From the monthly archives: January 2017

LARAMIE, Wyo. – The public lands management agencies announced the grazing fee for federal allotments today, which the federal government has decreased to a mere $1.87 per cow and her calf (or 5 sheep) per month, known as an Animal Unit Month, or AUM.

“This has got to be the cheapest all-you-can-eat buffet deal in the […]

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I have some questions and complaints about how our federal public lands are managed. I think ranchers pay a pittance in grazing fees, while doing a lot of damage to our collective lands. The timber industry is exploiting fear about wildfire to justify accelerated logging of national forests. The oil and gas industry doesn’t pay […]

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I regularly hear or read arguments from agencies compromising our natural heritage that such and such studies support their management decisions.  However, often the agencies overlook or ignore contrary science that does not support the policy or management decision.

To give them a break, the average district ranger or even specialists like wildlife biologists, […]

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I recently attended a talk on biomass energy at the Bend City Club.

The Bend City Club presentation on biomass was another example of a juggernaut premised on unexamined assumptions without question. At every step of the way there are assumptions that are given and accepted. However, if any of these assumptions is incorrect than […]

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In Victory for Conservation Groups, Court Orders Better Protections Before Reinstating Grazing Permits

PORTLAND, Ore.— Conservation groups scored a victory in federal court Tuesday on behalf of the Oregon spotted frog, which is protected as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The court found that the U.S. Forest Service’s allowance of grazing on the 68,000-acre Chemult […]

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A memo leaked today orders all of the bureaus of the Department of Interior, which includes the Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Bureau of Indian Affairs, and others, to clear nearly every decision or correspondence with the Office of the Executive Secretariat […]

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PORTLAND, Ore. – Western Watersheds Project, a nonprofit environmental group, has launched a legal challenge to a management plan for five National Wildlife Refuges in the Klamath Basin of Oregon and California. The lawsuit, filed last week in Oregon, cites failures by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect sage grouse and rare native […]

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The straw-grasping began almost as soon as the shock wore off. Conservationists began searching for a sign that Donald Trump might care about something other than money and winning. They dug up a January 2016 interview with Field and Stream and Outdoor Life, where he said that he doesn’t like the idea of divesting federal […]

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Idaho Must Destroy Data Obtained From Illegal Elk and Wolf Collaring 

POCATELLO, Idaho – A federal judge today ruled that the U.S. Forest Service illegally authorized the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) to conduct approximately 120 helicopter landings to place radio collars on elk in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness last […]

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New Polling Data Underscores Public Support for Endangered Species Protections

By Western Watersheds Project

WASHINGTON – The American public supports the continued protection of endangered species and worries that the new Congress will undermine these majority values, according to a new poll of American voters conducted in the wake of the 2016 […]

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Quote

‎"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour."

~ Edward Abbey