New Forest Service chief gets rough treatment in Congress. By Matthew Daly, Associated Press. Good! Hopefully the new Congress will finally rein in the land management agencies which have become increasing lawless during the Bush Administration. The new commitee chairman, however, is a supporter of cutting more timber, and he played an unsavory role in…
Lemhi and Custer counties are two large sparsely populated counties in central Idaho. Many of the posts to this blog are about events that happen there. Politicians often like to argue that the folks there are some kind of “real Idaho” — loggers, miners, grazers. There is hardly anyone more strident in this position than…
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Secretary has accepted Gov. Jim Risch’s plan for the 9.3 milion acres of national forest roadless area in Idaho. It is now slated to be become part of the Code of Federal Regulations. While such a regulation is not as hard to change as a law passed by Congress (as designated…
Back in the 1980s almost every state with U.S. Forest Service land got a statewide Wilderness bill. Two states that did not were Idaho and Montana. Idaho had, and still has, more unprotected roadless national forest land than any other state. Montana has less, but it has a lot. A statewide wilderness bill for Montana…
I had meant to discuss this too, but KT just posted a detailed comment on the awful White Pine County, NV lands bill that did pass. This measure, which was attached to the omnibus bill, designates over 500,000 acres of scenic desert mountains as Wilderness, but outside the Wilderness it is privatization of our public…
Not to be confused with the numerous barren ground caribou or the woodland caribou, the mountain caribou is faltering all over B.C. In the United States it would be, and in fact it is, an endangered species. A tiny herd hangs on in northern Idaho. It wanders back and forth over the border. This sad…
Here is a detailed alert from the Wyoming Wilderness Association on your comments on the Bridger-Teton Forest Plan’s desired future conditions. Public comment is being accepted until September 30. Ralph Maughan
There was a gathering of climate experts this week in Helena, MT. The effects of global warming in Montana were described with more and greater wildfires being just one of the most obvious. There has been a furious debate in recent years whether the increase in forest fires is due to bad forest practices, not…
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.