August 2013
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Season generally runs August 30 to March 31- Idaho’s wolf-hostile, general hunting season opens again tomorrow. The season is six months long except for parts of the state where it is ten months long. While normal hunts for elk, deer, ducks, and the like, strive to maintain sustainable and nearly stable populations of the game…
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One of the often repeated remarks used to explain the large fires we are experiencing around the West is that a hundred years of fire suppression has led to unnatural accumulations of fuels. Yet such assertions assume that fire suppression was always efficient and effective—a questionable assumption especially in the early days of the Forest…
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We now know the true story of the recently deceased 176 sheep near Fogg Hill in Eastern Idaho — frightened into stampede, but not killed by wolves. We have to ask ourselves, have past wolf “massacre of sheep” stories been similarly misreported? Back in 2009 near Dillon, Montana, there was much outrage, but few facts…
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Little Queens fire a new worry- With in incredible 1714 people assigned to fighting the Beaver Creek fire which has slowly grown to 108,000 acres, good progress has been made securing its long east flank, greatly reducing the threat to burning these towns. The fire is rated at 30% contained. Matt Leidecker Photography has a stunning…
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Big pile of dead sheep in remote Idaho mountains- While uncommon, this sort of thing has happened before in Eastern Idaho/Western Wyoming. It’s not a pretty picture. One hundred seventy-six sheep lie dead below a rocky slope near Fogg Hill, deep in what is called the Palisades Backcountry in Idaho near the Wyoming border. This is…
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New York Times and others condemn Agency actions. Wolf delisting temporarily halts- Before a species can be removed from the endangered or threatened species list a panel of qualified scientists (“peers”) need to review the proposal to see if a delisting as proposed is justified — will not result in the species becoming in need…
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As large fires have spread across the West in recent decades, we hear increasing demands to reduce fuels—typically through logging. But logging won’t reduce the large fires we are experiencing because fuels do not drive large fires. You can have tons of fuel per acre as occurs in Oregon’s Coast Range or the Olympic Mountains…
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Beaver Creek Fire descends onto Idaho resorts towns from the west- Talking with Hailey resident Jon Marvel early last week about the huge Elk Creek and Pony wildfires blazing northeast of Boise, Idaho, he said “Watch the Beaver Creek Fire, especially as the weekend arrives.” The weekend came with the predicted winds and a stampeding…