Terry Tempest Williams writes “If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide, and so we are found.”
I remember kneeling on the wet ground, the reddish-brown earth painting circles on the knees of my favorite jeans. Dew was everywhere and the smell of wet sagebrush seemed to soak into every pore. We sat watching the sun slowly begin to rise, sending streams of orange and pink light cascading over the Lost River Range. Then we heard it, the first “boom.” I remember being so disappointed with that sound. There had been all of this hype over the ‘booming’ the night before at the dinner table, and now it just sounded like my brother had popped his knuckles.
Then my dad handed me the binoculars. As a ten year old somewhat prissy girl, even I was impressed. Three or four male sage grouse were strutting back and forth on the lek in the distance. They would puff up the sacs on their throats and chest, and I just knew that if they had arms they would start beating their chests like King Kong atop the Empire State Building. Instead, they would kind of bob their heads and a hollow sounding ‘Pop! Pop!’ could be heard. Their tail feathers were fanned out in a magnificent array, looking almost like black spears against their reddish bodies, the same color as the circles on my knees. I watched the hens peeking out of the sagebrush seeming to hide just like us, not wanting to interrupt the magnificent display. (more…)
So, here in the Bear River Range, the most significant high-elevation wildlife corridor connecting the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and northern Rockies to the Uintas and southern Rockies, a wolf was killed for using that corridor. This wolf made it through the gauntlet of roads, noisy ATVs, dirt bikes, and other human actions that degrade wildlife habitat. Of course if it had made it to Utah, it’s fate would probably have been the same as we are no more enlightened than those in Idaho. A sad situation!
The wolf was “harassing” the sheep of a Forest Service permittee. This raises the question as to where were the guard dogs? Where was the herder? Obviously close enough to kill the wolf, but not close enough to chase it away. I suppose harassment of sheep means being in sight (rifle sight) of the herder. (more…)
With only 1.1% of the beef production in the United States coming from BLM managed lands in the west, and a management system where all costs exceed income by a factor of eight to twelve, there is no economic reason to continue an activity that has resulted in the essential destruction of 80% of stream systems, the elimination of water quality and radical modification of wildlife and native plant habitat. It is time to start the end of this destructive use. I propose that public lands ranchers petition their representatives in Congress, who have always been ready to do their bidding, to provide for a buy out of whatever interest in these lands ranchers may have. If they fail to do this, they face inevitable economic extinction as their livestock use withers in the face of environmental and economic realities many of which they have brought down on themselves by their selfish and heedless excesses over many decades.
Jon Marvel is executive director of WWP. He lives in Hailey, Idaho.
Water troughs kill innumerable birds and other wildlife on public lands
I breathe in sharply. The bird in the trough is large this time. The feathers are scarcely wet – the head lying face down in gentle repose – yet somehow as if at any moment it might spring awake and gracefully lift into the sky on those powerful wings tucked so neatly against the sides of the body.
No! I cry out. But there is no response. No head lifts, no eyes plead for assistance. I realize suddenly that life and hope have only been recently abandoned by this still form, and my imagination begins to race. If only – if only I had made it here just an hour before, perhaps even just minutes ago, before that last fateful breath was taken. If only I could have plucked this beautiful falcon from the alluring but deadly water and sent it winging back across the night sky, back to Echo Crater where the prairie falcons nest and scream from the rocky walls.
But this bird will never fly again. Nor will the hundreds and likely thousands of other birds that have drowned this summer alone in water developments on public and private rangelands in Idaho. The prairie falcon was only one of three found drowned this summer in Laidlaw Park, Idaho. The three falcons, along with approximately two dozen other birds, died recently in troughs and tanks in the Craters of the Moon National Monument Expansion, where a warning was issued upon establishment by Presidential Proclamation “not to appropriate, injure, destroy, or remove any feature of this monument.” (more…)
Those of us who care about public lands’ ranching tend to think about the ecological costs of livestock on the landscape: ruined streams, trampled and compacted soils, and degraded vegetation communities. Many of us care deeply about the impacts of cows on wildlife habitats and worry about the permanent damage that this powerful special interest group inflicts on our publicly-owned forests, deserts, and grasslands.
Thinking about these things in terms of the economics is just as frustrating. From grazing fees to fat cows, the balance is constantly tipping towards the side of the cowboys. (more…)
We think so too, and we’ve been urging the BLM to protect this place from the adverse affects of livestock grazing. We’ve been protesting proposed decisions to renew grazing permits on the Ironwood Forest National Monument because the BLM needs to complete a Resource Management Plan (RMP) for the monument before reissuing ten-year permits. (more…)
The Mexican gray wolf has had a tough time in the southwest. By 1970, it was extirpated from the U.S. during a systemic “predator control” campaign carried out at the behest of the livestock industry. Now, it seems like history might be repeating itself.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Mexican gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act in 1976 and eventually set about recovering the species through captive breeding. In 1998, the agency began reintroducing wolves in portions of their former range in Arizona and New Mexico. The program set a goal of 102 wolves in the wild by 2006, including 18 breeding pairs. However, as of January 2008, only 52 wolves remain and only three of those are breeding pairs, a decline from the previous year and part of an ongoing trend of failed restoration.
This last year’s decline in the wolf numbers reflects a serious threat to maintaining viable wolf populations on the southwestern landscape. Each wolf is important genetically to the diversity and health of the subspecies, and the loss of a single individual or pack represents a serious loss for the long-term health of the entire population. Given this significance, it is important to look at one major reason for the population decline: the demands of the public lands’ livestock industry. (more…)
Westslope Cutthroat Trout, photo: copyright Pat Clayton
by Larry Zuckerman, WWP
When Captain Meriwether Lewis spoke of “speckled trout” in his 1805
journal entry at Great Falls, Montana and then again in 1806, at Fort Clatsop near Astoria,
Oregon, he was unaware that he was first to write about these distinctive Western trout, which now bear the species name “clarki”, in honor of expedition partner, Captain William Clark. He also didn’t know he was describing two different subspecies: Westslope cutthroat trout in the Upper Missouri River and coastal cutthroat trout, an anadromous form, from the Columbia River. In fact, “Lewis and Clark’s trout” or Westslope cutthroat trout, the state fish for Idaho and Montana, bears Latinized versions of the brazen explorers’ names – Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi.
There are 14 subspecies of cutthroat trout in the West as described by eminent ichthyologist, Dr. Robert Behnke of Colorado State University. While two are extinct, the remaining 11 Interior subspecies have suffered catastrophic declines. Examining most of the 19th Century accounts of the Interior cutthroat trout, one would find only non-natives like brown trout, brook trout, and rainbow trout at historic sites like the Green River, Rio Grande, and Lake Tahoe. (more…)
While I appreciate that your article on Jon Marvel took a moment to give credit where credit is due— it is most certainly true that Marvel has done more than any other conservation group in the state to fix the flawed public lands grazing program– the bulk of the article’s argument hinges on a demonstrably false premise: that Marvel would be more effective if he would just play “nice.”
First of all, as anyone who’s ever spoken out against this state’s obscenely powerful cattle industry (dairy or beef) can easily attest: the cattlemen most certainly don’t play nice themselves. Implicit intimidation and outright threats are common. I suspect that even those with saintly dispositions would find it difficult, if not impossible, to continue to show “mercy” and/or “understanding” in the face of such harassment. (more…)
In a heated showdown with Western cattlemen, Idaho environmentalist Jon Marvel, tries to outlaw livestock grazing on public lands.
A profile on Western Watersheds Project’s Executive Director, Jon Marvel
True grit University of Chicago Magazine
By Lydialyle Gibson
He can’t help looking. Even though Jon Marvel knows there’s probably no bluebunch wheatgrass here, that its numbers in this field have been declining for years, so that a person could walk a mile through the sagebrush—and Marvel has—without seeing a single delicate blond seedhead, he can’t help searching the ground for one. In central Idaho’s dry sage-steppe grasslands, bluebunch wheatgrass is a key native species, year-round forage for elk, deer, and antelope. It’s part of what keeps the ecosystem whole.
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With only 1.1% of the beef production in the United States coming from BLM managed lands in the west, and a management system where all costs exceed income by a factor of eight to twelve, there is no economic reason to continue an activity that has resulted in the essential destruction of 80% of stream systems, the elimination of water quality and radical modification of wildlife and native plant habitat. It is time to start the end of this destructive use. I propose that public lands ranchers petition their representatives in Congress, who have always been ready to do their bidding, to provide for a buy out of whatever interest in these lands ranchers may have. If they fail to do this, they face inevitable economic extinction as their livestock use withers in the face of environmental and economic realities many of which they have brought down on themselves by their selfish and heedless excesses over many decades.
