Threats
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Some time ago, this web site posted the opinion of public lands rancher and state legislator Bert Brackett on the Murphy fire complex. Here again is Brackett’s opinion. Failed policy based on flawed science has gotten us here. Guest opinion in the Idaho Statesman. Brackett blamed the Western Watersheds Project because it won a lawsuit…
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The judge ruled Wyoming’s program to test elk for brucellosis before they enter a winter feedlot (and kill the elk if it tests positive for brucellosis anti-bodies) was not an arbitrary and capricious decision. Indeed that legal standard is a high bar (that a government program is arbitrary and capricious). Livestock groups were happy because…
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The Salt Lake Tribune has an editorial today against the 1872 general mining law, which has endured attempts to reform it since the 19th century. Its harmful consequences to our public lands is increasing because of the recent rush to stake new uranium and other “hard rocks” claims. These minerals are basically given away free…
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Western Watersheds Blog has located the news the Secretary Dirk Kempthone and his “new honest” Department of Interior has just approved regulations that make the stip mining in Appalachia even worse.
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This dovetails nicely with the story previous about Mark Rey. The Associated Press reports “The Bush administration violated federal law by missing deadlines to produce a study on the impact of global warming, now as much as two years overdue, and must issue a summary by March, a federal judge ruled. Judge Saundra B. Armstrong…
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Gov to [gas and oil] industry: Back wildlife efforts. By Dustin Bleizeffer. Casper Star-Tribune energy reporter. post 1490
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Gonzaga University biology professors Julie Beckstead and David L. Boose were recently awarded $247,000 in federal grants for a three-year study on pyrenophora semeniperda, a fungus that attacks the seeds of cheatgrass. Something like this could save the rangelands of the West. Story in the New York Times. Associated Press.
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While cheatgrass arrived in the West as an accident, African Buffelgrass was deliberately planted. It has changed the fire ecology of the Sonorian desert and has even become a severe fire threat inside cities such as Tuscon, AZ. “Buffelgrass is like taking a kiddie pool, filling it with gas, and putting it in your front…