Free Republic

A question must seriously be asked whether Jared Polis is interested in governing all of Colorado, or just the narrow strip that contains the vast majority of the state’s population. Polis has repeatedly angered the small band of hardy farmers and ranchers that make up Colorado’s second-largest industry by his insensitive slights and tone-deaf insults. It’s as if the governor pays lip service to agriculture one day and then slaps it in the face the next. Case in point: In February Polis ignored the recommendations of his own Department of Agriculture and appointed yet another animal welfare extremist to a...

The coal plant is closing, along with the mine that feeds it and has nearly 115 more employees, and all the workers will lose their jobs over the next decade ... The same scenario is playing out in other small towns across the U.S. After decades of relying on coal for their workforce, tax base and way of life, the towns face uncertain futures as new state and national legislation forces the retirement of fossil fuels ... The impact spreads beyond the plants workers and is felt by the rest of the community, too. In Craig, much of the infrastructure...

Controversial appointee accuses ranchers of ‘scam’ in recent wolf kills.. For a day and a half, county officials, policy experts and politicians discussed the challenges unique to rural Colorado, but the most satisfying moment for most attendees came at the very end. The annual Voices of Rural Colorado Conference returned after a one-year COVID-19 hiatus, hosted by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce. The conference is a joint effort by Action 22, Pro 15 and Club 20, organizations that represent the interests of 59 of Colorado’s 64 counties. The 2022 conference covered such things as affordable housing, higher education, energy...

Attacks on cattle and dogs by wolves that migrated into northwest Colorado from Wyoming have stoked a rancher-wolf controversy sooner than expected. Don Gittleson woke up Wednesday morning to a sight that’s starting to feel common on his North Park ranch: a cow torn up by wolves, the third attack on his livestock since a few days before Christmas. If this were Montana, Wyoming or Idaho, Gittleson could pull out a gun and shoot the predator dead. But this is Colorado. Wolves in Colorado are protected under state law. Killing them – no matter how many cows or sheep or...

A confirmed wolf kill was discovered near Walden, Colo., the home of one of Colorado’s wolf packs. An approximately 500 pound purebred replacement heifer was found dead after being attacked and eaten by this pack of wolves. This is the first confirmed wolf kill of livestock in Colorado in over 70 years. In early 2021, Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirmed the existence of this pack in north central Colorado; however, individual wolves have been sited in the area previous to the pack confirmation. Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials are working closely with the livestock producer to learn as much from...

Landlord groups are suing the Biden administration for extending the pandemic eviction moratorium from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, claiming the new order can only be extended by new legislation, as ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Alabama and Georgia associations of Realtors filed an emergency motion Wednesday night with Judge Dabney Friedrich of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asking her to enforce the Supreme Court's recent order stating that the CDC could not extend the moratorium without new legislation. The Alabama Association of Realtors said the CDC issued the new order "for...

Sioux Falls, South Dakota; : A third-generation farmer filed a lawsuit today against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is unlawfully preventing him from farming one of his fields. In 2011, a division of the Department of Agriculture ruled that a small seasonal mud puddle on Arlen Foster’s farm is protected by federal law as a wetland. Even though the federal government has no authority to regulate such puddles, the department is forcing Foster to choose between productively using his field or participating in federal programs for farmers, like crop insurance. “The government lacks the authority to insist that he...

Bill Clinton’s land management rules and other liberal policies paved the way for future debilitating wildfires ... Zybach warned of potential disastrous wildfires shortly after Clinton signed a slate of rules in the mid-1990s that drastically reduced logging and road creation on federal lands. ... Shortly before leaving office in 2001, Clinton limited the ability of the United States Forest Service to thin out a dense thicket of foliage and downed trees on federal land... created a ticking time bomb ... “If you don’t start managing these forests, then they are going to start burning up. Thirty years later, they...

Funny how the environmental objectives of the "Save the Planet from the Flying Global Warming Monster" squad and that of Marxism line up so neatly. Of course you shouldn't have personal autonomy or private property. It's bad for the 'planet'. And by the planet, we mean the red planet. So it's no surprise that The Nation, where the synergy of the red and the green meet, should roll out a story like this, "If we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate change, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership." ... And give up...

Colorado has a bear problem. Pure and simple, we have too many bears.. When I was a kid growing up .. my brother and I spent a lot of time in the woods. We were hiking, backpacking, exploring, hunting and climbing around all the time in the high country. Never once did we see a bear. I clearly recall the first time I ever saw a bear in the woods, and I was 31 years old, in 1993. Not too long after that, I took over the outfitting permits in Marble, Colorado, and I remember one day when I saw...

U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) sent a letter to Bank of the West President and Chief Executive Officer Nandita Bakhshi pushing back on the bank’s decision to no longer conduct business with companies engaged in the exploration and production of coal, oil and natural gas. Bank of the West, headquartered in San Francisco, CA, has 23 branches with dedicated employees who work hard to serve communities and families across Wyoming. In his letter, Barrasso condemned the San Francisco headquarter’s attack on Wyoming’s communities and businesses that depend on fossil fuels for energy security, jobs and economic growth. “This misguided and...

Recordings and summaries of emergency calls show Washington wildlife officials at first objected to an air rescue of a woman treed by wolves, or help from the Okanogan County sheriff. Washington wildlife managers initially opposed sending a helicopter or a search-and-rescue team to save a woman treed by wolves in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, according to recordings and summaries of emergency calls. ... Notes from a call between DNR dispatcher Jill Jones and a wildlife officer summarized WDFW’s position, and her position, shortly before the helicopter launched. “No helicopter. Federally listed species. 3 WDFW personnel saying so,” according to DNR’s...

A troubling trend has occurred for ranchers in NE Washington ... cattle are experiencing breeding issues since the migration of wolves to the area... the rate of female cows .. that didn’t become pregnant has increased from five percent to about 20 percent. A cow must raise a calf every summer for the rancher to recoup costs ... Diamond M also has a winter range to cut costs, but when wolves came into the area about a decade ago, they’ve seen their cattle attacked ... Texas A&M University agreed with the open cow side effect from wolves, and an Eastern...

County officials in western Colorado have regularly lambasted Planning 2.0 and this week, Garfield County joined in with five other counties in the western United States considering suing to halt the rule, which they have criticized as a central-planning measure. The BLM this month announced that the rule was final and on Monday, Garfield County agreed to spend as much as $40,000 with the Texas-based property-rights organization, the American Stewards of Liberty, to halt it. While Garfield County is taking an active role, Mesa County officials are looking to Congress and a Republican administration under President-elect Donald Trump to deal...

A new report has government officials considering setting 10 million acres of across six states in the American west off limits to mining and development to protect the chicken-like Greater Sage Grouse, which is not an endangered species. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report found that much of the Sage Grouse’s habitat sits on top of extremely valuable deposits of minerals including gold, copper, lithium, silver, uranium and many others. The USGS report means that the government’s most restrictive grouse protection plan could kill even more than 31,000 jobs and lead to more than $5.6 billion in reduced annual economic...

A Michigan state senator from the Upper Peninsula says the federal Environmental Protection Agency has done everything in its power to indirectly shut down a mine near Marquette. The issue is back in the news because a limited-government legal foundation announced last month it will represent the Marquette County Road Commission in a federal lawsuit against the EPA. The agency has blocked a plan to build a shortcut road to the Eagle Mine in the western Upper Peninsula. In a phone interview with Michigan Capitol Confidential this week, Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba, suggested that the EPA’s real target in the...

The BLM released its draft environmental impact statement Thursday. It is proposing amending up to 11 resource management plans in the two states. In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined the Gunnison sage-grouse requires listing as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. ... about 5,000 breeding Gunnison sage-grouse live in the two states. Some 4,000 live in the Gunnison Basin, and the others in six satellite populations in Colorado and a seventh in Utah. ... Fish and Wildlife pointed to the low numbers of birds in the other populations and their range of habitat threats as...

A forestry company filed a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) lawsuit against Greenpeace Tuesday for misrepresenting the company’s environmental record to raise funds and promote its agenda. Greenpeace knowingly and deliberately made false claims about the company while fundraising, and fabricated evidence of Resolute’s alleged environmental malfeasance, according to the forestry and paper company Resolute Forest Products. RICO is an anti-mafia law designed to combat organized crime. Greenpeace’ is a global fraud,” states the 124-page legal complaint. “For years, this international network of environmental groups collectively calling themselves ‘Greenpeace’ has fraudulently induced people throughout the United States and...

Oil and gas industry groups on Thursday sued federal agencies over revisions to land management plans in Colorado and other western states to protect the greater sage-grouse. The Western Energy Alliance and the North Dakota Petroleum Council filed the suit in North Dakota, saying the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service failed to follow proper procedures for public involvement in adopting the land use plan amendments. They also say the plans ignore sound science and will hurt western economies. Plan revisions being challenged include ones in northwest Colorado, where greater sage-grouse habitat substantially overlaps with oil and gas...

$16 million in fines dropped, threats canceled. A Wyoming rancher threatened by the Environmental Agency with $16 million fines for getting a state permit and building a stock pond on his ranch has reached a settlement that will have the fines go away and he’ll keep his stock pond. WND reported in 2015 on a lawsuit filed on behalf of Fort Bridger, Wyoming, rancher Andy Johnson by officialsl with the Pacific Legal Foundation seeking to vindicate his property rights. The lawsuit explained federal law clearly exempts stock ponds from the rules of the EPA, which had filed a compliance order...