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Oregon Congressman’s Greg Walden’s (other western legislators also are sponsors) support of the so-called Resilient Federal Forests Act is based on faulty assumptions. The Resilient Federal Forests Act will actually decrease forest resilience. Here’s a link to Walden’s position on the Act. Here’s just a few of the problems. Walden asserts that if beetles, and…
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As much as 700,000 acres in and adjacent to the new designated wildernesses could possibly be retired from livestock grazing- Many people are celebrating the establishment of the three new wilderness areas in the Boulder and White Clouds mountains of south central Idaho. About 275,000 acres of very scenic mountain ridges with alpine and sub-alpine lakes…
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The article below has many important points from the Antiplanner that I believe are quite accurate. The FS spends almost a thousand dollars per acre trying to control fires. This is due to the absolutely insane response of the agency to fire. First, most fires self extinguish without any control, yet we waste money jumping…
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NEWS RELEASE Western Watersheds Project Lander, WY – The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality has revised the state’s water quality standards on 76 percent of the state’s stream mileage to allow five times more fecal coliform bacteria in the water. The new standards allow 630 colony-forming units of Escherichia coli (“E. coli”) per 100 milliliters of…
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Idaho Wildlife Services recently made public an Environmental Assessment (“EA”) supposedly analyzing statewide predator damage and conflict management. However, wolves are notably absent from the 273-page document. Wildlife Services’ recent killing of five wolves in central Idaho—in addition to previous killings of six in response to livestock depredation and 19 to boost elk populations in…
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Huge Nevada monument riles Republican extremists- President Obama has added over a million acres to the national parks system by designating three new national monuments on U.S. public lands. They are in Texas, California, and Nevada. They are Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, 331,000 acres in Northern California, Waco Mammoth National Monument in Texas and the big (704,000…
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News came out last week that taxpayer-funded and woefully misnamed Wildlife Services killed five wild wolves in central Idaho for alleged livestock depredation—another in a long line of such wolf-killing actions by this secretive government agency. Wildlife Services, which Congressman Peter DeFazio calls “one of the most opaque and least accountable agencies” in the federal government,…
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Scoflaw ranchers turn out livestock on parched public lands- Battle Mountain, Nevada – Following in Cliven Bundy’s lead, ranchers in Battle Mountain, Nevada have defied drought closure orders and yesterday turned livestock onto the North Buffalo allotment managed by the Battle Mountain District of the Bureau of Land Management. Despite ongoing good faith negotiations by the agency and…
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.