George Wuerthner
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Old growth forest along the Salmon River, Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner The Wall Street Journal’s December 21, 2023, editorial board wrote that Biden’s New Forest Plan will “lead to more uncontrolled fires—and won’t help the climate.” The WSJ is upset that the Biden Administration plans to ban logging of old-growth forests on national forest lands,…
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Grayling possess a large dorsal fin, and depend on cold, clear water for survival. Photo George Wuerthner In 1991, I, with the help of Jasper Carlton at the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to list the Arctic Grayling (sometimes called Montana Grayling) under the Endangered Species Act. My petition…
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The Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, California, was an urban blaze driven by high winds. Photo George Wuerthner A new paper, “Wildlands-urban fire disasters aren’t a wildfire problem,” published in PNAS, challenges traditional approaches to wildfire management strategies. The researchers note that most of the large blazes that destroyed homes, including Lahaina, Hawaii, Talent and…
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Wolves successfully live in states or parts of other countries with far greater human populations than Colorado. Photo George Wuerthner A recent NPR radio story titled: “Is Colorado Too Crowded To Support Wolves” suggested that with 6 million residents, there wasn’t enough habitat to sustain wolves. I’ve been involved with wolf restoration since the 1980s,…
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Severe deforestation on the Wallowa Whiteman National Forest, Oregon justified by fire scar reconstructions. Photo George Wuerthner One of the biggest problems, and also a source of disagreements in wildfire discussions, stems from the use of different temporal and spatial scales. What may seem like excessive wildfire under one set of temporal and spatial assumptions…
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Bison and Tetons, Grand Teton NP, Wyoming. Photo George Wuerthner In a recent New York Times commentary, author Dayton Duncan celebrated what he termed as the ongoing restoration of bison across the West. Hundreds of thousands of bison reside in the US on ranches, Indian reservations, and state and federal lands. That may sound like…
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“The grazing of livestock, where established prior to the effective date of this Act, shall be permitted to continue subject to such reasonable regulations as are deemed necessary by the Secretary of Agriculture.” The Wilderness Act of 1964, Section 4(d)(4)(2) Cattle grazing designaed wilderness in the Sonoran Desert National Monument, Arizona. Photo George Wuerthner No…
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Coyotes are the prime target of M-44s, but numerous other wildlife and pets are also killed by these devices. Photo George Wuerthner Today, the Biden Administration’s Department of Interior has formally banned M-44 or what are known as cyanide bombs, from 245 million acres of Bureau of Land Management federal lands. M-44 are spring-loaded ejectors…