A Wind developer in southern Idaho has hit a two-year road-block that casts significant doubt on whether the wind project sited in pristine sage grouse habitat along the border of Nevada will ever be developed at all. BLM defers China Mountain decision for two years – Elko Daily Free Press “stupid bird.” We’ve covered the…
“Energy independence” has been the Republican energy policy since 1974- Americans have a bad case of Alzheimer’s when it come to knowledge or remembrance of energy policy. Politicians usually give them a couple shots of rhetorical whiskey to make their memory even worse. This is my effort to help folks remember. Gasoline prices spiked in the United States for the first…
Controversial bill, S1283, dies on a rare tie vote- but S1282, a similar bill, is still alive. There aren’t many Democrats in the Idaho state senate, but all of them joined with about 40 per cent of that body’s Republicans to kill the effort to turn the Land Owner Appreciation law (LAP) into a possible…
Increased Fees to Graze On Public Land Still Doesn’t Cover Costs President Obama’s proposed 2013 budget for the Department of the Interior includes a tiny bit of good news for western public lands: a $1 increase in the fee charged for livestock grazing on Bureau of Land Management lands. The fee, which is required of each public…
NCBA complains about the use of “best available science” and the mandate to protect sensitive species. In a news release published yesterday, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) complained that the new proposed US Forest Planning Rule is too onerous to public lands ranching. In their press release they imply that science does not support…
If you listened to President Obama’s State of the Union Address you may have noticed that the President had some things to say about how this administration values public land: […] I’m directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public lands to power 3 million homes. For groups working to…
Years of legal pressure prompts favorable policy change Public land domestic sheep grazers and bighorn advocates have been clashing for decades over land-use conflicts which place bighorn sheep populations at risk of deadly disease. With the passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012, favorable policy change promises new avenues of conflict resolution that may…
Wolf delisting rider and most of the highly unpopular giveaways to polluters and abusers of our public lands are defeated- The conference report on the 2012 appropriations bill for most non-defense expenditures has been finalized. Instead of merely appropriating more or less money for agencies many ideologically loaded amendments or riders were added, mostly by…