Nevada
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Numerous wind turbines now erected in Spring Valley, Nevada- The project to install 66, 275 foot tall wind turbines directly below the heights of Great Basin National Park, Nevada is now well underway as the April 22, 2012 photo shows. Nevada’s first wind farm, which will disturb almost 15 square miles, was approved by the…
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Even after 18 years, the Nevada BLM won’t round up trespassing cattle citing “safety concerns”. I’ve seen the lack of enforcement of rangeland standards on many occasions but when faced with even the most egregious lawlessness, the BLM does nothing. The lawlessness of public lands ranching is displayed in its full grandeur and leaves…
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Candidates use that word, “public lands” because they can’t say they “have no use for national forests, national parks, or national wildlife refuges’ Most westerners love the public lands of the United States and most of the outdoor recreation that does not use special facilities like stadiums takes place on them. Romney and Santorum, who…
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If you listened to President Obama’s State of the Union Address you may have noticed that the President had some things to say about how this administration values public land: […] I’m directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public lands to power 3 million homes. For groups working to…
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The effort to list the Greater Sage-grouse via the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been an uphill battle. However, even as the end-game has yet to be realized, the effort itself has been remarkably successful at prompting bureaucratic backflips and a whole lot of paper-shuffling to accommodate consideration of the species. Unfortunately, many of the existing and developing…
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Over my years of traipsing around public lands in the West I have come across hundreds of uncapped 3-foot tall PVC pipes sticking out of the ground. For a long time I didn’t know the purpose of the pipes but later came to understand that they were used as markers for mining claims. I’ve peered…
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Release of 32 bighorn underway- This release by the Nevada Department of Wildlife, Nevada Bighorns Unlimited and private individuals has taken 20 years to be accomplished. The stock for the release came from Nevada to the south around Stonewall Mountain near Tonapah. They are desert, not Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. Bighorn are now back in…
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On September 14 and 15 Katie Fite and I visited the Miller Creek Allotment on the Mountain City Ranger District of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest to check out the riparian areas there. What we found was just a horrible mess that any land manager should be embarrassed about enough to actually do something about but,…