Grazing and Livestock
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The Supreme Court recently ruled in an 7-1 vote (Justice Stephen Breyer recused himself) that the EPA regulations about water pollution as mandated by the Clean Water Act did not apply to sediment and other pollution from logging operations. The timber industry is rejoicing over the ruling. But citizens should be less sanguine than industry.…
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Holistic grazing guru pieces together false assumptions to produce ineffective but popular recommendations on climate change- Allan Savory is a name not well known to most people concerned about climate change. However, he has been preaching his gospel of holistic grazing for a generation now and is somewhat loved by the Western livestock grazing industry,…
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In yesterday’s post about the Owyhee “Group 1” grazing decision we discussed the NRCS Ecological Site Descriptions for Juniper Mountain that inaccurately describe the vegetation and magically discount the native juniper forests that exist there. In the Environmental Assessment the BLM states: “Ecological site descriptions for Castlehead-Lambert allotment do not identify the presence of juniper…
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The Owyhee BLM has finally issued a Proposed Decision on the so-called “Group 1” allotments but, unfortunately, the BLM really doesn’t go far enough to reverse damage caused by decades of abusive livestock grazing and they didn’t collect enough information to rationalize their decision even though the Environmental Assessment (EA) consists of a whopping 556 pages…
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While Idaho taxpayers are facing budget cuts to public education and health care, ranchers are busy writing self-serving bills to provide money for “studies” that will paper over destructive impacts of livestock grazing on sage grouse. Last year saw thousands of people marching on the grounds of the Idaho Capital in Boise. People were marching…
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The average sheep herder who comes to work in the US under the H2A immigrant worker program gets paid only $650-$750 per month. Many of the workers come from South American countries like Peru or Chile and spend months in remote areas of Idaho with little communication and poor access to medical facilities. Contrast this…
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Once again, it’s $1.35/AUM — just a token fee- Like last year, the USFS and the BLM have announced that the 2013 grazing will a mere $1.35 per animal unit month (AUM). In a news release, the agencies wrote: “An AUM or HM – treated as equivalent measures for fee purposes – is the occupancy…
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A fight is brewing over domestic sheep grazing in bighorn sheep habitat in Wyoming. The Biodiversity Conservation Alliance filed a lawsuit last year to protect the small Encampment herd of bighorn sheep from coming into contact with disease ridden domestic sheep which would likely kill the entire herd if contact between the two species were…