The national wilderness preservation system would be strengthened-
Taking a long trip into the backcountry during winter doesn’t appeal to some people. That’s understandable. But I enjoy it, and it’s something I try to do a few times a year. Winter backpacking is very different, and more challenging, compared to strapping on the pack during […]
Continue Reading →Effort to turn ranchers into scofflaws nets just one so far-
Ammon Bundy has been trying to recruit livestock operators who have grazing permits on U.S. public lands to stop paying the rental (grazing fees) for their grazing allotment. He finally recruited one, or at least one showed up Saturday to renounce paying his grazing […]
Continue Reading →Dwight Hammond and his son Steve, the ranchers who sparked the recent Harney County protests, were characterized as “responsible ranchers” by Congressman Greg Walden in a speech before Congress.
Walden sought to minimize the crimes the Hammonds have committed by suggesting they merely burned a bit more than a hundred acres, something that he tried […]
Continue Reading →A mistake?
On Jan. 13 Idaho Fish and Game landed helicopters in the deep wilderness of central Idaho (Frank Church/River of No Return Wilderness). There they radio collared a number of elk and also four deep wilderness wolves.
Idaho’s wildlife agency was operating under a special order from the U.S. Forest Service. Radio collaring is […]
Continue Reading →Please read the news article I have pasted below. Then come back and read my commentary. There are some great quotes from Chad Hanson and a few others that counter the industrial forestry perspective that we can and need to log our way out of large fires. However, the idea that most historic fires were small […]
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During the last Pleistocene Ice Age advance ice covered much of the North American Continent, as well as the mountainous areas of the West. Depending on who you consult the ice retreated sometime between 15,000 years to 12,000 years before present. A minor expansion of ice occurred during the Little Ice Age sometime between […]
Continue Reading →By Josh Osher and Andy Kerr
The Sheriff of Harney County, OR met with the leader of the armed occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and offered a way to end the takeover fiasco. The Sheriff offered a “safe escort” out of the increasingly untenable situation. Congress should follow the Sheriff’s pragmatic gesture and offer […]
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MONTANA: Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) denied Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection for the iconic Yellowstone Bison, 14 months after Western Watersheds Project and Buffalo Field Campaign petitioned to list these bison as an endangered or threatened species. The conservation groups sought federal protection for the Yellowstone bison because they are harmed […]
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Judge Rejects State’s Attempts to Avoid Responsibility
VICTOR, Idaho— A federal judge today ordered Idaho officials to develop trapping restrictions that prevent protected Canada lynx — one of the rarest cats in the United States — from being illegally hurt or killed across more than 20,000 square miles of the state’s […]
Continue Reading →VICTOR, Idaho— In response to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity and allies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that the Northern Rockies fisher, a rare and vanishing species, may warrant federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Fishers are cat-like, medium-sized members of the weasel family with slender, brown bodies […]
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