WWPBlog

Zadig at Demarcated Landscapes exclaims “Oops, picked up Range Magazine by mistake.” Zadig thought that when picking up a copy of a local Sierra Club publication, the fall Desert Report (pdf), there might be a reasonable expectation for a non-extractive-industry based point of view. After all, it’s not like the idea is lacking representation in the media throughout the West. Energy spent greenwashing livestock in desert Neveda seems foolish anyway. And besides, another national has that market pretty well locked up. It’s hard to figure out considering the widespread environmental degradation associated with the activity in the arid and semi-arid West - damage which is featured on the Sierra Club’s main website:

Read the rest of this entry »

Western Watersheds Project, along with the Hells Canyon Preservation Council and The Wilderness Society have succesfully protected bighorn sheep in the Payette National forest by preventing the trailing of domestic sheep through the Salmon River Driveway.

Litigation pursued by WWP and partners was succesful in compelling the Forest permittee to truck their sheep to Weiser rather than risk judgement in court.

Trailing would have unduly risked transferring domestic sheep disease to bighorn sheep by exposing the two along Cuddy Mountain near Hells Canyon.

Update:

High Country News has featured the Payette Bighorn legal battle in its most recent issue. The subscription only article sheds some light on the history of Bighorn throughout the West and specifically in Hells Canyon :

At one time, an estimated 10,000 bighorns inhabited nearly 6 million acres of steep canyon walls and rugged high country in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Native people used the sheep for meat, clothing and tools and crafted a small, technologically advanced bow from the horns. The Indians left numerous depictions of bighorn sheep on rock outcroppings; some of these petroglyphs can be seen today along the Snake River.

Their precipitous decline in numbers is widely accepted to result from a pneumonia transmitted from domestic sheep to the Bighorn sheep. But Forest Service’s unwillingness to protect the Bighorn sheep on their own despite the overwhelming science suggests:

“After dealing with this for years, we know that the agency won’t do it unless they are put in a box and slowly submerged in cold water,” says Jon Marvel

It worked - the Bighorns will not be exposed to domestic sheep disease.

The Times-News has published an AP story describing BLM efforts to rehabilitate lands burned by the Murphy Complex-Fire.

As part of the emergency stabilization plan, $473,000 will be spent on so-called “protective fencing” meant to keep livestock out of damaged areas.

In all, the BLM aims to spend more than $9 million on both protective fencing and repairs to permanent fences that divide cattle grazing allotments.

These are fences that obstruct wildlife migration and endanger imperilled sage grouse. All to keep commercial cattle grazing on public land munching away the immediate indigenous seed sources and to keep them from wandering onto burned public land or another permittees public allotment.

Post Fire Terminology and Competitive Appriopriations
Read the rest of this entry »

The Telluride Daily Planet “highlights the changing face of farming and grazing in the West,” i.e. trophy second home-owners using ranching to evade state property taxes. By moving sheep through their vacation properties, landowners are able to enjoy ag taxes:

Gray Head is an enclave for the wealthy elite, 885 acres of luxury homes, private trails and pristine wilderness below Whipple Mountain. But because sheep sometimes graze the property, Gray Head’s homeowners say their land should be taxed as agricultural land, at vanishingly low rates.

Take one empty lot at Gray Head. As ordinary vacant land, its owners would owe $14,391 in property taxes. But as agricultural land, its tax burden would be $51.94 per year. That’s a difference of about 28,000 percent.

Jiminy ! What a steal !

It sure puts that whole lonesome cowboy myth into perspective.

The Bison hunt is about to gear up at the National Elk Refuge in Wyoming. It is an odd arrangement. But the interesting aspect of this article is not that the hunt is on, it’s Barry Reiswig’s, former refuge manager for Fish and Wildlife Service, opinion of the place :

Reiswig, who retired from the Fish and Wildlife Service in June, said he never liked the feeding program but was forced to accept it as a political reality.

“For us to march in and say, ‘We’re going to phase out this feeding program,’ that was not an option,” Reiswig said. “Realistically, in a Western state, given this administration, that’s just not the way this game is played.”

In this game Vice Presidents blow off their friends’ faces while shooting at birds released from cages, affluent folk fly all the way to Wyoming to shoot docile buffalo, and shooting fish in a barrel is considered fair substitute for fair chase.