A Forest Service cabin near a wilderness hot spring is filled with frozen dead cattle and the Forest Service doesn’t know quite what to do. Worried that the cattle carcasses will pollute the hot springs the Forest Service wants to get them out of the area but options are limited. They can’t use helicopters because [...]
Continue Reading →Even after 18 years, the Nevada BLM won’t round up trespassing cattle citing “safety concerns”. I’ve seen the lack of enforcement of rangeland standards on many occasions but when faced with even the most egregious lawlessness, the BLM does nothing. The lawlessness of public lands ranching is displayed in its full grandeur and leaves [...]
Continue Reading →Yesterday, Western Watersheds Project, Hells Canyon Preservation Council, and The Wilderness Society filed a motion in federal district court seeking to halt domestic sheep grazing on three allotments in the Payette National Forest in order to protect imperiled bighorn sheep in Hells Canyon, and native bighorns in the Salmon River Canyon.
In 2010, the Forest [...]
Continue Reading →Christopher Ketcham has been writing about many of the issues we write about here and has just published a very long and clear-eyed article about the ongoing wolf issue in The American Prospect. Ketcham interviews many people here in Idaho including our own Brian Ertz and his sister Natalie, he also got some great quotes [...]
Continue Reading →Red meat mortality study causes stir-
Today many people are emailing and posting to Facebook the just released study telling that “Red Meat Consumption is Linked to Increased Risk of Total, Cardiovascular, and Cancer Mortality.” The entire study [...]
Continue Reading →Extractive Industry Determines the Fate of Sage Grouse in Idaho.
On Monday, March 12, 2011, the Idaho Governor Butch Otter’s Sage Grouse Task Force had its first formal meeting. Originally the meeting was to be organized by the Idaho Governor’s Office of Species Conservation (OSC) but something happened and rather than have OSC organize the [...]
Continue Reading →The Payette National Forest has announced its decision to capitulate to the domestic sheep industry and interpret the Bighorn Sheep Rider passed via the 2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act in a way contrary to the clear language of the statute, halting implementation of it’s Payette Decision which would have removed domestic sheep use from the Forest [...]
Continue Reading →I think it’s safe to say that this couldn’t be called a trend, but last year a funding shortfall for USDA Wildlife Services shortened their coyote killing season by two months in Montana while at the same time the number of domestic sheep that coyotes killed ended up being lower by 1,900. The effectiveness [...]
Continue Reading →Editors note 5:30 PM MST 2/22/2012: we have learned that this “wolf kill bill” will probably move no further in the Oregon Legislature — it is probably dead for the year, though it is possible that legislative “tricks” could possibly push it further.
Full release:
Activists Take Over OCA Meeting and Call Attention [...]
Continue Reading →The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife recently purchased private checkerboard land intermingled with Forest Service lands in the Rock Creek watershed north of Yakima. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, The Nature Conservancy and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation combined forces and purchased 16 square miles of [...]
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