This story was in our local Bakersfield newspaper yesterday. It makes me want to kick some conservative rancher butt!
http://www.latimes.com/business/careers/work/la-me-carrizo20aug20,1,4256663.story?coll=la-headlines-business-careersSuicide Casts a Shadow on Conservation Battle
National monument official was distraught at shift she said favored grazing over grasslands.
CARRIZO PLAIN NATIONAL MONUMENT, Calif. — First she killed her dogs, shot them in the head with a .38-caliber revolver and covered the two bodies with a quilt. Then Marlene Braun leveled the blue steel muzzle three inches above her right ear and pulled the trigger.
"I can't face what appears to be required to continue to live in my world," the meticulous 46-year-old wrote in May in a suicide note. "Most of all, I cannot leave Carrizo, a place where I finally found a home and a place I love dearly."
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About 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles, Carrizo Plain National Monument is largely unknown to the outside world. But in Braun's short tenure as monument manager, the plain had become a battleground between conservationists and the Bush administration over the fate of Western public lands.
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A 13-year veteran of the BLM, Braun was torn between the demands of a new boss who she felt favored the region's ranchers, and conservation policies adopted nearly a decade ago to protecting the austere swath of prairie she shared with pronghorn antelope and peregrine falcons, the California condor and the California jewelflower.
BLM suicide ripples across West
Perhaps a better way of pondering the circumstances of Braun’s decision is to consider this: Talk to BLM employees today and you will hear fear expressed over the way that marching orders are coming down from members of the Bush administration in Washington.
http://www.billingsnews.com/story?storyid=17959&issue=280