Threats
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Utah State Government shows its true colors on public lands- A month ago 20 protesters made a camp near PR Springs, high (8000 feet) on the Tavaput Plateau in the Book Cliffs of Eastern Utah. This is oil shale country For almost a century developers have been trying to figure how to extract the low…
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Increase in State-permitted Fur Trapping Leads to Illegal Trapping of Wild Cats BOISE, Idaho— Five conservation groups filed a lawsuit today against the governor of Idaho and other state officials to halt trapping that harms and often kills Canada lynx, one of the rarest cats in the United States. The lawsuit charges Gov. Butch Otter,…
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Bighorn sheep, and much other wildlife will benefit- In a big surprise, including to the now unhappy Idaho congressionals, Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack has told Congress he will close the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station (USSES) near Dubois, Idaho. The station covers 16-thousand acres of summer grazing in the Centennial Mountains — on the Continental Divide…
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Environmental groups have asked a federal court in Montana to stop domestic sheep grazing this summer at the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in southwest Montana. On June 23, 2014, Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians and Gallatin Wildlife Association filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Biological Opinion for…
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Bison allowed to wander Jackson Hole, WY at will- We have written about bison in Wyoming versus inside Montana a number of times, but not for a couple years. Because of the constant public hostility of Montana’s Department of Livestock (the DOL) and the less-than-in-depth reporting by Montana traditional media, folks probably forget that Montana’s…
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There are widely held assumptions that logging will reduce or preclude large wildfires and beetle outbreaks. The recent adoption of the Farm Bill categorical exclusion that will permit logging up to 45 million acres of national forests is based on flawed assumptions about forest health and wildfire. LARGE WILDFIRE CLIMATE DRIVEN Large fires are driven…
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Group asks increase in elk permits so public land cows can continue during drought- Even though cattle graze for just $1.35 an animal unit month (an AUM) on Forest Service land, a group of central Utah livestock operators has asked the Utah Wildlife Board for an increase in elk permits because there isn’t enough forage…
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Land transfer to states would mean less land access for typical American- The idea that the states are really the constitutional, legal, rightful owner of the U.S. public lands is without merit. Origin of U.S. public lands The United States owns 650-million acres of land. That is about 30 per cent of the land area of…
