Category: Politics
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Public Lands Welfare Ranchers Again Subsidized By Taxpayers
Livestock are grazed on all federal lands, including national parks and wildlife refuges. Still, most livestock grazing occurs on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the US Forest Service. Even specially protected landscapes that are supposed to be managed for natural conditions, like designated Wilderness areas, are grazed by domestic animals.…
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Trump’s Executive Order To Speed Logging
In March, President Trump declared a national emergency by Executive Order to speed up the logging of our national forests. The order affects more than 112 million acres, larger than the entire state of California. It would remove or nullify most environmental safeguards on our national forests. Trump’s order exempts objections to timber sales by…
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Public Lands Are Part Of Our Nation’s Inheritance
America’s public lands are one of the Nation’s most outstanding achievements. Public lands are part of every citizen’s heritage and an essential part of the national inheritance. It is especially vital to the people living in the western states, where we enjoy an abundance of public land. The public domain is critical to our perception…
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Political Philosophies
I’m a biologist, an ecologist, one who cares for the land. I believe in science, depending on who funds it and if there are ulterior motives. I have tried to use what little knowledge I have to try to exert an influence on how land is managed, perhaps to no avail. I believe in biodiversity,…
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The Failures of the Biden Administration
I won’t go into the most disastrous of Biden’s mistakes, the appointment of the jellyfish-like Merrick Garland as Attorney General, instead focusing on public lands issues. Looking at the trajectory of public lands and wildlife issues over the last half century, what I have found consistently is that when there is a Republican administration, strong…
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Interview About Public Lands And Indian Land Back Efforts
In this episode, George Wuerthner discusses issues arising about tribal efforts to garner more authority and control of public lands, and the efforts to transfer public lands to tribal entities. Click on the link above to listen in your browser or the PLAY button in the upper left corner below.
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The Meaning of Virginia Park
NOTE: Written in 2018, I offer this as a response to a TWN reader curious about “fortress preservation”. Once a year the NPS offers a guided tour so you, too, can experience a preserved piece of public lands [w/o citation & monetary fine].) In the 1990s I worked at Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park. I…
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Comb Wash – Check It Out Before A Quarter of a Century of Recovery is Destroyed
The Comb Wash allotment and the adjacent Cottonwood allotment within what, at the time of this writing, is still within the Bear’s Ears National Monument features prominently within the annals of litigation against the abuses of livestock grazing on our public lands. For decades after the passage of The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) the…