Politics
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WASHINGTON — The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) soon to be considered by the U.S. House of Representatives contains several provisions that would undermine current efforts to protect greater sage grouse on nearly 60 million acres of public lands, and would lead to listing greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act. The livestock lobby…
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Heather Tallis and Jane Lubchenco published a commentary titled “A Call for Inclusive Conservation” in the November 2014 issue of Nature. The essay sought to broker a truce or compromise between two philosophical positions in the conservation movement today that can be characterized as “new conservation” which promotes human utility as the primary goal of…
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Outcome for halting adverse climate change, protecting the environment, curbing pollution and toxics was very negative- Republicans scored an across-the-board victory in Tuesday’s mid-term elections. That they did well is not surprising. Mid-term elections are almost always bad for a President’s party, especially in the sixth year of a two-term President. Republicans, however, did even…
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I sent this into the Helena IR in response to an article that basically tried to portray the idea that environmental lawyers and groups were getting rich off of law suits that are often characterized as “frivolous”. In truth no one wins a law suit if it’s frivolous, and the fact that some groups win…
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Was demonization of wolves sort of a test case? Looking back after almost 20 years at organized attempts to terrify Americans into supporting policies that the right wing likes, it can be argued that demonization of wolves was sort of a test case, an experiment. Turning around the increasingly favorable public perception of wolves was…
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The merging of the Nez Perce and Clearwater National Forests offers opportunity to plunder- Two very important national forests in north central Idaho were recently combined through administrative action. The Clearwater and the Nez Perce National Forests both operate under separate forest management plans, developed after years of analysis and public comment. There was even…
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Importance of fighting to keep the public land public grows with likely Republican Senate win in November- Even though most of the public opinion in the West does not favor giving the national parks, forests, BLM lands and wildlife refuges to the states, this is a priority among conservative elites in the West. The polls…
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Only Utah shows majority in favor of states getting hold of U.S. public lands- A public opinion poll of 200 people in each of the eight Intermountain western states has shown a majority (52 to 42 %) are against transferring the federal lands to the Western states. In total, 1600 were interviewed. A slight majority of Utahans…