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…)
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…)
The verdict is still out on what the specific impacts of global climate change really will be for our desert wildlands but government responses are definitely posing new challenges to already stressed wildlife on public lands. Climate change does pose a threat to biodiversity and may even threaten entire ecosystems. Meeting these threats requires more protection of sensitive habitats, particularly those providing connectivity for species movements, to preserve ecological flexibility. Unfortunately, so far the response of the agencies has been just the opposite of what is needed. They are allowing many of the public lands that would provide this flexibility to be considered for the industrial scale development of so-called green energy projects by private industry. (more…)
Before my retirement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in July 2000, I directed the wolf recovery program in Idaho. The work was the most rewarding, challenging, frustrating and stressful experience of my 33 years with the FWS. (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…)
Recent news that sage grouse would not be listed under the Endangered Species Act, while celebrated by industry, was for some of us a moment of great sadness. Not because it was unexpected; it wasn’t. But because it confirms again that nothing really matters to us but human comfort and material prosperity. We continue to believe that only humans are necessary and important.
Sage grouse are a sagebrush-dependent species, which for us laypersons can be understood simply as a species whose health directly mirrors the health of the habitat it occupies. If sage grouse are becoming extinct, the habitat is also so fragmented and degraded it can no longer support them. There were once hundreds of millions of sage grouse, along with vast numbers of bison, bears, mountain sheep, elk, deer, wolves, lions and billions of smaller animals, birds and fish occupying the sage-steppe ecosystem. We have ruthlessly and in many cases systematically exterminated them and their habitat for our own benefit and continue to do so to this day.
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.
WWP’s challenge of 17 BLM Resource Management Plans incorporating tens of millions of acres of public lands has gotten the attention of Eureka County, Nevada. The County seeks to intervene in the lawsuit.
Marvel said the lawsuit “charges that the BLM failed to comply with the National Environmental Protection Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act by not analyzing adequate alternatives that would protect sage grouse and other sage steppe wildlife species.”
“WWP claims that all the RMPs (resource management plans) are inadequate and violate the law in similar ways. The lawsuit affects about 34 million acres of BLM-managed lands,” he said.
But others react differently.
Nevada Cattlemen’s Association President Dan Gralian told Elko County Commissioners in June the Western Watersheds lawsuit is intended to drive people off public lands, and the suit affects all of rural Nevada. More than 300 grazing permits in the state would be affected if Western Watersheds wins.
Gralian called Western Watersheds a “radical environmental group.”
Bighorn frequently die of pneumonia after contact with domestic sheep, but domestic sheep don’t get sick. In response to lobbying by woolgrowers the Idaho legislature has passed a law that will require the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to certify that existing sheep operations are safe and possibly to kill any bighorn sheep that are found near domestic sheep on public or private land. This law is simply vengeance of the perpetrator on the victim. Use the strength and influence of the business community to send the perpetrators a message. Don’t vacation or recreate in Idaho until it’s again safe for bighorn sheep.
” All animals have Pasteurella bacteria in their upper respiratory tracts…” Dr. Marie Bulgin
Yes, it’s true, many species of mammals, including people do. And most have hair and two eyes. But most mammals don’t have the propensity to pass their Pasteurella respiratory flora on to another closely related species which then dies of the infection. Thirty years of field observations on free-ranging domestic and bighorn sheep, experimental inoculations and captive animal trials have shown this is exactly what happens. Washington State University researchers have recently again shown that otherwise healthy domestic sheep are the source of the lethal Pasteurella, this time uniquely (florescent) labeled, that kill bighorn if they are allowed nose to nose contact.
All cattle have Pasteurella bacteria in their upper respiratory tracts. But some have more deadly strains that others and will infect susceptible cattle causing outbreaks of “shipping fever” pneumonia, if they are not kept separate. What is happening when domestic sheep are mingled with bighorn is exactly what happens when stressed cattle shedding bad Pasteurella’s are allowed to mix with unprotected susceptible cattle. No stockman in his right mind would do this. Any veterinarian who allowed it would be a candidate for a malpractice suit. And who would propose killing the susceptible cattle to prevent spread of infection ? Why doesn’t the State of Idaho “get it” ? Maybe because the “experts” they listen to have serious conflicts of interest.
A funny-looking bird that fluffs its feathers to dance an elaborate mating rite just might be able to accomplish what well-funded environmental groups have been struggling to do for decades: bring about regional protection of vast swaths of Western lands.
The sage grouse might turn out to be the Great Basin’s equivalent of the northern spotted owl, the bird whose near-extinction slowed timber cutting in the Northwest and saved millions of acres of old-growth forests after it was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
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