Recent news stories focus on how a conservation easement on a large ranch in northwest Colorado is blocking a major new transmission line, and therefore stalling the enormous Chokecherry-Sierra Madre wind farm in southcentral Wyoming. While these articles make some valid points about the need for renewable energy, they gloss over the reality that […]
Continue Reading →Allen River, Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska. Photo George Wuerthner
Hats off to High Country News for publishing A quest for Alaska oil sparks a fight over tribal sovereignty by Max Graham in their July 6th edition. It represents a good start in providing a more balanced perspective on […]
Continue Reading →Previously logged and thinned forest that burned at high severity in the Jocko Lakes Fire, Montana. Photo George Wuerthner
There are daily news stories about the recent large wildfires in 2020. In nearly all of these media accounts, the large blazes are almost always attributed to a lack of active forest management. […]
Continue Reading →
The Wilderness Society just teamed up with Yale University to release a report promoting renewable energy development on public lands, and like the recent Michael Moore documentary Planet of the Humans, it’s stirring up controversy. The report suggests we should ramp up utility-scale renewable production on federal public lands, with a particular focus […]
Continue Reading →
In an act of appalling hubris, the oil and gas industry is asking the federal government to loosen enforcement of federal regulations on public lands in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance, one of the petroleum industry’s primary lobbying groups, was quoted in EnergyWire as seeking one-year extensions […]
Continue Reading →
The Recording the Feds Tried to Hide Reveals Parts of the Plan
By Kelly Fuller, Western Watersheds Project
You gotta say one thing for folks who share the views of Karen Budd-Falen and the Bundys: They never miss a chance to push their agenda of turning your public lands over to their […]
Continue Reading →NEWPORT, OR — Despite the government shutdown, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has continued to accept new drilling permit applications and requests for site inspection at proposed oil and gas wells. Since December 22, when the shutdown began, a BLM database has posted notice of new proposed oil and gas wells in Alaska, Montana, New Mexico, and […]
Continue Reading →Massive Lease Sale Includes Public Land Near National Park, Wildlife Refuge
RENO, Nev — The Trump administration plans to auction more than 900,000 acres for oil and gas extraction on the doorstep of Nevada’s only national park and other protected public lands. It would be the largest single lease sale of public lands […]
Continue Reading →
By Erik Molvar, Executive Director, Western Watersheds Project
While Trump administration issues directives banning discourse on climate change and muzzles scientists in federal agencies, the fossil fuel industry may have an even tighter stranglehold over state institutions. In his new exposé of industry meddling in higher education, Behind the Carbon Curtain (slated for an April […]
Continue Reading →
FILLMORE, Utah— Conservation groups today condemned a U.S. Bureau of Land Management proposal to auction off 14,943 acres of public land in central Utah for fracking and drilling, which will hurt an imperiled population of greater sage grouse.
The Bureau previously announced that it would include lands occupied by the Sheeprocks sage grouse population and […]
Continue Reading →
