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This past winter, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began preparing two Environmental Impact Statements to review the environmental of consequences creating a region-wide series of “fuel breaks” that will add thousands of miles of new linear non-sagebrush habitat across the Great Basin portion of Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and Utah. The goal of fuel breaks…
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In a March 26th Times News article, Karen Launchbaugh, a University of Idaho range professor, propagandized misleading ideas about livestock grazing. Like nearly all range professor, Ms. Launchbaugh, sees her job as promoting livestock grazing. I know because I studied range management both as an undergraduate and in grad school, so familiar with the emphasis…
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The Idaho BLM is proposing to remove juniper from over 600,000 acres of land in the Owyhee River area of southern Idaho ostensibly to benefit nesting sage grouse. Sage grouse avoid treed areas, so the idea is to cut down juniper to increase sage grouse habitat quality. While there is no doubt from the literature…
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The headline in a recent Capital Press article proclaims that “Preliminary data shows cattle, sage grouse can coexist”. http://www.capitalpress.com/Livestock/20171016/study-preliminary-data-show-cattle-sage-grouse-can-coexist The article then goes on to quote various researchers who are at the beginning of a ten-year study. According to the article, grazing allotments were grazed according to traditional patterns for two years, then the…
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Dear Tom I see that you are planning an article in Montana Outdoors on “green grazing”. Without having read the piece, I can say that it will perpetuate the myth of “well managed” grazing. For every example of “green grazing out there I can show you 100 examples of where livestock production is destroying and…
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Tom Sawyer would be proud of the “progressive” livestock producers who “love” predators. These ranchers are continuously held up as a “win-win demonstrations” by collaborating so-called conservation groups who promote these operations as examples of how wildlife and ranching can co-exist. You know the names, in part, because there are so few of them around…
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The Department of Interior recently released its Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy whose goal is to reduce range fires in sagebrush ecosystems critical to sage grouse. The plan correctly identifies that cheatgrass is a major threat to the bird, as well as the sagebrush ecosystems. Cheatgrass is an exotic annual plant that greens up early,…
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Here is a positive editorial authored by Ted Koch, US Fish and Wildlife Service Nevada Field Supervisor and signed by three other state US Fish and Wildlife Service managers that recently appeared in the Elko Daily Free Press apparently in response to an editorial I wrote about how livestock grazing was harmful to sage grouse…
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.