Wyoming counties are currently involved the Public Lands Initiative. Ostensibly the purpose is to determine which Wilderness Study Areas (WSA) should be designated as wilderness and which areas will be released to other land exploitation. Across Wyoming, there are 42 WSAs on BLM lands and three WSAs on Forest Service lands, totaling over […]
Continue Reading →Why Collaboration Won’t Protect our Public Lands By Rick Meis, Halfway, OR
Collaboration is a process of playing two sides off against each other in order to create enough guilt in one or all the parties that a compromise is reached. The primary problem is that it is specifically NOT based on science […]
Continue Reading →The Challis Messenger carried an article about the voluntary retirement of grazing privileges on the Wildhorse allotment of the Challis National Forest. http://www.challismessenger.com/articles/2018/01/18/another-livestock-grazing-permit-relinquished
The article quotes County Commissioner Randy Corgatelli who said: “We can’t keep losing AUMs” (animal unit months), Corgatelli said. “It hurts the economy of Custer County.”
Corgatelli’s statement is more hyperbole […]
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Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) and Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) have introduced legislation that is an extreme and irresponsible attack on your public lands and the wildlife they support. This bill has the Orwellian title of the “Greater Sage Grouse Protection and Recovery Act,” (S.273, H.R.527).
These bills would do the opposite […]
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LARAMIE, Wyo. – The public lands management agencies announced the grazing fee for federal allotments today, which the federal government has decreased to a mere $1.87 per cow and her calf (or 5 sheep) per month, known as an Animal Unit Month, or AUM.
“This has got to be the cheapest all-you-can-eat buffet deal in the […]
Continue Reading →I have some questions and complaints about how our federal public lands are managed. I think ranchers pay a pittance in grazing fees, while doing a lot of damage to our collective lands. The timber industry is exploiting fear about wildfire to justify accelerated logging of national forests. The oil and gas industry doesn’t pay […]
Continue Reading →The straw-grasping began almost as soon as the shock wore off. Conservationists began searching for a sign that Donald Trump might care about something other than money and winning. They dug up a January 2016 interview with Field and Stream and Outdoor Life, where he said that he doesn’t like the idea of divesting federal […]
Continue Reading →The recent decision by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to kill members of the Profanity wolf pack because they have killed a few cattle grazing public lands in NE Washington is more than sad. That any wolves are killed merely to benefit the profit margin of private businesses utilizing public resources is an […]
Continue Reading →By Jonathan Ratner, Wyoming Director, Western Watersheds Project
Representative Rob Bishop’s Utah Public Lands bill isn’t just a bad deal for Utahns who want to see Bears Ears protected as a national monument, but it’s also a terrible bill for public lands in general. Included in the sweeping language is binding provisions that would […]
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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report last week detailing the extent to which the United States Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have failed to follow agency regulations in documenting and penalizing unauthorized or trespass livestock grazing on federal public lands. The report, entitled Unauthorized Grazing: Actions Needed to Improve Tracking […]
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