The Wildlife News

Montana Department of Livestock violates private property rights on behalf of livestock industry.

Ken Cole — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:15:17 +0000

In today’s Buffalo Field Campaign Update from the Field the depths that Montana’s livestock barons will stoop to protect livestock interests is revealed. Because the Montana Department of Livestock is limited by a temporary restraining order issued on Monday by a federal judge, they have decided to explicitly violate the property rights of a landowner who has explicitly told them that the agency is not welcome on their land. The Galanis family “alerted the Department of Livestock to the fact that the buffalo are welcome on the preserve and that the agents, buffalo hazing, and harassment are not.” The State of Montana has made it explicitly clear that the rights of the Galanis family are subservient to the livestock industry and that they are willing to violate those rights at any time they please to conduct their hazing operations.

The hazing takes place in the midst of bison birthing season and calves just days old spend the beginning of their lives being chased by cowboys on horses and ATV’s.

Here is the update from the Buffalo Field Campaign.

* Update from the Field: Judge Orders Halt to Helicopter Hazing

We’ve been seeing a lot of grizzly bear sign this spring. A few patrols have seen actual grizzlies. Buffalo Field Campaign’s documentation of the presence of the protected bears has helped secure a Temporary Restraining Order in U.S. District Court to ground the helicopter. Attorney Rebecca Smith, representing the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, successfully argued in court on Monday, May 14 to prohibit the use of helicopters for hazing buffalo in threatened grizzly bear habitat. The Order, issued by Judge Charles C. Lovell, prevents the Interagency Bison Management Plan agencies “from conducting further bison helicopter hazing operations…pending further order of this Court.” Buffalo Field Campaign’s expert assistance and video and photographic evidence played a central role in the case. The grounding of the helicopter is a major and immediate victory that is already being felt on the ground.

BFC file photo by Stephany. Click photo for larger image.

For the first time in at least fifteen springs we needn’t fear the chopper’s overwhelming noise and vibrations or squint our eyes to the powerful dust-stirring gusts of the rotor wash. We don’t have to see the buffalo frantic with terror or watch grizzly bears, moose, elk, eagles, swans, and herons–and so many other precious species–flee from the deafening noise. We don’t have to watch newborn calves run on broken or dislocated legs as the chopper hovers and lunges from overhead. Spring is blooming along the Yellowstone boundary and, for at least the time being, the hell of the ‘copter is over.

BFC file photo by Stephany. Click photo for larger image.

The landscape on the western edge of Yellowstone is the buffalo’s home. The south-facing, grass-growing slopes of the Horse Butte Peninsula are birthing grounds; pregnant mothers gather here to gain strength and nourishment after the long and cold winter; newborn calves, reddish-orange and brimming with life, draw their firsts breaths and take their first steps here. The meadows, bluffs, banks, and forests that envelop the Madison River on its westward course from Yellowstone National Park comprise a rare and precious patch of Earth still blessed with wild buffalo, grizzly bears, wolves, and wolverines. This is one of the very last places in America where wild buffalo still leave hoof prints, tufts of hair, and pie shaped droppings.

BFC file photo by Stephany. Click photo for larger image.

BFC file photo by Stephany. Click photo for larger image.

BFC file photo by Stephany. Click photo for larger image.

BFC file photo by Stephany. Click photo for larger image.

The Montana Department of Livestock, helicopter or not, refuses to tolerate buffalo on this landscape. Since Monday we have documented one hazing operation after another as a host of horse-mounted agents, from the Department of Livestock, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and the National Park Service, do everything in their power–and some things beyond their rightful power–to clear the land of the buffalo who belong here. Trespassing, chasing buffalo past the point of exhaustion, depriving thirsty animals of water, and separating newborn calves from their mothers are not too much for these livestock agents, game wardens, and park rangers.

BFC file photos by Justine and Stephany. Click photos for large images.

BFC file photos by Justine and Stephany. Click photos for large images.

The Galanis family thought they could help the buffalo when they bought land on Horse Butte and designated it as a preserve where buffalo and other wildlife would be safe and protected. They alerted the Department of Livestock to the fact that the buffalo are welcome on the preserve and that the agents, buffalo hazing, and harassment are not. On Tuesday morning, three horse-mounted agents of the Montana Department of Livestock willfully disregarded the rights and wishes of the Galanis family and entered their land without permission to chase away the buffalo. We were there at the Galanis’ invitation to greet the agents at the property line, remind them that they were trespassing, to tell them that the buffalo are welcome, and to document their illegal entry. The agents ignored our warnings, charging their horses at the buffalo and chasing them toward the back of the property. Justine and I got on our bikes and followed, videotaping and shooting photos as the frightened buffalo fled the horsemen.

BFC file photos by Justine and Stephany. Click photos for large images.

BFC file photos by Justine and Stephany. Click photos for large images.

Even without the helicopter, hazing is intolerable. The agents ran the buffalo at top speed up and over the crest of Horse Butte. We left our bikes with our patrol partners and sprinted after the haze with our cameras. The things we witnessed then and since are things no one should have to see or endure: calves separated from their herds by the strong current of the Madison River, their mothers emitting plaintive bellows; the pronounced limp of a newborn calf as it flees the horsemen, the umbilical cord still trailing from its mom; collapsed and panting calves being prodded from the ground to run; protective mothers turning to face the riders, “back off, already!”

This is what the lives of wild buffalo are like this week along Yellowstone’s western boundary. Buffalo, members of America’s last wild population, are being chased as you read this. With the grounding of the helicopter we achieved a major victory that will benefit the entire landscape and all its inhabitants. The helicopter will probably not be back this spring. But to mistake this victory for the end of the struggle would be dangerous and dishonest. Hazing buffalo, by whatever means, must stop. Buffalo Field Campaign will continue to fight for the buffalo in the field, in the courts, and in the policy arena. We will be here to document every last action against the buffalo and to do everything we can to further their protection. Please support us in this crucial work.

For the Buffalo,

Dan Brister
Executive Director
Buffalo Field Campaign

Another Kill Order for Wolves via Flat Top Ranch

Brian Ertz — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:18:29 +0000

Less than a year after Flat Top Ranch was awarded $600,000 for a conservation easement - half of which was paid for by a Blaine County levy assessed to protect wildlife – Flat Top Ranch has run into more conflicts with wolves:

Jerome Hansen, supervisor of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Magic Valley Region, said wolves belonging to the Little Wood Pack near Carey had reportedly killed seven ewes on private land. Though Hansen declined to name the property owner, Peavey later confirmed that the sheep were his, some of many roaming on his Flat Top Ranch.

The lambing sheep were reportedly spread buckshot across the landscape, largely unattended. A kill order on the wolves has been issued and is being pursued by Wildlife Services in the area despite efforts to ensure livestock/wolf conflict preventative-measures would be incorporated into management practices.

You may remember the controversy prompted by the Flat Top Ranch’s application for a $300,000 match from Blaine County Land, Water & Wildlife Program‘s funds levied by Blaine County citizens “to protect natural resources and the quality of life valued by area residents.”

The controversy started when the Flat Top Ranch’s application sought to fund a private conservation easement on its property with levy dollars immediately after three wolves were killed on the ranch by Wildlife Services in response to less-than solid evidence that wolves were responsible for a single dead cow.

Efforts to leverage those county dollars to protect wolves in the area were initially thought to be successful, but last November, we at The Wildlife News were critical of the language in the easement extended to Flat Top Ranch:

As is so often the case with stipulations directing management, the devil is in the details. Vaguely conditional language kills the enforceability of a document – and in this case it is likely to kill wolves on Flat Top Ranch.

The language included in that conservation easement:

Grantor shall comply with all applicable laws and use selective and humane control techniques, including, where practicable, non-lethal deterrents and management practices.

Vaguely conditional language gave Flat Top Ranch the opportunity to collect county dollars and kill wolves too.

Video of the Wildlife Service’s kill action on Flat Top Ranch last August:

Yet another Yellowstone wolf disperses to South Dakota

Ralph Maughan — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:29:53 +0000

Wolf from Park’s most remote pack ends up near Pine Ridge, South Dakota-

The third wolf from the Yellowstone Park area over the years to disperse all the way to South Dakota has been found dead. The big male wolf was hit by an auto along U.S. Highway 18. Over the last decade two other wolves from in or near Yellowstone have been found dead in western South Dakota. This shows how far a wolf seeking a mate will travel. Of course, famous former Oregon wolf OR7 traveled perhaps a thousand miles (including the kinks and backtracks) in migrating from NE Oregon to northern California.

The wolf was born to the Yellowstone Delta Pack, which lives in the most remote, roadless part of Yellowstone Park. There is little chance of any wolves creating a successful wolf pack in South Dakota, which may be sparsely populated but is open, and well roaded. It is possible that in an irony of ironies a wolf could migrate from Yellowstone all the way through the Dakotas to Minnesota where wolves were never extirpated.

Story from a South Dakota newspaper. Wolf found near Pine Ridge migrated from Yellowstone. Kevin Woster. Rapid City Journal staff

Birds vs. J.P. Morgan

louise wagenknecht — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:20:30 +0000

Leadore, Idaho: After a period of indecision, the mountain bluebirds have made their choice — this year, it’s the nest box out by the west fence. The tree swallows now have uncontested claim to the nest box on the post above the east gate, while the house wrens seem to have won the house on the garage wall. It was a near-run thing, however. The house sparrows were determined this year, even though they aren’t supposed to like nest boxes designed for bluebirds. Papa Sparrow would perch atop it while the old lady rummaged around inside, ignoring the wren that clung to the side of the garage and scolded them. The moment the sparrow left, the wren started stuffing nesting material into the house. After several days, the sparrows gave up.

Our bird books tell us that sometimes wrens will do this just to prevent other birds from using a nest site, then go off and build a real nest nearby. But this year two wrens are stuffing the nest box full of crap. We wake up to the bubbling song of the male wren atop a nearby post.

House finches, Cassin’s finches, white-crowned sparrows, chipping sparrows, lazuli buntings, chickadees, all haunt the bird feeder. A male Bullock’s oriole drinks from the hummingbird feeder and pecks at halved oranges. Robins, mourning doves, Eurasian collared doves (a new arrival in the last few years), red-winged blackbirds, starlings, cowbirds, goldfinches in full breeding plumage – all frequent visitors. A common grackle with a strange speckling of white around the face arrived this morning.

All of them are intent on reproduction, using the finite nesting sites and resources of the local area. At the end of their lives, they will have reproduced themselves once (if they’re lucky). Zero population growth = success.

Unlike us, birds haven’t burned fossil fuels for the past two hundred years, although a few species, like house sparrows and starlings, have taken advantage of the one animal that does by using urban habitat and the fruits of mechanized agriculture. But in general, birds are not like J.P. Morgan, which in desperation makes weird bets on the growth of the U.S. economy.

Desperation, not just greed. Bankers have always been greedy, but humans are now used to exponential growth. Energy invested in oil drilling used to have an EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) of 100:1. Today, the EROEI on the Bakken formation in North Dakota is about 6:1; for the Alberta tar sands, it’s only 3:1. We built a world on the easy oil, now gone. J.P. Morgan knows this, and is scared spitless, because it means that the exponential growth that made them rich is over.

Of course, the real difference between birds and people is that we will keep tearing up the world in a futile effort to keep the good times rolling.

To Kill A Mockingbird

George Wuerthner — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:30:48 +0000

I recently attended the wolf hearings held by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission in Helena.

The commission is considering initiation of a trapping season, as well as eliminating quotas on the number of wolves that may be killed. The goal is to significantly reduce the state’s wolf population which currently numbers somewhere in the vicinity of 600 animals.

The commission will make a final decision on the matter by July.

At the hearing I felt like I was witnessing a modern day version of Harper Lee’s famous book To Kill a Mockingbird. In that novel the mockingbird is symbolic of innocence animals and by extension, innocence citizens destroyed by thoughtless and ignorant people.

In Lee’s novel the main character, lawyer Atticus Finch, is one of the few residents of the southern community of Maycomb committed to racial equality and fairness. He agrees to defend a black man (a mockingbird in human society) wrongly accused of raping a poor southern girl. For his efforts both Atticus and his children suffer abuse and ridicule from the community. Worse, in the end, Atticus is unable to overcome the racial prejudice of his community members and win acquittal for the black man who was convicted by public opinion rather than facts.

Even the otherwise descent people of that community were unable to put aside the cultural biases they had grown up with.

In a similar way I believe the wolf has become a symbolic scapegoat for many otherwise descent Montanans who, for whatever reason, cannot overcome the cultural biases against wolves.

I do not want to overstate this analogy. Wolves can and do kill elk and deer as well as livestock. They can sometimes even depress elk and deer populations. Yet for many who testified at the commission hearings, it is clear that killing wolves symbolizes more than just a predator that may occasionally create conflicts with human goals. When one can’t lash out at the real and/or imaginary forces that are creating fear or anger, someone or something else is punished. What was termed in my college animal behavior classes as “displaced” aggression.

In Montana there is displaced aggression being heaped upon the wolf. For some with the most extreme opinions in Montana, the wolf actually represents the distance federal government or worse a UN global plot to subjugate rural America that they fear is controlling their lives. When they kill wolves, they are lashing out at these institutions they fear.

And like the mythical towns people in Maycomb Alabama whose racial prejudice and lynch mob mentally convicted the black man Tom Robinson of imagined crimes based on dubious evidence, the wolf has been convicted and sentenced in the court of public opinion—at least the portion of the public I observed at the hearings.

There is no other way to explain the depth of hatred and fear I witnessed. Any rational examination of the evidence against the wolf would not justify the death penalty that I fear will be imposed by the Commission.

Over and over again I heard many of the same old inaccurate and often exaggerated justifications for wolf reductions. Among them is the assertion that wolves are decimating the state’s elk and deer herds and destroying hunter opportunity.

Yet in 1992 when the state completed its elk management plan, and three years before wolves were reintroduced, there were an estimated 89,000 elk in Montana. By 2007 an article in Montana Outdoors proclaimed there may be as many as 150,000 elk in the state. And a recent communication I had with Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist put the current number at around 140,000 animals.

Even as I write this commentary, the headlines in today’s papers proclaimed “FWP: Surveys Show Big Game Populations Bouncing Back.”

Any reasonable person looking at those numbers would conclude that the presence of wolves is not a threat to hunting opportunities. Indeed, if I wanted to be as irrational as many of the hunters I heard at the hearing, I could suggest a correlation where the presence of wolves appears to increase elk numbers and hunting opportunities across a state.

Similarly, accusations that wolves are a threat to the state’s livestock industry are equally as dubious. Last year according to the Montana Dept of Livestock, more than 140,000 cattle and sheep died from various causes including poisonous plants, disease, and other factors. Out of these 140,000 animals, wolves were responsible for less than a hundred deaths.

This is not to suggest that the loss of any livestock is not an economic blow to the individual rancher, but can anyone seriously argue that wolves are a universal threat to the livestock industry that justifies state-wide persecution?

And there are many positive benefits to the presence of a large wolf population that were rarely mentioned or acknowledged at the hearing. For instance, temporary or even sustained decrease in elk numbers can lead to a reduction in browsing on riparian vegetation like willows and cottonwood along streams. Healthy riparian areas create more food for beaver. Beaver ponds improve water storage and stream flow, reducing floods—which may be a huge net economic benefit to society.

Healthy and functioning streams also equal more trout and other fish, improving fishing opportunities and of course the bottom line for businesses that depend on serving the fishing public.

Predation by wolves can also reduce the occurrence of diseases that are a potential threat to both livestock and wildlife. For instance, the spread of disease like chronic wasting disease and brucellosis can have economic consequences to the livestock industry as well as elk and deer hunting. Wolves by their presence tend to reduce disease across a herd by dispersing elk and deer as well as by preying on sick animals.

Collectively these positive economic benefits to society and even to the livestock industry may far outnumber any negative costs associated with wolf livestock losses. If we are going to manage wolves so they full fill their ecological function as top predators, one can’t kill the majority of wolves off and expect to maintain these positive ecological benefits.

Even more troubling to me is that Montanans seem to want to use brute force instead of their brains to deal with wolf conflicts. A great deal of recent science on the social ecology of wolves as well as the positive benefits of predators on ecosystems is largely ignored by current management policies.

There is a growing body research that suggests increased persecution of predators is likely to increase, not decrease, human conflicts. Even if you lower the wolf population, you may actually increase the human conflicts.

Widespread and aggressive indiscriminate killing of wolves or any other predator may have unintended consequences. Hunting and trapping tends to skew predator populations towards younger age classes; Younger animals are less skillful hunters. They are the very animals most likely to wander into the backyards of people’s homes or come into a ranch yard to nab a young calf or lamb. Due to their inexperience and lack of hunting skill, younger animals are more inclined to seek out livestock as prey.

In addition, a wolf population suffering from heavy mortality leads to break up of packs where breeding is usually limited to the dominant male and female. Fragmenting the population into many smaller packs can result in more breeding females and often results in a higher survival of pups. In a very short time the population rebounds, prompting endless calls for more persecution.

Predator control can even potentially lead to greater kill of elk and deer. Smaller packs with many pups to feed are unable to guard their kills against other scavengers. When an adult kills an elk or deer, by the time it can carry meat back to the den and return, much of the carcass may be stripped of any remaining meat, leaving that animal no choice but to kill another elk or deer. Smaller packs may in the end also produce more pups—and like teenagers everywhere—the greater food demands of growing pups may lead to the killing of more prey and/or livestock.

And since many wolves co-exist with livestock, the indiscriminate and random removal of wolves by hunting and trapping can actually create a void that may be filled by other wolves that may be more inclined to prey on livestock.

There are definitely conflicts that sometimes arise between wolves and people. However, the intelligent way to respond is through the surgical removal of individual animals or packs and adoption of non-lethal animal husbandry practices.

For instance, after California passed a state-wide ban on use of traps and poison to control predators, Marin County Commissioners voted to replace lethal measures with non-lethal methods. The tax payer funds that previously went to lethal control were used instead to build fences, purchase guard dogs and lambing sheds. In the end there was a reduction in predator losses while at the same time, the county spent less funds than what it had previously spent on lethal predator control. A similar effort in Montana’s own Blackfoot Valley where dead carcasses which serve as an attractant for predators are promptly removed has also lead to a reduction in livestock /predator conflicts.

Such changes in policies demonstrate what is possible when people use their brains instead of their guns.

In the novel to Kill a Mockingbird, the indiscriminate killing of mockingbirds represented the unnecessary and thoughtless destruction of animals and humans based on old biases. The sad truth is that in Montana we are still killing symbolic mockingbirds by our archaic and irrational attitudes towards predators like the wolf.

George Wuerthner is a hunter, former Montana hunting guide and ecologist living in Helena, Montana.

BLM Report: Public lands ranching fails rangeland health standards on a third of rangelands assessed, 33 million acres

Brian Ertz — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:33:41 +0000

A new federal assessment of rangelands in the West finds a disturbingly large portion fails to meet range health standards principally due to commercial livestock operations. In the last decade as more land has been assessed, estimates of damaged lands have doubled in the 13-state Western area where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) conducts major livestock leasing.

The “Rangeland Inventory, Monitoring and Evaluation Report for Fiscal Year 2011” covers BLM allotments in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The report totals BLM acreage failing to meet rangeland health standards in measures such as water quality, watershed functionality and wildlife habitat:

Almost 40% of BLM allotments surveyed since 1998 have failed to meet the agency’s own required land health standards with impairment of more than 33 million acres, an area exceeding the State of Alabama in size, attributed to livestock grazing;
Overall, 30% of BLM’s allotment area surveyed to date suffers from significant livestock-induced damage, suggesting that once the remaining allotments have been surveyed, the total impaired area could well be larger than the entire State of Washington; and
While factors such as drought, fire, invasion by non-native plants, and sprawl are important, livestock grazing is identified by BLM experts as the primary cause (nearly 80%) of BLM lands not meeting health standards.

“Livestock’s huge toll inflicted on our public lands is a hidden subsidy which industry is never asked to repay,” stated PEER Advocacy Director Kirsten Stade, noting that the percentage of impairment in lands assessed remains fairly consistent over the past decade. “The more we learn about actual conditions, the longer is the ecological casualty list.”

Cottonwood Creek, Owyhee Idaho BLM

This is to say nothing about the actual condition of public lands, which some public oversight organizations maintain to be in much worse condition than is reported due to overwhelming pressure on agency employees to overlook grazing impacts or attribute them to something else.

Last November, PEER filed a scientific integrity complaint that BLM had directed scientists to exclude livestock grazing as a factor in changing landscapes as part of a $40 million study, the biggest such effort ever undertaken by BLM. The complaint was referred to a newly appointed Scientific Integrity Officer for BLM but there are no reports of progress in the agency’s self-investigation in the ensuing months.

At the same time, BLM range evaluations, such as this latest one, use ambiguous categories that mask actual conditions, employing vague terms such as “making significant progress” and “appropriate action has been taken to ensure significant progress” that obscure damage estimates and inflate the perception of restoration progress. For example, in 2001 nearly 60% of BLM lands (94 million acres, an area larger than Montana) consisted of grazing allotments that were supposed to be managed to “improve the current resource condition” – a number that has stayed unchanged for a decade.

Efforts to demand improved condition for imperiled species, like sage grouse, are met with state and local attempts to influence federal policy by recommending management that ignores the impacts of livestock grazing and BLM’s own politicized attempts to forestall any meaningful management changes to livestock grazing for decades.

“Commercial livestock operations are clearly a major force driving degradation of wild places, jeopardy to wildlife, major loss of water quality and growing desertification throughout the American West,” Stade added, while noting that BLM has historically been dominated by livestock interests. “The BLM can no longer remain in denial on the declining health of our vast open range.”

Meanwhile, Livestock interests in Washington DC continue to push for less environmental analysis, less public involvement in grazing decisions, and to double the length of grazing permits with the Grazing ~~Improvement~~ Entrenchment Act.

***

Original PEER Press Release

Have you come across any interesting wildlife news? May 15, 2012

Ken Cole — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:05:49 +0000

Here is our new open thread on wildlife news topics. You can access the previous open thread here. Please post those comments and stories about wildlife you find interesting.

Judge issues temporary restraining order against helicopter hazing of bison in and near Yellowstone National Park. Livestock interests forced to argue against private property rights.

Ken Cole — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:58:20 +0000

U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell has issued a 14-day restraining order against using helicopters to haze bison back into Yellowstone National Park because of well documented grizzly bear activity in the area. Last year the Judge Lovell denied a similar request citing technical issues related to the lawsuit but, after both the Buffalo Field Campaign and the Gallatin National Forest documented grizzly presence in the areas where the helicopter hazing was taking place, the judge granted the temporary restraining order request made by the Alliance for Wild Rockies.

The Interagency Bison Management Plan, issued in 2000, scarcely examined the effect of bison hazing on grizzlies and made the assumption that the hazing would primarily occur during the winter months when grizzlies were hibernating. The plan also said that helicopter hazing would not take place if grizzlies were confirmed I the area where the hazing would take place.

One of the reasons that the Montana Department of Livestock (DoL) uses helicopters is to scare the bison off of private lands where the bison are welcome and the DoL is not. The agency claims that it can trespass on private property to remove the bison but has declined to enter the property on foot because they want to avoid looking like they don’t care about private property rights, which they don’t. Presumably this forces the hand of the DoL to violate the property rights of Horse Butte residents who welcome bison.

This highlights the obvious conflict that exists in many western states, and particularly Montana. Livestock and their owners have more rights than the average person.

Sagebrush Rebels still fighting to take public lands from the public. Meanwhile, the BLM sues rancher rather than remove trespass cattle from the Gold Butte allotment.

Ken Cole — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:36:30 +0000

Last month it was reported that the BLM cancelled a roundup of trespass cattle on the Gold Butte Allotment because they perceived a threat from Cliven Bundy who wrote to the company contracted to roundup and remove the trespass cattle saying “Cliven Bundy will do whatever it takes to protect his property and rights and liberty and freedoms and those of, We the People, of Clark County Nevada”. Bundy’s cattle have been in trespass on the allotment for the last 18 years but the impotent BLM has done nothing to remove them. Yesterday, the BLM filed a lawsuit asking that the court block “unauthorized and unlawful grazing of livestock”, something that the BLM already has the authority to do through its grazing regulations.

Bundy, described as a throwback to the Sagebrush Rebellion, thinks of these public lands as his own despite longstanding precedent and law which clearly states that the lands belong to the federal government and that livestock grazing on these lands is a privilege and not a right.

Sagebrush Rebellion style politicians have been active recently in both Utah and Arizona. Both states’ legislatures passed bills that demanded that federal lands be transferred to the states. In Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed the legislation, but, yesterday, Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the bill which would have required expensive and, ultimately, unsuccessful litigation.

Niemeyer on wolves in California road trip

Ralph Maughan — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:29:39 +0000

Carter Niemeyer is on a speaking tour in California. He is giving his usual clear eyed views based on his many years working with ranchers, Wildlife Services, managing the wolves of Idaho for the United States government, and meeting and working with wolf conservationists. He always tries to bring facts and reason to this contentious issue. Of course most folks know that California now has its first known wolf in many years — a long distance migrant from Oregon who has been named “Journey.” Interest is intense.

It seems like every time I hear Niemeyer speak, or read of a talk he has given, I learn something new.

The other day he spoke in Yreka, California. The talk, followed by a lengthy Q and A period, was covered by a blog which I was not aware. Carter Holds Court at Miner’s Inn in Yreka. Wolves and Writing. Writing inspired by wolves and other sentient beings.