IWP sends its best wishes to members and supporters for a more cow- (and sheep) free millennium on all public lands in the good old USA as well as all other lands being desertified and biologically diminished by livestock use across the world! The following is some early January news from IWP:
The University of Oklahoma Press has published a new book, "The Western Range Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity," by University of Wyoming College of Law Professor Debra Donahue. Copies may be ordered from Oklahoma University Press at 800/627-7377 and www.ou.edu/oupress , or Amazon Books at www.amazon.com . While the book is pricey at $47.50, it is the best analysis and advocacy text for the elimination of public lands ranching on arid lands in western North America since Lynn Jacobs' "Waste of the West" first published in 1991.
In staff memoranda to the Idaho Land Board released January 5, the Idaho Department of Lands has recommended that Idaho Watersheds Project be awarded 4 grazing leases covering over 5000 acres of Idaho school endowment land. The leases include over 4,000 acres in the Lime Creek watershed, which is threatened bull trout habitat, 777 acres on Cottonwood Creek within 3 miles of Boise and 640 acres on Poison Creek in Blaine County. All of these areas show historic and current abuses from livestock grazing mismanagement. The Land Board will act on the recommendations on Tuesday January 11, 2000. IWP anticipates that the Board may well overturn the staff recommendations and award the leases to the ranchers; however, in one case (Cottonwood Creek), the rancher defeated at auction, millionaire Brad Little, has written a letter to the Land Board recommending that IWP be awarded the lease !
Curiously, the Department of Lands has recommended that millionairess Mary Hewlett Jaffe be awarded the lease to 2520 acres of school endowment land in Custer County even though IWP outbid her ranch manager, Shane Rosenkrance, $1.200 to $200. for the lease in September!