No time to read the full Jarbidge photo essay? Take a quick look at any of the photos using the links below. NOTE: Rabbit photos may be disturbing to some viewers.

Dead Cow and Vulture Sage Grouse Remnant Sagebrush Cheatgrass and Tumbleweeds in Draw Burned Sage Noxious Weeds 1 Noxious Weeds 2 Sagebrush Loss and Fragmentation 1 Sagebrush Loss and Fragmentation 2 Cows and Trough Dust Devil Compaction Dead Young Black-tailed Jackrabbit Dead Rabbits in Road 1 Island of Unburned Sagebrush Photo Antelope Dead Rabbits in Road 2

• DEAD COWS & VULTURES
  Dead Cow and Vulture Photo
  This photo was taken at Juniper Butte allotment, Brackett permittee.
   
• SAGE GROUSE
  Sage Grouse Photo (Courtesy USFWS)
  Sage grouse populations have plummeted across the Jarbidge and leks (traditional grouse display areas) have disappeared under intense cattle grazing and development of livestock facilities. BLM’s Land Use Plan promises the public that it will protect the critical sagebrush habitats for grouse and other wildlife.
   
• REMNANT SAGEBRUSH
  Remnant Sagebrush Photo
  A remnant pocket of native Wyoming big sagebrush habitat in the Jarbidge. It contains structurally diverse sagebrush and clumps of desirable native bunchgrasses, free of weeds in the interspaces.
   
• CHEATGRASS & TUMBLEWEEDS
  Cheatgrass and Tumbleweeds in Draw Photo
  Invasive species like cheatgrass and other weeds are overrunning sage grouse habitats impacted by linked grazing and fire in the Jarbidge. This is causing large-scale habitat loss.
  
  Cheatgrass is the continuous pale vegetation in photo. Its dense growth of flammable fine fuels causes fires to flash rapidly across landscapes, destroying sagebrush habitats. Gray plants clogging bottom of the draw are tumbleweeds blown in from livestock-damaged uplands.
  
  Burned Sage Photo
  BLM reacts by burning tumbleweeds, killing sagebrush and stimulating growth of a new mat of weeds.
   
• NOXIOUS WEEDS
  Noxious Weeds Photo 1
  Weeds are now invading livestock-depleted lands. Noxious rush skeletonweed amidst a sea of cheatgrass in a northern Jarbidge BLM allotment. Its small seeds are transported on the wind and infest livestock-trampled soils.
  
  Noxious Weeds Photo 2
  Legions of noxious Scotch thistle in a northern Jarbidge BLM allotment. Cheatgrass has invaded understory of sagebrush in background.
   
• SAGEBRUSH LOSS & FRAGMENTATION
  Sagebrush Loss and Fragmentation Photo 1
  Pale tan cheatgrass dominating sagebrush and seedings. BLM seedings and millions of dollars of fire rehab. projects designed for cattle have greatly destroyed and fragmented sagebrush habitats. In the 1960s and 70s, BLM burned, sprayed and plowed sagebrush to plant crested wheatgrass (a soil-depleting Asian grass) for livestock forage. As large fires swept the increasingly weedy and heavily stocked lands of the Jarbidge in recent decades, BLM continued to plant Asian grasses as fire rehab. and then stocked lands more heavily with cattle. These high cattle numbers have caused cheatgrass and now noxious weeds to expand and choke out understories in native plant communities and infested the seedings too!
  
  Sagebrush Loss and Fragmentation Photo 2
  Barren monoculture of crested wheatgrass with seeding rows visible, lacking sagebrush and diverse flowering plants that produce essential food for grouse chicks. These seedings are biological “dead zones” devoid of most native wildlife species.
   
• ARTIFICIAL WATER
  Cows and Trough Photo
  Several hundred miles of artificial water pipelines and troughs have been built to extend and intensify livestock use into nearly every corner of the Jarbidge. Photo depicts a trough in the Clover Crossing allotment (Bachman permittee). On hillside in background, pale tan grass is cheatgrass; clumps of grass are barren seeding.
   
• FIRE, DESERTIFICATION & WILDLIFE DESTRUCTION
  NOTE: Rabbit photos may be disturbing to some viewers.
  Dust Devil Photo
  Cheatgrass, weeds and seedings have led to huge fires that sweep across the Jarbidge, consuming remaining pockets of sagebrush. 200,000 acres burned in the July 2005 Clover Fire. Much of the area burned was land that taxpayers had already spent millions of dollars re-seeding in lavishly funded “Fire Rehab” projects following previous fires. Those seedings became infested with weeds under high stocking of cattle.
  
  Desertification accelerates with each new fire.
  
  Compaction Photo
  Cattle hoof pocks and dog. Cattle trampling destroys protective living soil surfaces (microbiotic crusts). Hoof-pocked soils provide ideal sites for weed seeds to take root. Hoofprints from cattle grazing when soils were muddy - cemented in burn where weeds were consumed by fire- Simplot Coonskin allotment.
  
  Dead Young Black-tailed Jackrabbit Photo
  Fast-moving weed fires consume wildlife habitat and kill wildlife. A young jackrabbit dead atop a burned cow flop.
  
  Dead Rabbits in Road Photo 1
  Shotgunned jackrabbits placed in a macabre display in the middle of a road in the first patch of sagebrush at the western edge of the Jarbidge Clover burn. Black ash cloud billows in the burn in the background. Red shotgun shells littered the road ahead.
  
  Island of Unburned Sagebrush Photo
  While the Jarbidge Clover Fire consumed > 100,000 acres of crested wheatgrass seedings, pockets of sagebrush with intact native grass understory survived. Here, the fire burned through crested wheatgrass and weeds and stopped at the edge of the native plant community.
  
  Routine BLM fire rehabilitation policies close only burned portions of pastures, and continue grazing everywhere else through construction of a new maze of barbed wire fences to pen cattle into unburned areas. These unburned areas are critical refuges for native wildlife.
  
  Antelope Photo
  Sagebrush, important winter food for sage grouse, antelope and other wildlife, is now gone across most of the Jarbidge. The situation is so bad that cattle are eating large amounts of the remaining sagebrush and shunning the unpalatable seeded crested wheatgrass.
   
• RECOVERY EFFORTS
  The temporary closure of grazing allotments in the Jarbidge provides a respite for damaged public lands and wildlife. It enables development of a solid plan to protect core sagebrush areas and recovery of wild lands where sagebrush has been lost. Over half the lands where cattle are to be removed are grazed by billionaire Simplot cattle holdings!
  
  The Federal Court stopped these Simplot and other powerful ranchers from getting an 83% increase in cattle numbers.
  
  The temporary closure of grazing allotments under the Federal Court Decision will provide critical ungrazed food and shelter for wildlife in the coming winter.
   
• IN CLOSING
  Dead Rabbits in Road Photo 2
  How we treat lands that we all own and share, and the wildlife that inhabits these lands, shows what kind of a people we are. Do we want some of the nation’s most powerful public lands ranchers and the Idaho politicians who do their bidding to destroy our shared heritage of wildlife and wild public lands?