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Cattle grazing Grand Staircase Escalante NM, Utah. Photo by George Wuerthner Livestock production is one of the most ubiquitous human activities around the globe. It is particularly detrimental to arid lands, and much of the western public lands are arid. Typically most livestock advocates, which also includes far too many conservation organizations, focus on one…
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Forest Service using drip torch for prescribed burning. Photo by George Wuerthner There has been a spate of articles in various newspapers and magazines, asserting that if the Forest Service were following burning practices of Indigenous people, the massive wildfires we have seen around the West would be tamed. Here are some representative of…
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is right now* working to remove a wolf or wolves from the Sheepherders Baseball Park or Pitchfork Canyon packs on the Gila National Forest of New Mexico, and it doesn’t make any sense. (Not that public lands ranching ever makes sense.) The permittee gets money under federal livestock programs…
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Guest opinion by Melissa Cain, Bighorn Conservation Director for Western Watersheds Project. Last week, wild bighorn sheep herds in Washington and Oregon have been detected with deadly pneumonia, likely caused by a deadly pathogen spread by domestic sheep grazing on public lands. The bighorn are dying slow and painful deaths because they have no natural…
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We do not want those whose first impulse is to compromise. We want no straddlers, for, in the past, they have surrendered too much good wilderness and primeval areas which should never have been lost. – Bob Marshall on the founding of the Wilderness Society There is an unfortunate tendency on the part…
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It’s been a while since there’s been news about public lands rancher/wolf killer Craig Thiessen from New Mexico. He’s the guy who pleaded guilty to killing a trapped Mexican gray wolf pup (named “Mia Tuk” by an Albuquerque schoolkid) with a shovel in 2015. He got off relatively easy for violating the Endangered Species Act…
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The commentary by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in the October 10th Bozeman Chronicle “Together we can tackle the fire issue” was another example of how the organization sees its role as a shill of the livestock industry. The misinformation presented on sagebrush, juniper, and Doug fir “invasion” in southwest Montana lacks critical scientific expertise and…
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The National Park Service has released its management plan for Agriculture in the Point Reyes National Seashore. That is right—agriculture in a national park system unit. The decision to continue livestock production in Point Reyes National Seashore demonstrates once again why allowing any commercial resource use in our parklands compromises the primary goals of our…
Author
George Wuerthner is an ecologist and writer who has published 38 books on various topics related to environmental and natural history. He has visited over 400 designated wilderness areas and over 200 national park units.