Western Watersheds Project
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MONTANA: Western Watersheds Project and Buffalo Field Campaign petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) today to list the Yellowstone bison under the Endangered Species Act. Yellowstone bison are found primarily in Yellowstone National Park and migrate into the jurisdictions of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming where the wildlife species is forcibly removed or destroyed…
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Boise, Idaho. Four conservation organizations today filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program over its large-scale, often secretive killing of wild animals in Idaho. The program kills millions of animals nationwide every year, and in 2013 killed more than 3,000 mammals in Idaho alone via aerial gunning,…
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After years of landscape scale drought in Nevada, irrational grazing practices continue. While the Bureau of Land Management is required by federal law to protect wildlife habitat on our public lands, the agency has been woefully lax in addressing the combined impacts of livestock grazing and drought on habitat essential to sage-grouse, antelope, mule deer…
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POCATELLO, Idaho – Faced with a legal challenge by conservationists and an imminent hearing before a federal appeals court, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (“IDFG”) has abandoned its plan to resume a professional wolf-killing program in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness during the coming winter. In a sworn statement submitted to the…
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Wasteful Government Grazing Program to Continue Hailey, Idaho—Last month’s effort to end wasteful government programs at the Agricultural Research Station’s U.S. Sheep Experiment Station by closing it in the fall of 2014 has been thwarted by political interference from Idaho Representative Mike Simpson. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack claimed that the station had become a…
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OVERLOOKING THE ROLE OF LIVESTOCK IN THE DEMISE OF THE GREATER SAGE-GROUSE & ITS HABITAT A report by Western Watersheds Project DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE:WWP Sagegrouse and livestock report An enormous land management planning effort is underway in the American West, involving ten states and 60 million acres of what remains of sagebrush habitats on…
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Environmental groups have asked a federal court in Montana to stop domestic sheep grazing this summer at the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in southwest Montana. On June 23, 2014, Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians and Gallatin Wildlife Association filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Biological Opinion for…
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The Western Governors’ Association met earlier this month in Colorado to discuss, among other things, plans to oppose federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection for Greater sage-grouse and undermine federal conservation laws. The sage-grouse is in grave decline across its range in the western United States, but rather than spend time developing ways to restore…
