NEWS ROUNDUP

Eminent-Domain Battle Flares in Connecticut A group that won a Supreme Court victory allowing it to seize property for private development is telling some residents to vacate their homes in the latest flash point in a nationwide controversy. Representatives of the homeowners accused the quasi-public New London Development Corp. on Tuesday of reneging on a promise not to seize the properties while lawmakers considered changing the state's eminent-domain laws. State House Minority Leader Robert M. Ward (R) called for a special session to enact a moratorium on property seizures, and homeowners vowed to continue fighting. "They're going to have to pry my cold fingers from the house," said Michael Cristofaro, who received one of several vacate notices sent this week. Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R) and state lawmakers had urged local governments to refrain from seizing property for development. Rell also favors a special session on the issue, a spokesman said....
Judge halts FEMA program to protect endangered species A federal judge has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stop issuing flood insurance for new development in areas populated by endangered species in the Florida Keys. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Moore's decision Tuesday means FEMA can't grant new flood insurance policies in endangered habitats until the agency complies with requirements of the Endangered Species Act. "It's a first-ever ruling that prevents the federal government from subsidizing new development in an endangered species habitat with flood insurance," said John Kostyack, senior counsel for the National Wildlife Federation, and lead attorney for the three conservation groups that sued....
Wake Up, Republicans: Endangered Species Act Reforms Should Protect Property Rights and Species, Not Harm Both Today, the National Center for Public Policy Research joined over 80 major national and state public policy organizations in a coalition letter expressing disappointment with Republican efforts to reauthorize the Endangered Species Act. Specifically, the letter charges Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), Chairman of the House Resources Committee, with putting forth a weak reform effort that falls woefully short of fixing the ESA or preventing the ESA from abusing landowners. "Property owners have long suffered under the Endangered Species Act's onerous restrictions and outright disdain for property rights," said National Center Vice President David Ridenour, "And from what we've seen, Rep. Pombo's bill would ensure that this suffering continues largely unchecked." The letter was signed by a broad coalition of influential national policy organizations, including: Coalitions for America, Eagle Forum, the American Conservative Union, the National Taxpayers Union, Liberty Matters, and the Christian Coalition....go here(pdf) to view the letter....
Gator encounters triple in Florida The number of alligator sightings and attacks in Florida has nearly tripled in recent decades, according to a paper being published today in the journal Wilderness & Environmental Medicine. As more Americans move to coastal communities and the country's alligator population continues to rebound, humans are increasingly encountering the once-endangered species. In Florida alone, the number of alligator attacks has risen from an annual average of five between 1948 and 1986 to an average of 14 between 1986 and 2005, said Ricky Langley, a medical epidemiologist at North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services. The number of ``nuisance complaints'' or sightings in Florida increased from 5,000 in 1978 to nearly 15,000 in 1998. "It's pretty much a straight line going up,'' Langley said in an interview, adding that Americans "just have to be more careful, and be on the lookout when they're on the water or on golf courses.'' Florida leads the nation in alligator sightings; Louisiana reported 4,000 alligator encounters last year while Georgia and Texas each had about 450. Alabama followed with almost 250, and Arkansas reported just under 100 alligators in 2004....
Conservation, industry groups agree on methane plan A conservation group and energy development firm have reached an agreement to let coal-bed methane production in a southeast Montana project continue but with limits on land disturbance and the disposal of water tied to the development. The agreement between the Northern Plains Resource Council and Fidelity Exploration & Production Co. alters an order U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Anderson issued earlier that halted the Tongue River-Badger Hills Project near Decker, pending further environmental study. Under terms of the agreement, which Anderson has approved, production from 86 wells on federal leases could continue but water from the wells could not be used for "managed" irrigation or put into as-yet-unbuilt pits approved by BLM. There would also be no new disturbance of lands over the federal leases in the project area unless a landowner requested it, the BLM required it or safety, environmental or cultural protections required it....
Katrina turned lush forests into wastelands The sound of chain saws has replaced the song of the cicadas on Judd Brooke's 4,000-acre timber ranch. Devastation is widespread since Katrina roared through. Broad swaths of longleaf pines, which grow so tall and straight they're often used for utility poles, lie uprooted, snapped in half or bent. The wreckage is a business and personal catastrophe for Brooke, 57. His parents bought the first 140 acres of this spread half a century ago, and as a 4-year-old, he sometimes slept in a tent they pitched among these pines during weekend getaways. Timber growers such as Brooke will count their losses. Katrina took about 70% of his timber ready for harvest; trees worth at least $2 million before the storm. That tale of woe is echoing across Mississippi as the hurricane's damage is assessed. The Mississippi Forestry Commission says Katrina caused $2.4 billion of tree damage, more than half in commercial timber spread across 1.3 million acres. In the worst-hit areas, the coastal counties like Brooke's, almost half the timber may be damaged....
County joins appeal of prairie dog plan The Pennington County Commission voted on Tuesday to join other counties in an appeal of the U.S. Forest Service's plan to manage prairie dogs on federal grasslands. The plan, released Aug. 12, outlines management strategies for the Fort Pierre, Buffalo Gap and Oglala national grasslands. The commission voted to contribute $1,000 toward the appeal. Though the plan authorizes the poisoning and recreational shooting of prairie dogs as well as nonlethal management practices, Fall River County State's Attorney Lance Russell told commissioners that the plan doesn't go far enough. The plan allows poisoning prairie dogs outside areas where the black-footed ferret has been introduced on the national grasslands and establishes a half-mile, prairie-dog-free buffer zone around federal land. Russell said Fall River and ranchers from Crawford, Neb., to Wall are concerned about the impact of uncontrolled prairie dog populations in the interior of the national grasslands — particularly the effect prairie dog towns have on soil erosion — and that the buffer zones are too small to prevent encroachment onto private land. They are seeking to increase the buffer zones to a full mile....
Column: Ultimate Environmentalism How to save the environment? Not just from mankind, but ultimately from nature itself? Those are tough questions, but we have to start somewhere, and where better than with cute cats? And after we've cloned these cute critters, we have many more technologies to use to save nature. Yes, technologies to save nature. It's the forward-looking technos, not the backward-looking greens, who will literally immortalize the environment. Scientists have already demonstrated, pretty much, that any life can be extended into seeming perpetuity. It's already a thriving business, in fact; a company called Genetic Savings & Clone offers a "repet" service. And if pets can be cloned, it's only a matter of time before other crawlers and creepers can be replicated, too. And there's more good news on the using-technology-to-save-and-revive-nature front. Last month the Audubon Society of New Orleans reported that its researchers had been able to breed African wildcat clones. That is, biologists have now demonstrated that clones of wild animals can successfully reproduce themselves through natural sexual conjugation; fears that clones would be sexually sterile, or would produce only deformed freaks, have been proven wrong....
Tree-sitting environmentalists duck arrow attacks Claims have been made by some environmentalists who say some tree sitters protesting the Sten Timber sale have been attacked with a high powered bow and arrow. The area is about 60 miles east of Eugene. And the claim is that someone shot at a protester who was in a tree on Saturday. The arrow grazed the protester's hand. Another arrow punctured a hole in a water jug in the tree. Forest Service police officer Joe Flecher says he was called on Sunday, more than 24 hours after the incident occurred, and not much could be done....
Protection for frogs proposed by feds Federal wildlife officials on Tuesday proposed designating more than 8,000 acres of streams in Southern California mountains as land critical for the survival of one of the Inland region's most endangered species. With only 100 mountain yellow-legged frogs known to exist, an Inland environmental group filed a lawsuit last year seeking the critical habitat designation. Such a move can lead to stricter restrictions of activities on land that provides habitat for an endangered species. Officials with the San Bernardino National Forest said the designation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, should it go into effect, will have little impact on the public. Most of the areas are too remote, and a campground at Dark Canyon and a picnic area at Fuller Mill Creek have already been altered to accommodate protections for the frog, said Ruth Wenstrom, a forest spokeswoman. The biggest potential impact, she said, would be filing more paperwork with the federal wildlife agency when forest officials plan fuel treatments to prevent fires....
Federal help sought to protect squirrel Saying that state protection has not prevented the Mohave ground squirrel from sliding closer to extinction, an Inland university professor and an environmental group filed a petition Tuesday asking the federal government to list the animal under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Federal protection, if granted, would give more clout to the squirrel's imperiled status as the suburbs of Victorville and Hesperia continue their sprawl into the animal's habitat and as the Army expands its tank-training center north of Barstow into land known to harbor a core population of the squirrel, environmentalists said. Representatives for the Army and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not return telephone calls seeking comment. Generally, such petitions to the federal wildlife agency can take a couple years to process if an initial 90-day review deems them to have merit. The squirrel, which lives about half the year underground in burrows, is about 9 inches long and was listed as threatened by the state in 1971....
Park Service moves ripped County resident Jim Walker accused the National Park Service of carelessness and negligence in the wildfire that burned more than 70,000 acres in the Mojave National Preserve in June. "You talk about public preparedness," Walker said Tuesday after the Board of Supervisors meeting. "Where was ours? Why did they let my ranch burn?" The National Park Service has a history of tense relationships with landowners and ranchers, many of whom preceded the 1994 arrival of the federal agency. Before the land was designated a national preserve, it was under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. Walker said he had planned to retire next year in one of the "inholdings" private land at the national preserve. The Park Service wants to rid the preserve of homes to enhance the area's tourism appeal, he said. "They just wanted to get us out of their land," he said. "They decided to let (the fire) burn us out."....
Editorial - Roads and Wilderness: Counties shouldn't assert dubious claims to prevent wilderness Last week, a federal appeals court changed the rules of the road for determining whether county claims to old rights of way across federal land are valid. Utah's counties, backed by the state, won a limited victory in their long battle with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and the Sierra Club over disputed county roads on federal lands. If this victory helps the counties to establish clear title to roads that no reasonable person would dispute, that would be good. If, however, it emboldens counties to assert dubious claims to little-used dirt tracks as a pretext to remove from potential wilderness designation lands that otherwise would qualify, that would be bad. Only lands that comprise at least 5,000 contiguous acres and are roadless qualify as potential federal wilderness. Of course, how one answers these questions, in the case of a particular road, is the heart of the argument. What everyone agrees on is that there is much at stake, including economic development in rural Utah, how federal lands are used by different groups of people (ATV riders or hikers, for example) and whether certain lands will remain open to mining, drilling, ranching and logging, or will be set aside for wilderness protection....
Court backs Park Service closure of Salt Creek Road A U.S. district judge has affirmed the right of the National Park Service to close an old Jeep road in Canyonlands National Park because of damage caused by off-highway vehicle use. Judge Dale Kimball on Tuesday issued a decision that upholds the closure of the Salt Creek Road in the Needles District of the park, ruling that the park service acted within its administrative rights as established by Congress. The Utah Shared Access Alliance, a consortium of OHV organizations, had opposed the closure. The group argued that the park service had been "arbitrary and capricious" in prohibiting motorized access on the road - which runs in and out of a stream bed for about 10 miles on the way to Angel Arch, a popular destination for four-wheelers....
Congress clears Wind Cave National Park expansion The House of Representatives has passed legislation to authorize expansion of Wind Cave National Park, moving the bill to President Bush's desk. Rep. Stephanie Herseth, D-S.D., hailed Tuesday's passage of the bill, but the transfer still faces complications: The family that owns most of the additional land has shown no sign of wanting to sell it to the government. Brendan Casey has said his family will not sell the 5,550 acre property for the amount the government has offered. Milliron Ranches, owned by Casey's Rapid City family, is now on the market for $14 million. The government has appraised the land at less than half that. "There is more money in the private sector to do this, and nowhere near as many complications," Casey said in July....
Study on removal of dam released A Sonora-based group leading the effort to remove O'Shaughnessy Dam and restore the Hetch Hetchy Valley claims it is possible to remove the dam within 16 years. An 86-page feasibility study released today in Sacramento by Restore Hetch Hetchy says the draining of Yosemite's eight-mile-long mountain reservoir could begin in about 10 years. In doing so, the study claims, thousands of jobs will be created. Millions of dollars also will be spent in Tuolumne County if the valley is restored, the report said. Entitled "Finding the Way Back to Hetch Hetchy Valley," the study proposes enlarging Don Pedro Reservoir or Calaveras Reservoir in the Bay Area to replace storage lost by the draining of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. "Yosemite is the jewel of the National Park Service and its crown jewel is sitting under 300 feet of water waiting to be restored," said Ron Good, executive director of Restore Hetch Hetchy. "If the American people get behind the idea, it will happen."....
Aging Nuclear Power Plants May Affect Emissions Pact A proposed agreement among nine Northeast states to cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants casts a new light on arguments in New Jersey and Vermont about whether the licenses of two aging nuclear plants should be extended. Community groups in both states are opposing the extensions of the licenses beyond their 40-year terms, but environmentalists are generally supportive of the proposed agreement among the governors to reduce these greenhouse gases, which contribute to global climate change. Shutting down the two reactors would mean immediate, substantial increases in the emissions, because it would increase reliance on fossil fuel plants, probably tripling emissions in Vermont and doubling them in New Jersey. "I think the environmental community is confused right now in terms of where they want to go," said Richard A. Valentinetti, director of Vermont's air quality program, who has been deeply involved in drafting the nine-state agreement. "Obviously there's some real polarization."....
Engineers Say a Key Levee Won't Be Set for Months Hurricane Katrina washed away a 17-foot-tall earthen levee that had protected St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, from the waters of a shipping canal, and the Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday that the ravaged parish would be left defenseless against even small storms at least until early next year because replacing the structure would take months. In a conference call with reporters, Col. Duane P. Gapinski of the corps acknowledged that the levee might not be rebuilt even by the start of next year's hurricane season. On the other hand, Colonel Gapinski and other corps officials said, at this point there is little for the levee to protect. "St. Bernard Parish is complete destruction," he said. Local authorities have ordered the parish evacuated and have said no one will be allowed to return for four months....
Senate defeats bid to change mercury rules The Senate on Tuesday narrowly turned back a challenge to the Bush administration’s strategy on mercury pollution, leaving intact federal rules that give power plants flexibility in how they reduce emissions of the dangerous toxin. With a 51-47 vote, the Senate defeated a resolution to void Environmental Protection Agency rules finalized last March. The Democrats and nine Republicans who supported the repeal contended the EPA approach was too slow and too weak in dealing with a pollutant that can cause serious neurological damage to newborn and young children. The White House insisted that its market-based approach to curtailing mercury pollution is effective and founded on sound science, and warned that the president would veto any legislation that overturned the EPA rules....
Migration policies adversely affect environment, other species The United States-Mexico border is a physically imposing and beautiful area. It is a distinctive habitat, and one of the most fragile wilderness areas in the country. Soaring summer temperatures and freezing winters make it a deadly place to travel, distinctly inhospitable to humans who do not have the resources to handle the climatic extremes. In the past 10 years, thousands of people, forced by tightened U.S. immigration policies into these dangerous regions, have died due to exposure and dehydration. Undocumented migrants, however, are not the only group negatively affected by U.S. border policy: the increased militarization of the southern border threatens jaguars, owls, pronghorn sheep, and many other local species, and greatly intensifies stress on soil and water systems that cannot adjust to human use. Ecological damage to the area is likely to increase. The U.S. Border Patrol has numerous proposals on the table to increase infrastructure and patrols in the area to deter migration. Many of these projects aim to fortify isolated stretches of desert that include some of the most pristine wild areas in the nation. Recent passage of the REAL ID act could exempt the Border Patrol from conducting appropriate Environmental Impact Studies of the area. In addition to pushing migrant flows into even more inhospitable terrain, these construction projects could cause devastating damage to the fragile ecosystem in the borderlands....
Cattlemen's Group Wrangles With Its Former Allies In a cramped office sandwiched between cattle auction yards and the looming white tanks of an oil refinery is the headquarters of a growing cowboy rebellion against federal trade policies and the large beef-packing companies they once regarded as allies. It is the office of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, or R-Calf USA, an organization of ranchers founded in 1999 that says its membership has doubled to 18,000 in the last year. The organization has found an ally in Montana's governor, a former rancher who last month called the Agriculture Department "stooges" of the meatpacking industry. And it has drawn the ire of a rival beef group and Canadian ranchers by managing to keep the border closed to Canadian cattle for several months this year. Staking its ground against the Bush administration and meatpackers, who depend on a steady supply of cattle, R-Calf contends that the threat of mad cow disease is still too great to allow Canadian cattle into the United States....
Self-Made Cowboy When he’s talking about his cattle, he’s prideful and open, a little boastful of all the hard work he’s put in and the success he’s earned. When he has to talk about himself and his past, growing up penniless in the tiny Azore village of Faial, he’s suddenly a shy schoolboy again. He won’t make eye contact. He rubs his hands over his eyes and the back of his neck, up and down his arms, hugging himself, waiting for it to be over. And now, at 58, he has the wife - and the life - he wanted since he was a boy, when he tramped around Portugal broke and barefoot, the youngest of five children abandoned by their father. All his life, Vargas wanted to be a cowboy, and after decades of punching a clock and working odd jobs, he is running cattle in the San Joaquin Valley and the hills behind Gavilan College. Spending every day with the two loves of his life - his cows, and Kathy....

===