Dairy and beef cattle are grazed at Point Reyes National Seashore sixty years after the properties were purchased by American citizens. Photo George Wuerthner
Fences. Everywhere I went during a recent trip to Point Reyes, I encountered fences. Why are there fences in a national park unit? They exist to facilitate the […]
Continue Reading →The Buffalo Horn drainage in the Gallatin Range is one of the most important wildlife areas in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Photo George Wuerthner
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is the last major relatively intact temperate-zone ecosystem in the world. It is a global heritage.
There are organizations like the Montana Wilderness Association […]
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We do not want those whose first impulse is to compromise. We want no straddlers, for, in the past, they have surrendered too much good wilderness and primeval areas which should never have been lost.
– Bob Marshall on the founding of the Wilderness Society
There is an unfortunate tendency on the part […]
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Western Watersheds Project, Alliance for the Rockies, and the Yellowstone to Uintas Connection are seeking to block the killing of up to 72 grizzly bears over the next 10 years on national forest land in the headwaters of the Green River. With the Yellowstone grizzly listed as a ‘threatened species’ under […]
Continue Reading →Recently there has been a spate of commentaries advocating collaboration as a means of resolving issues surrounding which public lands should be given the “Gold Standard” of wilderness protection under the 1964 Wilderness Act.
Advocates of collaboration, including some representatives of Montana’s various conservation organizations, argue that only collaboration can “resolve” the issues in today’s […]
Continue Reading →The Gallatin Range south of Bozeman, Montana is one of the most critical wildlife areas in the northern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). Indeed, protecting the remaining roadless lands (approximately 230,000 acres) as wilderness is vital to maintaining the ecosystem integrity of the GYE.
The Gallatin Range is home to one of the densest populations […]
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Bob Marshall, Aldo Leopold, and Olaus Murie, legendary biologists and founders of The Wilderness Society (TWS), must be crying in their graves.
When Marshall founded the Wilderness Society, he wrote: “We do not want those whose first impulse is to compromise. We want no (fence) straddlers for in […]
Continue Reading →In recent years it has become fashionable for conservationists to substitute and promote other land classification in place of wilderness designation. Wilderness is “passé” so we are told, even though it is the “gold standard” for land protection.
In a recent white paper, The Wilderness Society outlined some of these alternatives such as National Recreation […]
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Buffalo Horn drainage
The Gallatin Range that lies south of Bozeman, Montana is the largest unprotected wildlands in the northern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). The Gallatin Range is highly scenic with glaciated cirques, grassy meadows, and subalpine lakes.
Biologically it is one of the more diverse […]
Continue Reading →My title may seem excessively harsh by some groups who are doing what they believe is the best way to protect public lands from industrial development. However, when you consider that we have only 2.7% of the lower 48 states in designated wilderness, while at the same time there are calls from many ecologists to […]
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