The Wildlife News

Sage Grouse

  • How Grazing Reform in the Owyhees and Protections for Sage Grouse are Being Politically Undermined

    Ken Cole

    The month of March was an active month for sage grouse. Not only have sage grouse started to assemble on their strutting grounds known as leks due to the abnormally warm start of the month but the season for strutting has begun Washington D.C. and Boise, Idaho and other areas in western states. On March…

  • Huge Owyhee Grazing Environmental Assessment Glosses Over Conditions, Avoids Real Solutions

    Ken Cole

    The Owyhee BLM has finally issued a Proposed Decision on the so-called “Group 1” allotments but, unfortunately, the BLM really doesn’t go far enough to reverse damage caused by decades of abusive livestock grazing and they didn’t collect enough information to rationalize their decision even though the Environmental Assessment (EA) consists of a whopping 556 pages…

  • Idaho ranchers want more taxpayer money for grazing “studies”

    Ken Cole

    While Idaho taxpayers are facing budget cuts to public education and health care, ranchers are busy writing self-serving bills to provide money for “studies” that will paper over destructive impacts of livestock grazing on sage grouse. Last year saw thousands of people marching on the grounds of the Idaho Capital in Boise. People were marching…

  • Sage Grouse Pushed Two More Steps Toward Endangered Species Act Protection by Nevada.

    Ken Cole

    With the firing of Nevada Department of Wildlife chief, Ken Mayer and massive sagebrush suppression projects –in place of grazing reductions – by the BLM, sage grouse are headed toward trouble in Nevada. A behind the scenes battle has taken place between many competing forces like Nevada Department of Wildlife, BLM, Nevada Department of Conservation…

  • Endangered Species Act Protection is Proposed for Gunnison Sage-grouse

    Ralph Maughan

    Hailey, ID.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed an Endangered Species Act (ESA) listing rule and critical habitat designation for the Gunnison sage-grouse that will designate the species as Endangered and provide 1.7 million acres of critical habitat in Colorado and Utah. Gunnison sage-grouse (Centrocercus minimus) has a more restricted range than the closely-related…

  • SAGE GROUSE: PROXIMATE AND ULTIMATE CAUSES

    George Wuerthner

    SAGE GROUSE:  PROXIMATE AND ULTIMATE CAUSES When I was in college, one of my favorite courses was animal behavior.  One of the more memorable lessons I learned was the difference between proximate and ultimate causes of behavior. Proximate and ultimate causes of events are important to distinguish. For instance, say a researcher finds that sedimentation…

  • Killing ravens to save livestock grazing, not sage grouse

    Ken Cole

    In Nevada nowadays it is all the rage to blame predators for habitat problems created by overgrazing by livestock. That is clearly illustrated in an article published in the Elko Daily News which describes the efforts that the State of Nevada has undertaken under pressure from livestock groups cleverly disguised as hunting groups. Rather than…

  • BLM Protections for Sage Grouse may not hit the ground for 10, possibly 20 years.

    Ken Cole

    Resource Management Plans Won’t Affect Already Permitted Activities With a decision by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) about whether sage grouse should receive Endangered Species Act protection due by 2015, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has begun a process to revise the Resource Management Plans (RMP’s) which dictate how resources are managed…

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Edward Abbey

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Jim Fowler

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Raveena Tandon

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