Grazing and Livestock
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The bull trout, a char, is listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened in the lower 48 states. It has been extirpated from about 60 percent of its natural range. Worse, like many native salmonids, it is primarily found in headwater streams with little connectivity to larger river systems. The bull trout is a top apex predator, and as a…
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In a recent blog post, Defenders of Wildlife is grossly misleading the public claiming that they have “saved the last wild bison” by participating in and supporting the quarantine of buffalo that originated as wild calves from Yellowstone. Quarantine is a domestication process. There is no benefit from quarantine to bison as wildlife. Quarantine is…
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PEER creates a BLM Rangelands Health map- Grazing activists are going to cheer an interactive map created by PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility). As they sent their comments on the Greater sage grouse to the US. Fish and Wildlife Service, PEER wrote: The comments are based on analysis of data available for viewing on PEER’s…
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The merging of the Nez Perce and Clearwater National Forests offers opportunity to plunder- Two very important national forests in north central Idaho were recently combined through administrative action. The Clearwater and the Nez Perce National Forests both operate under separate forest management plans, developed after years of analysis and public comment. There was even…
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This August the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) reversed an earlier 2010 ruling that Arctic Grayling in the Upper Missouri River system of Montana were endangered (but precluded from listing under the Endangered Species Act due to higher priority species). Instead the Service decided that as a result of cooperative efforts by ranchers in…
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Because of the current open comment period on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on the Proposed Rule Changes for Mexican Wolf Reintroduction and the recent hearings on the same, I’ve been spending a bit of time with the DEIS and trying to wade through all 467 pages of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s new plans…
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Cliven Bundy is free. Michael Brown dead. Justice? Ferguson, Missouri, teenager Michael Brown was shot six times and killed nine days ago by officer Darren Wilson. Brown was shot because, perhaps, he was resisting arrest for jaywalking or stealing cigars. Unarmed local residents gathered to protest his death. They were met by local law enforcement…
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After years of landscape scale drought in Nevada, irrational grazing practices continue. While the Bureau of Land Management is required by federal law to protect wildlife habitat on our public lands, the agency has been woefully lax in addressing the combined impacts of livestock grazing and drought on habitat essential to sage-grouse, antelope, mule deer…