Sage Grouse

  • Western Watersheds Project Litigates 145,000 Acre Vegetation Treatment Project in Nevada

    Ken Cole

    In early June, Katie Fite and I visited southeast Nevada to examine the results of past vegetation treatments meant to “restore” sage grouse habitat in the Schell Field Office of the Ely District BLM. What we found was quite astonishing. Rather than restoring sage grouse habitat, the BLM targeted the best sage grouse habitat, near…

  • Idaho ranchers want more taxpayer money for grazing “studies”

    Ken Cole

    While Idaho taxpayers are facing budget cuts to public education and health care, ranchers are busy writing self-serving bills to provide money for “studies” that will paper over destructive impacts of livestock grazing on sage grouse. Last year saw thousands of people marching on the grounds of the Idaho Capital in Boise. People were marching…

  • SAGE GROUSE: PROXIMATE AND ULTIMATE CAUSES

    George Wuerthner

    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…

  • BLM Protections for Sage Grouse may not hit the ground for 10, possibly 20 years.

    Ken Cole

    Resource Management Plans Won’t Affect Already Permitted Activities With a decision by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) about whether sage grouse should receive Endangered Species Act protection due by 2015, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has begun a process to revise the Resource Management Plans (RMP’s) which dictate how resources are managed…

  • Collaboration, Idaho Style

    Ken Cole

    Extractive Industry Determines the Fate of Sage Grouse in Idaho. On Monday, March 12, 2011, the Idaho Governor Butch Otter’s Sage Grouse Task Force had its first formal meeting. Originally the meeting was to be organized by the Idaho Governor’s Office of Species Conservation (OSC) but something happened and rather than have OSC organize the…

  • The Cowboy Plan to Save Sage Grouse….. Making Things Worse

    Ken Cole

    On December 1st, at a presentation given by Bob Budd about the Wyoming Core Habitat Plan for sage grouse, it was pretty obvious that the livestock industry has things pretty much locked up with the agencies and politicians. The presentation was given in one of the big, new hearing rooms in the basement of the…

  • Sage Grouse hunting in decline for similar reasons as elk declines

    Ken Cole

    The sage grouse population of Idaho has been in steep decline for years. It is now getting to the point where hunting has declined to a one-week season where hunters are limited to one bird a day. It seems a bit odd to me that there isn’t more outrage by the hunting community over this…

  • Judge overturns BLM grazing decision

    Ken Cole

    This is what WWP calls “low hanging fruit” For the last several years I have been appealing grazing decision issued by the Ely District of the BLM and, over and over again, the District only considers alternatives which maintain the status quo even when they have identified problems on the allotments that are either caused…

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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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