Ken Cole
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Last week a Associated Press article proclaimed that the rehabilitation taking place after the Soda Fire, which burned 225,953 acres along highway 95 on the Oregon/Idaho border in August, was going well. Not so fast. According to a report from Roger Rosentreter, a retired PhD botanist who worked for the BLM for 38 years, things aren’t going so…
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An important study released today concludes that the presence of cattle in important sage grouse habitats increases the number of ravens that prey on sage grouse and their nests by 45.8% in the Curlew Valley of southeast Idaho. The study found that anthropogenic subsidies were increased in areas where livestock grazing occurred and raven populations increased…
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On Sunday and Monday, February 14-15, 2016, USDA Wildlife Services took to the skies and shot the remaining 24 bighorn sheep in the Montana Mountains of northwest Nevada at the request of Nevada Department of Wildlife. These were important sheep because they were once healthy and over 60 had been translocated from there to areas in…
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Adams County doesn’t have any so-called “herd districts” or areas where livestock are not allowed to simply roam free and Idaho’s open range laws don’t require livestock owners to keep their livestock off of highways. As described in several news articles published on November 2nd, a Subaru carrying two people struck a black bull on…
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BLM Plans to Turn Landscape into a Cattle Forage Zone. The highly vaunted, but meaningless, land management plans to save sage grouse are being put to the test with the recovery plan for the Soda Fire which burned 225,953 acres along highway 95 on the Oregon/Idaho border in August. Instead of focussing on reestablishing native…
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The art of land and wildlife management has fallen into the hands of political actors who are beholden to powerful interests who only care about how much money they can squeeze out of our wildlife and public lands. When faced with making tough decisions, these professional bureaucrats have learned special skills to move up through…
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Bighorn sheep near the northern entrance of Yellowstone National Park are dying from pneumonia. Pneumonia outbreaks in bighorn sheep are often associated with contact with domestic sheep or goats which carry many pathogens that cause pneumonia in bighorn sheep but do not affect domestic sheep or goats. According to a press release by Montana FWP,…
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Just a week after the BLM withdrew its decision to issue a Special Recreation Permit to “Idaho for Wildlife” (IWF) for a predator killing contest, Congressman Peter DeFazio (OR) and a coalition of Environmental Groups have sent two separate letters to the U.S. Forest Service asking them to not allow the contest on U.S. Forest Service…
