Blog
Couple Faces Prison Time for Closing a Cattle Gate on Public Land
Rose Chilcoat, former Associate Director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, and her husband Mark Franklin face serious charges for a crime they didn’t know they’d committed. Last April, Mark Franklin closed a cattle gate on public land in a remote section of Utah desert. Now, he faces up to 16 years in prison on charges…
Idaho’s once famous wild Clearwater and Salmon River steelhead in a state of collapse
Fish & Game Still Allowing Angling. Time to Shut ‘Er Down Boys! APRIL 2, 2018 ~ THE CONSERVATION ANGLER, David Moskowitz Idaho, still famous for potatoes, used to be famous for big wild steelhead. How big? The biggest in the lower 48 States. How famous? Ted Trueblood among others became famous fishing for what are surely the most…
Trump and Zinke are “sowing the seeds for the legal attacks.”
A recent article published by the New York Times by reporter Coral Davenport: Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks Were Fast. It Could Get Messy in Court. As the head of the federal agency controlling billions of acres of public lands and waters, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has spent the past year making bold policy proclamations to advance President Trump’s…
Sage-Grouse Will Suffer from Policy Reversals
A blog from Steve Holmer, Vice President of Policy at American Bird Conservancy The administration’s recent decision to backtrack on the landmark 2015 Greater Sage-Grouse conservation plans is a disaster in the making for these fast-disappearing birds – and for the remaining sagebrush habitat on public lands. Under this backward-looking change, which would green-light new development on…
Trump Orders Largest National Monument Reduction in U.S. History
Senior Attorney Todd Tucci – Washington, DC Office Yesterday, President Trump made his first visit to Utah to announce he is withdrawing protections for over 1.5 million acres of national monuments – threatening tens of thousands of cultural, historic, paleontological and ecological artifacts and objects. President Trump shrank Bears Ears National Monument by nearly 90%, and…
The Columbia River Gorge is Dead;
Long Live the Columbia River Gorge – Unless Greg Walden Has His Way By Andy Kerr – Originally published on his Public Lands Blog Part 1: It’s a Beautiful, Natural, and Necessary Thing That Nature Changes September 29, 2017 Everyone—including many a card-carrying conservationist—just needs to take a deep breath. Yes, there was a relatively large…
Twenty-Five Horses
By Board President Linwood Laughy In 1966 I lived with my parents beside the Middlefork of the Clearwater River in north central Idaho. Our home stood across the river from Highway 12, with principal access by rowboat and canoe. One day a neighbor invited my father to come meet two friends, an elderly Nez Perce…
No, They Don’t, Mr. Pruitt
By Robert Glicksman In his first speech upon assuming his duties as EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt informed the agency’s employees that “regulators exist to give certainty to those that they regulate.” No, Mr. Pruitt, they do not. Regulators and the regulations they are responsible for adopting and enforcing exist to protect the public interest. In…
What Are “America’s Public Lands”?
By David James Duncan “The basic mood of the future,” wrote Thomas Moore, “might well be one of confidence in the continuing revelation that takes place in and through the Earth. If the dynamics of the Universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the sun, and formed the Earth, if this same…
Work That Inspires
By Tom Flynn Tom recently completed a summer law clerkship at Advocates for the West’s Boise office. He is a third-year student at Vermont Law School, where he is pursuing a J.D. and a Masters degree. He particularly enjoys studying water law and natural resources law. Advocates for the West inspired me to go…
