Last week, the state of Utah filed a court challenge to the Biden Administration’s expansion of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments in southern Utah. The state is claiming the designations were unlawful and besides the state could do a better job of managing this land (which incidentally is federally owned […]
Continue Reading →I helped to create RESTORE the North Woods in 1991 which put forth a proposal for a 3.2 million acre national park in the Maine Woods. I’ve been a board member and now president for a long time now. We still are advocating for a large national park in Maine and achieved the […]
Continue Reading →Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The park was originally created to protect geological phenomena like geysers and canyons. Photo George Wuerthner
The year 2022 is the 150th birthday of the creation of Yellowstone National Park. The establishment of the park in 1872 is something to celebrate globally. It is a shining beacon […]
Continue Reading →Approximately 5700 cows graze national park lands at Point Reyes National Seashore. Photo George Wuerthner
A federal lawsuit against the National Park Service (NPS) at Point Reyes National Seashore was filed on January 10th by four environmental organizations. The lawsuit contends the National Park Service in a new management plan for the […]
Continue Reading →Old Faithful is emblematic of Yellowstone National Park. Photo George Wuerthner
A recent article Return the National Parks to the Tribes in Atlantic Magazine by David Treuer is worth a detailed review because it represents a common set of inaccurate assumptions and historical imprecision about the relationship of conservation, national parks […]
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We do not want those whose first impulse is to compromise. We want no straddlers, for, in the past, they have surrendered too much good wilderness and primeval areas which should never have been lost.
– Bob Marshall on the founding of the Wilderness Society
There is an unfortunate tendency on the part […]
Continue Reading →TRUMPING OUR PARKS
The Trump Administration is on the warpath against the environment.
From increasing oil and gas leasing on our public lands to decreasing national clean air standards for automobiles, eliminating environmental law enforcement, attacking the Endangered Species Act, removing the United States from the Global Climate Accord, and reducing oversight of livestock grazing […]
Continue Reading →In the recent Public Lands legislation that was passed by Congress, Oregon got some new protected landscapes including the Devil’s Staircase Wilderness, 250 miles of new Wild and Scenic River segments on the Rogue and Molalla rivers and measures such as a mining ban on the Chetco River. This legislation was a good but a […]
Continue Reading →Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke has directed the National Park Service to reverse Obama-era directives implemented in October of 2015 that prohibited certain “hunting” practices in Alaskan national park units.
Zinke is attempting to reinstate the killing of black bears with cubs and hunting them with dogs, hunting grizzlies over bait like donuts and bacon, […]
Continue Reading →Once, years ago, I was hanging out with Doug Tompkins at his home in Chile, sipping tea and sitting by the fire, when Doug began telling me tales of his early climbing days with his first climbing partner, Johnny. I asked what became of Johnny, and Doug told me he had died in a climbing […]
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