Egan Range-Ward Mountain Landscape Ely BLM
Ely BLM has long been at the forefront in driving Pinyon Jays towards extinction. Vast areas of central Nevada were deforested for wood during the 1800s era mining boom and white settlement. The region ran on wood. Across vast areas of the landscape, the trees that agencies claim are invading, encroaching, taking over – are actually re-occupying the elevation and precipitation sites where they naturally occur in the Great Basin.
In the 1950s-1980s BLM and the Forest Service conducted large-scale destruction of both sagebrush and PJ forest – and openly stated the chaining, burning, cutting, and herbiciding were being done to try to increase cattle and sheep forage on depleted “range”. Ely agencies were so n relentless in their assaults on native woody communities that the term Ely chain” was developed. In chaining deforestation, two large bulldozers are driven cross-country through the forest with a ship’s anchor chain between them. The trees are violently uprooted and ripped out of the earth. They may later be bulldozed into big piles and burned or left in place. This is followed by “seeding” that in the past nearly always planted exotic cattle forage grass crested wheat, and nowadays may contain a few other species that have been bred to be larger, coarser and produce more “forage” than more diminutive local native ecotypes.
The photos below show the handiwork of both bulldozer chaining and a bullhog (a brutal loud ugly monster that grinds up whole trees) – with the bullhog operating in the peak of migratory bird nesting season. BLM and the Forest Service routinely disregard the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. “Mitigation”, “avoidance” and “protective” language in NEPA project decisions has gotten weaker and weaker. Agencies have gone from not destroying or “treating” in the current jargon- – forest and sage nesting habitat in migratory bird nesting season to now saying: “Oh we’ll send a biologist out to look for bird nests and avoid them if we find any”. This is a fantasy – you can’t rip up the forest, or burn the forest, in spring and NOT “take” migratory birds. Look at the bullhog – can anyone seriously believe this monster piece of equipment was not grinding up Mourning Dove, Mountain Bluebird, Gray Vireo, Ash-throated Flycatcher and many other species eggs and chicks?
Ward Charcoal ovens testify to the 1800s mining boom and the first wave of massive deforestation.
Chaining and bullhogging created a new road directly up a steep sidehill face.
Cold rain in a chaining of old growth Pinyon and Juniper.
Your tax dollars at work – mimicking an explosion – massively destroying a natural carbon sequestering native mature and old growth forest for the benefit of the public lands livestock industry. All based on absurd models and ecosites. AND being purposefully blind to the role of 1800’s mining boom era deforestation in the Great Basin.
Bullhog operating in the distance. Dust, wood chips, and mist of ground up nesting bird eggs and chicks from mid-May 2024 forest destruction. The machine’s forest death cloud spoor is how we tracked down where it was operating. See also this article.
Old growth remains.
Beautiful, tough, carbon-sequestering arid native forest flattened like a farm field with no structural complexity to provide habitat for small mammals, lizards, or birds. Biocrusts and understory plants smothered in wood chips. Shrubs gone. All the complex structure of a forest converted into wood chips and debris. How much does this elevate the site temperature in summer? How much hotter, drier, windier, weedier and desolate will this site be?
Author Chris Ketcham described the Egan gut-wrenching bullhog forest destruction in This Land.
Bullhog radically simplifying the forest and destroying biodiversity. Old growth Pinyon-Juniper forest in background not yet ground up or chained.
Chaining across a block of land.
Where a few months ago there had been forest…