From the monthly archives: August 2021

By Jocelyn Leroux, Washington and Montana Director, Western Watersheds Project

 

This year has proven deadly for many of Montana’s wildlife species. From outrageously regressive rules governing gray wolf management to opening numerous Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) to livestock operations free of charge, the priorities of Montana’s decision makers have been on full display. Wildlife […]

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*Post authored by Greta Anderson and Emily Renn 

Photo courtesy of NY Wolf Conservation Center, https://nywolf.org

In the Arizona Republic article, “Anubis, a Mexican gray wolf found outside his territory, is relocated amid outcry from scientists, advocates,” (August 18, 2021), Arizona Game and Fish Department’s Jim deVos provided […]

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Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho. Photo George Wuerthner

Though most conservation groups focus on federal lands, a neglected area of concern are state properties. Throughout the West, most of these lands are either leased for timber cutting or livestock grazing.

Although there are limited ways that conservation groups can influence state management (or […]

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Chapter 3:
Rewilding on a Global Scale: a
Crucial Element in Addressing
the Biodiversity Crisis
George Wuerthner
30
Rewilding on a Global Scale
According to the report, the average abundance of native species
has declined by 20% since 1900. Other groups have suffered
significant declines, including […]

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In July, the Bureau of Land Management rounded up the vast majority of Utah’s Onaqui wild horse herd. Pressed by a lawsuit, the Bureau’s Salt Lake Field Manager testified under oath that an emergency roundup was necessary because wild horses were in poor and declining health and would need to be euthanized if left […]

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** Guest post by Richard Spotts**

 

An open letter from a former Bureau of Land Management employee to Secretary Deb Haaland. 

Dear Secretary Haaland:

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in your Interior Department is broken and I know how you can and should fix it.

BLM’s dominant management culture has long been (and […]

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Logging opens forests to greater solar drying of vegetation and wind penetration, often resulting in greater fire spread. Photo George Wuerthner

The recent editorial by Kendall Cotton of the Frontier Institute represents the misguided assumptions surrounding wildfire. Cotton repeats the timber industry’s argument that logging/thinning can eliminate large blazes.

Reducing “fuels” is […]

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1.

Together, the states of Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming rake in billions of dollars in tourism revenue, much of it coming from outdoor—as opposed to cultural—attractions. “If Utah don’t got it, you don’t need it,” Utah. Com’s website assures. “Open your mind and invigorate your senses. Because some things can’t be explained, only experienced,” […]

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**Guest post by Adam Bronstein, Oregon/Nevada Director for Western Watersheds Project

In the past year, the gray wolf has once again been in the national spotlight due to terrible changes in federal and state policies. Last October, wolves nationwide lost protections under the federal Endangered Species Act despite their low numbers or complete absence […]

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Active forest management on private timberland just west of Chester, CA which was overrun by the Dixie Fire. Photo George Wuerthner

There has been a spate of pronouncements from politicians as different politically as Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines to California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsome arguing that we need more “active forest […]

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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