The Wildlife News

Grazing and Livestock

  • Help Stop the Entrenchment of Public Lands Livestock Grazing!

    Ken Cole

    Two-hundred and fifty million acres of public lands need your help.  The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resourcesis poised to move the so-calledGrazing Improvement Act of 2013 (S. 258) out to the floor, legitimizing this bad idea that is nothing more than an attempt to exclude conservation interests from public lands grazing management. If enacted, this…

  • Second Case of Brucellosis Found in Montana Cattle. Not the End of the World.

    Ken Cole

    A second case of brucellosis has been found in cattle in the brucellosis surveillance zone near the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) in Montana. This has prompted Texas to ask for further testing of cattle that are exported from the area to be tested once they arrive in the the state. It’s not as big of…

  • BLM Public Lands Grazing Accounts for Only 0.41% of Nation’s Livestock Receipts

    Ken Cole

    The recently released Department of Interior Fiscal Year 2012 Economic Report shows that Grazing on BLM Public Lands Accounts for only 0.41% of the nation’s livestock receipts and only 17,000 jobs.  In contrast, recreation accounts for 372,000 jobs and contributes $45 billion to the economy. According to the report, the BLM permits 12.4 million animal unit…

  • Sage Grouse, Livestock Grazing, and the Bovine Curtain

    George Wuerthner

    There is a lot in the news about the potential listing of sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act. Western politicians are using heated rhetoric about how a listing would destroy their economies, and the “western way of life” (read death and destruction to native wildlife). And in good western tradition, they blame the federal…

  • BLM Abuse of its Public Trust Duty – Conservationists Win Duck Creek Case

    Ken Cole

    Western Watersheds Project and Wild Utah Project had a significant win this week on the Duck Creek allotment of Utah.  In the longest running administrative grazing appeal hearing in the history of the Department of the Interior, including 12 weeks of hearings and a record of 15,000 pages, WWP demonstrated that BLM’s rangeland health assessments…

  • How Grazing Reform in the Owyhees and Protections for Sage Grouse are Being Politically Undermined

    Ken Cole

    The month of March was an active month for sage grouse. Not only have sage grouse started to assemble on their strutting grounds known as leks due to the abnormally warm start of the month but the season for strutting has begun Washington D.C. and Boise, Idaho and other areas in western states. On March…

  • More about “encroaching” junipers on Juniper Mountain.

    Ken Cole

    In yesterday’s post about the Owyhee “Group 1” grazing decision we discussed the NRCS Ecological Site Descriptions for Juniper Mountain that inaccurately describe the vegetation and magically discount the native juniper forests that exist there.    In the Environmental Assessment the BLM states: “Ecological site descriptions for Castlehead-Lambert allotment do not identify the presence of juniper…

  • Sage Grouse Pushed Two More Steps Toward Endangered Species Act Protection by Nevada.

    Ken Cole

    With the firing of Nevada Department of Wildlife chief, Ken Mayer and massive sagebrush suppression projects –in place of grazing reductions – by the BLM, sage grouse are headed toward trouble in Nevada. A behind the scenes battle has taken place between many competing forces like Nevada Department of Wildlife, BLM, Nevada Department of Conservation…

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‎”At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour.”

Edward Abbey

“The continued existence of wildlife and wilderness is important to the quality of life of humans.”

Jim Fowler

“Our forests offer much more than just beautiful landscapes and wildlife. Each one has a different story to tell.”

Raveena Tandon

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