Like the Bundy brothers now illegally occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, I’m a lifelong rural Westerner, and I believe that if I were to talk with them, we’d most likely find we have a lot in common. There’s the way our lives were shaped by the land, for instance. I was […]
I have a lot in common with the Bundys. Here’s what I’d like to say to them.
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Former BLM chief: Bundys ‘pursuing an agenda’ on public land
Bob Abbey was Bureau of Land Management chief from 2009 to 2012 and Nevada state director from 1997 to 2005. In a recent interview with High Country News, he discusses the BLM’s response to ranchers, including Cliven Bundy in Nevada, who broke federal laws, as well as the importance of collaborating with local law enforcement when it comes […]
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The BLM has armed up since 1978, but it’s still outgunned
In confrontations with armed groups like the Bundy supporters, local law enforcement matters most.
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I send my toddler to school outside. You should, too.
“Your son looks quite … warm,” another mother says, eyeing my 3-year-old son as we drop off his older brother at kindergarten. I look down at Isaac, his body encased in a snowsuit, two additional insulating layers hidden beneath. “He goes to an all-outdoor preschool,” I reply, but the mother is already distracted, busy waving […]
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The BLM’s inconsistent approach toward rule breakers
A look at how the feds have — and have not — punished individuals for defying regulations.
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Can plant-based feeds make aquaculture sustainable?
Some scientists are replacing sardines and anchovies with soybeans and corn as food for farmed fish.
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Don’t delist: Yellowstone grizzlies still need federal protection
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has indicated that it plans to remove the iconic Yellowstone grizzly bear from the protection of the Endangered Species Act early this year. The federal agency’s plan is irresponsible and premature because grizzlies are struggling to adjust to declining food sources, even as they face an uncertain future caused […]
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California relocates residents whose wells have gone dry
Residents explain why the new drought program may or may not work for them.
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PZP: Where hope, science and mustangs meet
The longtime mustang advocate, TJ Holmes, and I head into southwestern Colorado’s Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, searching for mustangs. We do this regularly. TJ has documented these mustangs for eight years, working in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management. A big part of her work is administering PZP, the fertility-control vaccine (porcine […]
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Malheur occupation, explained
The deep history behind the Bundy brothers’ takeover of a wildlife refuge in Oregon.
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Forty years of Sagebrush Rebellion
The Oregon occupation, the 2014 Bundy standoff and many other stories are all related to a long-simmering movement.
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Where private land meets public interest
A group of landowners on the Colorado-New Mexico border aim to conserve a contested landscape.
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Rants from the Hill: A Christmas tree grows in the Nevada desert
The pinyon offers an alternative to artificial or commercially farmed trees.
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Court will hear case against data trespass laws
A federal judge rejected the state of Wyoming’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit.
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Which stories held your attention this year?
From the Animas to Washington wildfire, here are the stories that our readers spent most time on in 2015.
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The obscure music where wild animals sing from the heart
In a small corner of popular music, there are songs that have been written and sung in the haunting voices of animals, and the Canadian singer-songwriters Gordon Lightfoot and Ian Tyson have written what I think are the best of them. In Lightfoot’s “Whispers of the North,” a loon speaks: whispers of the northsoon I […]
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In Idaho, rancher buyouts take a big step forward
Idaho’s White Cloud Mountains seem like an unlikely place for the beginning of a positive shift in public-land management. They gleam high and cold above the seemingly endless sagebrush plains of southern Idaho, one of the most conservative states in the West. Yet it was here last year that Republicans worked with environmentalists to plant […]
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Ranch Diaries: Year in review at Triangle P
Coconut the elk, Clem the colt and big dreams for next year.
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Economic diplomacy in Sagebrush Rebel country
A new science and education center gives rural Utah a boost.
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5 things I learned about managing my money from covering the oil bust
A reporter relays tips from her time in the field.