Male sage grouse strut on a lek to lure females into breeding. Photo by Bob Wick, BLM
One often doesn’t get good news, but this week, the U.S. District Court agreed with conservation groups that the Bi-State Sage Grouse was illegally removed from its listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Efforts […]
Continue Reading →In May, 2021 I happened to be traveling through northern California on my way to Lassen National Park. When I drove out of Chester, California, I encountered a number of forest thinning projects along the highway. So I photographed some of them, in part, because in many cases large fire-resistant trees were being removed.
Then […]
Continue Reading →Approximately 5700 cows graze national park lands at Point Reyes National Seashore. Photo George Wuerthner
A federal lawsuit against the National Park Service (NPS) at Point Reyes National Seashore was filed on January 10th by four environmental organizations. The lawsuit contends the National Park Service in a new management plan for the […]
Continue Reading →Cattle grazing and production is one of the most destructive of human activities, if a full accounting of all the costs were considered. Photo George Wuerthner
I recently received a video titled Audubon Conservation Ranching: Hooves on the Ground, Wings in the Air from the Audubon Society. The video promotes beef […]
Continue Reading →The influence of fire suppression is exaggerated. The idea that there was a “hundred years” of fire suppression ignores the fact that in the early 1920s and 1930s as much as 50 million acres burned annually. Furthermore, climate controls fires, as indicated by the cool, moist decades between the 1940s-1980s. Courtesy of […]
Continue Reading →The recent wildfires in California make me feel even more worried about the fate of anyone whose homes are built in the woods. California has experienced the 9 of the largest fires in its history in the past two decades, but large fires have occurred in many other western states during the same period.
What […]
Continue Reading →The arrival of the still lone-wolf has led to formation of the Pacific Wolf Coalition-
The Pacific Wolf Coalition has issued its first news release. This new wolf advocacy group was formed when the long migration of wolf OR-7 from NE Oregon to Northern California raised interest in restoring wolves to the Cascade Range and […]
Continue Reading →Endangered Desert Tortoise Further Imperiled by Remote Solar Plant
For several months we’ve been covering the progress of the, now approved, solar power plant at Ivanpah near Las Vegas on the California side of the Nevada/California border. Initial construction has begun and biologists have rounded up as many desert tortoises as they can to […]
Continue Reading →The very rich funding political causes is not new, but the billionaire Koch Brothers are finally getting much deserved publicity-
That money is the “mothers milk of politics” is well known, but the identify of the mothers often isn’t. In recent years the role of really rich people funding their causes has mushroomed. Rightwingers will […]
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