Federal Court Decision Holds That Protecting Sage-Grouse Must Take Priority Over Livestock Grazing in Owyhee Canyonlands and beyond in Southwest Idaho Early last week the federal district court of Idaho affirmed Western Watersheds Project’s challenge to five Bureau of Land Management (BLM) grazing decisions in southwest Idaho’s Owyhee Canyonlands that harmed Greater sage-grouse. Judge rules…
Western Watersheds Project wins initial court victory Western Watersheds Project (WWP) has won a federal court order overturning the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Resource Management Plans (RMPs) for the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho and the Pinedale Field Office in Wyoming. These two plans affect management on over 2.5…
The National Wildlife Federation published a report demonstrating that Pronghorn and Mule Deer look to be in appreciable decline in Wyoming and Colorado. Looks like Sage-grouse are plummeting as well. Habitat concerns, as well as Oil & Gas impacts, look to be among the culprits but I find it particularly interesting that the report does…
Recently, Western Watersheds Project won a court victory halting corporate livestock ranching on 450,000 acres on the Jarbidge Field Office, BLM in southern Idaho. It was a sweet victory for sage grouse, wildlife, and other environmental values in southern Idaho – but it may or may not be short-lived. Later this month, the Idaho U.S.…
The list of species the federal government has been more or less forced to consider for ESA protection has been growing longer and longer over the years, and yet it acts very slowly, complaining that species are being added at too fast a rate. Much of the agency’s tiny budget was eaten up responding to…
I’m heading back home from a fruitless mission to find sign of sage grouse near leks (strutting grounds) along the Owyhee Front near Murphy, Idaho. We didn’t find any sign at all and fear that they are blinking out in this once productive stronghold. We did find these dead coyotes though. There were actually 5…
Meltwater Stonefly (Lednia tumana) The Meltwater Stonefly, an aquatic insect scientists consider can be “ideal early warning indicators of climate warming in mountain ecosystems” is the latest in the long list of species abandoned by the Obama Administration using the “Warranted But Precluded” determination to deny meaningful protections under the Endangered Species Act. Rare fly won’t…
Last week I went out with a co-worker to check out what was going on in the Jarbidge Field Office where Western Watersheds Project has won a court victory that ends corporate ranching on 450,000 acres of public land. When we arrived we found cattle on several of the allotments even though the injunction is…