Erik Molvar returns to the Tuesday morning live show to discuss and offer insights regarding the unmistakable connection between the logging industry, livestock industry, and increased fire risk. While selling the public a false claim of trying to make us safer, these destructive industries are finding new ways to profit while the planet plunges deeper into extreme fire conditions.

The industries driving the West’s fire crisis are selling logging and livestock grazing as the cure, and taxpayers, wildlife and the land are paying the price. I can't do better than the title of the original written publication so I am reusing both the title and the subtitle.​

Tune in to listen and post questions that you would like to have answered during the show!

Erik Molvar Explains the Connection Between Cheatgrass and Cattle.
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Erik Molvar wrote a piece that caught my attention titled, 'Log It, Graze it, then Watch it Burn. The piece is very similar to conversations I've had with George Wuerthner on my show regarding fire conditions opposed to fire fuel. I've often connected the logging industry to the cattle industry since forests are often chopped down under the guise of controlling wild fires, when the reality is that forests are replaced by highly flammable cheatgrass which provides an excuse to bring in cattle to control that grass via grazing. More specifically, in this episode I ask Erik about the relationship of cattle when it comes to the survival or doom of native perennial bunch grasses and nonnative annual cheat grass.

Erik Molvar ~ Western Watersheds Project’s Executive Director. Erik cut his teeth in conservation in the field, doing more than half a million acres of wilderness inventory in Wyoming’s Red Desert and Medicine Bow Mountains. This led to a leadership position fighting oil and gas projects in Wyoming during the Bush administration. His signature accomplishment is defeating the 1,240-well Seminoe Road Coalbed Methane Project during that time. He wrote comprehensive, science-based conservation alternatives for federal land-use plans involving lands in the Red Desert, the Bighorn Basin, and the Medicine Bow National Forest. He spent 13 years as a conservation advocate and later Executive Director of Wyoming-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, and led WildEarth Guardians’ Sagebrush Sea Campaign for three years. Over this period, he became a national leader in sage grouse conservation and recovery. Molvar is a wildlife biologist with published research in the behavior, ecology, and population dynamics of Alaskan moose as well as large-scale conservation planning. His scientific research helped establish that predation risk led to the evolution of herd-forming behavior in Alaskan moose, and he also helped to elucidate the role that moose play in accelerating nutrient cycling in timberline areas of Denali National Park. He has also worked on Forest Service stream survey crews and as a biological technician for the Corps of Engineers barging juvenile salmon and steelhead down the Snake and Columbia Rivers. Prior to becoming a professional conservation advocate, Molvar traveled the West as a hiking guide author. He is the author of 16 hiking guidebooks and backpacking techniques manuals for national parks and wilderness areas spanning the West from Alaska to Arizona, including Hiking Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks, Hiking Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, and Alaska on Foot: Wilderness Techniques for the Far North. He also was managing editor for Wyoming’s Red Desert: A Photographic Journey, was a managing editor for the official interagency commemorative book for the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, and has contributed writing and professional photography to a number of other books, both nonfiction and literature. Erik is a contributor to The Hill and his columns in that newspaper can be found he #wildlfire #deception #cattle #livestock #logging #skylerthomas #erikmolvar #pointreyes

Today's live show features a very special guest for anyone who has been dying to answer specific questions about rangeland ecology. In Point Reyes we have a very different sort of rangeland ecologist in that the so-called scientist is really there to defend livestock grazing. By contrast, today we will talk to someone who not only speaks without the pressure of the livestock industry guiding his words, but can share first-hand experience of witnessing nature's recovery once livestock have been removed.

Be sure to join the show to have your questions answered! 10 AM Pacific!

Paul Ruprecht is the Nevada Director at Western Watersheds Project. He holds a J.D. from Lewis & Clark Law School and a master’s degree in Rangeland Ecology and Management from Colorado State University. He previously managed a 10,000-acre conservation preserve in northern Nevada, overseeing restoration and documenting ecological recovery following the removal of livestock.

The Nature Conservancy, which has been increasingly exposed for lining the pockets of ranchers rather than actually helping nature, gave a webinar August 12th, 2026, which revealed what many feared.  There was no inclusion of nature in their so-called restoration plan for Point Reyes National Seashore.  The entire webinar centered around bringing in even more cattle (in addition to cattle still grazing from the south end to the north end of the park.).  Even if you are a supporter of cattle grazing, one should be very concerned that cattle grazing is their entire plan.  How about a few other ideas?  Perhaps engage in other forms of restoration in addition to the absurd cattle grazing plan.  
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Laura Cunningham, of The Western Watershed Project, will be joining my podcast on Tuesday August 12th to give a rundown of the many flaws she noticed in TNC's presentation.  Below is the link to be notified for the live show. ​

For the last year the rancher-influenced media outlets have repeatedly stated that ranching families were “evicted” and that elk are now roaming free. People being evicted aren’t usually paid, much less paid millions. This was a voluntary exit by some ranchers and the fact that it was only some and not those who CHOSE to stay proves that the use of the word evicted is dishonest and inaccurate and yet the word is used repeatedly by so-called professional journalists. The reality is that ranching still remains in the seashore and cattle can be seen from the north end to the south end. Meanwhile, elk and other wildlife are still restricted by the 100s of miles of rancher barbed-wire fencing that has not been taken down and 90% of the elk fence itself is still up.
What else remains true is that the most degraded land is ranch land or former ranch land. These areas host both the greatest number of species and greatest density of invasive plants, including, but not limited to the annual fire fuel weeds that ranchers claim the cattle are required to combat. The ranch residences and barn structures continue to be a testament that even where rancher workers resided, no one did anything to stop invasive plants or promote positive vegetation, much less there be a need to go examine adjacent g fields grazed by cattle. By contrast, the further one is away from both the ranching structures and the grazed fields, the less invasive fire fuel plants there are.
Even during the decades of active ranching, strips of native plant vegetation between the ranch parcels where cattle weren’t allowed continue to be the only healthy native plant and naturally fire-resistant vegetation in the seashore, along with the elk reserve. But we also have all the ranch lands outside the seashore serving as examples…one does not need to enter Point Reyes to already be exposed to a never-ending visual testament that ranch lands are either dead or full of fire fuel grasses and thistles, while the “un-ranched” lands are the healthiest, greenest, and most likely to resist fire.
If the TNC and ranchers want to demonstrate the effectiveness of targeted grazing in restoring native plant life and reducing annual fire fuel plants, they can do this outside the seashore. The public does not need to give up THEIR national park to pretend to demonstrate something that has failed to be demonstrated anywhere ever. The land, anxious for a chance to heal itself, does not need to be hindered from recovery due to this farce of regenerative grazing. The wildlife need not continue to suffer so that the pockets of ranchers continue to be lined while the public are fed a never ending buffet of lies and propaganda from the very same people financially benefitting from the spread of these lies.
This playlist is an entire day of documentation (July 16th 2026) and is one of many playlists available. The video below is the first of the 7-16-26 documentation vidieos.
Stop listening to rancher propaganda and LOOK AT THE PROOF in front of you. ​

Below is a short rant I recorded expressing frustration at the complete nonsense the Point Reyes Light is getting away with (members only)

Below is a much longer video, our live show, discussing the same Point Reyes Light article. 

Sasha Gennet is a fake scientist, a sellout, an embarrassment to the scientific community

For those who want to read the full article, please click this link. 
https://www.patreon.com/posts/point-reyes-tnc-147038183?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link.  

Introducing 'Truth Trips', a series of funding campaigns to debunk ranch propaganda first hand.  The ask is simple, help cover travel expenses and compensate to the time spent filming, editing, and fact-checking the relentless lies being fed to the public. 

Campaign one seeks to document the state of each ranch in Point Reyes as they currently exist in order to counter future lies about why the ranchers were needed.  

​I'd like to thank Karin P. Lease for being the first to donate to this campaign!  Thank you!

Below is the tax deductible donation link.  Other ways to support are by joining the associated Patreon or by using PayPal to donate.  

Today, when the discussion of helping the ranch workers affected by the ranch closures came up, a new question occurred to me; "Why don't people who worked for 30 years have any unemployment benefits?"

The millionaire ranchers themselves gave as little as possible to these ranch workers and part of giving as little as possible included lowering their wages by negotiating housing into the amount.
The crazy thing is that we, the taxpayers, essentially provide that housing since the ranchers pay a criminally low lease rate. Consider that McClure Ranch is the size of Golden Gate Park and is leased out for $3,500 a month. Yes, all of it. That includes the structures on it, some of which are housing structures. The main residence is over 3,000 square feet...that alone would demand a monthly rent of $12,000 in San Francisco.

Now add in the rest of the residences and thousands of acres of land and you begin to understand the absurdity of the finances in Point Reyes.

So, the employees of these ranchers who were enjoying "sweetheart lease deals" still found ways to screw over their employees.
Why haven't I head about severance packages? Where are the rancher-provided 401K plans? Where are the unemployment benefits?

​#rancehrs #ranchworkers #pointreyes

Dating back to when Point Reyes National Seashore was first proposed the ranchers have claimed that the creation of the park would destroy the local economy and hurt the local food industry. First of all, 50% of Marin County land is used for agriculture, so the peninsula acreage is not necessary. Secondly, the local stores and restaurants are not exclusively selling locally produced food. In fact, it is hard to find anything in the stores that can be confirmed to be directly produced from the agriculture in Point Reyes National Seashore. This video focuses on Inverness Park Market, but the documentation does not stop there.