Tag Archives: public-lands

Legislative moves to give public lands to the states advance despite little evidence of public support

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“All of the Western states except Montana now entertain bills to take the public lands from the United States and give, transfer or take them for the individual states. Some Republicans in Congress are trying to get the proposed redistribution of land going by means of the annual budget process.

“This is happening despite increased support by the general public for keeping the U.S. public lands safe for all Americans.”

Source: www.thewildlifenews.com

GR:  State lands always wind up for sale to the highest bidder. Giving the states ownership of our public lands guarantees that they will be developed for profit without regard for air, water, soil, wildlife, or human society.

Somebody Stole $19 Billion from U.S. Wildlife and Open Spaces

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Arches National Park, Utah. (Photo: Jacob Frank/Getty Images)GR:  The U. S. Congress is willing to drop any protections that might threaten a developer’s opportunity to use the land. In Arizona, it appears that our state Game and Fish Department opposes national monuments because someday a developer might come up with a profitable use for the land.

Richard Conniff's avatarstrange behaviors

Arches National Park, Utah. (Photo: Jacob Frank/Getty Images) Arches National Park, Utah. (Photo: Jacob Frank/Getty Images)

My latest for Takepart:

Here’s a brilliant idea: Make oil and gas companies pay to conserve land for wildlife threatened by climate change. Crazy, right? But it’s already the law, and it has been for the last 50 years: In 1965, by a unanimous vote, Congress created the Land and Water Conservation Fund and declared that the government would spend $900 million a year to preserve open space, protect wildlife, and encourage outdoor recreation—all of it paid for with royalties from offshore oil and mineral extraction.

So why are our national parks falling to pieces? Why is it such a struggle to protect endangered species? Why is having someplace outdoors to play—someplace decent, I mean—a strange and dreamlike notion for most American children?

The sad reality is that Congress actually allocated only $306 million to LWCF in 2014…

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Study: Livestock Grazing on Public Lands Cost Taxpayers $1 Billion Over Past Decade

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cattleRanchers I’ve known receive public funds to build livestock management facilities on public lands. When ranchers do the work themselves, the income can equal income from cattle sales. Only the ranchers benefit from the facilities. At the same time, the ranchers complain about government regulations. They threaten to take their guns to town, and sometimes they do go armed to meetings with BLM and FS managers.

R.T. Fitch's avatarStraight from the Horse's Heart

Information supplied by The Center for Biological Diversity

BLM’s Welfare Ranching Bedfellows come with a huge price tag…

WASHINGTON— A new analysis  finds U.S. taxpayers have lost more than $1 billion over the past decade on a program that allows cows and sheep to graze on public land. Last year alone taxpayers lost $125 million in grazing subsidies on federal land. Had the federal government charged fees similar to grazing rates on non-irrigated private land, the program would have made $261 million a year on average rather than operate at a staggering loss, the analysis finds.

Click Image to Download Full Report Click Image to Download Full Report

The study, Costs and Consequences: The Real Price of Livestock Grazing on America’s Public Lands, comes as the Obama administration prepares Friday to announce grazing fees for the upcoming year on 229 million acres of publicly owned land, most of it in the West. The…

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Will there be a ‘hostile takeover’ of western public lands?

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Would states manage land better than the feds? The choice is for the better of two evils. Federal management is biased toward land abusers (e.g., welfare-ranchers), but at least the federal government has a difficult time selling off public lands. Not a problem for the states where public land is often sold to developers. Developers do not take care of the land. Moreover, the lands the states retain and manage gets even less care than the federal lands. So, let’s keep the public domain public by keeping it under federal management.

Bob Berwyn's avatarSummit County Citizens Voice

klj Federal lands in the U.S. Courtesy Univ. of Montana.

New website offers glimpse of ongoing efforts to ‘de-federalize’ the West

Staff Report

FRISCO — On and off efforts to force the transfer of federally managed public western lands to individual states have grown beyond campaign rhetoric.

These days, there’s a semi-organized effort on the part of lawmakers in several western states to try and take over millions of acres of forests and rangelands. The history of the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, with roots in the Reagan era, is outlined in detail on this University of Colorado website.

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Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret–Livestock Impacts

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Livestock Impacts

GR:  The Earth could get along just fine without us.  If anyone can think of an ecosystem function that requires our presence, I would like to hear about it.  Circumstantial and fossil evidence indicates that even when human numbers were small, the fires, animal drives, and plant preferences had harmful effects.  Ecosystem resilience absorbed early human impacts, but now with more than seven billion of us, the impacts are simply overwhelming earth ecosystems. Livestock?  Earth could tolerate a few domestic beasts, but not the billions we have now.  Watch the video.

The following By Read on The Wildlife News

“The movie goes far beyond the obvious impacts of livestock production such as overgrazing of rangelands, and talks about everything from water pollution (from manure) to energy use in the production of meat to the mistreatment of meat producing animals by humans. Overall it makes a very cogent and articulate argument against meat/dairy consumption.

“They even take on Alan Savory, advocate of more livestock production as a means of reducing global warming, pointing out that methane production from domestic animals is one of the largest contributors to warming climate, and vastly exceeds any ability of grazed grassland ecosystems to absorb more carbon.

“The video is full of facts illustrated with great graphs like how many more gallons of water or the amount of land required in the production of a hamburger vs. a veggie burger that will make it easy to understand why livestock are one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity and ecosystems” By

Source: www.thewildlifenews.com