A Newly Surfaced Document Reveals the Beef Industry’s Secret Climate Plan
What the beef industry knew about its environmental impact — and how it spent decades blocking climate action. Immediately following yesterday’s article on the BS Myth that ‘grass-fed’ beef is better,...
View ArticlePublic Lands are Central To Democracy
A few weeks ago, I watched a pack of wolves in Yellowstone National Park with perhaps several dozen other visitors. Everyone was excited to glimpse one of the Park’s packs. People with scopes and...
View ArticlePoint Reyes Settlement Offers Massive Public and Ecological Benefits
The January 2025 Point Reyes National Seashore settlement agreement ended decades of conflict over management of cattle ranching and wildlife on public lands. The departure of most of the commercial...
View ArticleUpper Green River Allotment Grizzly Mortality Sink
The Upper Green River headwaters are in the Wind River Range. Photo by George Wuerthner The 170,000-acre Upper Green River Allotment, located on the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, is the...
View ArticleTrump 2.0 and the Nation’s Federal Forestlands
Top Line: The excesses of the executive branch will need to be checked by the judicial branch, the legislative branch, and/or the people. Figure 1. The official 2025 portrait of Donald J. Trump, 47th...
View ArticlePINYON JAY EXTINCTION PROJECTS RAGE ON
BLM leaders never had the desire or will to do what it takes to preserve Sage grouse populations. Sage-grouse plans make major concessions to industries, and especially to the great destroyer of...
View ArticleFailure Of Conservation Groups To Criticize Tribal Wolf Slaughter
The state of Washington recently reported that its endangered wolf population had declined for the first time in 16 years. The state confirmed that it has 230 wolves, compared to 254 wolves in the...
View ArticleBig Old Trees Are a Big Deal, Part 1: Busting a Myth and Discovering...
Top Line: Big old trees play out-sized roles in a forest stand in terms of biodiversity, carbon storage, and carbon sequestration. This is the first in a series of two Public Lands Blog posts on big...
View ArticleOregon Wolf Update
In the late 1990s, I was traveling across the Blue Mountains of Oregon with my wife, Mollie, and my children en route to Montana. Both Mollie and I had been involved in wolf restoration politics in...
View ArticleBig Old Trees Are a Big Deal, Part 2: More Good News Than Not
This is the second in a series of two Public Lands Blog posts on big old trees. Part 1 exploded the myth that big old trees slow in their rate of growth as they age and also introduced the concept of...
View ArticleNature Conservancy Models Used to Maul Public Lands, Wildlife and Watersheds
In a recent article on the plight of the Pinyon Jay, I mentioned a major new 550,000 acre Cedar City BLM Pinyon-Juniper deforestation proposal, the Indian Peak Watershed Restoration Plan, on the...
View ArticleTrump’s Executive Order To Speed Logging
In March, President Trump declared a national emergency by Executive Order to speed up the logging of our national forests. The order affects more than 112 million acres, larger than the entire state...
View ArticleA National Monument for the Douglas-Fir
Top Line: In these dark times for nature, if not also the republic, it is all the more important not only to oppose but also to propose. I have either been part of or witnessed a multitude of...
View ArticleJoin the Healthy Public Lands Conference: May 28-30th
Public lands belong to all of us, and protecting them requires collaboration, strategy, and action. That’s why we want to share an important event happening May 28-30, 2025 The Healthy Public Lands...
View ArticleCow Pie Pal: Put Bad Grazing on the Map
From Western Watersheds Project A new app to document the destruction—and fight back. Out West, it’s easy to miss the most destructive industry on public lands. Across vast tracts of public land, there...
View ArticleMore Timber Industry Propaganda from Oregon State University
Oregon State University (OSU) published a series of essays, “Not All Flames Are the Same,” on wildfire in Oregon. While the essays are written about Oregon forests, most of the main ideas about...
View ArticleHouse Tax Bill Accelerates Public Lands Resource Exploitation
The debate over provisions in the recently approved House tax legislation (Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill) has numerous environmentally destructive provisions which I will get to in a moment. However, one...
View ArticleIrrigation for Livestock–Destroying Western Rivers
A recent newspaper article noted that a large resort ranch along the base of Montana’s Crazy Mountains was using water for irrigation on a golf course. Worse, according to the news account, the ranch...
View ArticleBook Review: The Other Public Lands: Preservation, Extraction, and Politics...
Both a need and opportunities exist to elevate the conservation status of state public lands.
View ArticleHow Common Were Low Severity Blazes in Western Ecosystem?
A recent article in the Arizona Republic, “The only way to save Arizona forests is to let them burn,” repeats the misguided idea that low-severity/high-frequency fires keep the forest open and...
View Article