Threats
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This past week the Biden Administration reversed a permit approved by the Trump Administration that would have allowed the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority to construct a 211-mile industrial road through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve to access copper and zinc deposits in Northwest Alaska. Except for the route across…
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An important question regarding sagebrush ecosystems, and species that rely upon them like sage grouse has to do with exactly what constitutes the fire rotation in sagebrush habitat? And a corrolary question is do current fire management policies emulate these historical conditions? William Baker’s paper, Scaling Landscape Fire History: Wildfires Not Historically Frequent in the…
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Recently, Rep. Cliff Bentz discussed wolf management in a forum in Pendleton, Oregon. Bentz represents Oregon’s second district, which includes nearly all of eastern Oregon. During his presentation, Bentz is reported in an article in the East Oregonian to have made several misleading statements about wolves and their impact on game animals. For example, Bentz…
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Giant Sequoia May Require High-severity Blazes for their surival. Photo George Wuerthner During the summer of 2020 and 2021, with one of the most severe droughts in California’s recent history, wildfires charred thousands of acres in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the mountain range’s magnificent sequoia groves were among the areas burned. I recently visited…
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High-severity blazes are critical to healthy forest ecosystems. Photo George Wuerthner I read yet another study circulated by UC Davis and doggedly promoted by the national media, encouraging more prescribed burning, thinning, and forest manipulation to reduce large high-severity blazes characterized as “bad.” The headline from UC Davis proclaims that scientists have documented, “Unprecedented…
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A BLM (U.S. Bureau of Land Management) decision to allow livestock grazing to grow up to three times in the Owyhee Country of southwest Idaho has been blocked for now by a Dept. of Interior judge. Dickshooter Cattle Company, owned by J.R. Simplot an Idaho-based agricultural conglomerate, asked to increase cattle grazing by up to…
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Thinning/logging at Newberry Crater National Monument, Deschutes National Forest, Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner One of the arguments alleged by proponents of thinning or logging forests is that it will reduce the size of wildfires and hence carbon emissions from blazes. Proponents argue that more trees survive a fire if there has been “active forest management.”…
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Lowery Ruins, part of the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner Livestock grazing threatens the integrity of Colorado’s Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. Located in SW Colorado near Cortez, President Clinton established the 176,000 acre Monument in 2000 to protect one of the highest concentrations of archeological sites in the West…
