact to soils both decreases the amount of [...]
Continue Reading →Rocky Barker has a blog today about the upcoming status of public lands in the government shutdown.
National forests and BLM lands will remain open but national parks close. By Rocky Barker. Idaho Statesman
Update. Looks like some deal was worked out late Friday night. Government remains open
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