Department of Interior
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Once again, it’s $1.35/AUM — just a token fee- Like last year, the USFS and the BLM have announced that the 2013 grazing will a mere $1.35 per animal unit month (AUM). In a news release, the agencies wrote: “An AUM or HM – treated as equivalent measures for fee purposes – is the occupancy…
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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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A group of 238 environmental and social justice groups, with a combined membership of many millions, have sent a letter to President Obama asking him to replace departing Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar with Arizona Congressman Raúl Grijalva. The letter, originally sent to President Obama on December 10, 2012, was re-sent after Secretary of Interior Ken…
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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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Hunt will probably end below quota; but many more wolves killed in state’s wolves-are-just-vermin-zone- Wyoming first wolf hunt ends Dec. 31. 2012. Wyoming opted for a much less ambitious/less-destructive-to-wolves hunt compared to neighboring Idaho and Montana. Unlike its neighbors, Wyoming has a wolf maximum kill quota and a relatively short hunt. However, Wyoming also has…
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Lawsuit aims to take back majority of marsh land used to create the Refuge- A lawsuit by landowners who helped create the Grays Lake National Wildlife Refuge in 1965, now threatens is dismemberment. One of the best known features of the obscure country between the eastern edge of the Snake River Plain and the Wyoming…
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Washington Governor Christine Gregoire is rumored to be a front-runner for nomination as Secretary of the Interior, where she would oversee millions of acres of public land. But a livestock “pilot” program she instituted in Washington, which fast-tracked the introduction of livestock grazing on Washington Wildlife Areas free of charge to ranchers, while running roughshod…
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A year after Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a complaint with the BLM for intentionally excluding livestock grazing impacts from “Rapid Ecoregional Assessments” which were supposed to look at “change agents” for BLM landscapes, the BLM has put the $40 million assessments on hold and remained silent about charges of political interference. Even…