Free Republic

The Harassment of the Hammonds Upon examination of the government’s trail of paperwork spanning a period of nearly two decades , between the Hammonds and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (MNWR), it is apparent that they were being persecuted by the federal government for simply insisting upon exercising their historical right to trail cattle. This began long before the controlled burn in 2002 and the backfire in 2006 that resulted in them being sentenced to five years in federal prison. What is plainly “a long train of abuses” has been well documented...

Four Western Slope men, including two local U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees, have been sentenced in the poaching of a trophy bull elk on private land on the Roan Plateau, Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced Tuesday. State officials said Thad Bingham, 44, of Fruita, killed the elk, while Brian Scheer, 45, of Fruita, Josh Fitzsimmons, 45, of Rifle, and Barrett Rowles, 48, whose hometown wasn’t given, participated in the illegal hunt in October 2014, which the state agency took two years to investigate. Bingham and Scheer work at the service’s Horsethief Canyon Native Fish Facility Ponds near Fruita, where...

JACKSON, Wyo. — When the mighty elk herds of the West were facing the possibility of extinction from overhunting, settlement and neglect a century ago, people here stepped forward and began what has turned out to be a profound biological experiment....A federal lawsuit filed last year by a coalition of environmental groups charges that feeding the elk violates the Fish and Wildlife Service’s charter to manage refuges for healthy populations and biological integrity.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service says a pack of endangered Mexican gray wolves has killed a horse belonging to a Catron County family. Mark Miller and his family returned to their homestead on the Diamond Creek in southwestern New Mexico about three weeks ago to find the remains of their horse. Tracks show the wolves apparently chased the horse from a pasture into a corral and killed it. Miller says his family has tried yelling at the wolves, throwing rocks and installing noisemakers, but he says the pack continues to be a problem.

Days ago, in a proposal unnoticed by the media, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced the largest land grab since President Clinton designated massive national monuments across the West. When Clinton decreed 1.9 million acres of federal land in Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to kill a vast underground coal mine that would have employed 1,000 locals in the most economically depressed region of southern Utah, generated $20 million in annual revenue, and produced environmentally - compliant coal for generating electricity, there were protests across the West. When the Bush Administration published its plans, there was...

Suit says state at fault in grizzly mauling... The widow of a hunter mauled by a grizzly bear while he was gutting an elk has filed an appeal with the Montana Supreme Court after a district judge here dismissed her lawsuit against the state. Mary Ann Hilston contends negligent management practices led to the death of her husband...in the fall of 2001. She filed a lawsuit in federal court in September 2004, claiming the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks knew there was an aggressive grizzly bear with two cubs prowling the...

Animals and humans have suffered the menace of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for three long decades. During this span, over 1,300 species have been listed as threatened or endangered under the Act’s guidelines. According the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the ESA is responsible for recovering a mere 10 of them. That amounts to a pitiful recovery rate of less than one percent. When you take into account credible studies that show these 10 recoveries had little or nothing to do with the ESA, the "success" rate plummets to zero. Saving zero of over 1,300 species is hard work...