The Administration’s earlier attempt to revise the rules for national forest planning were quickly shot down by a federal court because they made the forest plans no longer subject to serious public comment and attempted to avoid NEPA for what had been the guiding document as to how a national forest would be managed for…
This is the time to contact Governor Schweitzer asking for bison habitat, especially since Republican Montana congressman Dennis Rehburg shot down an effort in Congress to provide it. I’d think the Democratic governor would want to knock of this obstreperous retrograde Republican holdover. _________________ Here is the BFC update. In this issue: * Update from…
Barker blogs about the history of the general area burned in the giant Murphy Fire complex and the personalities involved. He has written a lot about fires, beginning with his coverage of 1988 Yellowstone Park fires and living through the firestorm that blew through Old Faithful that year. In 2005 his book Scorched Earth: How…
On July 6, the US Fish and Wildlife Service will publish a new proposed rule 10j in the Federal Register, that will make it every easy for state agencies and even private persons to kill wolves even without them being delisted. They won’t have to scientifically prove that wolves are depleting elk herds, essentially they…
It is a bacteria called mycoplasma ovipneumoniae. It is apparently common in domestic sheep and goats, but easily causes fatal pneumonia in bighorn sheep. Story Organism ID’d That May Be Killing Bighorn Sheep. By Keith Ridgler. AP. (as printed in the Seattle Post Intelligencer). “All indications are that the domestics are passing diseases and killing…
-Important update. See the June 12 story on bison- I don’t like to step on the story that federal Judge Winmill just overturned Bush’s bastardized BLM rules because it is the more important story, but folks will probably be more likely to read that Montana has doublecrossed folks and captured the bison and sent the…
They haven’t found any reason why the cattle at Bridger, Montana turned up with brucellosis. They know it wasn’t bison. But, they can’t just let scientific investigation run its course. They have to kill something. So tomorrow they will be rounding up the approximately 250 bison that keep leaving Yellowstone Park to feast on the…
Instead of going along with this, hopefully the next Administration will charge Montana DOL with a criminal offense when they invade Yellowstone Park this way. They should be charged with the felony, not the BFC volunteers. The DOL thugs should remember the way Congress changed in 2006. There will be a new President in 2008.…
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.