A detailed history of the conflict, starting in 1953.
Bureau of Land Management
Posted inArticles
Public Record: Cliven Bundy
Court and federal documents chronicle a long history of grazing battles.
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
Inside the BLM’s abrupt decision not to ban shooting in an Arizona national monument
Why guns, politics and saguaros don’t mix.
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
The Latest: Interior approves a 990-mile-long transmission line
BackstoryThe proposed Gateway West transmission line through southern Wyoming and Idaho could deliver up to 3,000 megawatts of power, including wind. But such projects require complex permitting and lengthy review processes, even as upgrading the grid becomes increasingly urgent. In 2011, the Obama administration created a “rapid response team” to help expedite clean-energy infrastructure, including […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
BLM teams with researchers to protect midget faded rattlesnake
Summer snake hunting in western Colorado is a race against the sun. The reptiles emerge early from their dens to soak up dawn’s dull warmth. But once the hillsides hum with heat, they’ll split for the shadows. “We better get going,” says biologist Josh Parker of Georgia’s Clayton State University when I meet his small […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
A new collaboration has Idaho ranchers and the BLM fighting fire together
On a hot day in August 2011, lightning sparked a fire in the rocky bluffs outside Glenns Ferry, Idaho. With the Bureau of Land Management’s fire crews tied up on the other 16 or so fires burning in the area, a few local ranchers, some of whom had grazing allotments on the land, rushed in […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Secret getaways of the National Landscape Conservation System
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. Updated 4/9/13 The only map I have shows the way out of Las Vegas — always a good thing to know. It is crisp and folded-up on the passenger seat and it says to take the eastbound interstate, […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2013: Farming on the Fringe
The BLM fights for the Southwest’s last free-flowing river
SIERRA VISTA, ARIZONA “For sale: Prime Office/Retail,” proclaims the sign on a mesquite flat on the outskirts of this affluent city of 47,000 people, about an hour south of Tucson near the Huachuca Mountains. It’s announcing a 2,000-acre project known as Tribute, proposed by California developer Castle and Cooke and approved by city leaders six […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
BLM plans for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska
On a chilly June afternoon several years ago, I sat for hours on a muddy sandbar, entranced as a seemingly endless procession of migrating caribou swam across a northwestern Alaska river. The air was filled with splashing, the grunting of cows, the answering calls of their calves. Perhaps some 2,000 animals passed by. You might […]
Posted inArticles
Abbey’s Road: Retired BLM chief gives one last look across the range
Bob Abbey, director of the federal Bureau of Land Management, retired this May after a total of 28 years with the agency. It was his second — and final — retirement: He originally left in 2005 after eight years as the Nevada state director, returning in 2009 only after a special request from Interior Secretary […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
The great New Mexican juniper massacre
385,000 years: That’s the estimated collective age of old, live junipers illegally cut for firewood between July 2010 and November 2011 on Bureau of Land Management land in northern and central New Mexico. Hardest hit have been the surreally beautiful badlands west of the small town of Cuba, now stippled with freshly sawed tree stumps, […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Detente in the rancher v. environmentalist grazing wars?
If you’ve been trolling the news recently, you might think that ranchers still reign supreme over the federal estate, despite the fact that the number of cattle and sheep on public lands has declined by more than half since the 1950s. In November, for example, the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed a […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Protecting wildlife corridors remains more theory than practice
updated Dec. 30, 3011 Every May for the past five years, Jackson Hole, Wyo., has celebrated the return of 300 or so Antilocapra americana to nearby Grand Teton National Park. The revelry is not just to honor the animals for completing their remarkable 120-mile-long seasonal migration. It also salutes a Herculean communal effort: the 2008 […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
BLM experiments with camouflage to hide renewable power structures
On a late summer day, Bureau of Land Management visual resource specialist Sherry Roche lugged a 50-pound plywood panel from a white pickup onto the bare hillside of Hubbard Mesa near Rifle, Colo. Others lashed it to the ground with climbing rope, then stepped back to see if its specially engineered pattern of pixels faded […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
A fee-dodging retiree forces a national forest to rethink access charges
Soft-spoken, bespectacled Jim Smith makes an unlikely activist. The former Mobil Oil geophysicist retired to Sedona, Ariz., about 10 years ago, drawn by the spectacular red-rock scenery. In November 2009, Smith drove five miles of rough road to the Vultee Arch trailhead and backpacked in for a night. When he returned, he found the Forest […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
The BLM’s conservation experiment
Salazar directs agency to put conservation first – in some places
Posted inArticles
High Country Views: Anticline deer decline
The 300-square-mile Pinedale Anticline in western Wyoming has been called America’s Serengeti. It’s crucial winter range for mule deer and pronghorn antelope, and is a sage grouse stronghold. But it’s got riches below ground too – the third largest natural gas reserve in the United States. Development of the gas reserve has been underway for […]
Posted inArticles
Audio: The joy of CX
The BLM’s categorical exclusions have allowed some questionable drilling permits.
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
Who’ll clean up when the party’s over?
Land managers and industry are stepping up efforts to reclaim public lands scraped and drilled for oil and gas. Is it too little, too late?
