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It’s been a month-and-a-half since occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon ended. Most of the Malheur occupiers and many of those who planned and directed the earlier 2014 standoff with federal personnel at the Bundy Ranch near Mesquite, Nevada, are now in prison waiting trial. What kind of activists were the…
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Climate change and genetic isolation threaten famously tough predator- MISSOULA, Mont.— Describing the wolverine as a “snow-dependent species standing squarely in the path of global climate change,” a federal judge today overturned an August 2014 decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refusing to grant this rare and elusive species any protection under the…
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Boise, IDAHO – Conservation groups voluntarily dismissed their lawsuit against high-elevation domestic sheep grazing in the “Summer West Range of Centennial Mountains because the government has agreed not to graze again until it completes a full environmental review of the potential impacts of the activity. It has previously committed not to grazing in Summer East Range or on an adjacent Forest Service…
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Up to 900 to soon die- Today the annual cull of Yellowstone bison got underway. It is plenty contentious. I have been ranting about this nearly annual slaughter since 1996 on The Wildlife News and its previous incarnations. In recent years it has been mostly out of sight just north of the Park’s northern boundary.…
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Effort to turn ranchers into scofflaws nets just one so far- Ammon Bundy has been trying to recruit livestock operators who have grazing permits on U.S. public lands to stop paying the rental (grazing fees) for their grazing allotment. He finally recruited one, or at least one showed up Saturday to renounce paying his grazing…
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Judge Rejects State’s Attempts to Avoid Responsibility VICTOR, Idaho— A federal judge today ordered Idaho officials to develop trapping restrictions that prevent protected Canada lynx — one of the rarest cats in the United States — from being illegally hurt or killed across more than 20,000 square miles of the state’s Panhandle and Clearwater regions.…
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2015 mortality figure casts a dark shadow on wisdom of delisting- Early 2016 is expected to be the time when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service once again proposes delisting the grizzly bear in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem (GYE) in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Back in 2007 the Yellowstone grizzly was actually delisted, but a federal district…
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News release. 12/21/15 Court rejects indiscriminate wolf killing- Olympia, WA. In response to a challenge brought by a coalition of conservation organizations, a federal court rejected plans to escalate cruel wolf killing in Washington state by the secretive federal program dubbed “Wildlife Services.” Federal District Judge Robert Bryan held that Wildlife Services should have prepared a…
Author
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.