Simplot Company report to justify lower water quality standards provokes big controversy-
Anglers don’t like pulling fish off their lure that look like mutant monsters. The accusation that selenium poisoning from the Smoky Canyon phosphate mine is killing fish, creating awful deformities, and being picked up into the ecosystem in general has greeted a 700-page draft [...]
Continue Reading →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 →The effort to list the Greater Sage-grouse via the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been an uphill battle. However, even as the end-game has yet to be realized, the effort itself has been remarkably successful at prompting bureaucratic backflips and a whole lot of paper-shuffling to accommodate consideration of the species. Unfortunately, many of the existing and developing [...]
Continue Reading →The final peer review report commissioned by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and conducted by Atkins, a global consulting firm, who enlisted 5 prominent biologists to review and comment on Wyoming’s Gray Wolf Management Plan, has found that the Plan is deficient primarily because of its vagueness with regard to maintaining [...]
Continue Reading →After 22 years as the chief biologist at the National Elk Refuge, Bruce Smith pens an easy-to-read, but stark warning about continuing elk feeding-
Prions are bit like tiny pieces of radioactive material in that they are very dangerous promoters of illness and for practical purposes never really go away, resting in the dust and [...]
Continue Reading →Bridger-Teton National Forest sued for failure to analyze new projects blocking the path of the pronghorn-
According to the Western Watersheds Project, the Bridger-Teton N.F. was talking up a good story how they were going the protect the “path of the pronghorn” which runs from the Wyoming desert, where they winter, northward to Jackson Hole [...]
Continue Reading →Abundant grass in mountains and lack of snow keeps elk off of Refuge-
The amazing wet spring and early summer continue to affect wildlife (and hunting) in NW Wyoming. Usually this time of year elk are moving onto the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole. This year, however, numbers are very low, with prized bulls [...]
Continue Reading →Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) has been found in elk, deer, and moose in several areas of Wyoming and has been moving ever closer to the already brucellosis infected elk herds that use feeding grounds in northwest Wyoming. The feeding grounds long ago caused the elk to stop migrating to a unique area along the Continental [...]
Continue Reading →A tiny nematode spread by biting flies piles on top of habitat decline and predation-
Most know that the moose of NW Wyoming are in serious decline. This has not been the first time because early explorers and settlers reported almost no moose. Nevertheless, in the early 1900s the moose population became established and grew [...]
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 [...]
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