Free Republic

Congress is considering permanent protection for 26 million acres of beautiful and historic landscapes in the American West, but has quietly excluded millions of acres of California desert. In a system that would rival the national parks and forests, the National Landscape Conservation Act would unify the management and funding for areas such as the original Pony Express National Historic Trail, Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, a million acres of Alaskan caribou calving grounds, 38 wild rivers, Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and a tiny ghost town near the Mexican border. But more than half of the 10.6 million-acre...

Wolves, wolf-hybrids suspected culprits in bloody predations... his herd of 700 sheep. But something had gotten there before him. Everywhere he looked, it seemed, there was a sheep that had been attacked and bloodied. "It was terrible," he said. "Some of them just had a chunk of flesh tore out, in some cases clear to the bone, the size of an orange. A few were bit in the neck." A few of the sheep could be doctored, but many of them died... of the 60 that were attacked, 21 died and 39 were injured. On top of that, the percentage...