cows
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Caption: Above Cheatgrass invades fuel break cleared along road in Oregon. Bottom: Fuel break created in Idaho’s Snake River Plain. Photos by George Wuerthner The Department of Interior released a final decision to created 11,000 miles of linear cheatgrass corridors, which they are euphemistically calling “fuel breaks.” Think about that figure. Eleven thousand miles is…
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Recently Nevada Bureau of Land Management (BLM) State Director Jon Raby suggested that the agency will try “targeted grazing” among other methods to reduce wildfires in the sagebrush ecosystem. Raby says the BLM is implementing this action “because of the threat of annual invasive grasses, specifically cheatgrass, play in altering fire regime conditions that intensify…
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COWSPIRACY: THE SUSTAINABILITY SECRET VIDEO HITS A HOME RUN I recently had the pleasure of viewing new video of Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret. The basic question these two film makers ask is why the contribution of livestock to ecosystem degradation is missing from the world’s environmental agenda. To find the answer…
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SAGE GROUSE: PROXIMATE AND ULTIMATE CAUSES When I was in college, one of my favorite courses was animal behavior. One of the more memorable lessons I learned was the difference between proximate and ultimate causes of behavior. Proximate and ultimate causes of events are important to distinguish. For instance, say a researcher finds that sedimentation…
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With severe drought gripping much of the Mid-West and West, the federal government is promising relief from this “natural disaster” for agricultural producers. Soon federal funds will be flowing for “disaster relief” in the farm belt. Already farmers are permitted to graze and hay Conservation Reserve Program lands which are supposed to be, among other…
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Unprovoked attack leaves grandma dead while protecting one year old grandson- I wonder if the cows will be showing up at bus stops sizing up which children (or seniors) they can stomp to death 😉 For sure, cows kills far more people than wolves do. Maybe shelters should be built for the children. Family says…
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Global Warming, Western Ranching, and the Bovine Curtain. This is from the WWP blog linking to an opinion by George Wuerthner as to how cattle contribute mightily to global climate change. Just like the old Iron Curtain that squelched any critical discussion of Communism’s failures, we in the West live behind a “Bovine Curtain.” The…
