Officials with the Idaho State Department of Agriculture (ISDA), the Idaho Cattle Association (ICA), and a coalition made up of Idaho ranchers and veterinarians are recommending changes to the rules governing trich testing of bulls in that state.

A proposed rail line to service coal mines near the southeast Montana community of Colstrip has drawn harsh criticism from landowners along the prospective route, many of whom claim the project is an unacceptable encroachment of their private property rights.

An attempt to resolve a long standing debate over water rights between landowners in western Montana and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) failed to pass the state legislature last week, marking another step in a decades old debate over ownership of water in the region.

For ranchers along the lower Snake River corridor in eastern Washington, neighboring with government and corporate landowners has long been a part of daily life.

As the gray wolf expands its territory in the northwest, controversies over the species between ranchers, wildlife agencies, and proponents of the species are also spreading to previously unaffected areas.

Owing to the nature of Washington’s wolf management plan, which calls for dispersal throughout the state before Endangered Species Act restrictions can be lifted, Rep. Joel Kretz introduced a bill last month calling for the transplantation of wolves into the western portion of the state.

A series of grazing cutbacks announced on Jan. 28 by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) left ranchers in southwestern Idaho’s Owyhee County reeling, and county officials worrying about the region’s economic future.

An ongoing battle underway in Washington is pitting landowners and ranchers against the state Department of Ecology (DOE), Washington’s primary water regulatory agency, over the agency’s claimed authority to force the fencing of stream banks on private property to exclude livestock.

A recently developed international committee designed to measure and assess the environmental impacts of the livestock industry worldwide has announced its election of California Animal Science professor Frank Mitloehner as its first chairman. The committee is a project of the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The apparently very poor condition of a shipment of U.S. cattle bound for Russian dairy farms has officials in that country considering a ban on the importation of U.S. cattle that arrive via oceangoing vessels. In a statement issued Sept.