Posts by: Brian Ertz

A Wind developer in southern Idaho has hit a two-year road-block that casts significant doubt on whether the wind project sited in pristine sage grouse habitat along the border of Nevada will ever be developed at all.

BLM defers China Mountain decision for two years – Elko Daily Free Press

“stupid bird.”

We’ve covered […]

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The Payette National Forest has announced its decision to capitulate to the domestic sheep industry and interpret the Bighorn Sheep Rider passed via the  2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act in a way contrary to the clear language of the statute, halting implementation of it’s Payette Decision which would have removed domestic sheep use from the Forest […]

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Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is not content to criticize President Obama’s policy objectives from a political perspective, he’s taken to the pulpit criticizing the President’s, and an entire population of religious people, whose faith compels them to consider the environment.

Santorum is at odds with his own church on environmental issues – Los Angeles Times

Santorum […]

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Editors note 5:30 PM MST 2/22/2012: we have learned that this “wolf kill bill” will probably move no further in the Oregon Legislature — it is probably dead for the year, though it is possible that legislative “tricks” could possibly push it further. 

Full release:

Activists Take Over OCA Meeting and Call Attention […]

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Increased Fees to Graze On Public Land Still Doesn’t Cover Costs 

President Obama’s proposed 2013 budget for the Department of the Interior includes a tiny bit of good news for western public lands: a $1 increase in the fee charged for livestock grazing on Bureau of Land Management lands.

The fee, which is required of each public […]

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Federal Court Decision Holds That Protecting Sage-Grouse Must Take Priority Over Livestock Grazing in Owyhee Canyonlands and beyond in Southwest Idaho

Early last week the federal district court of Idaho affirmed Western Watersheds Project’s challenge to five Bureau of Land Management (BLM) grazing decisions in southwest Idaho’s Owyhee Canyonlands that harmed Greater sage-grouse.

Judge […]

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Senator Jeff Siddoway also pushes amendment to turn Land Owner Appreciation bill into a no access gravy train-

Idaho rancher and State Senator Jeff Siddoway has introduced a bill (S1305) in the Idaho statehouse that would authorize the slaughter of wolves involved in molesting or killing livestock by any number of creative ways.

[…]

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If you listened to President Obama’s State of the Union Address you may have noticed that the President had some things to say about how this administration values public land:

[…] I’m directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public lands to power 3 million homes.

For groups working to […]

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The effort to list the Greater Sage-grouse via the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been an uphill battle.  However, even as the end-game has yet to be realized, the effort itself has been remarkably successful at prompting bureaucratic backflips and a whole lot of paper-shuffling to accommodate consideration of the species.  Unfortunately, many of the existing and developing […]

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Years of legal pressure prompts favorable policy change

Public land domestic sheep grazers and bighorn advocates have been clashing for decades over land-use conflicts which place bighorn sheep populations at risk of deadly disease.  With the passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012, favorable policy change promises new avenues of conflict resolution that […]

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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