Currently viewing the category: "Sage Grouse"

 

The Elk Ridge Complex grazing allotments were closed to livestock grazing in 2015. Now the BTNF wants to open them to cattle grazing. Photo George Wuerthner 

The Bridger Teton National Forest (BTNF) has recently issued an Environmental Assessment to restock four vacant grazing allotments in the Upper Green River drainage north […]

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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 […]

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The Centennial Range straddles the Montana-Idaho border forming a natural migration corridor for wildlife. Photo George Wuerthner

Due to a recent court decision, the Centennial Range, which lies along the Idaho-Montana border to the west of Yellowstone National Park, is that much closer to becoming a “safe zone” for wildlife.

For decades, […]

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The Clear Lake National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is likely not on everyone’s radar. The refuge lies on the California-Oregon border to the southwest of Klamath Falls, Oregon. Part of the Klamath Basin National Refuge system, Clear Lake, is one of many natural lakes in the area that are important staging areas for migratory waterfowl on […]

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Ed. note: An earlier draft version of this post was inadvertently posted before final review. Please replace all prior copies with this final draft. 

 

Last summer, in a remote corner of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, in the one spot with just a little cell reception, I sat in my car listening by phone to […]

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Stream dried up for irrigation of livestock forage. Photo by George Wuerthner

Recently the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) announced they were working to reduce the wildlife impacts of fences. Not by removing the fences, but by changing the wire on them to facilitate easier wildlife passage. Fences, as GYC, noted […]

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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 […]

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Western Watersheds Project (the organization that I am the Executive Director of), WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity are fighting the reinstatement of grazing on four allotments in eastern Oregon that are permitted to Hammond Ranches. In part, we argue that the Hammonds don’t have a great track record and are thus undeserving […]

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This past December 2018 the Bureau Field office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released a final Environmental Assessment for the Battle Creek, East Castle Creek, and Owens Allotments Grazing Permit Renewal, at least partially within the Little Jacks Creek Wilderness, part of the stunningly beautiful Owyhee Canyonlands Wilderness Complex in Idaho.

The BLM […]

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Reprinted from Waco Tribune-Herald March 9, 2019

By Steve Holmer, American Bird Conservancy

Wildlife experts concluded in 2015 that the Greater Sage-Grouse, an iconic bird of the West, did not require listing under the Endangered Species Act, thanks to then-new federal management plans with added conservation requirements. Many conservation groups, including American Bird […]

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‎"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour."

~ Edward Abbey