The Mill Creek area where the Forest Service’s proposes a dry forest restoration. Photo George Wuerthner
The Ochoco National Forest proposes what they call a “dry forest restoration” on approximately 23,015 acres in the Mill Creek Dry Forest Restoration Project area east of Prineville, Oregon. https://www.fs.usda.gov/nfs/11558/www/nepa/113632_FSPLT3_5569731.pdf
As with almost everything […]
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*Trigger warning: Animal cruelty and wolf abuse discussed below
For over a year, my colleague at Western Watersheds Project and I have been paging through gory reports of dead livestock, most of them (questionably) attributed to Mexican wolf predation. I’ve gotten somewhat inured to seeing the bloody corpses of cattle, decapitated calves, and […]
Continue Reading →Prescribed burning by Forest Service. Photo by George Wuerthner
There has been a spate of articles in various newspapers and magazines asserting that if the Forest Service were following burning practices of Indigenous people the large wildfires we have seen around the West would be tamed.
Here are some representative of Indian burning […]
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In September, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, testifying on behalf of Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso’s latest bill to gut the Endangered Species Act (ESA) peddled the fake-news narrative that the ESA is “broken.” States would do a better job recovering endangered wildlife, Gordon testified, ignoring the obvious reality that every single species protected under the […]
Continue Reading →With the election of Joe Biden, we have a leader who recognizes that we need to use science to effectively deal with the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss.
To address these twin threats to the planet’s stability and integrity, the president-elect supports the goal of using science-based decision-making to protect 30 […]
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There’s a new tome on Idaho’s wildlife, and it goes beyond the field guide approach to include in-depth historical research and a digest of archival material that might otherwise have been lost. Authored by former Idaho Game and Fish Regional Supervisor Jerry Theissen, the book Idaho Wildlife: History, Exploitation, Politics, & Management spans […]
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Forest Service using drip torch for prescribed burning. Photo by George Wuerthner
There has been a spate of articles in various newspapers and magazines, asserting that if the Forest Service were following burning practices of Indigenous people, the massive wildfires we have seen around the West would be tamed.
Here are some […]
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is right now* working to remove a wolf or wolves from the Sheepherders Baseball Park or Pitchfork Canyon packs on the Gila National Forest of New Mexico, and it doesn’t make any sense. (Not that public lands ranching ever makes sense.)
The permittee gets money under federal livestock programs […]
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Guest opinion by Melissa Cain, Bighorn Conservation Director for Western Watersheds Project.
Last week, wild bighorn sheep herds in Washington and Oregon have been detected with deadly pneumonia, likely caused by a deadly pathogen spread by domestic sheep grazing on public lands. The bighorn are dying slow and painful deaths […]
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It’s been a while since there’s been news about public lands rancher/wolf killer Craig Thiessen from New Mexico. He’s the guy who pleaded guilty to killing a trapped Mexican gray wolf pup (named “Mia Tuk” by an Albuquerque schoolkid) with a shovel in 2015. He got off relatively easy for violating the Endangered Species […]
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