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07/29/2025

ProPublica, July 23, 2025:

"Law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, have for years worked alongside private mine security to surveil the largely peaceful protesters who oppose the mine, called Thacker Pass, according to more than 2,000 pages of internal law enforcement communications reviewed by ProPublica.

"Officers and agents have tracked protesters’ social media, while the mining company has gathered video from a camera above a campsite protesters set up on public land near the mine.

"An FBI joint terrorism task force in Reno met in June 2022 “with a focus on Thacker Pass,” the records also show, and Lithium Americas — the main company behind the mine — hired a former FBI agent specializing in counterterrorism to develop its security plan. ...

"All told, about 10 agencies have monitored the mine’s opponents. In addition to the FBI, those agencies include the Bureau of Land Management, Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Nevada State Police Highway Patrol, Winnemucca Police Department and Nevada Threat Analysis Center, the records show."

📷 Thacker Pass protest encampment, 2021. Tony Huegel/Backcountry Byways LLC

06/24/2025

U.S. 191 disappears beneath Arizona's massive copper mine at Morenci.

Under federal law, miners pay nothing to the American people for the wealth they extract from federally managed "public lands" at irreparable environmental cost.

Actually, what we think of as public lands were long ago surrendered to commercial, profit-driven enterprises that can also claim to be "the public," and which can bar you from access. These lands belong by law, first and foremost, to ecologically destructive commercial industries -- e.g., open-pit mining, clear-cut logging, grazing of wildlife habitat, etc. -- each of them also subsidized. The notion that these lands are held primarily in trust for hiking, hunting, fishing, wildlife, responsible OHV recreation and ecological values is arguably a fallacy. Those are minor players in the halls of power and influence. Just look around you the next time you're out there.

📷 Backcountry Byways LLC

06/07/2025

Summer is coming ...

📷 Tony Huegel/Backcountry Byways LLC

05/27/2025

Kilgore, Idaho

📷 Tony Huegel/Backcountry Byways LLC

02/15/2025

Feb 14 (Reuters) - The Trump administration has halted funding for federal programs to reduce wildfire risk in Western states and has frozen hiring of seasonal firefighters, as part of broad cuts to government spending, according to organizations impacted by the moves.

01/28/2025

📷 Burr Trail Scenic Byway, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah

From Fox 13 News, Salt Lake City, Utah, Jan. 27, 2025:

GARFIELD COUNTY, Utah — A move to rename southern Utah roadways after President Donald Trump has failed after the Garfield County Commission voted against the motion on Monday.

County Commissioner Leland Po***ck, who proposed the motion, was the only member of the commission who voted in favor of renaming the Burr Trail Scenic Backway to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Burr Trail Backway.

Following a public hearing, two other commissioners, Jerry Taylor and David Tebbs, voted against the motion, which also could have renamed Johns Valley Road to Scenic Byway 12 as the Donald J. Trump Presidential Highway.

The Burr Trail Scenic Backway connects Boulder to Highway 276.

While the majority of residents in Garfield County voted for Trump, renaming the roads for the president was a bit too much for many. An online petition had already gathered 1,200 signatures to preserve the historic Burr Trail name."

Keep It Like It Wuz

📷 Tony Huegel/Backcountry Byways LLC

11/12/2024

American veterans ...

📷 Tony Huegel/Backcountry Byways LLC

05/02/2024

Mexican standoff? It appears so.

We were privileged recently to encounter three threatened desert tortoises within a short distance along a remote Mojave Desert road.

They are native to the harsh environments of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, in the western U.S. Yet even here, their numbers are plunging toward extinction. Threats include predation, grazing, wildfires, invasive vegetation and habitat destruction, road kills, active military reserves, development, solar-energy farms and other human impacts. Even Joshua Tree National Park, where preservation is a core mission, says its desert tortoise population has declined by 90 percent over the past 40 years.

Naturally camouflaged, tortoises are easy to spot if one drives slowly and watches for them. We carefully moved the tortoises we encountered off the road's treadway in the directions they were headed, following the rules for doing so.

📷 Tony Huegel/Backcountry Byways LLC

04/13/2024

1990 SR5 22RE 5 SPD 4Runner, bought new in fall of '89, retired now after almost 280,000 hard miles. She fires right up each spring, eager to get back on America's backroads. Let's hope the new 6th gen 4Runner continues the legacy of its forebears.

04/12/2024

From The New York Times, April 12, 2024:

"The Biden administration on Friday made it more expensive for fossil fuel companies to pull oil, gas and coal from public lands, raising royalty rates for the first time in 100 years in a bid to end bargain basement fees enjoyed by one of the country’s most profitable industries."

For the first time ....IN 100 YEARS!

Photo: A drilling rig on Wyoming's Pinedale Anticline, the state's largest natural-gas field and the nation's sixth-largest. The 198,000-acre former sagebrush ecosystem it occupies lies adjacent to the western slope of the Wind River Range. (file photo from 2013/Tony Huegel)

04/04/2024

Fifty-six years ago today, white drifter James Earl Ray aimed a rifle out of this rooming house window at black civil rights leaders standing on a balcony outside the Lorraine Hotel room of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and pulled the trigger. The shot killed Dr. King, forever creating a martyr for the cause of racial justice in America.

📷 Tony Huegel

03/27/2024

From the Washington Post, March 27, 2024

"Oil and gas companies will need to stem the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from their drilling operations on federal and tribal lands under a highly anticipated rule the Biden administration finalized Wednesday. ...

"Wednesday’s rule seeks to prevent accidental and negligent leaks of methane — the main component of natural gas — from wells, pipelines and other infrastructure. It also aims to discourage venting and flaring — the practices of intentionally releasing methane into the atmosphere, rather than building equipment to capture it.

"These practices have become prevalent on public lands across the country, federal data shows. Between 2010 and 2020, companies reported venting and flaring an average of about 44.2 billion cubic feet of gas per year — enough to meet the energy needs of roughly 675,000 homes, according to the Interior Department.

Some fossil fuel companies argue that they need to vent or flare gas because they lack pipelines to deliver the fuel to market. Environmentalists counter that the practices are wasteful and harmful to taxpayers, since companies pay royalties for the oil and gas they sell, but they make no payments for the vented or flared methane."

📷 A natural-gas facility in Utah's Nine Mile Canyon, an important archaeological zone famous for its concentration of centuries-old rock art and structures from the native Fremont Culture and Ute people, as well as white-settler sites. Photo by Tony Huegel/Backcountry Byways LLC

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Paradise, NV

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http://www.backcountrybyways.com/

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