Public Lands
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Did non-violent protest work here? The news is that Tim de Christopher is getting out of a California federal prison a bit early, after 18 months instead of 2 years. He will serve out the last 6 months in a Salt Lake City halfway house. Presumably there in work release they will try to have…
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Wolves now under Wyoming control and they are already being shot in state’s first wolf hunting season- Mike Jimenez, who has managed wolves in Wyoming for U.S. government for years now with a slowly growing wolf population and minimal livestock depredations, has written his last wolf news report. Here it is converted to a PDF…
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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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SAGE GROUSE: PROXIMATE AND ULTIMATE CAUSES When I was in college, one of my favorite courses was animal behavior. One of the more memorable lessons I learned was the difference between proximate and ultimate causes of behavior. Proximate and ultimate causes of events are important to distinguish. For instance, say a researcher finds that sedimentation…
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Someone is using the artificial sweetener, xylitol, to presumably poison wolves in the Wood River Valley. It is unclear whether any wolves or other canines have been poisoned but one dog has died and another has been sickened by eating xylitol laced meatballs placed in the Lake Creek area. A picture online shows several of…
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I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees. It seems more and more there are fewer conservation organizations who speak for the forest, and more that speak for the timber industry. Witness several recent commentaries in Oregon papers which are by no means unique. I’ve seen similar themes from other conservation groups in the…
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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can’t let the rare carnivore just languish as a candidate endangered species- Dana Christensen, a Montana federal district court judge has denied the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s (“the Service”) motion to dismiss a conservationist lawsuit that asks for a prompt decision to give endangered species protection for the…