Free Republic

RENO, Nev. - A new federal proposal to manage wild horses is rekindling debate over another fixture of the Western range: cattle. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last week proposed moving thousands of mustangs to preserves in the Midwest and East to protect horse herds and the rangelands that support them. ~snip~ Many horse defenders and others who had been working to save the romantic symbols of the American West and might have been expected to welcome Salazar's solution instead stampeded the other way. They want Salazar to remove livestock to make room for the mustangs and argue that cows are...

The government wants to deal with the booming number of wild horses crowding the Western range by sending the animals east. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today unveiled his plan to control the rising environmental and monetary costs associated with wild horses and burros by moving tens of thousands of them onto new preserves in the Midwest and East. "We must consider citing these preserves in areas outside of Western States because water and forage are extremely limited in the West, and drought and wildfire threaten both rangeland and animal health," Salazar said in a letter today to Senate Majority Leader...

People can no longer use almost 11,000 acres of BLM and Forest Service land in Campbell County because an outhouse at the Weston Hills Recreation area was destroyed. The Weston area 25 miles north of Gillette, which is popular with campers, ATV users and mountain bikers, will be closed for the next month while an investigation is under way. The investigation will determine the environmental impact that may have been caused when a possible small explosive was set off in an outhouse in early July. Robert Sprentall, Douglas district ranger and Thunder Basin National Grassland manager, said a Forest Service...

More often than not I worry that our elected representatives in Washington DC have completely lost touch with the common man. They spend money like there is no limit to the amount that can be provided by the American taxpayer and when we complain, they treat us like we are idiots. They talk down to us and with a smile and a pat on the back tell us not to worry they are looking out for our best interest. So far I have had to exempt Lynn Westmoreland from this criticism. Maybe he hasn't been inside the Beltway long enough...

FORT IRWIN, Calif. -- Bureau of Land Management officials say as many as 100 wild burros will be rounded up in the Mojave Desert next month and put up for adoption because they keep invading the Fort Irwin Army base. [snip]

I've been looking for a map of the USA that indicates where the government-controlled land is. The one I recall seeing here years ago and can't find now had sections in colors of yellow,green,red etc. indicating what part of the goverment controlled the land. I had saved a link to one of the maps like that, but the link is no longer any good. http://www.nwi.org/Maps/GovernmentLand.gif If anyone saved the map, I would appreciate a working link or repost of the map.

A southern Utah county has taken its fight to manage roads in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to a federal appeals court, claiming that federal officials improperly closed routes to traffic. Lawyers for Kane County argued Wednesday before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver that the county managed the roads for years before the nearly 2-million-acre monument was designated in 1996.

OAKLAND, Calif. — A westward dash to power electricity-hungry cities by cashing in on the desert's most abundant resource — sunshine — is clashing with efforts to protect the tiny pupfish and desert tortoise and stinginess over the region's rarest resource: water. Water is the cooling agent for what traditionally has been the most cost-efficient type of large-scale solar plants. To some solar companies answering Washington's push for renewable energy on vast government lands, it's also an environmental thorn. The unusual collision pits natural resources protections against President Barack Obama's plans to produce more environmentally friendly energy.

Drumbeat Continues: Administration Enlists Another Soldier for its War on American Energy Production Washington, D.C. - Institute for Energy Research President Thomas J. Pyle issued the following statement in response to Secretary Salazar’s appointment of Ned Farquhar – former employee of the most aggressive of all the anti-energy lawsuit groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council – as the new Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. “Ned Farquhar’s professional history demonstrates that in the past, he has ascribed to a philosophy right in line with the Administration’s emerging agenda: To artificially increase the price of the energy we use...

A land conservancy from Oak Glen spent years amassing $45 million in private donations and negotiating the purchase of more than a half-million unspoiled acres in the California desert so it could be turned over to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for protection. Now, the BLM is considering applications for wind turbines and solar-energy arrays on thousands of those acres. The proposals on the donated Mojave Desert parcels have riled residents, visitors and members of The Wildlands Conservancy, which orchestrated the land deals involving a broad scattering of parcels in eastern San Bernardino County. “It’s a violation of trust,...

GRANTS PASS — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management plans to decommission up to 20 miles of roads and about the same amount of trails this year along the Hellgate recreation section of the Rogue River. The work would be done as part of the Rogue River Corridor Restoration Project that begins at White Horse Park where the Applegate River pours into the Rogue. The project reaches downstream some 20 river miles to the mouth of Grave Creek in the Rogue National Wild and Scenic River Corridor. "The main intent is decommissioning roads and trails within the river corridor, all...

I attended the BLM "public input" session on Feb. 3, 2009, concerning planned land closures at Table Mesa Road, one of the last remaining sites for outdoor marksmanship in the area north of Phoenix. About 75 people attended, half concerned with being able to drive the area, and many of the rest seeking to preserve land for desert marksmanship. It doesn't look good for shooting outdoors. Or for four wheeling, or rock crawling, on this 11,000-acre playground of desert currently enjoyed by countless outdoor enthusiasts. In a beautiful twist on the classic "We're from the government and we're here to...

A Bush administration decision that sparked hot controversy in Utah has been turned topsy-turvy by the Obama Administration. New Interior Secretary Ken Salazar this afternoon canceled 77 oil and gas leases in Utah. In a news release, he said oil and gas supplies need to be developed responsibly to help reduce dependence on foreign oil, but it must be done in a thoughtful, balanced way that protects signature landscapes and cultural resources. The 77 parcels, which are the subject of a temporary restraining order, were part of a Dec. 19, 2008 lease sale offering 130 parcels in three areas in...

The University of Utah student who disrupted an oil and gas drilling lease auction last month says he has raised $14,000 of the $45,000 he needs to pay the federal Bureau of Land Management to hold 13 parcels he won. Tim DeChristopher won the parcels and ran up the bidding on others in an effort to foil the Dec. 19 auction, which drew controversy from the start because of concerns the drilling could damage Utah's wild lands and would be too close to some national parks. DeChristopher said he never had any intention to develop or pay for the parcels....

BILLINGS – Several conservation groups have sued the Bureau of Land Management, accusing the agency of failing to address global warming pollution they say is produced by oil and gas development on public lands in Montana. The lawsuit, filed in District Court in Missoula on Wednesday, challenges four oil and gas lease sales the BLM held this year. It claims the agency violated federal law by failing to prepare any environmental analysis to justify the lease sales and by relying on nearly 30-year-old decisions, which do not address global warming. The agency also allegedly failed to quantify and reduce greenhouse...

President-elect Barack Obama could move quickly once in office to halt oil and gas drilling near national parks in Utah, Obama's top transition adviser said Sunday. But it's unclear whether Obama would be able to reverse the Bush administration's decision to hand out leases to about 360,000 acres of federal land in Utah; the leases, some of which lie near Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Dinosaur National Monument, are scheduled to go on sale a month before Obama is sworn in. John Podesta, co-chairman of Obama's transition team, said on Fox News Sunday that the president-elect is looking at...

"There's a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we'll see the president do that," Podesta said. "I think that he feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set." Executive orders "have the power of law and they can cover just about anything," Tobias said in a telephone interview. On drilling, the federal Bureau of Land Management is opening about 360,000 acres of public land in Utah to oil and gas drilling. Bush administration officials...

LOS ANGELES – A relative of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and one of his former cabinet secretaries are part of a private investment group that could score a lucrative payoff if regulators approve a sprawling solar-energy complex near the Mojave Desert Preserve. The personal connections have raised questions about possible favorable treatment for a project being touted as a breakthrough in the development of solar power. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime environmental activist who is the cousin of first lady Maria Shriver, and former state Environmental Protection Secretary Terry Tamminen were named senior advisers at VantagePoint Venture Partners last year....

FORT WORTH — One of Fort Worth’s hottest tickets was to Saturday’s finals of the Extreme Mustang Makeover at the Will Rogers Memorial Center. Then and in the previous three days, about 300 wild horses recently gathered from the open range (and their trainers) competed for $70,000 in prizes. Audiences were charmed.But this week, darker undercurrents have shrouded the wild horse celebration. While about 33,000 mustangs still roam free on public lands in Western states, an equal number have been gathered up to prevent overgrazing and are currently held in corrals and pastures run by the federal government. This June,...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management today published proposed regulations to establish a commercial oil shale program that could result in the addition of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil from lands in the western United States. In keeping with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, the BLM is proposing regulations that would provide the critical “rules of the road” on which private investors will rely in determining whether to make future financial commitments to prospective oil shale projects. “As Americans pay more than $4...

The Bush administration didn’t waste much time after its lifting of the executive ban on off-shore drilling to make its second big gesture towards the oil markets. Late yesterday, the Bureau of Land Management opened 3.9 million acres of land in Alaska for drilling and exploration. The land had already been reserved for petroleum production, but had been kept in limbo by complaints and legal action by environmentalists: The US federal government on Wednesday said it would open 3.9m acres of land in a designated petroleum reserve in Alaska for drilling as a means to help curb rising petrol prices....

Todays announcement from BLM should serve to remind Democratic leaders that NPR-A is already open for energy production, is already in the process of being leased for energy development, and has otherwise been explored for more than a generation. Democrats brought forth their Use It or Lose It bill without knowing it was already the law of the land... todays announcement is good news for the American people -- and bad news for Democratic leaders who worked furiously to prevent these lease sales from going forward ... Unfortunately, very little happening this week in Washington will get us any closer...

The US federal government on Wednesday said it would open 3.9m acres of land in a designated petroleum reserve in Alaska for drilling as a means to help curb rising petrol prices. “This is welcome news at a time when Americans are paying record prices at the pump,” said C. Stephen Allred, assistant US Secretary for Land and Minerals. “Together with proposed new production from other offshore and onshore areas, these increased supplies will help to stabilise energy costs.’’ The Alaska decision follows one by President George W. Bush on Monday to lift a presidential ban on drilling on the US outer...

In the Rockies today, a lawsuit is filed to stop energy leasing on Colorado's Roan Plateau, the public gets more time to weigh in on a change in national parks' gun policy, and the BLM rounds up hundreds of horses in Nevada. Ten environmental groups have sued the Bureau of Land Management to keep energy leases on Colorado's Roan Plateau from being auctioned off on Aug. 14. The leases are opposed by hunters and anglers who said wells present a danger to the plateau's wildlife habitat.Groups sue to stop energy leases on Colorado plateauA proposal to change gun policy in...

Link to ABQ Journal:http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/14115016state07-14-08.htm

A double blow for solar energy EPAIT SEEMED so promising—mirrors sprawled across desert land in the scorching south-west delivering clean electricity and helping to wean Americans off imported fossil fuels. Some scientists and industry developers claim that Nevada’s empty and sun-drenched expanses alone could supply enough terawatts to power the entire country. Now even the optimists fear this wonderful prospect may be a mirage. Congress has been dithering over extending a valuable investment tax credit for solar-energy projects, which solar advocates say is critical to the future of their industry but which is due to expire at the end of...

BUREAU TO STUDY IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT DENVER - Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies the environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years. Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada. Solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies' desires to lease public...

Before bureaucrats slammed the door for almost two years on new solar plants on 119 million acres of federal land they manage in six western states, they might have mentioned it to Harry Reid. You know, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader who represents a state that has been called the Saudi Arabia of solar, the senior senator from the state with 67 percent of its land under the control of the Bureau of Land Management, which implemented the freeze. But in this case, the BLM must have lost Reid’s number. “We read it in (Wednesday) morning’s paper,” Reid spokesman...

A newly discovered batch of well-preserved dinosaur bones, petrified trees and even freshwater clams in southeastern Utah may provide fresh clues about life in the region some 150 million years ago. The Bureau of Land Management announced the find Monday, calling the quarry near Hanksville "a major dinosaur fossil discovery." Several weeks of excavation have revealed at least four long-necked sauropods, two carnivorous dinosaurs and possibly a stegosaurus, according to the BLM. Nearby, there are also animal burrows and petrified tree trunks six feet in diameter. It doesn't contain any new species - at least not yet - but offers...

CHEYENNE -- Federal officials began arriving in Riverton on Monday to prepare for the Rainbow Family gathering, which is expected to be held on U.S. Forest Service land in the Big Sandy area near Pinedale. A national incident management team made up of about 40 Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management personnel was setting up shop to deal with the potentially thousands of people who could turn out for the event in early July. "The Rainbow Gathering of Living Light" is a weeklong campout that has been held on federal lands around the country each year since the early...

Energy: Oil is selling as if the world is running out of crude. It's not. In this country alone there is at least 118 billion barrels of recoverable but untapped oil, a bit more than Iraq's estimated reserves.That 118 billion barrels is an estimate made by the American Petroleum Institute using data from the Bureau of Land Management and the Minerals Management Service. Data compiled by Richard Watson, BLM's lead scientist, from those same federal agencies boost the estimate to 215 billion barrels. Compare that with Saudi Arabia, known as the world's richest oil nation, which is judged to hold...

Speculators have filed applications to develop more than 1 million acres of desert in Southern California with solar, wind and geothermal power plants, setting up a classic clash over land use with environmentalists and off-road enthusiasts. They have submitted at least 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees all of the territory, in recent years and especially since 2007. The interest is so hot that even if many of the projects fall through, the remaining ones would change the look of the arid landscape. California, particularly the southern half, is the epicenter of the nation's push for...

A survey of onshore oil and gas resources show public lands contain 31 billion barrels of oil and 231 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, but not all of it is available for development - something the Bush administration would like to change, according to a new report. The so-called Phase III inventory, ordered up as part of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, and released today by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, looks at the potential for energy development, as well as development's obstacles.

Crews began tearing away the charred planks and blackened cables of the Dewey Bridge on Monday after fire gutted the 92-year-old structure that had spanned the Colorado River 28 miles north of Moab, Utah. Flames blamed on a 7-year-old Grand Junction boy playing with matches Sunday afternoon had devoured the bridge’s creosote-soaked wooden deck and rails. The fire forced an Afton, Wyo., family of five to flee the campsite they had just upstream from the bridge and irritated a Fruita woman who remembered that ranchers used to use controlled burns on the stream and river bottoms to avoid just such...

Mountain bikers worry proposal could kill ‘epic ride’. Many of the area's skilled mountain bikers are concerned about a proposal that would ban them from some of their most-prized local trails, including a segment of the Colorado Trail. The proposal is part of a draft plan by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to guide management of 2.4 million acres of public lands in Southwest Colorado. The plan recommends classifying 55,000 acres as new wilderness, including 51,000 acres west of Hermosa Creek. Congress is ultimately responsible for establishing wilderness areas, which cannot be used by motorized vehicles...

SIERRA VISTA — Fort Huachuca and the Bureau of Land Management were awarded Saturday for their roles in protecting a tributary of the San Pedro River from future development. The Nature Conservancy gave the Morris K. Udall Outstanding Conservation Achievement Award in the public sector to both the agencies for their work in conserving more than 1,400 acres and 4.6 miles of river to the east of Fort Huachuca. The land is a part of the Babocomari Ranch, nearly 28,000 acres between the Mustang and Huachuca mountains, owned and operated by the Brophy family since 1935. The Babocomari River, one...

BISBEE — It’s a long-standing concern of border-security proponents: Illegal immigration and smuggling cause significant environmental damage, says a report recently released by the Bureau of Land Management. The annual report for fiscal 2006 details efforts by the bureau and partner organizations to mitigate the impacts on lands in Southern Arizona. Deborah E. Stevens, public affairs specialist for the Bureau of Land Management, said the purpose of the report is to build public awareness and get attention to the issue. “Tremendous numbers of people and organizations are doing work. We kind of want to let people know what we are...

A conservative group said Tuesday it is suing the Bureau of Land Management for records about any role Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Nevada politicians had in a real estate development project in the state. The group, Judicial Watch, said the BLM had not responded to a Freedom of Information Act request March 8 seeking correspondence with Reid, D-Nev., Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada and the state's Republican governor, former Rep. Jim Gibbons, about the Coyote Springs development. The Los Angeles Times reported in a story last year that Reid and other Nevada politicians intervened with federal...

Tree-thinning to begin in fall in Colorado, Wyo. The U.S. Forest Service is launching a major effort to battle bark beetles across an 80,000-acre swath of Colorado and Wyoming, its largest assault to date on the fire-prone forests. The plan, announced Friday, calls for thinning and tree removal in five Colorado counties and two in Wyoming. The program, aided by $8 million in new federal funding, relies on partnerships between the federal agency and the mountain counties where rust-red trees are causing the most danger to humans. Mary Ann Chandler, a Forest Service spokeswoman, said the agency has structured the...

Midler Wrongly Hacks Down 200 Trees LIHUE, Hawaii (Aug. 22) - Bette Midler cut down more than 230 trees around one of her properties on the island of Kauai without a permit, and the state has recommended she be fined. An attorney for Bette Midler says the trees that were cut down were foreign to Hawaii, and that she had plans to re-introduce native plants to the land. The staff of the Board of Land and Natural Resources recommended $6,500 in fines for having the trees felled and for building a graded road without permits required for the land zoned...

Wildfires in several western states have stirred embers of the "Sagebrush Rebellion," as ranchers and politicians have criticized federal agencies, the courts and environmentalists over policies they say are contributing to the fires. Nevada's Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons and U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., claimed environmental groups and federal bureaucracy have contributed to fires, including one at Lake Tahoe that burned more than 250 homes. And this week, Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter, a rancher, and the state's two senators, Larry Craig and Mike Crapo, joined ranchers in blaming federal safety rules for crippling early efforts to douse a 1,000-square-mile...

It’s irrational for Sen. Ken Salazar to demand that the Bureau of Land Management hold off on a drilling plan for Colorado’s Roan Plateau, while simultaneously blocking confirmation of the person nominated to head the agency. The BLM is less able to respond to such petulant demands, after all, if there’s no one in charge. And it’s laughable to hear the U.S. Senate trumpeted as the “world’s greatest deliberative body” when one senator, using an unwritten “rule” of uncertain origin, can unilaterally halt the confirmation process, leaving a major federal agency leaderless, in order to extort concessions from the executive...

Gov. Bill Ritter said Wednesday that the pine beetle epidemic that has killed nearly half of the state’s lodgepole pine trees will have an “impact for generations to come” and will change the look of Colorado’s forests. After getting a look at stands of dead trees from the air, Ritter said the outbreak is part of a natural cycle that has been encouraged by the drought, milder winters and the fact there are so many clusters of the same type and age of tree that are attractive to the beetles. He said the epidemic can’t be stopped, only managed to...

For Kiley Miller and John Rzeczycki, owners of 160 acres of wild desert outside Moab, Utah, Easter brings jeeps. Hummers, too, and modified pickups, and stripped-down rock crawlers—by the tens of thousands they descend on Moab for the annual Easter Jeep Safari, one of the nation's largest off-road-vehicle events. The jeeps whine through gears on a windswept uplift named Black Ridge near the couple's property, leaving a spoor of beer cans and brake fluid. Once, a group of jeepers left a message on one of the Private Property signs Miller and Rzeczyckihad put up—a noose, as carefully knotted as a...

The 73-year-old man who strung heavy cables across a trail on the San Francisco Peaks that clotheslined a motorcyclist won't be going to jail. J.D. Protiva will receive supervised probation for one year after pleading guilty to three counts of felony endangerment in a case in which a motorcyclist hit one of the cables and was thrown from his bike in September. He was also banned from the Coconino National Forest. Protiva was sentenced Tuesday after telling a Coconino County Superior Court judge he had gone too far in a frustrating attempt to ban motorcycles and protect nesting sites for...

More than 50 miles of roads and trails southwest of Colorado Springs would be closed to vehicles under rules proposed by the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM on Tuesday released the Arkansas River Travel Management Plan, which would change travel rules on 240,000 acres of public land ... There are now 232 miles of roads and trails open to vehicles. That would drop to 181 miles under the proposal. A complete list of proposed closures is available on the BLM’s Web site. Officials said the change is needed because of the increasing number of people coming to the area...

Tentative accord: The county will take signs off federal land but plans to 'assert its right of way' The long, sometimes nasty standoff between Kane County and the Bureau of Land Management over the county's unauthorized placement of road signs on federal land is on the verge of being settled. County and Interior Department officials on Tuesday reached a tentative agreement to end the dispute, which dates back over two years and intensified in February when the county began placing off-highway vehicle route signs in and around the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in defiance of BLM rules. Under the framework...

An 11-year-old boy is killed by a black bear overnight at a popular campsite in American Fork Canyon. This morning authorities are searching for the bear. The boy was asleep inside a tent he was sharing with his family at the Timpooneke Camp area, about 10 miles up the canyon. The family was camping about two miles up a dirt road from that campground. The boy, his mother, stepfather and a 6-year-old brother were sleeping in a large tent with several sections, and the 11-year-old was in a section of the tent by himself. Around 11 p.m. family members heard...

Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar said Wednesday he wants another look at drilling on the Roan Plateau but stopped short of saying he’d press the Senate to prevent it. “I would hope that there would be another opportunity to re-examine oil and gas on top of the Roan Plateau,” ... Salazar’s brother, Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., is seeking this week to have the House include a provision banning spending on Roan leasing during the 2008 fiscal year in an Interior Department appropriations measure... Drilling proponents said John Salazar might be “caving in to pressure from out-of-state special interests.” Most of the...

Boise, Idaho (AP) -- A judge on Friday blocked new rules governing how ranchers use 160 million acres of federal land, saying a federal agency had given in to pressure from the livestock industry. The Bureau of Land Management violated the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in creating the rules, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled. The judge said the BLM's rule revisions would have loosened restrictions on grazing on public land nationwide, limited the amount of public comment the BLM had to consider and diluted the BLM's...