Public Land Management
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I studied geography in grad school. One of the basic premises of geography is that maps can show graphical concepts and ideas that might not be obvious with other forms of communication. The map of roads in Greater Yellowstone serves as a powerful tool, revealing a reality that many fail to grasp. Despite the protection…
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Yellowstone National Park recently released its Final Bison Management Plan. It arbitrarily limits bison numbers through tribal hunting outside of the park and the transfer of public Yellowstone bison to Indian reservations. The NPS Preferred Alternative 2 is better than the existing bison management but will continue the degradation of wild bison. Alt. 3 is…
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I had a few minutes to polish and varnish a group of new samples I had collected on my last trip down to southern Utah, so I though I would provide a few examples, for those of you who run around P-J habitat. These three examples are from San Juan County, UT. This little pinyon…
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The BOSH project in southern Idaho ultimately plans to destroy tens of thousands of acres of juniper woodlands on BLM lands. BOSH stands for Bruneau-Owyhee Sagebrush Habitat Project. The advocates of the BOSH project use pejorative language to characterize the Juniper clearing from the landscape. Terms like “restoring” the “natural” condition of the land assume…
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An article in the Oregon Capital Chronicle focuses on cultural and prescribed burning fuel reduction and how they can preclude large wildfires, such as the 127,000 acre Cedar Creek Fire on the Willamette National Forest. The Cedar Creek fire was a wind-driven blaze that occurred during severe drought. The only thing that brought the blaze…
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This past week, the Trust for Public Lands announced that it had secured a conservation easement for 13,000 acres in Northwest Montana as part of the Lost Trail Conservation Area. The easement precludes subdivision of the land for housing tracts and allows the landowner, Green Diamond, to continue its forestry operations. Advocates of this…
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The 1.6 million acres Deschutes National Forest, Oregon is engaged in an active deforestation effort, all justified based on precluding or slowing wildfires. The Forest also suggests that the logging is “restoring” historical forest conditions. After the spotted owl controversy of the 1980s, the Forest Service lost its social license to log public forests to…
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The seminal work on public lands livestock grazing and its web of impacts, Welfare Ranching – The Subsidized Destruction of the American West is now available for download.
