Leadbelt Creek Watershed, Central Idaho

The rain has brought a rich suite of greens to obscure western public landscapes.

Tributary to Leadbelt Creek, Central Idaho © Brian Ertz 2009 (click to enlarge)

Sarah Palin Resigns As Governor, Wolves Everywhere Celebrate

Someone must have told Palin she’s a contender for a presidential run in 2012 ? Good luck with that ex-Governor Palin …

If you think you can handle it, there’s the video of Sarah Palin’s resignation speech on the Huffington Post link :

Sarah Palin Resigning as Alaska’s Governor – Huffington Post

And a great photograph of one wolf’s response on ecorazzi :

Sarah Palin Resigns As Governor, Wolves Everywhere Celebrate – ecorazzi

Ethics concerns raised at NV wildlife commission

Killing predators to “conserve” other more “desirable” wildlife has been a consistent topic of conversation on this forum.  It’s ugly enough in it’s own right in my mind – single-species conservation runs into such ethical dilemmas, especially when most wildlife managers don’t see a problem at all.  It appears one wildlife manager in Nevada doesn’t see an ethical problem with much of anything :

Ethics concerns raised at NV wildlife commission – AP

The projects before the Nevada Wildlife Commission seemed simple enough: spending about $160,000 to kill ravens and coyotes to protect sage grouse and mule deer from the predators.

But the situation has since turned into an ugly soap opera, with ethics questions raised over ties between one commissioner’s mother and backers of the predator projects.

Yet, from my perspective, it’s frustrating that a story about “ethics concerns” of a wildlife management agency could miss the mark so fundamentally.  Here we have a wildlife agency slaughtering coyotes & ravens in such a nasty way with public dollars and the ‘ethical question’ is about whether it is wrong that one of the commissioner’s family members might be the one to get the contract for the wildlife slaughter ?

United Nations Will Study Threats to Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park

Finally some international pressure on the coal pit/coalbed methane proposals just northwest of Glacier (and Waterton) National Parks-

United Nations Will Study Threats to Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. By Dan Testa, Flathead Beacon (in New West)

Judge Tosses Bush-Era National Forest Management Regulations

Does this third court rejection of Bush national forest rules put a stake through its heart?

The 2005 Bush revision of the rules for national forest planning were especially aimed at ignoring wildlife even though the law — the National Forest Management Act of 1976 — required plans to provide for species viability. That meant that projects on the forest would not be allowed to harm any species of fish or wildlife so that its population would no longer be viable.

Now after years of fighting, hopefully the Service will return to the 1982 rules implementing NFMA. This decision will have far reaching effects.

Judge Tosses Bush-Era Forest Management Regulations. By Noelle Straub. Greenwire in the New York Times.