Lawmen of the lonesome range

Four Twin Falls County lawmen patrol the outskirts of a county the size of Rhode Island, where wild animals are sometimes the bad guys. The small team of deputies from the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office works to protect people and property from thieves and predators on high desert terrain lush with valuable livestock and wildlife. For ranchers grazing cattle worth upwards of $800 to $1,700per head, this law enforcement presence is welcomed, especially in the spring as small calves vulnerable to predators appear and grow. On the range, Vaughn is sometimes entirely out of radio service. As he drives on, the radio crackles beside the heavy moan of the pickup’s engine. Cell phone service dwindles as the roads become rougher. Vaughn said he believes he has seen a wolf while on rural patrol at least once during the past three years. His beat includes both on-road and off-road areas that include private ranches, federal Bureau of Land Management areas and U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service lands. He says the area amounts to about 1 million acres of mostly public land. The sheriff’s office receives payment for patrolling federal land inside the county, which has a $234,000 annual budget for rural patrol, according to Stewart...read more

The federal agencies are doing it right in this area of Idaho. As I previously posted, the BLM & FS should contract with local law enforcement rather than building a costly, bureaucratic and unfriendly police force with drones in the sky and hidden cameras on the ground.