Montana has a wilderness deficit. People may be surprised to learn that only 3.4 million acres out of the state’s nearly 94 million acres are congressionally designated wilderness under the 1964 Wilderness Act. There are at least 6.3 million more U.S. Forest Service acres that potentially could be designated as wilderness, as well […]
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The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has launched a massive juniper removal project in Idaho and plans to expand it throughout the Great Basin.
For instance, the BLM is also planning to destroy juniper woodlands in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.
Juniper is a common native species that grows in […]
Continue Reading →The New Yorker recently published an article titled Trailblazing plan to fight California Wildfires https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/26/a-trailblazing-plan-to-fight-california-wildfires that contain misinformation. I’ve had many people ask me what I thought of the piece. Given the influential nature of the New Yorker itself, I decided to respond here.
The writing is good. There is much that is accurate about […]
Continue Reading →LARAMIE, Wyo. – Conservationists today questioned the inaction of Wyoming state lawmakers and law enforcement in light of social media’s removal of a video montage of “coyote whacking.” The video shows a number of snowmobilers chasing coyotes to exhaustion using snowmobiles, running over the animals repeatedly with their machines, then beating the animals to death […]
Continue Reading →The National Park Service has released a plan for Pt. Reyes National Seashore this shocks and angers me, and here is an alert/story by the group, “Restore Pt. Reyes National Seashore.” . . . Ralph Maughan
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The National Park Service (NPS) has released its Draft […]
Continue Reading →The recent killing of more grizzly bears by the Wyoming Game and Fish, a listed endangered species, to protect ranchers in the Upper Green River Allotment on the Bridger Teton National Forest is another shameful example of the mixed-up priorities and mismanagement of our public lands. Why should native animals, especially, endangered animals, be killed […]
Continue Reading →In a message on wildfires I just got from Congressman Greg Walden, he asserts, “A lack of management has left us with overstocked federal forests full of fuel just waiting to burn.” Unfortunately, his statement is full of misinformation.
He neglects to put this into context. In the decades between the 1940s and 1980s, the […]
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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CAPTION: Open space is not the same as good wildlife habitat. The hayfield shown here has limited wildlife value. The willows and other shrubs on the left are along a creek protected from livestock by a rural subdivision. The right side of the photo dominated by grasses and an entrenched […]
Continue Reading →Recently Nevada Bureau of Land Management (BLM) State Director Jon Raby suggested that the agency will try “targeted grazing” among other methods to reduce wildfires in the sagebrush ecosystem. Raby says the BLM is implementing this action “because of the threat of annual invasive grasses, specifically cheatgrass, play in altering fire regime conditions that intensify […]
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