Politics
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Idaho Senate Resources committee votes not to confirm Gov. Otter’s nomination of Joan Hurlock- Although once a woman sat on the Idaho Fish and Game Commission, Nancy Hadley of Sandpoint 1997 to 2005, that was then. In the last few years Idaho has retreated culturally by perhaps a generation. Governor “Butch” Otter recently nominated Joan Hurlock to…
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Decaying Management In America’s National Park System- Yellowstone Park is loved by millions of Americans and many more around the world. It is the original model for not just America’s National Park System, but for national parks in other countries. By “system,” it is meant the national parks are established and managed by a common…
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I’ve been reading about the world’s economic woes quite a bit recently and the arguments between between those who support austerity to fight some looming “deficit crisis” and those who support deficit spending to stimulate the economy. In these arguments I am starting to believe that those who argue for austerity cuts to reduced the…
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Last week Rep. Ken Ivory, R of West Jordan, Utah, came north to Idaho, up out of the smog (worst in the country), to tell Idaho’s lawmakers that they should make a play to take over the U.S. public lands like Utah has proposed to do. We predicted this would happen because Utah’s legislature gets…
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HB249 would allow Montana landowners to kill bison for any reason- 2012, and it looks like 2013, is shaping up to be another year of livestock interests trying to repeal a generation or two of progress in the management of wildlife. Alan Doane, a Montana Republican legislator, has a bill that would allow landowners to…
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Ken Salazar is reportedly leaving his post as Secretary of Interior in March of this year. His legacy includes a failed delisting of wolves in Idaho and Montana, which was legislatively pushed through, delisting of wolves in Wyoming where wolves are treated as vermin, approval of the Deepwater Horizon using a categorical exclusion from National…
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State Agency Game Farming Is Not Compatible with Ecosystem Integrity With the delisting of wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act, management of wolves has been turned back to the individual states where wolves occur. In most of these states, we see state agencies adopting policies that treat wolves as persona no…
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(update) Judge says emergency closure by Montana wildlife commissioners with no public hearing might offend Montana’s Constitution and might deprive the public of the legal right to harvest wolves- In a shock to wolf conservationists and to people who think Yellowstone Park is a special place, an American icon, local Montana Nels Swandal reopened hunting and…