The sentence that came down for Cody Easterday Tuesday concludes one of the biggest cattle rustling cases in the history of the West.Read More
From Oregon to the Dakotas, hay stocks for hungry cattle are already low. On top of that, ranchers say summer pastures are dry from the widespread drought.Read More
Easterday Ranches and Easterday Farms has provided beef, potatoes, onions and produce to dinner tables for more than three generations. Now in bankruptcy, many of the family’s key properties will be sold to repay debts. It’s one of the largest sales of prime water-rich agricultural lands in the Columbia Basin in recent history. Read More
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday issued a grazing permit and privilege to two eastern Oregon ranchers whose imprisonment sparked the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016.Read More
For some people, there are advantages to living in an unprotected area. For one, they don’t have to pay taxes into a fire district or timber taxes to the state. Residents in Moses Coulee area of Douglas County want to act as an initial attack team for their small area, helping douse the flames until official fire crews arrive.Read More
A federal appeals court in San Francisco has denied the Justice Department's motion for a retrial in the case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who led an armed standoff against federal agents over cattle grazing near his ranch in 2014.Read More
Around a million beef cattle are born each spring in the Northwest — about 228,000 in Washington, 533,000 in Oregon and 495,000 in Idaho last year. It takes a large crew working close to get through hundreds of cattle at a time, and ranchers say the job can’t wait — coronavirus or not. Read More
The Bureau of Land Management decides who gets to do what on some 250 million acres of public land in the country, or to put it another way roughly one-tenth of all the land in the U.S. Relocating its headquarters to the West, where most of its actual land is, has been floated for years. But now the Trump administration is actually making it happen.Read More
A rancher is rattled by the recent slaying of one of his cows near Hampton, Oregon.Read More
The Oregon ranchers whose imprisonment helped spur an armed occupation in 2016 don’t have permission to graze on federal land after all. On Friday, a U.S. District Court rejected the Trump administration’s decision to restore grazing rights to Dwight and Steven Hammond, the father and son pair at the center of years of controversy in eastern Oregon.Read More
Montana recently passed a law that, if it gains federal approval and goes into effect as planned in January, would require many Medicaid recipients to prove they work a set number of hours each month.Read More
Right now in remote eastern Oregon, a serial crime spree is unfolding. Young purebred bulls are mysteriously showing up dead. Cowboys recently found several animals with body parts precisely removed -- and it’s happened just like this before in the West.Read More
After hours of testimony, a federal judge in Portland extended a temporary restraining order as he considers whether or not to prevent a controversial Harney County ranching family from grazing their cattle on certain parcels of public land in southeast Oregon.Read More
The Trump administration is lifting restrictions meant to protect greater sage grouse across seven western states. In Oregon grazing restrictions are being removed in 13 locations that provide habitat for the imperiled birds.Read More
Washington officials have authorized the killing of wolves in two more of the state’s packs. Conservationists oppose the move. They say it could only worsen wolf-livestock conflicts. The order comes after wildlife officials confirmed wolves preyed on four cows in one attack and six in another this past fall.Read More
Heraclio Delacruz is a Peruvian sheepherder, in Spanish what’s called a “pastor.” This is his 18th year with the Martinez family sheepherding operation in Central Washington. " ... you’re alone, with your friends the dogs, the braying sheep," he says.Read More
In late September, the Martinez brothers moved about half of those 800 sheep from the mountainous terrain around Lake Wenatchee to the irrigated, emerald pastures of Connell, in Central Washington. They did it with the help of some highly skilled men: Peruvian “pastores” or sheepherders. All the way from South America, most of them have been with the Martinez family for decades.Read More
