Public Lands
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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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A fight is brewing over domestic sheep grazing in bighorn sheep habitat in Wyoming. The Biodiversity Conservation Alliance filed a lawsuit last year to protect the small Encampment herd of bighorn sheep from coming into contact with disease ridden domestic sheep which would likely kill the entire herd if contact between the two species were…
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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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GPS collar shows grizzly was on ridge above Grant Creek in Oct. 2011- For years there have been reports grizzly bears in or near “The Rattlesnake,” just north of Missoula, Montana. Now there is hard proof that one grizzly briefly visited in October 2011. A “dropped” GPS collar found miles to the north from a female…
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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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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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Loss of collared wolves has had a significant effect on research of wolves in Yellowstone National Park According to a news article in the Jackson Hole News & Guide, the population of wolves in Yellowstone National Park has dropped by about 20-28% from the 2011 end-of-the-year estimate of 98 wolves. Dan Stahler, a wildlife biologist…
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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…