About Ralph Maughan

Dr. Ralph Maughan is a specialist in natural resource and environmental policies and politics. He is not a biologist. He was born and raised in Utah and Idaho. He has many years experience in Western public land and environmental issues. Maughan has written several hiking guidebooks in addition to academic books and articles. Ralph is also the President of the Wolf Recovery Foundation. Founded in 1986 as a nonprofit 501.C.3 tax deductible organization, the Wolf Recovery Foundation was the first organization in Idaho completely dedicated to the restoration of wolves in the Rockies.
Ralph’s spouse, Jackie Johnson Maughan is a writer and the author of a number of outdoor books and articles. She has also been a Forest Service fire lookout during 4 recent summers.

The Maughan Ranch

By Ralph Maughan

How big is my spread? Well it’s about 700-million acres, and the funny thing is it’s your ranch too, if you’re an American citizen. The ranch is our American public lands, our great national commons.

Trouble is there are a lot folks around who want to steal our land. . . plenty of them here in Idaho, but even worse ones in other states. Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy, California was about the worst. He wanted to give our public ranch to developers, foreign mining interests, oil companies, anything but the American public. Thanks to the voters in his district he no longer chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Resources Committee. He’s not even in Congress. There are a lot more like him, and they are sneaky too.

I want to put a few more wolves and grizzly bears on the ranch and run a few less cattle. I tend to favor real elk over “slow elk” and bighorn sheep over sheep. Some folks say that’s perverse. Maybe it’s because like most westerners my ranch house and my job are in the city. In my case that’s the huge metropolis of Pocatello, Idaho (pop. 52,000).

As a real westerner, as opposed to the mythical westerner, I was born and raised in suburban Utah — Logan. Our family spent some time in Rexburg, Idaho, where my father (Ralph, I’m Jr.) coached at Ricks College. Ricks has been renamed “BYU-Idaho. Dad (Ralph Sr.) finished his 37 year career as track coach at Utah State University. I’m sorry to say my dad died on July 3, 2006.

I’m a prof and an outdoor enthusiast! We real westerners may be disenfranchised by our increasingly corrupt politicians, but I’ll never be quiet about it!

Note: I became Professor Emeritus of Political Science on July 1, 2007 after teaching 36 years at Idaho State University. So there will be more time for the outdoors and working on behalf of conservation.

Hiking Guides by Ralph Maughan

Beyond the Tetons: A Backpacking Guide to Wyoming’s Teton Wilderness. Pruett Pub. Boulder, CO, 1982. Out of print.

Hiking Idaho, second edition. Formerly “The Hiker’s Guide to Idaho” Globe-Pequot $19.95 1984, 1990, 1995, 1997, 2001. Co-authored by Jackie Johnson Maughan.

Hiking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness Areas.Published June 2000. Co-author Lee Mercer. Globe Pequot Publishing.

Email to Ralph Maughan
I want your messages. If I don’t answer within three days, email me again. I get a lot of email and some falls into “cybercracks”, so if I fail to answer I mean no offense. Short email tends to get answered before long ones. No middle school or high school student report information requests, please! Wolf reintroduction is agood topic. I’d love to help, but the number of requests for school reports can be overwhelming, but I am glad it is such a popular topic.

About my blog

This blog replaces my old web site at http://www.forwolves.org/ralph. The old site will remain up because it contains ten years of wolf news I wrote. I see that many people use these old articles. I think they contain valuable data.

I like to write about much more than wolves. I seem to be one of the few bloggers who writes primarily about conservation and politics in the Idaho/Western Montana/Western Wyoming area.