The Fish and Wildlife Service will soon be reviewing a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for Oregon’s Deschutes River written by contractors working for the Central Oregon irrigators. The HCP will dictate the future of the river.
The goal of the irrigators is to obtain a “get out of jail free” […]
Continue Reading →The Oregon spotted frog was originally found throughout wetlands in Oregon and Washington. It is the most aquatic of all native frogs. It is always located near perennial water sources.
Draining of these wetlands, livestock grazing, and dams have significantly reduced its habitat. For instance, 95% of the wetlands in the Willamette Valley and […]
Continue Reading →All the early western stockman wanted from the federal government in Washington DC was the free use of public lands, high tariffs on any meat coming from outside, the building and maintenance of public roads, the control of predators, the provision of free education, a good mail service with free delivery to the ranch gate, […]
Continue Reading →http://www.nature.org/magazine/archives/new-life-in-the-badlands.xml
The above link is to an article published by The Nature Conservancy exalting the Malpai Borderlands group in Arizona and New Mexico. You can read the article for a little background on the Malpai group, but the basic story is relatively simple. A very large ranch called the Gray’s Ranch lying along the […]
Continue Reading →The bull trout, a char, is listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened in the lower 48 states. It has been extirpated from about 60 percent of its natural range. Worse, like many native salmonids, it is primarily found in headwater streams with little connectivity to larger river systems. The bull trout is a top apex predator, and as a […]
Continue Reading →Real wildlife takes island back after rats poisoned. Island renamed Hawadax Island
The brown rats showed up on this 9 by 3 mile Aleutian Island in 1780 on the wreck of a Japanese ship. It is one of 16 islands close by and also part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. The national wildlife refuge contains […]
Continue Reading →U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can’t let the rare carnivore just languish as a candidate endangered species-
Dana Christensen, a Montana federal district court judge has denied the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s (“the Service”) motion to dismiss a conservationist lawsuit that asks for a prompt decision to give endangered species protection for the […]
Continue Reading →Tom Knudson of the Sacremento Bee has been working on this very important and eye opening series about USDA Wildlife Services for several months. I was contacted by him in December last year and we talked about several issues related to WS and their killing.
This first installment of three introduces people to the agency […]
Continue Reading →Rare grizzly of the Cabinet-Yaak, wounded, apparently turns on hunter’s partner and kills him-
Note that the story below has been superseded. The hunter who ended up dead was shot by his partner as the grizzly attacked him. The bullet was, of course, likely meant for the bear. Matters are still being investigated as of […]
Continue Reading →The list of species the federal government has been more or less forced to consider for ESA protection has been growing longer and longer over the years, and yet it acts very slowly, complaining that species are being added at too fast a rate. Much of the agency’s tiny budget was eaten up responding to […]
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