Public Lands
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Recently I drove up the Lostine River corridor and hiked the trail in the Eaglecap Wilderness giving me a good opportunity to review a Forest Service proposal to log the river corridor. The agency is using a stealth method of approving the proposed logging called a “Categorical Exclusion”. The CE allows the FS to proceed…
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The House Subcommittee on Natural Resources chaired by Tom McClintock (R) of California is advocating more active management of our national forests based on the presumption that logging/thinning will reduce large wildfires. A clear indication of McClintock’s perspective is found in the title of a recent hearing he chaired called “Oversight Hearing on Burdensome Litigation…
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Many rural counties with sizeable amounts of federal lands within their jurisdictional boundaries depend on federal payments to support basic services like fire, police, schools, and the like. The main programs include the Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILT), Refuge Revenue Sharing, Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act (SRS). One of the…
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Conservation groups challenge disease-breeding feedground on public lands JACKSON, Wyoming –– Four conservation groups filed a lawsuit today to challenge the U.S. Forest Service’s authorization of the Alkali Creek elk feedground on the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The high-risk feedlot, run by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, baits and unnaturally concentrates wild Jackson elk…
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When I was in college at the University of Montana in Missoula, I had a housemate named Tom. Tom was a wilderness fanatic like myself. We both loved exploring the wildlands that surround Missoula. Tom had a map on the wall where he drew a circle that encompassed a hundred-mile radius around Missoula. Tom…
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The major national monuments of the last 20 years on the chopping block President Trump has just signed a much-predicted executive order that mandates a review of all the national monuments established since 1996 that are larger than 100,000 acres. National monuments are established under the Antiquities Act of 1906 that gives Presidents the power…
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Pocatello, Idaho. Last week 14-year-old Canyon Mansfield watched his yellow lab Casey die from the effects of an explosive cyanide device set out by the federal government agency named Wildlife Services (WS). This happened near his home but on public land (BLM) just east of Pocatello. The device, named an M-44, explosively releases a powder…
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National Forests across the West are facing dire threats from politicians, the timber industry and the Forest Service. The public is currently being misled into thinking that our forests are “unhealthy”, and that they need to be “restored” due to “beetle infestations” and “insect and disease.” All of this is euphemism to drastically ramp up…
