Articles

Largely ignored in this debate is the fact that animal impact is essential to the health of these areas.

Nature does not much care whether the animals be bison, cattle, goats, horses etc., so long as animals in sufficient numbers and concentrations are periodically grazing and browsing weeds and brush, trampling old growth and deadfall, tilling in seeds and leaving behind dung and urine.

Animals used in this way are also essential to wildfire prevention because the grass, weeds and browse they consume and trample down otherwise accumulate as the fine fuels that accelerate catastrophic fire.

At Pitchstone Waters we have found that properly managed goats are the easiest form of fire-control brush management in overgrown forests.

The negative is that this a service which must be paid for.

Videos

Late summer 2020 game camera clips from Pitchstone Waters.

At Pitchstone Waters bears are constantly chewing up cameras and drinker float valves. For them its a form of play.

Wildfire continues to devastate the American West at increasing rates.

As this video is posted, wildfires are burning across more than 768,000-acres of land in twelve Western states, and 500,000-acres in Canada. Ten fires are in Idaho, which has been under a smoke cloud for days.

According to some, the plan that could combat the danger of forest fire lies in the complicated history and present role of the wild horse. Naturalist rancher William E. Simpson II, Michael Perez, and Pulitzer Prize winning author David Philipps explore the interconnected issues of wildfire and wild horses in the American West.

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Curated and written collection of thoughts on biodiversity, wildlife and resource management.