Tag: desert tortoise
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Responding to Pro Livestock Advocates
A number of years ago Bay Nature published a couple of pieces promoting livestock production in California. I responded with a critique of the articles. I continue to hear the same arguments today with various individuals and organizations promoting “regenerative” grazing, “grass fed beef” and livestock as a “tool” to reduce wildfires, among other alleged…
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Two More Years of Trespass: Bundy’s Cows Still Trampling Tortoise Habitat
Reseda, CALIFORNIA – Hundreds of cattle are still on the loose two years to the day after the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began rounding up Cliven Bundy’s cattle in the Gold Butte area of southern Nevada. Forced by armed militants to release the penned cattle at the famous standoff under the highway bridge, the…
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Ivanpah thermal solar power plant produces “death rays” torching many birds
Roast bird record at Mojave solar plant even worse than predicted? Plant workers call them “streamers.” Birds that fly through the beams of concentrated sunlight at the massive Ivanpah solar plant near Primm, Nevada catch fire and fall from the sky, leaving a smoky trail as they burn and die. This solar plant is not…
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Cliven Bundy’s Shell Game: Why it Matters to the Tortoise that BLM Finishes what it Started
Many of Cliven Bundy’s supporters in the Bunkerville showdown last weekend were saying things like, “It’s not about the tortoise,” and making the issue of long term trespass into a sign that the U.S. is headed towards fascism under a overreaching regime. But, see, it kind of is about the tortoise. The threatened Mojave desert…
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Cattle trespass operation made dangerous by media coverage
Right wing outcry brings milita. Violence? It’s difficult to find news stories that stick to the issue of the 21 years Cliven Bundy has been in violation of the laws governing American public lands. The lone rancher trying to save his cattle from the “govmnt” is just too good a theme. Then too, they don’t…
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White House highlights Desert Tortoise website as ‘government waste’
Obama willing to waste billions of dollars to destroy the natural environment, less willing to spend a pittance to conserve it In a recent email from Vice President Joe Biden, the White House chose, among the umpteen thousand examples of government waste, a federally funded Desert Tortoise website as its whipping-boy to highlight what it…
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Renewable Energy Industry CEO looks to the future
Suggests government policy/subsidies – not free market – give wildlife conflicting, utility-scale projects an edge over distributed generation NRG Energy CEO David Crane, lead investor in the controversial Ivanpah Solar Thermal Energy Project, discusses why giant utility-scale renewable energy projects are economically viable and what the future might look like for renewables with a reduction…
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Ivanpah solar project would disturb thousands of desert tortoises
The Ivanpah solar thermal project consists of 5.4 square miles of high quality habitat for the Endangered Species Act protected desert tortoise, a fact that developers (and some investors) underestimated resulting in the temporary suspension of activities on phases 2 and 3 of the project site due to construction activities exceeding the incidental take limit…