The dawn breaks each morning on a hundred different mountain ranges in the Great Basin, with few human eyes to see it. Many of these mountain chains will be unfamiliar to most – the Toquimas, the Wah Wahs, the Goshutes, the Sheeprocks, the Fox Range – but the one thing they all have in common […]
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President Biden today issued an Executive Order outlining a broad and ambitious policy to tackle the climate crisis. It contains plenty of ambitious provisions, couched within an all-hands-on-deck approach to climate change, which will commit every federal bureau and department to doing its part to slow or even reverse the unfolding climate catastrophe. Decisive […]
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There’s an organized campaign underway to get wild horses off America’s western public lands, and the livestock industry is both its primary salesman and beneficiary. It’s all about the money and expanding the livestock industry’s stranglehold on western public lands.
The livestock industry has cooked up a cock-and-bull story about how wild horses are the […]
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In September, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, testifying on behalf of Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso’s latest bill to gut the Endangered Species Act (ESA) peddled the fake-news narrative that the ESA is “broken.” States would do a better job recovering endangered wildlife, Gordon testified, ignoring the obvious reality that every single species protected under the […]
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There’s a new tome on Idaho’s wildlife, and it goes beyond the field guide approach to include in-depth historical research and a digest of archival material that might otherwise have been lost. Authored by former Idaho Game and Fish Regional Supervisor Jerry Theissen, the book Idaho Wildlife: History, Exploitation, Politics, & Management spans […]
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In a recent news story, the Sacramento Bee speculated that cattle grazing might be a “secret weapon” to fight fire. The story presents the dangerously simplistic claim that cattle grazing reduces fire risk, based on an unpublished study funded by the California Cattle Council, the results of which have yet to be subjected to the […]
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William Perry Pendley’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Land Management has been withdrawn and while President Trump offered no explanation for withdrawing Pendley’s nomination, it seems he didn’t have the votes necessary for Senate confirmation. The Senate Democrats were united against him and a few GOP Senators found themselves in an election year hot […]
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The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is America’s environmental charter. Signed into law by Richard Nixon, it has three central tenets. First, federal agencies must look before they leap and examine the full environmental impacts of most major actions that receive federal funding, including the direct, indirect, and cumulative effects those actions will have. Second, […]
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By Tim Whitehouse and Erik Molvar
Amid the COVID-19 crisis and the uprisings against police brutality and systemic racism, it is understandable if many Americans overlooked the Trump administration’s continued attacks on the management of public lands and the Constitution’s mandates about how our leaders are appointed.
The most recent attack of this type came […]
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A week ago, I was touring Montana public lands with my 13-year-old daughter. As we approached Yellowstone National Park, I explained how the slaughter of bison was largely to appease the livestock industry, pushed by a handful of ranchers who didn’t want bison migrating out of the Park. Bison, as it turns out, eat […]
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