Grazing and Livestock
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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…
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In today’s Buffalo Field Campaign Update from the Field the depths that Montana’s livestock barons will stoop to protect livestock interests is revealed. Because the Montana Department of Livestock is limited by a temporary restraining order issued on Monday by a federal judge, they have decided to explicitly violate the property rights of a landowner who…
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Less than a year after Flat Top Ranch was awarded $600,000 for a conservation easement – half of which was paid for by a Blaine County levy assessed to protect wildlife – Flat Top Ranch has run into more conflicts with wolves: Jerome Hansen, supervisor of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Magic Valley Region,…
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A new federal assessment of rangelands in the West finds a disturbingly large portion fails to meet range health standards principally due to commercial livestock operations. In the last decade as more land has been assessed, estimates of damaged lands have doubled in the 13-state Western area where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM)…
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U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell has issued a 14-day restraining order against using helicopters to haze bison back into Yellowstone National Park because of well documented grizzly bear activity in the area. Last year the Judge Lovell denied a similar request citing technical issues related to the lawsuit but, after both the Buffalo Field Campaign…