Whatever happened to the vaunted new May 15 tolerance date? Supposedly it would be different this spring. Bison would allowed to migrate out of the Park and onto Horse Butte free from harassment until at least May 15. The reality is pretty much like recent years. Brutal Montana Department of Livestock agents and Yellowstone Park…
Is SB1175 a way to stall so that “research” can be done? More bighorn ‘the Earth is flat’ madness : Otter must decide bighorn issue by Saturday – Rocky Barker – Letters from the West, Idaho Statesman What he and other sheep ranchers really want is more research to determine not only if disease is spread from…
A sad fact is that public land livestock grazing is so pervasive out west (around 300 million acres of public land) that most people have become accustomed to the image of livestock degraded landscapes and have little idea what might be. Recently, WWP received a report dated July 18, 2007 from the Idaho Department of…
Mark Salvo and Andy Kerr write about the voluntary grazing buy-outs included in the recent Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, and how these “win/win” solutions could become a more generalized tool across western public lands to resolve often contentious resource conflicts. Ranchers now have a way out – High Country News, Writers on…
A Review of Idaho Senate Bill 1124 Earlier I wrote about a member of the Idaho legislator and livestock rancher, Monty Pearce, who has recently taken aim at bighorn sheep conservation and restoration efforts in response to a sheepman’s call for special treatment from the Idaho legislature. This after the Payette National Forest’s proposal to drastically reduce his…
Sheep Ranchers Claim Paying Minimum Wage to Workers Would Put them Out of Business. This is an important article : In Loneliness, Immigrants Tend the Flock – The New York Times * Also, check out Captive Labor. Environmental Costs Domestic sheep ranching on public land is subsidized in many ways – environmental costs associated with…
Your Comments Are Needed by March 3, 2009! Wild bighorn sheep are native to North America, and once numbered in the millions. But their numbers have drastically declined to just a few thousand. The biggest threat wild bighorns face is disease from domestic sheep. Most experts agree that when wild and domestic sheep come into…
Elimination/Reduction of Beef in your diet remains among the most potent personal choices you can make to help preserve our natural world Hamburgers are the Hummers of Food in Global Warming: Scientists – CommonDreams.org Buying local meat and produce will not have nearly the same effect, he cautioned. That’s because only five percent of the…
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.