A few weeks ago, my wife and I were backpacking on the Sheltowee Trace National Recreation Trail along Rock Creek in McCreary County when we came across a fellow hiker who’d traveled from Indiana to hike Kentucky’s long trail.

After some talk of footwear choices and blisters, she remarked on the astounding beauty of the place. “We don’t have anything like this,” she said.

I recently attended a presentation on invasive weeds by a representative of the Deschutes National Forest.

The problem with the presentation was that it promoted and legitimized an industrial paradigm to weed threats. The Forest Service (FS) promotes an Industrial Forestry Paradigm that treats the symptoms, not the causes of ecological degradation.

The biggest factors contributing to the spread of weeds on public lands comes from logging/thinning and livestock grazing. Yet during the entire Forest Service presentation, the one thing missing from the talk was any mention of why and how weeds are spread. Most species that we consider weeds are plants that thrive on disturbance. In other words, activities that create bare soil and/or reduce the viability of the native species to compete against weed species, thus promote weed invasions.

Recently I attended a meeting with the Bridger Teton National Forest (BTNF) officials to discuss future grazing plans for the Upper Green River grazing allotment.

The allotment, one of the most outstanding wildlife areas in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, contains the headwaters of the Green River and lies north of Pinedale Wyoming between the Wind River Range and the Gros Ventre Range.

Basically, the Forest Service plans to allow the continued degradation of public resources by livestock grazing on what is one of the most important wildlife areas on the entire BTNF. The Upper Green Allotment is an excellent example of PPSC or “privatize profit, socialize costs.”

The shooting of the Profanity Pack last year and now a kill order for the Smackout Pack in Northeast Washington clearly demonstrated the failure of the current strategy of many conservation groups who are involved in wolf recovery efforts.

In this case, a number of organizations, including Wolf Haven International, Conservation Northwest, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Humane Society had joined the Wolf Advisory Group or WAG, a collaborative group that worked with the state of Washington as well as other “stake holders” (read ranchers) to produce a wolf recovery strategy.