Public Lands
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Rarely given more than minimal herding, Bundy’s cattle seem now to be on their own- Many people argue that Nevada, the driest state, is really no place for cattle, grass-loving creatures that they are. Nonetheless, herds of widely spaced cattle have pummeled the landscape there for over a hundred years. For a generation Cliven Bundy…
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The Forest Service solution to large wildfires is more logging, but this prescription ignores the growing body of scientific research that suggests that logging/thinning/prescribed burning does not work under severe fire conditions. Why is this important? Because the vast majority of all fires self-extinguish whether we do anything or not. However, all large fires —…
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It’s been a month-and-a-half since occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon ended. Most of the Malheur occupiers and many of those who planned and directed the earlier 2014 standoff with federal personnel at the Bundy Ranch near Mesquite, Nevada, are now in prison waiting trial. What kind of activists were the…
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Climate change and genetic isolation threaten famously tough predator- MISSOULA, Mont.— Describing the wolverine as a “snow-dependent species standing squarely in the path of global climate change,” a federal judge today overturned an August 2014 decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refusing to grant this rare and elusive species any protection under the…
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I wish to respond to the self-serving opinion piece in the March 16 Missoulian by Gordy Sanders and Loren Rose of Pyramid Lumber Company in Seeley Lake titled “Work together to pass Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project.” The Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Project is a good example of “PPSC” socialism: privatize the profits, socialize the costs. Nearly every…
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Boise, IDAHO – Today, Western Watersheds Project filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada over its approval of new fences in important sage-grouse habitat on the Argenta allotment. Fences harm sage-grouse in a variety of ways. The decision to build the fences along six sections of streams on public lands was…
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When Adrian Sewell of New Mexico made a big show of traveling to the besieged Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January to tear up his grazing permit and denounce the Forest Service, it was apparently just a big show. The “renegade rancher” has signed the Annual Operating Instructions (AOIs) and reportedly paid his 2016 grazing bill for…
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Some mountain bikers are attempting to amend and weaken the Wilderness Act MISSOULA, MONTANA – This week 116 conservation organizations from across America have asked Congress to oppose attempts to amend and weaken the Wilderness Act and Wilderness protections by allowing bicycles in designated Wilderness. “For over a half century, the Wilderness Act has protected…
