George Wuerthner
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The headline in a recent Capital Press article proclaims that “Preliminary data shows cattle, sage grouse can coexist”. http://www.capitalpress.com/Livestock/20171016/study-preliminary-data-show-cattle-sage-grouse-can-coexist The article then goes on to quote various researchers who are at the beginning of a ten-year study. According to the article, grazing allotments were grazed according to traditional patterns for two years, then the…
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Montana GOP Senator Daines recently published a simplistic and misleading guest commentary on a wildfire in the Washington Post. In that editorial, Daines, like many other misinformed logging proponents claims more logging would reduce large wildfires and he blames “environmental extremists” for delaying the forest reduction projects. Most of the wildfires burning under low to…
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Recently rancher Ken Andrus had a guest commentary in the Idaho State Journal basically championing Idaho agriculture. However, like almost all folks in Ag, he has an overblown view of his place in the Idaho economy. http://idahostatejournal.com/opinion/columns/the-ranchers-side/article_f5881123-e136-5f04-8c5b-06a869515b57.html For instance, Mr.Andrus suggested that Idaho AG was Idaho’s largest industry. This claim is created by aggregating anything remotely…
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Recently a bunch of older foresters wrote a letter that has been published in a number of Montana papers advocating more logging and other fuel treatments of our forests to reduce wildfires. These foresters all seem to be influenced by the Southwest ponderosa pine model which has infiltrated so much of the thinking of foresters…
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Dear Tom I see that you are planning an article in Montana Outdoors on “green grazing”. Without having read the piece, I can say that it will perpetuate the myth of “well managed” grazing. For every example of “green grazing out there I can show you 100 examples of where livestock production is destroying and…
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Last year when the Profanity Wolf Pack was killed in Washington after depredation on cattle, Washington State University predator researcher Robert Wielgus suggested in several articles that the livestock losses were preventable, and thus, so was the killing of the Profanity Pack. Wielgus was subsequently punished by the university who placed a gag order on…
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Our public heritage is at risk from a lawless logging bill that effectively eliminates all reasonable checks on the timber industry. The threat comes from House Natural Resources Committee passed out of committee H.R. 2936 known euphemistically as the “Resilient Federal Forest Act” or as the Westerman bill for short after its chief sponsor. The…
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NASA just reported the drought in eastern Montana is so severe it is a once in a century event. Not surprisingly, despite livestock grazing that some suggest could preclude large blazes, the drought in Eastern Montana has spawned some recent blazes including the 270,000-acre Lodgepole fire. The fire raced across grazed public and private pasture…