Grazing and Livestock
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CAPTION: Open space is not the same as good wildlife habitat. The hayfield shown here has limited wildlife value. The willows and other shrubs on the left are along a creek protected from livestock by a rural subdivision. The right side of the photo dominated by grasses and an entrenched streambed that is actively grazed…
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Recently Nevada Bureau of Land Management (BLM) State Director Jon Raby suggested that the agency will try “targeted grazing” among other methods to reduce wildfires in the sagebrush ecosystem. Raby says the BLM is implementing this action “because of the threat of annual invasive grasses, specifically cheatgrass, play in altering fire regime conditions that intensify…
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In June the BLM released a draft EIS Programmatic EIS for Fuel Breaks in the Great Basin. The proposal would authorize the creation of 11,000 miles of fuel breaks primarily in sagebrush ecosystems across parts of Nevada, California, Utah, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. https://eplanning.blm.gov/epl-front-office/projects/nepa/71149/175534/213852/FuelBreaksDraftPEIS_Bulletin.pdf This plan is a government boondoggle that will cost a significant…
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Sometimes a “win” is the fight you don’t have to have. Instead of victories proclaimed from the steps of the courthouse, some wins are the quiet kind which involve not having to go back to court at all. Western Watersheds Project and our allies recently had such a win, in a case over Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs, the…
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Monitoring project shows two weeks of cattle is decimating the understory FISH LAKE, Utah – Conservationists today released a new report showing that cattle grazing in the world-famous Pando aspen clone and neighboring aspen groves exert more than four times as much grazing pressure over less than two weeks as do mule deer grazing over the course…
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Western Watersheds Project (the organization that I am the Executive Director of), WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity are fighting the reinstatement of grazing on four allotments in eastern Oregon that are permitted to Hammond Ranches. In part, we argue that the Hammonds don’t have a great track record and are thus undeserving…
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Point Reyes National Seashore was established in the 1960s by the purchase of private ranches. The public paid fair market value for these lands. Livestock operations were to be removed over a 25-grace period. But time and again the ranchers refused to leave OUR property. Surprisingly Representative Jared Huffman, ordinarily good on environmental issues, has…
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Recently the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MDFWP) Commission voted to permit cattle grazing on the Spotted Dog Wildlife Management Area (WMA). Approval of livestock grazing on the WMA is based on the theory that a quid pro quo allowing ranchers to graze their cattle on public land will reduce animosity towards wildlife…
