Free Republic

The House Committee on Natural Resources held a legislative hearing on June 15 on HR 3397, sponsored by Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, to require the director of the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw the proposed conservation rule. In her prepared testimony, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem told the committee that nearly 98% of BLM surface lands in South Dakota are grazed by permittees; her state hosts 76 actively producing oil and gas leases that cover 36,762 acres; and the acres managed by the BLM provide recreation opportunities. Noem said the proposed rule overemphasizes conservation rather than the economic needs...

While the bureau put more days on the public comment calendar, the administration still has announced no plans to hold additional meetings. After outcry from Western constituencies and their representatives in Congress, the Bureau of Land Management has extended the public comment period on its proposed public lands rule that threatens to upend those Americans’ way of life. The new rule proposed in March establishes a framework for “conservation leases” elevated over other uses such as mining, grazing, and gas development. The agency guidelines, which were created without a congressional vote, would implement a radical departure from the “multiple use...

A federal judge this week denied a temporary restraining order sought by environmental groups that would block grazing in six eastern Oregon pastures. The Capital Press reports U.S. District Judge Michael Simon said the plaintiffs haven’t shown that turning cattle out on the pastures will cause irreparable harm to sage grouse or to rangeland research. He said continued grazing isn’t likely to irreparably harm the ability of environmental plaintiffs to enjoy undisturbed sagebrush grassland, since the pastures have long been grazed and are rested on a rotating basis. The case was filed against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management by...

This week, a group of men who stood face to face with government agents and refused to back down will find out how many more years of their lives that decision will cost them, as a verdict is expected in their federal trial in Las Vegas. It is the case of United States v. Cliven Bundy, et al. Here's a brief look at how it all began. "Are you really going to shoot these people if they move forward? Yes or no?" Dennis Michael Lynch, a documentary filmmaker, yelled this pivotal question to government agents at a ranch outside Bunkerville,...

Two allotments delayed pending more studies. A coalition of environmental groups have forced public land managers to delay a grazing permit decision on Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Grand Canyon Trust, Western Watershed Project, Wild Earth Guardians, National Resource Defense Council, Wildlands Defense, the Sierra Club and Durango-based Great Old Broads for Wilderness collectively filed a 27-page protest against the proposed Flodine and Yellow Jacket grazing allotments on the monument ... they want the two allotments permanently closed to grazing ... The groups challenged a recent decision plan by the BLM to issue 10-year terms for the allotments, located...

Rep. Rob Bishop has a radical plan for changing public land policy, and it starts with an experiment in his home state of Utah. The Republican is known for shaking things up with his dry sense of humor and occasional belligerence toward Obama administration officials. Easily identified by his three-piece suits and coiffed white hair, the new House Natural Resources Committee chairman is trying to turn his panel from a legislative backwater into a driver of reform. Washington Examiner: With the Land and Water Conservation Fund, I hear a lot about how the states need more control. But how can...

Washington, DC – Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell today issued a Secretarial Order calling for a comprehensive science-based strategy to address the more frequent and intense wildfires that are damaging vital sagebrush landscapes and productive rangelands, particularly in the Great Basin region of Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and California. The strategy will begin to be implemented during the 2015 fire season. Goals include reducing the size, severity and cost of rangeland fires, addressing the spread of cheatgrass and other invasive species, and positioning wildland fire management resources for more effective rangeland fire response. “Targeted action is urgently needed to...

Proposed regulations to guide sheep grazing in the Weminuche Wilderness are so weighty and controversial that the level of environmental examination of the issues is being ramped up a notch. The original Environmental Assessment (EA) of the plan – for which an unusual second public comment period was opened – has been suspended to allow preparation of a more comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Kara Chadwick, recently named supervisor of the San Juan National Forest to replace Mark Stiles, broke the news Thursday in a talk to Club 20. She confirmed it later to The Durango Herald. Chadwick cited heightened...

TWIN FALLS, Idaho — A federal judge dealt another setback to the J.R. Simplot Co. and other ranchers by reaffirming his late-February decision to halt grazing on 17 Bureau of Land Management allotments covering some 450,000 acres in southern Idaho. Western Watersheds Project director Jon Marvel said Winmill's decision will protect thousands of acres of critical sage grouse habitat from livestock grazing. Marvel's group aims to shut down grazing on public land in the West

Richard Cockle/The Oregonian/2008 Ken Brooks, a rancher in Grant County, takes a break from  feeding his cows to discuss a federal judge's decision on  steelhead that he says could force him to cut his herd from  450 cows to 150. JOHN DAY -- Rancher Ken Brooks is standing in his ranch yard near the ghost town of Fox , his eyes sweeping the timber-covered Malheur National Forest that holds the key to his future and that of 18 other Grant County ranching families. "They're all pretty angry," he said. "We're all in the same boat. We're unsure what we're...

A federal judge has sided with managers of northern Wyoming's Bighorn National Forest and against an environmental group that challenged livestock grazing in the forest. Boise-based Western Watersheds Project filed suit over a 2005 revision to the forest management plan... U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer ruled Monday that forest managers did as the law required -- they took a "hard look" at the environmental consequences of the forest plan.

Have you ever noticed that herds of grazing animals all face the same way?Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction. Wild deer also display this behaviour - a phenomenon that has apparently gone unnoticed by herdsmen and hunters for thousands of years.

The compensatory ruling from the Court of Claims in the Fifth Amendment Takings case of grazer Wayne Hage was finaly handed down after 17 years. Hage's heirs were awarded $4,220,431.20 plus interest from time of Takings plus attorney costs. Property takings on so called federal land included: improvements of springs and wells; water use rights; roads; fences; irrigation ditches. Takings for cattle impoundment and taking of the "entire ranch" were denied. The 18 page ruling should be posted on the Stewards of the Range website soon. https://www.stewards.us/

The Forest Service says it's trying to protect resources by ordering a 30 percent reduction in cattle grazing on grasslands in southwestern North Dakota. Some ranchers were surprised by the order. Doug Pope is the president of the Little Missouri Grazing Association. He says the Medora District has had more than 4 inches of rain this spring. He says a lot of people thought Forest Service letter ordering the cuts was unwarranted. The Forest Service manages grazing on about 1 million public acres on the National Grasslands. Ron Jablonski is the Forest Service ranger for the Medora District. He says...

Boise, Idaho (AP) -- A judge on Friday blocked new rules governing how ranchers use 160 million acres of federal land, saying a federal agency had given in to pressure from the livestock industry. The Bureau of Land Management violated the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in creating the rules, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled. The judge said the BLM's rule revisions would have loosened restrictions on grazing on public land nationwide, limited the amount of public comment the BLM had to consider and diluted the BLM's...

Could a graze on the head help cure baldness? Biologists had thought that once mammals lose their hair follicles, they are gone forever. Now George Cotsarelis at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and his colleagues have shown that adult mice can regenerate follicles when their skin is wounded.

WASHINGTON - Federal officials are investigating how National Archives documents of interest to Indians suing the Interior Department were found discarded in a trash bin and a wastebasket. The discovery came to light on Sept. 1, when Archives staff noticed federal records in one of the trash bins behind the National Archives Building near the Capitol. They notified the Archives' inspector general, Paul Brachfeld, whose staff recovered the documents. They found at least a portion of the documents were Bureau of Indian Affairs records dating to the 1950s, according to Jason Baron of the Archives' Office of General Counsel, in...

PHILADELPHIA - How's this for a breath of fresh air? Barbaro is enjoying daily outings outside his intensive care stall to pick his own grass, enjoy the warm weather and stretch his recovering legs. Barbaro stepped outside his ICU stall and started daily walks on a grassy area near the unit last week for the first time since having catastrophic injuries in the Preakness nearly three months ago. The Kentucky Derby winner, also recovering from a severe case of laminitis on his left hoof, continues to show signs he's on the road to recovery. "It's a big step just to...

Sheep don't mix well with grizzly bears and wolves. Now they won't mix at all on more than 70,000 acres in the Absaroka-Beartooth wilderness. A 74,000-acre sheep grazing allotment south of Big Timber in the Gallatin National Forest has been permanently closed and the ranchers who used it for generations have been paid to move their sheep elsewhere... The agreement is the eighth -- and second-largest -- in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem in recent years that has led to the retirement of about 300,000 acres from grazing. The latest involves the Ash Mountain and Iron Mountain allotments used for generations...

WASHINGTON — Federal agencies spend at least $123 million a year to keep public lands open to livestock grazing, according to a government report that environmentalists say bolsters their argument that grazing should be limited. "If we are going to allow grazing on our public lands, the very least we should be doing is we should be recovering the costs," said Greta Anderson, a Tucson, Ariz., botanist and the range restoration campaign coordinator for the Center for Biological Diversity. Jim Hughes, deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management -- which, with the Forest Service, manages 98 percent of grazing...