Farewell to Lance Morrow

by Nancy Debevoise

Jeffrey City falconer and grazing-reform activist Lance Morrow has decided to leave the WOC board, at least for now.

"I have much respect and the highest admiration for the work that WOC is doing to keep Wyoming a desirable place to live," he says. "WOC has wonderful staff and an active board of directors willing and able to tackle such horrors as runaway coalbed methane development, other rampant minerals-extraction activities and destructive timber sales throughout the state."

However, Lance continues, "with serious rollbacks of environmental regulations by the Bush Administration, the government's industry-friendly attitude and the need for WOC to commit most of its resources to fighting these threats, I think it would be better to pull back and wait until the time is right to tackle what I consider to be the number-one environmental problem in Wyoming: livestock overgrazing on public lands."

He promises that "when conditions are more amenable for changing destructive livestock grazing practices, I will rejoin the struggle to protect our public lands from this and other serious threats to wildlife habitat, recreation opportunities and air and water quality."

Lance says he will miss "the camaraderie and sense of accomplishment that I felt as a WOC board member."

And WOC's board will miss Lance's first-hand knowledge of deteriorating range conditions on the Green Mountain common grazing allotment near his home and his fierce commitment to restoring native plants, riparian areas and quality wildlife habitat on this and other public-lands grazing allotments.