Grazing and Livestock
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Montana and Wyoming infections and capture of elk. The last week has been filled with many stories about brucellosis and its impacts on wildlife and livestock. First, Montana has announced plans to capture and test elk for brucellosis then place radio collars on those females that test positive to see where they go and where…
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Sheep laden with germs and parasites are more likely to produce lambs than less diseased sheep- I don’t know if this is a strange result of evolution or due to deliberate breeding, but it is shocking. Sheep Study Finds an Upside to a Weak Immune System. New York Times.
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Public land ranchers concerned about candidate’s position that public lands ought be managed to preserve Idaho’s wildlife heritage Idaho’s Gubernatorial candidate Keith Allred, challenger to “Butch” Otter, recently drew a distinction between wildlife management on public versus private land, standing behind Idaho sportsmen on the bighorn sheep issue : Candidate’s Comments Cause for Concern –…
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The EPA is considering lowering allowable particulate matter from 150 micrograms per cubic meter to the range of 65 to 85 micrograms. This would be a very good outcome for many reason ranging from health, soil erosion and snow melt runoff. Recently a study implicated dust, primarily from western livestock grazing, as a big cause…
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Jon Marvel sees two ways to get cows and sheep to stop grazing on public lands: Politics and litigation. He chooses the latter. Dennis Higman does a profile on Jon for NewWest. Fortunate for all of us who care about western public lands and wildlife, the degree to which ranchers and their politician lap-dogs whine…
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Don’t worry about the man behind the curtain. In so many ways the issue of brucellosis in bison and elk is similar to the issue of domestic sheep diseases and bighorn except the rationalization for killing wildlife is just the opposite. We now know that domestic sheep are responsible for disease issues in bighorn sheep…
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On the “open range” if you don’t want someone else’s cattle on your property, you have to fence them out! Arizona is rethinking the fairness of this tradition. So are people in other states. Arizona Rethinking Open Range Laws. By Marc Lacey. New York Times. If you hit a black cow in the middle of…
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BLM reviewing sheep allotments within 30 miles of bighorn populations. This is another exposé about the fallout of the Payette bighorn viability decision and the latest science which conclusively shows that domestic sheep diseases kill bighorn sheep. What jumps out at me is the information contained near the bottom of the article which says that…