livestock

  • ABSTRACT: Livestock production occurs in all deserts (except polar deserts). In many desert areas, it is the single most significant human impact. Livestock production includes grazing plants and all associated activities to produce domestic animals. This consists of the dewatering rivers for irrigated forage crops, killing of predators and “pest” species, forage competition between native…

  •   Emigrant Peak and Yellowstone River Valley. Several of the East Paradise Allotments include the Six Mile drainage which lies to the right of the peak in this photo. Photo Georger Wuerthner  The Custer Gallatin National Forest (CGNF) in Montana recently completed an evaluation of six grazing allotments known as the East Paradise allotments. The…

  • Gravelly Range has extensive uplands. Photo by Ralph Maughan The Greenhorn Vegetation Managment plan calls for logging and burning thousands of acres in the spectacular Gravelly Range of Montana, primarily to benefit the local ranchers. The Gravellies occupy the western edge of what is typically recognized as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The Beaverhead Deerlodge National…

  •   The Richfield Ranger District of the Fish Lake National Forest in Utah released its draft reauthorization for grazing the Southern Monroe Mountain allotments in Sevier and Piute Counties. The economic analysis of its reauthorization document is typical of many Forest Service and BLM grazing decisions, whereby the agency emphasizes livestock grazing as an economically…

  • The cost of a hamburger does not reflect the cost of this cowbombed land in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner  Do you know what a Big Mac costs? If you say $4.50 or whatever the current price posted at the McDonald’s restaurant may be, you are vastly under-estimating the real price. That’s…

  • Cattle grazing and production is one of the most destructive of human activities, if a full accounting of all the costs were considered. Photo George Wuerthner I recently received a video titled Audubon Conservation Ranching: Hooves on the Ground, Wings in the Air from the Audubon Society. The video promotes beef production to save grassland…

  •   Concentration of cattle and moving them frequently has been proposed as a means of storing carbon in soils. Like other claims that seem to be too good to be true, such assertions fail to do a full accounting of the carbon cycle. Photo George Wuerthner  A recent New York Times article has latched on…

  • Fleecer Mountain Wildlife Management Area is one of the places MDFWP proposes “emergency livestock grazing.”  The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MDFWP) announced that due to the extreme drought conditions across Montana, it would open up some wildlife management areas (WMA) to livestock grazing and haying. And it will keep any WMA currently…

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