Grazing and Livestock
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Famous scientist tells USDA Wildlife Services their age old coyote killing program actually increases number of coyotes and depredations- USDA Wildlife Services and its prior incarnations such as Animal Damage Control and Predator and Rodent Control has been indiscriminately killing coyotes for as long as the agency existed. This practice has often irritated a diffuse…
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The Idaho Statesman reports that Mike Simpson has withdrawn the rider which would have prevented the BLM and US Forest Service from addressing the ongoing issue of disease transmission from domestic sheep to bighorn sheep and would have bypassed years of analysis and a long public process which generated 15,000 public comments. The rider would…
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Democrat Bob Kerrey uses increasingly popular term to attack rancher/politician who utilizes low federal grazing fees- Republican Deb Fischer, like others who graze cattle or sheep on federal public lands, pays almost nothing in return to the U.S. treasury. Politics has held down the fee paid to graze public lands so that now the fee…
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Update: June 27, 2012 Congressman Mike Simpson has withdrawn his proposed new rider which the story below is about. He said he is going to try to bring people together in a roundtable soon. He also said his new rider had amplified the rhetoric on the issue which was not what he wanted. Ralph Maughan…
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Senator Ben Nelson is retiring from the US Senate at the end of his term and he is trying to help former Senator Bob Kerrey take his place after he leaves by pointing out the hypocrisy of Kerrey’s opponent Tea Party/Republican Deb Fischer. Fischer is a public lands rancher who only pays a pittance to…
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This week there have been two significant developments for bighorn sheep in Idaho that relate to the closing of domestic sheep grazing in occupied bighorn habitat. Payette Decision Moves Forward First, in an unusual ruling from the bench, Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled that the closing of three domestic sheep allotments on the Payette National…
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Politico‘s Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist Matt Wuerker weighs in on Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson’s use of a Congressional Rider to attempt to deny bighorn sheep protections on national forests in order to allow a few lone sheepman access to graze domestic sheep that transmit deadly disease to imperiled bighorns on National Forest public lands.
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Bipartisan coalition in U.S. Senate supports “national mammal” status- S. 3248, the Bison Legacy Act, was introduced in the U.S. Senate May 24 by two senators, a Republican from Wyoming (Mike Enzi) and a Democrat from South Dakota (Tim Johnson). This might seem surprising because so much of the bison news is about hatred of…