12/6/99
The following news release was faxed to media outlets in Idaho, eastern Oregon, and
northern Nevada today:
"Golden Cowpie" Award Winners Announced by Idaho Watersheds Project
At a
special awards dinner in Hailey, Idaho on Saturday
December 4, 1999, Idaho Watersheds Project announced the winners of its first annual "Golden Cowpie" award.
This award is made to the federal or state land management office which has shown resolute
and unbending success in managing public lands ranching to assure continued degradation of
publicly owned natural resources. Because the abuse of public lands by public lands
ranching occurs everywhere this activity is permitted, there is an exceptional degree of
competition for this honor.
The joint "Golden Cowpie" Award winners for 1999 are the Owyhee
Resource Area of the Bureau of Land Management headquartered in Boise, Idaho and the Lost
River Ranger District of the Challis/Salmon National Forest headquartered in Mackay,
Idaho. These two federal agency offices have exhibited the most remarkable neglect of
their responsibility to protect public lands from livestock abuse in 1999 and will receive
a plaque and a gold-colored cowpie in acknowledgement of their rising to the top.
Idaho Watersheds project also announced that this year's runners up for the award were the
Elko Field Office of the BLM headquartered in Elko, Nevada and the Jordan Resource Area of
the BLM, headquartered in Vale, Oregon.
Jon Marvel, President of Idaho Watersheds Project, a non-profit conservation group with
1000 members, stated: " IWP is hopeful that any public notice brought onto these
agency offices by this award will motivate them to actually start to do the job they have
been hired for-- to protect our public lands for ours and future generations of
Americans."