Juniper removal below Abert Rim, Oregon Photo by George Wuerthner
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is now taking comments on a massive vegetation project for the Great Basin and adjacent areas of the Colorado Plateau. The PEIS for Fuels Reduction and Rangeland Restoration in the Great Basin (the Fuels Reduction and […]
Continue Reading →
Caption: Above Cheatgrass invades fuel break cleared along road in Oregon. Bottom: Fuel break created in Idaho’s Snake River Plain. Photos by George Wuerthner
The Department of Interior released a final decision to created 11,000 miles of linear cheatgrass corridors, which they are euphemistically calling “fuel breaks.” Think […]
Continue Reading →
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is rewriting its grazing regulations to allow more “flexibility” into range management. The agency even proposes increases in grazing seasons and numbers. All of this, of course, is the result of the pressure from the fox (Trump administration) guarding the hen house.
I think most career […]
Continue Reading →
Stream dried up for irrigation of livestock forage. Photo by George Wuerthner
Recently the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) announced they were working to reduce the wildlife impacts of fences. Not by removing the fences, but by changing the wire on them to facilitate easier wildlife passage. Fences, as GYC, noted […]
Continue Reading →Recently Nevada Bureau of Land Management (BLM) State Director Jon Raby suggested that the agency will try “targeted grazing” among other methods to reduce wildfires in the sagebrush ecosystem. Raby says the BLM is implementing this action “because of the threat of annual invasive grasses, specifically cheatgrass, play in altering fire regime conditions that intensify […]
Continue Reading →
This past winter, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began preparing two Environmental Impact Statements to review the environmental consequences of creating a region-wide series of “fuel breaks” that will add thousands of miles of new linear pathways across the Great Basin portion of Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and Utah.
The goal of fuel breaks […]
Continue Reading →The Western Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies released a report declaring that invasive plants, especially cheatgrass, is an enormous threat to the sagebrush ecosystem and sage grouse. Ironically the report emphasized that invasive weeds are a threat to the livestock industry as well.
The reason it is ironic is that across the West livestock […]
Continue Reading →In a March 26th Times News article, Karen Launchbaugh, a University of Idaho range professor, propagandized misleading ideas about livestock grazing. Like nearly all range professor, Ms. Launchbaugh, sees her job as promoting livestock grazing. I know because I studied range management both as an undergraduate and in grad school, so familiar with the emphasis […]
Continue Reading →
Last week a Associated Press article proclaimed that the rehabilitation taking place after the Soda Fire, which burned 225,953 acres along highway 95 on the Oregon/Idaho border in August, was going well. Not so fast. According to a report from Roger Rosentreter, a retired PhD botanist who worked for the BLM for 38 years, things aren’t going […]
Continue Reading →In early June, Katie Fite and I visited southeast Nevada to examine the results of past vegetation treatments meant to “restore” sage grouse habitat in the Schell Field Office of the Ely District BLM. What we found was quite astonishing. Rather than restoring sage grouse habitat, the BLM targeted the best sage grouse habitat, near […]
Continue Reading →
