Wildlife lovers and public lands users everywhere should be outraged by the actions of Wildlife Services. This secretive federal agency uses deadly poisons, neck snares, aerial gunning and other inhumane methods to indiscriminately kill all manner of wildlife species if the animal is reported to interfere with human activities – most often, livestock grazing on our […]
A Win for the West’s Only National Seashore National Park Service agrees to complete a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement and update its General Management Plan for grazing on Point Reyes National Seashore. Two years ago, Advocates for the West was approached by Huey Johnson of Resource Renewal Institute (RRI), a longtime environmental leader in California, […]
By Associate Attorney Talasi B. Brooks On July 5, the Idaho Fish & Game Commission opened a comment period on a proposal to change the rules governing bear baiting to now also allow for wolf baiting. Baiting is luring in a predator with smelly attractants, allowing it to feed until it becomes habituated or reaches […]
By Kendra Kenyon, Director of Strategic Partnerships June 29, 2017 I’ll let you in on a little secret – Idaho’s legendary Henry’s Fork is magical in June. Driving up from Boise last week to this tributary of the Snake River, where our Board Member Jim Sturdevant was hosting a gathering at his cabin, I was struck […]
By Andy Kerr Originally published May 26, 2017 on Andy’s blog site: www.andykerr.net It costs more to feed a domestic housecat than to graze domestic livestock on federal public lands. This has generally been the case since the early 1900s, when the federal government first required ranchers to pay a fee for grazing their livestock […]
By Anna Demetriades, Director of Development & Communications June 8, 2017 Contrary to its name, which conjures images of lush and robust greenery (but in fact derives its moniker from an Aldo Leopold quote), the Greenfire Preserve on the East Fork Salmon River possesses the stark, high desert beauty of sagebrush steppe – layer upon […]
Eighty-one years ago, Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, proposed a vast, 4 million-acre national monument for southern Utah. Over the ensuing decades, pieces of Ickes’ vision were realized in the establishment of Canyonlands and Capitol Reef national parks, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
By Arie Weidemaier May 9, 2017 The phrase “Predator management” seems uncontroversial. In Idaho, this phrase often refers to “management” of wild wolf populations by a secretive federal agency known as Wildlife Services. One of the biggest problems with how this agency operates is the lack of public participation – the public is mostly unaware of […]
Excerpt from an essay by David James Duncan May 4, 2017 Feeling inspired to protect Idaho’s salmon spawning habitat? Make a gift to Advocates for the West for IDAHO GIVES. We’ll put your gift right to work protecting the very best of Idaho! On the eastern edge of Idaho last fall, seven hundred miles from the sea, I watched […]
How a federal program uses our tax dollars to kill pets and wildlife. “Why can you plant a bomb near a house?” Fourteen year-old Canyon Mansfield asked after he endured watching his young yellow lab Casey die after triggering an M-44 cyanide ejector capsule planted on the hill behind his Pocatello, Idaho home. The bomb […]