Last week the Obama administration rebuffed conservation groups that had petitioned to raise the federal grazing fee to the level that would cover management costs. The media release from the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the conservation groups involved, provides background on the petition and related lawsuit.

The administration's refusal to address the grazing fee motivated me to re-work my video from an interview that I conducted in August 2004 with former Colorado Division of Wildlife researcher Len Carpenter. The new version has an improved introduction and postscript that more strongly makes the case that ranchers have not been good stewards of public lands.

This interview with Carpenter was conducted as part of my research for Western Turf Wars: The Politics of Public Lands Ranching. Although Carpenter's remarks did not make it into the hardcopy version of the book, they can be read in their entirety on the book's website: http://www.westernturfwars.com/XtraBooks/LenCarpenter.html.