Forest Service
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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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Controversial proposal rejected on Jan. 22 by Forest Service- In a news release the Jackson Hole Alliance celebrated the end of the proposal to combine national forests in Idaho and Wyoming that include some of the West’s best wildlife and scenery. There is still on the table, however, the idea that perhaps the headquarters (the…
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Plans to combine the Caribou-Targhee and the Bridger-Teton spark criticism- Once there was the Teton National Forest and the Bridger National Forest in Wyoming. Next door in Idaho their was the Caribou National Forest and the Targhee National Forest. Seeking efficiency, and perhaps other goals, a generation ago the U.S. Forest Service combined the Bridger…
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Past efforts to grab national forests, parks, wildlife refuges led by livestock industry. Now it will be Koch Bros, oil, GOP- Some call our public lands “American’s common treasure,” but the love of our land expressed in many forms, and the freedom they provide, have not stopped what are sometimes called “sagebrush rebellions” every decade…
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Badly managed cattle devastate the most remote public lands- “Till the cows come home” . . . that phase usually means a long time. That’s how it is on most of public lands of the Western United States. The cattle are put out before the grass and forbs (perennial flowers) are sturdy and ready for…
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A big victory for conservation after years of political then legal wrangling- For many years U.S. national forest users battled over development of those areas with no roads (“roadless areas”). As the more economically valuable roadless area were developed first, those that remained were usually developed only because of ever increasing federal subsidies. Roads in…
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With little hope that they will prevail in Idaho District Court people are asking why the Idaho Wool Growers Association, American Sheep Industry Association, Public Lands Council, and sheep ranchers from Wyoming and Colorado have begun litigation now. According to the latest gossip, the woolgrowers hope for a Romney Administration in 2013. The woolgrowers think that,…
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After numerous humiliating defeats on whether to allow sheep grazing on the Payette National Forest, woolgrowers are going back to court to argue that domestic sheep don’t transmit deadly pneumonia to bighorn sheep. Idaho Wool Growers Association, American Sheep Industry Association, Public Lands Council, and sheep ranchers from Wyoming and Colorado have filed a suit…