Juniper removal below Abert Rim, Oregon Photo by George Wuerthner
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is now taking comments on a massive vegetation project for the Great Basin and adjacent areas of the Colorado Plateau. The PEIS for Fuels Reduction and Rangeland Restoration in the Great Basin (the Fuels Reduction and […]
Continue Reading →When it comes to wild carnivores these lawmakers look to their gut instead of their brain-
A couple months ago I went to the Utah Capitol to oppose House Bill 228 (the brainchild of state Rep. Casey Snyder), otherwise known as the Livestock Predators […]
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Caption: Above Cheatgrass invades fuel break cleared along road in Oregon. Bottom: Fuel break created in Idaho’s Snake River Plain. Photos by George Wuerthner
The Department of Interior released a final decision to created 11,000 miles of linear cheatgrass corridors, which they are euphemistically calling “fuel breaks.” Think […]
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The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is rewriting its grazing regulations to allow more “flexibility” into range management. The agency even proposes increases in grazing seasons and numbers. All of this, of course, is the result of the pressure from the fox (Trump administration) guarding the hen house.
I think most career […]
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Photos courtesy of Escalante Watershed Partnership
Among the more egregious recent decisions of the Utah Bureau of Land Management is to open 50,000 acres of the Escalante River within the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument to renewed livestock grazing. The Escalante was so remote that it was the last major river to […]
Continue Reading →In June the BLM released a draft EIS Programmatic EIS for Fuel Breaks in the Great Basin. The proposal would authorize the creation of 11,000 miles of fuel breaks primarily in sagebrush ecosystems across parts of Nevada, California, Utah, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. https://eplanning.blm.gov/epl-front-office/projects/nepa/71149/175534/213852/FuelBreaksDraftPEIS_Bulletin.pdf
This plan is a government boondoggle that will cost […]
Continue Reading →Monitoring project shows two weeks of cattle is decimating the understory
FISH LAKE, Utah – Conservationists today released a new report showing that cattle grazing in the world-famous Pando aspen clone and neighboring aspen groves exert more than four times as much grazing pressure over less than two weeks as do mule deer grazing over the […]
Continue Reading →Mountain Biking is a significant threat to our wildlands—both in designated preserves like national parks, wilderness areas, and the like, but also Wilderness Study Areas (WSA) and roadless lands that may potentially be given Congressional protection under the 1964 Wilderness Act.
Wilderness designation is one of the best ways to protect biodiversity, watersheds, wildlife […]
Continue Reading →The Western Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies released a report declaring that invasive plants, especially cheatgrass, is an enormous threat to the sagebrush ecosystem and sage grouse. Ironically the report emphasized that invasive weeds are a threat to the livestock industry as well.
The reason it is ironic is that across the West livestock […]
Continue Reading →This past winter, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began preparing two Environmental Impact Statements to review the environmental of consequences creating a region-wide series of “fuel breaks” that will add thousands of miles of new linear non-sagebrush habitat across the Great Basin portion of Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and Utah.
The goal of fuel breaks […]
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