Public Land Management
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Upper Deschutes River is essentially an irrigation cancel for irrigators. Photo George Wuerthner The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will soon decide whether to approve a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for the Deschutes River Basin. The HCP was initiated by local irrigators and the city of Prineville who want to maintain their privilege of using…
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Black-tailed praire dog. Photo by George Wuerthner Years ago, I went out of my way to visit the Thunder Basin National Grassland. With a name like “Thunder Basin,” how could I resist. The Thunder Basin National Grassland is located in northeastern Wyoming in the Powder River Basin between the Big Horn Mountains and the Black…
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With the election of Joe Biden, we have a leader who recognizes that we need to use science to effectively deal with the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss. To address these twin threats to the planet’s stability and integrity, the president-elect supports the goal of using science-based decision-making to protect 30 percent of…
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Cattle grazing Grand Staircase Escalante NM, Utah. Photo by George Wuerthner Livestock production is one of the most ubiquitous human activities around the globe. It is particularly detrimental to arid lands, and much of the western public lands are arid. Typically most livestock advocates, which also includes far too many conservation organizations, focus on one…
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We do not want those whose first impulse is to compromise. We want no straddlers, for, in the past, they have surrendered too much good wilderness and primeval areas which should never have been lost. – Bob Marshall on the founding of the Wilderness Society There is an unfortunate tendency on the part…
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Record temperatures across the West, including a record 121 degrees in southern California by Los Angeles. Massive wildfires charring millions of acres including record large blazes in Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, and California, with the smoke that spread across the entire West. Half of the country is experiencing “severe drought”. Hurricanes ravage the Southeast. Do we…
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The Clear Lake National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is likely not on everyone’s radar. The refuge lies on the California-Oregon border to the southwest of Klamath Falls, Oregon. Part of the Klamath Basin National Refuge system, Clear Lake, is one of many natural lakes in the area that are important staging areas for migratory waterfowl on…
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Senators Steve Daines of Montana and Diane Feinstein of California have once again introduced legislation, the “Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act of 2020” that is based upon misguided assumptions that fuel reductions will preclude the large blazes occurring as the West. Never mind that climate change is the driving force in all these fires…