Public Lands
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The national wilderness preservation system would be strengthened- Taking a long trip into the backcountry during winter doesn’t appeal to some people. That’s understandable. But I enjoy it, and it’s something I try to do a few times a year. Winter backpacking is very different, and more challenging, compared to strapping on the pack during…
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Effort to turn ranchers into scofflaws nets just one so far- Ammon Bundy has been trying to recruit livestock operators who have grazing permits on U.S. public lands to stop paying the rental (grazing fees) for their grazing allotment. He finally recruited one, or at least one showed up Saturday to renounce paying his grazing…
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Dwight Hammond and his son Steve, the ranchers who sparked the recent Harney County protests, were characterized as “responsible ranchers” by Congressman Greg Walden in a speech before Congress. Walden sought to minimize the crimes the Hammonds have committed by suggesting they merely burned a bit more than a hundred acres, something that he tried…
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During the last Pleistocene Ice Age advance ice covered much of the North American Continent, as well as the mountainous areas of the West. Depending on who you consult the ice retreated sometime between 15,000 years to 12,000 years before present. A minor expansion of ice occurred during the Little Ice Age sometime between…
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By Josh Osher and Andy Kerr The Sheriff of Harney County, OR met with the leader of the armed occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and offered a way to end the takeover fiasco. The Sheriff offered a “safe escort” out of the increasingly untenable situation. Congress should follow the Sheriff’s pragmatic gesture and offer…
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POCATELLO, Idaho – A coalition of conservationists, represented by Earthjustice, today filed a legal challenge to the decision by the U.S. Forest Service to allow the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) to conduct approximately 120 helicopter landings in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness as part of a program to manipulate wildlife…
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The standoff in Harney County Oregon highlights one of the great ironies of the rural West. More than any other people, western rural residents are more heavily dependent on government (read taxpayer) largesse than any other part of America. Yet the average rural resident sees himself/herself as a “rugged and independent” individual and by…
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Public Employees for Environment Responsibility (PEER) news release “Federal Inaction for 19 Months on Bundy Spawns More Militia Confrontations” Washington, DC —This week’s armed seize of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon by self-styled “militia” stems from the lack of a coherent response to earlier confrontations with anti-government extremists, according to Public Employees for…