Oregon
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Recently I drove up the Lostine River corridor and hiked the trail in the Eaglecap Wilderness giving me a good opportunity to review a Forest Service proposal to log the river corridor. The agency is using a stealth method of approving the proposed logging called a “Categorical Exclusion”. The CE allows the FS to proceed…
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One result of the Bundy Gang take-over has been the abundant media attention to their assertions of government “overreach” and “aggressive enforcement“ of environmental regulations that, according to Bundy and Gang, has driven ranchers, miners, and loggers from the land. Unfortunately the media have been slow to counter such assertions. The reality on the ground…
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This fire was started just a few days ago (Aug 6), in mountains east of obscure Denio Junction in Nevada — the Trout Creek Mountains. It quickly spread north into Oregon, southward and eastward. Now it is over 270,000 acres, and a major source of interstate smoke. These are dry, mostly sagebrush and grass covered…
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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against the many wolf advocacy groups who held that Congressman Mike Simpson’s and Senator Jon Tester’s budget rider, which delisted wolves in Idaho, Montana, and parts of Oregon, Washington, and Utah, was unconstitutional. The panel of judges upheld Judge Donald Mollloy’s ruling that the rider was constitutional.…
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Snake River Pack? Although the wolf population in Oregon took a dip this year, packs continue to proliferate. Sneakcat reports one more pack* has been discovered and it has a pup. The pack is near Idaho close to and adjacent to the Snake River (the Idaho/Oregon border). According its tracks, it has at least 5…
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Demise of the Imnaha Pack is hardly the end of wolves in Oregon- Sneakcat has a story on this cheerful news. The Ochoco Mountains cover a large expanse of northcentral Oregon. They are not very high, but sprawl over a big area with many small drainages and only few well known points of tourist attraction…
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The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has issued a kill order for the alpha male and the uncollared subadult wolf from the Imnaha Pack of wolves in eastern Oregon’s Wallowa County. The Imnaha Pack is the state’s first and the only breeding pack this year and, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, consists of…
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A cement plant in a sparsely inhabited part of Oregon produces massive amounts of neurotoxic mercury. Idaho’s Simpson wants to give them a free pass to pollute Idaho- Mercury is not an unavoidable contaminant of cement. However, the deposit near Durkee, Oregon contains a very high level. Durkee, Oregon itself is a bit of nothing…