Conservation
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Montana Dept of Fish, Wildlife and Parks maintains wolverine trapping. At their August 2, 2012 Commission meeting, the Montana Dept of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MDFWP) commissioners voted to continue trapping wolverine, despite a petition from eight environmental groups and one individual George Wuerthner (me) to halt trapping. The groups– which included Friends of the…
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Agreement ending 100 years of fighting over the uses of the Klamath River’s waters falls to a group of local malcontents- After many years of fighting over salmon, dams, irrigation water, tribal treaty rights and ocean fishing matters came to an unpleasant head in 2001-2 when VP Dick Cheney sided with irrigators and let 70,000…
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Famous family of conservationists says change policy or give up the Olaus Murie Award- Olaus Murie is often called the “father of modern elk management.” His seminal scientific study of elk and many other kinds of wildlife such as caribou, which he learned about for 6 years in the field with has brother Adolf, was coupled with…
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Understanding Montana’s Wolf Policy Decision George Wuerthner On July 12, 2012, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MDFWP) Commissioners voted 4-0 to increase wolf hunting in the state, expanding the hunting season and permitting the trapping of wolves for the first time as well. The goal is to reduce wolf numbers across the…
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“Sportsmen’s Heritage Act” no favor to sportsmen or to America’s outdoor heritage- Updated on 2:10 AM. June 6, 2012 Back in 1924, when some parts of the public lands began to be set aside for protection as primitive places that would never be developed (not open to commercial logging, mining, or building) and where visitors…
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Politico‘s Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist Matt Wuerker weighs in on Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson’s use of a Congressional Rider to attempt to deny bighorn sheep protections on national forests in order to allow a few lone sheepman access to graze domestic sheep that transmit deadly disease to imperiled bighorns on National Forest public lands.
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The World Wildlife Fund has published a map that shows how intensively our oceans are being fished in comparison to 1950. The map is pretty startling and, with a rapidly growing world population that consumes more and more, it looks only to get worse. Is it possible that the world’s fisheries could collapse in our…
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I recently attended the wolf hearings held by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission in Helena. The commission is considering initiation of a trapping season, as well as eliminating quotas on the number of wolves that may be killed. The goal is to significantly reduce the state’s wolf population which currently numbers…