Public Land Management
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I have written a lot about CIEDRA (Wilderness, with side payments in the Boulder and White Cloud Mountains). I have written less about the Owyhee Initiative (Wilderness, with side payments in a huge region of arid, unpopulated steppe and canyon country in SW Idaho). CIEDRA has already passed the House. This is the first legislative…
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There is a danger in Grand Teton for bicyclists from vehicles, especially the big RVs that they let in for some reason and for the same fare as a small automobile. The Park Service wants bike paths separate from the roads. This may be a very good idea. However, many of them will be in…
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The Wyoming Range may be the prettiest mountains in Wyoming you never heard of. The begin about 20 miles south of Jackson Hole. They continue southward for many miles, paralleling the Salt River Range. They are full of elk, and massive fields of wildlife flowers. They have been little developed because the soils are very…
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Today Ed Bangs sent out a list of recent Idaho wolf-caused “depredations” Here is what he wrote. “On the 10th, ID WS confirmed that wolves from the Timberline/Wangdoodle Pack killed 1 ewe on a Boise National Forest grazing allotment on Rock Creek, north of Idaho City. Another ewe and a guard dog had also been…
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It looks like progress is being made reducing the numbers of lake trout in Yellowstone Lake. The method is gill neting, however. This takes constant effort and money. The article mentions $400,000 a year, not much comparied to the benefits for human anglers and the many birds and mammals that feed on the Yellowstone cutthroat…
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I first posted about Bush’s Dept. of Interior being ethically challenged on Sept. 13, but now an editorial from the New York Times makes me think I need to post an update. Read editorial “Interior’s Internal Messes.” And Time Magazine just weighed in too. Read “Department of Billion-dollar Bungling. How the Interior Department managed to…
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The Western Watersheds Project continues its amazing run of appeals against Forest Service and BLM condoned livestock grazing abuses. Here they planned to open up part of the Santa Rosa Wilderness in Northern Nevada to livestock grazing, but the regional office of the Forest Service (region 4–Intermountain Region) struck down the new grazing “plan” by…
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The Owyhee country, a huge area in SW Idaho that also includes country in northern Nevada and SE Oregon, is little known by most Americans, or even Idahoans who do not live in Idaho’s Treasure Valley (Boise-Nampa-Caldwell). It is lonely country with vast tablelands, mountains, and deep canyons cut in basalt, said to be the…