Threats
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“KT” has posted several times about slickspot peppergrass. I suppose some politicians guffaw when it is mentioned (names that sound unusual are not worth conserving, I suppose). Today the Western Watersheds Project website put up a good photo essay on slickspot peppergrass and the way the BLM lets it get ruined.
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The power to condemn private property in the public interest (with just compensation, of course) is a fundamental power of government. Some states, including especially Wyoming, have actually allowed this fundamental power to be exercised by private entities, organizations that may very well not have the interest of the citizens of the state in mind.…
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This is about one of those places in Wyoming that is wonderful, and being destroyed by the gas industry, while Governor Freudenthal diverts attention to 150 or so wolves that wander a small part of the state near Yellowstone. A wide-eyed view of the Red Desert. If more people see it, naturalist contends, they will…
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Here is the story by Whitney Royster. It is isn’t just deer/vehicle collisions.
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More bad news from Wyoming. Chronic Wasting Disease (“mad elk” and “mad deer” disease) has spread further in the state. Fortunately, it was not detected moving further west this year – toward the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Story in the Casper Star Tribune. By Brodie Farquhar.
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A number of the thermal vents in Yellowstone release high levels of carbon dioxide, the very gas that is building up in our atmosphere. Carbon dixoide is a crucial element for photosynthesis, and some have argued that the growing levels of this gas will make the world greener, better. Unfortunately they tend to work for…
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Most listings nowadays, and in the past, have come from conservation groups forcing the species onto the “list,” but in an unusual move the Bush Administration has proposed listing the polar bear, which is suffering the effects of warming in the Arctic. That melts the ice the bears need to hunt from. The polar bear…
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I posted this article as part of a comment yesterday, but it deserves its own post. The natural gas industry is the major threat to elk and deer in Wyoming (and, of course, chronic wasting disease). I have always thought the state’s anti-wolf rhetoric was mostly designed to divert attention away from the industialization of…