NEWS ROUNDUP

Column: "Fixing" the Endangered Species Act There was some speculation that he wouldn't actually appear, but there, in a polo shirt, sat House Natural Resources Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA), just inches away from Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. The setting was the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference, held this year in Austin, Texas, and surely the belly of the beast as far as Pombo is concerned. Though SEJ journalists come from all political perspectives, there's a natural tendency to think that anyone covering the environment is inherently sympathetic to a green viewpoint. Not surprising, then, that there was controversy when Robert Kennedy, Jr. got a standing ovation at last year's conference. (Bill Moyers was similarly received this year, with somewhat less controversy.) One expects fireworks at events like this. The Iraq War debate between two seasoned British orators, MP George Galloway and writer Christopher Hitchens, certainly contained enough firepower to fuel a dozen conflicts. (Hitchens was the clear winner, in my view, but others may have warmed to Galloway's fruity bombast.) As it happened, politeness ruled. Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin was the soul of impartiality, praising Pombo's service as the youngest committee chairman ever, and offering him kudos for his 229-193 House win on Endangered Species Act (ESA) revisions. She even praised Pombo's press secretary, Brian Kennedy, for actually returning her calls. Pope failed to go for the jugular and instead agreed with a point Pombo made in his opening remarks. Pombo similarly held his fire, and the pair mostly talked around each other....
Column: Endangered Species Act fails test of time After three decades, the Endangered Species Act has given us very little to cheer about. Since its inception, nearly 1,300 species have been listed as threatened or endangered. Yet, not one species has recovered as a result of the act alone. In fact, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, approximately 77 percent of listed species have only achieved less than 25 percent of their recovery objectives. More than half are classified as either "declining" or in "unknown" status. Sadly, that is the history of the Endangered Species Act. Born of the best intentions, it has failed to live up to its promise, and species are more threatened today because of its serious limitations. The cornerstone of the ESA is the "listing" of species and the designation of "critical habitat" — habitat necessary for species to recover. These processes are ambiguous and open to arbitrary personal judgment, and they lack sound science or peer-reviewed research. These key elements of the act are responsible for the misclassification of species as endangered or threatened and the application of a one-size-fits-all solution....
A growing regional divide over species act The Endangered Species Act - the nation's premier environmental law affecting thousands of plants and animals and many times that many landowners - is poised to undergo its greatest shake-up since Richard Nixon signed it 32 years ago. The House has passed legislation that changes several fundamental elements of the law, including protection of critical wildlife habitat and the financial rights of property owners. Whether similar legislation passes in the Senate - a large question at this point - it illustrates a deep and growing regional divide over fundamental environmental protections. In general, ranchers, farmers, and others in the rural West (and their champions in Congress) want to make laws like those protecting endangered species far less restrictive. Eastern lawmakers, whether Republican or Democrat, are more likely to support sanctions on development and other land use in the name of protecting plants and animals threatened with extinction. Protected under the ESA are 1,268 species....
Mexican wolf subject of program at MPEC Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity will talk about restoration efforts and show slides at 7 p.m. The center, a wildlife advocacy organization based in Tucson, Ariz., has been involved in the movement to return the Mexican gray wolf to a portion of its native range in New Mexico and Arizona. The effort was begun in 1998. Robinson, who lives in Pinos Altos, N.M., said status of the restoration project is "a mixed bag." "There are 50 wolves in the wild now - probably the last time there were that many was at the beginning of the 20th century, 100 or so years ago. But the bad news is the numbers aren't as high as predicted in the environmental impact statement. The number of breeding pairs is six - only half of the 12 pairs predicted."....
Thomas to Norton: Delist grizzlies People looking to hunt grizzly bears in Wyoming got a round-about boost from U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas this week, as he urged Interior Secretary Gale Norton to move forward with a petition to remove the grizzly from Endangered Species Act protection. With delisting, which has languished in recent months in part because of a Washington slow-down due to the Gulf Coast hurricanes, hunters in the greater Yellowstone area would have a limited season on the grizzly to keep numbers in check. "Interior has been sitting on this proposal, and Wyoming deserves to know about the timing," Thomas, R-Wyo., said in a news release after his Monday conversation with Norton. "The bear is a good example of what's wrong with the Endangered Species Act. If it's recovered, then let's get a deadline set to sign the delisting rule. I told her that I understood that the Fish and Wildlife Service had put forth a very good plan, but that it seems to be stuck in the pipe."....
House Resources chairman weighs Idaho wilderness bill The political maneuverings have begun over the future of the Boulder and White Cloud mountains, and the powerful chairman of the U.S. House Resources Committee appears amenable to a far-reaching bill that would legislate solutions to an array of Central Idaho's outstanding land-use and economic conundrums. "It is possible" that Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson's wilderness and economic development bill, called the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act, is the right bill at the right time, said U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., in an interview Saturday in Austin, Texas. As chairman of the Resources Committee, where the bill will begin its legislative journey later this month, Pombo has the power to kill the legislative review before it ever begins. The chairman said he would prefer to see a more comprehensive bill encompassing far more of Idaho's unresolved land-use debates, but added that CIEDRA is the kind of consent-building legislation that could work....
Groups sue feds to bar forest development A coalition of 20 environmental groups sued the Bush administration Thursday to block road construction, logging and industrial development on more than 90,000 square miles of the nation's last untouched forests. In the lawsuit, the Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, Greenpeace and other groups challenge the U.S. Forest Service decision earlier this year to repeal President Clinton's 2001 "roadless rule" that protected 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest. The federal lawsuit comes about a month after the attorneys general for California, New Mexico and Oregon brought a similar legal challenge. Both lawsuits allege the Bush administration violated federal law by not studying the environmental impacts of repealing the Clinton rule....
Cock and Bull on the Bitterroot The sad and sorry saga of mismanagement and public process failures on the Bitterroot National Forest in western Montana has taken a few more turns for the worst since Jeffrey St. Clair provided Counterpunch readers with a thorough account on September 21 (W Marks the Spot: Bait and Switch in the Bitterroot). Tuesday, local Bitterroot Valley residents and Friends of the Bitterroot, a grassroots conservation group with 670 members in the area, held a press conference at the Hamilton Public Library to lay out in detail what they describe as "a series of anti-democratic actions by the Bitterroot National Forest under the leadership of Supervisor Dave Bull." They also announced "We are requesting the Montana congressional delegation to investigate the unethical, and possibly illegal, actions of Supervisor Bull and Forest Service staff under his direction regarding his blatantly biased public processes in public land management on the Bitterroot National Forest."....
Udall: Logging could control beetle A Democratic congressman with a reputation as an environmentalist said Wednesday the West’s tree-killing bark beetle infestation is so bad that some logging rules should be streamlined to help combat the pest. “The problem isn’t coming. The problem is on top of us,” Colorado Rep. Mark Udall said. Udall met with about 150 elected officials, federal land managers, timber industry employees and western Colorado residents at this ski resort, one of the beetle’s hot spots. He said he will introduce legislation to expand the federal Healthy Forest Act to give states and communities more leeway in attacking the insect infestations raging throughout the West. The beetles burrow under bark and leave stands of rusty brown pines in swaths across some of the West’s most scenic vistas....
Friends of Wild Swan defeated in district court A recent court order from the U.S. District Court of Missoula upheld the Flathead National Forest in litigation regarding the Meadow Smith Project. The order states that all aspects of the plaintiff's--Friends of the Wild Swan --motion are denied. The Swan Lake District of the forest completed a record of decision for the Meadow Smith Project in 2003. The Meadow Smith Project area is about 10 miles north of Condon and includes 1,300 acres of national forest system lands in Lake and Missoula Counties. Project actions include thinning and prescribed fire to maintain the presence of and protect the unique characteristics of open-grown, large-tree ponderosa pine and western larch forests, return fire through prescribed fire as a process of succession, and lower the risks of loss of mature large-tree forests from insects, disease and lethal fire....
To Save Trees, Fighting One Alien Insect With Others The evergreen trees, a hallmark of southern Appalachia's national parks, are under attack by an invasive insect barely visible to the eye but potent enough to fell the giants of the eastern United States' old-growth forests. Already the tiny bug from Japan, known as the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA), has killed upward of 95 percent of the hemlocks in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park. Now they are making their way through the half-million-plus-acre (200,000-plus-hectare) Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee. The hemlocks shade streams, keeping water temperatures just right for brook trout and other fish. They also house birds such as the black-throated green warbler, solitary vireo, and northern goshawk, all three of which mainly shelter in stands of hemlock trees....
Lost timber may mean more expensive homes A staggering number of trees ruined by hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf Coast could lead to a strain on the pulp and paper industry, the loss of privately held timberland and, eventually, higher prices for home construction. Winds and storm surge waters knocked down billions of board feet of hardwoods, pine and other species used for building homes and making paper. Estimated timber losses from Katrina total 15 billion to 19 billion board feet from 5 million acres of damaged forestland in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. Katrina's high winds damaged an average of 20 percent of the timber that was standing before the storm. Near coastal areas, damage rates reached as high as 40 percent, the USDA said....
Balancing energy and nature Fish and wildlife might have already taken notice of improved living conditions in or near the North Umpqua River as new hydropower projects get under way from a relicensing agreement. Soda Springs Dam — the lowest and most contentious piece of PacifiCorp’s eight-dam hydroelectric project on the North Umpqua — isn’t the only big makeover in the energy company’s relicensing agreement. On Thursday, members of the public were shown improvements to different areas of the hydropower project’s wildlife habitat in a free tour provided by the settlement agreement’s resource coordination committee. The committee included representatives from PacifiCorp, U.S. Forest Service, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Land Management and other agencies in the eight-party agreement....
'Grizzly Man' avoids debate At first, it seems like a very odd choice. Werner Herzog, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, the director of such humanistic epics as "Fitzcarraldo" and "Aguirre: The Wrath of God," decided to make a documentary about an eco-freak who lived alone among Alaskan grizzly bears. But as "Grizzly Man" unfolds, subject Timothy Treadwell reveals himself as a classic Herzog figure: obsessed, enigmatic, egotistical and defiant; perhaps heroic, perhaps self-destructive; and almost certainly not completely sane. "Grizzly Man" consists largely of footage shot by Treadwell himself, a tousle-haired misfit who, every summer through the 1990s and into the first few years of this decade, camped illegally in the Alaskan wilderness so he could study and (in his own mind at least) protect the grizzly bears from encroaching civilization....
`Victims of Communism Memorial' planned Officials gave initial approval Thursday to a memorial for victims of communist regimes that would be located within sight of one of the icons of democracy - the Capitol. The 90-square-foot monument would be built on National Park Service land one block west of the Capitol. A central feature will be a bronze Goddess of Democracy statue similar to the papier-mache and Styrofoam statue erected by pro-democracy students in Beijing's Tiananmen Square during 1989 demonstrations. The National Capital Planning Commission voted unanimously to give preliminary approval to the "Victims of Communism Memorial." "Its location, with views of the U.S. Capitol, a world-renowned symbol of democracy, is an appropriate setting in which to remember the victims of tyranny," said John V. Cogbill, chairman of the federal agency that oversees planning in the District of Columbia and nearby Maryland and Virginia suburbs. The memorial will honor an estimated 100 million people killed or tortured under communist rule....
Fugitive family patriarch found in Alaska A man accused of molesting one of his 15 children while his family lived inside a national park was captured Wednesday more than 200 miles from his home. Robert Hale - known as Papa Pilgrim - had been on the run for nearly two weeks after being indicted on 30 felony counts, including sexual assault, kidnapping and incest, state troopers said. The indictment listed just one victim. Hale, 64, was taken into custody in Eagle River, an Anchorage suburb, telling officers he knew he was being sought and would not cause any trouble, trooper spokesman Greg Wilkinson said. Hale gained notoriety for his feud with the National Park Service involving access to the family's remote homestead within the 13.2 million-acre national park....
Keeping tabs on lions Up to 20 mountain lions will be fitted with electronic collars and tracked with global positioning satellite technology near Tucson and Payson in an effort to help people and predators coexist. As more people construct homes in or near the cats' territory, Arizona Game & Fish Department officials are getting deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of humans and wildlife. So the agency charged by the state with managing wildlife in Arizona is teaming up with the University of Arizona to study mountain lion behavior, said Bob Miles, a spokesman for Game & Fish....
Fort burns to ground Fort Clatsop, a popular tourist attraction and replica of where the Lewis and Clark expedition spent the soggy winter of 1805-1806 after reaching the Pacific, has been destroyed by fire, officials said Tuesday. Volunteer firefighters worked for hours Monday night to try to save the fort at the Lewis and Clark National Historic Park. But "half of the fort was burned up, and the other half is essentially a loss," said park superintendent Chip Jenkins. The site is being treated as a crime scene, he said. Investigators said Tuesday afternoon that they were looking for a truck seen leaving the area when firefighters arrived on scene. The vehicle is a dark-colored, newer Chevrolet truck, with the letters Z-7-1 on the rear fender, National Park Service officials said. The fire happened just 40 days before a Lewis and Clark Bicentennial event was scheduled to be held at the fort, the culmination of a two-year, national celebration of the explorers' journey to the West....
Environmental groups stake mining claims Environmentalists used an 1872 mining law assailed by critics as a giveaway to industry to stake claims in six Western states Thursday, hoping to protect land from development and prompt an overhaul in rules for hard-rock mining. About 50 claims totaling 1,000 acres were staked by the Citizens Mining Co., a coalition of industry watchdog groups. Amy Jiron of Denver and Bonnie Gestring of Missoula, Mont., were among those who drove stakes into the ground and filed paperwork with the Bureau of Land Management, in charge of minerals on federal ground. The group does not plan to mine gold, uranium or anything else; they intend to hold the claims until the law is changed....
Wheels in motion for land purchase The Bureau of Land Management is beginning its process to acquire 5,548 acres in the Elkhorn Mountains known as the Iron Mask property. The BLM’s Butte field office announced Wednesday that it is undertaking an Environmental Assessment to consider the potential impacts of the acquisition, which would be done using federal Land and Water Conservation money. The Iron Mask property is about five miles northwest of Townsend on the east side of the Elkhorn Mountains, and is considered a critical winter range for elk. As part of the EA, the BLM is asking individuals or groups to help identify any potential issues and concerns. “But it also helps if people make positive comments,” said Dave Barney, a realty specialist with the BLM in Butte. “If people who see something good in this don’t respond, that can be a shortcoming in some of those processes.” Earlier this year, the parcel was purchased by The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and The Conservation Fund, with both of those non-profit conservation groups wanting to keep the land from being subdivided. They anticipate managing the property until it can be sold to the BLM....
Freudenthal, Cubin square off over drilling regs Gov. Dave Freudenthal is taking issue with a proposal in the U.S. House to lift seasonal wildlife restrictions on gas drilling in western Wyoming. In a letter to Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., Freudenthal said a better way to speed up drilling would be to increase the number of U.S. Bureau of Land Management staff overseeing gas pipelines, permits and environmental analysis. "By shifting the dialogue to address these needs, our state's wildlife will be protected and development can be achieved at an increased pace," he wrote. Cubin is a member of both the House Committee on Resources and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. She has supported recent measures to ease regulations and environmental rules that are perceived to slow energy production. Drilling and related activity is prohibited in many parts of western Wyoming during the winter to lessen stress on big-game animals such as antelope and elk. The National Energy Supply Diversification and Disruption Prevention Act, introduced by House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo, R-Calif., would also lift long-standing moratoriums on offshore drilling along the East Coast and West Coast....
Column: The erosion of environmental policy THE BUSH administration and Congress have been chipping away at the National Environmental Policy Act, the law that requires federal agencies, such as the Forest Service and the Army Corps of Engineers, to do environmental impact reviews of their actions and programs. Now the House is about to consider how to "modernize" the act, but based on what the White House and Congress have already done, it's clear that the agenda isn't so much updating the law as gutting it. Like other recent campaigns that have hidden environmental assaults under euphemisms — such as the Clear Skies Initiative, which aimed to roll back air pollution controls — the attack on NEPA is being sold as something it isn't: cooperative conservation. Review after review, including a 2003 study by the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, have shown the act to be an effective planning tool and a critical element of open and accountable government....
States vs. Feds Over Environment This mini-mutiny by itself might seem minor, but it's only one of the latest bubbles in a national groundswell of state-led lawsuits and environmental initiatives that some say represents what could be the start of a long-term shift in U.S. environmental regulation and enforcement from the federal government to states. Dozens of states, frustrated over federal actions or inaction on the environment, are trying to fill the gap with their own green initiatives — or are filing lawsuits to block federal changes they say would weaken existing environmental regulations. In the past two years some 27 states have participated in at least a dozen major environmental initiatives — often lawsuits — in opposition to federal environmental policies, a Monitor analysis shows. Examples range from states ganging up to sue the nation's five largest power companies directly for their carbon emissions, to suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over regulatory changes concerning mercury emissions to developing a Kyoto-like global warming pact....
Column: In Defense of the Cowboy Most people who denigrate George W. Bush as a “cowboy” aren’t trying to compliment the label either, but linking him to a western coda is about as far as they want to take the argument against what’s come to be known as “the cowboy myth.” There are a few out there, however, who’ve been hunting the myth itself, or what they believed or wanted the myth to be, ostensibly because it has been used as a justification for public lands ranching. Take the late Edward Abbey, who knew a few cowboys and ranchers. As he put it, with characteristic bluntness, “It’s not easy to argue that we should do away with cattle ranching. The cowboy myth gets in the way. But if all of our 31,000 public land ranchers quit tomorrow, we’d never miss them.” Those who took up Abbey’s cause to end public land ranching went after the cowboys on an economic front, reasoning that cowboying on public lands could be made less feasible if grazing fees were raised, but cheap imported beef was already making public lands ranching less appealing. It should be common knowledge that even in a market favorable to the domestic rangeland production of beef, those who become involved in ranching for profit will eventually lose any fortune they might have started with as well as their credit, their health, their sunny disposition, their future, their dignity and eventually their land and all their other possessions—including their horse. What’s more, while they are committing economic suicide by running cattle, their neighbors will be selling off their land and grazing rights to developers and environmental organizations at exorbitant prices and retiring on the earnings....
PETA exhibit provokes anger from blacks One panel features a 1930s photograph of a lynching of a black man in Indiana offset by an Angus cow hanging by its feet at a slaughterhouse. Next to it, another installment drops the mouths of onlookers as their eyes move from a picture of a burning black corpse from a 1919 race riot to the corresponding image, that of a rooster set on fire. Continuing along the Animal Liberation Project, an exhibition recently launched by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), there are pictures of black men and women being branded, bloodied and burned, contrasting with shots of various domesticated animals in similar positions. One of the most provocative images, however, is that of an African-American's chained foot opposite the equally shackled limb of a circus elephant....
Sex and the single cow Sex in the barnyard may never be the same. A new process that appears to allow farmers to choose the sex of their cows and pigs in artificial insemination has the potential to revolutionize commercial agriculture. But these aren't mad scientists using genetic technology to manipulate a species, stresses Dr. Peter Blecher, whose father Stan developed the process at the University of Guelph. “We're just removing the sperm of the sex we don't want,” said Dr. Blecher, founder of Sequent Biotechnologies, whose sperm-sexing technology inspired a recent friendly takeover by Microbix Biosystems Inc....
From Test Tube To Table: FDA May OK Cloned Food The Food and Drug Administration is expected to rule soon that milk from cloned animals and meat from their offspring are safe to eat, raising the question of whether Americans are ready to welcome one of modern biology's most controversial achievements to the dinner table. Hundreds of cloned pigs, cows and other animals are already living on farms around the country, as companies and livestock producers experiment and await a decision from the FDA. The agricultural industry has observed a voluntary FDA moratorium on using the products of clones, but it has recently become clear that a few offspring of cloned pigs and cows are already trickling into the food supply. Many in agriculture believe such genetic copies are the next logical step in improving the nation's livestock. Consumer groups counter that many Americans are likely to be revolted by the idea of serving clone milk to their children or tossing meat from the progeny of clones onto the backyard grill....
Verses From the Boonies Voice of the Borderlands, by Drum Hadley. Rio Nuevo Publishers, $29.95. Hadley's new book, Voice of the Borderlands, is a gentle book full of grace, quiet humor, love and "cowboy zen," if you will. In some ways, it is a glorious requiem for a way of life rapidly fading into oblivion. It is also a rich celebration of life. This is not cowboy poetry, though it is poetry with a herd of cowboys riding through it. Cowboy poetry has a certain level of innate hokeyness to it. Don't get me wrong--I love the stuff. But it's about mythology and stereotypes and white hats vs. black hats, that sort of thing. Voice of the Borderlands is an entirely different animal. Hadley paints lyrical pictures of life as it was, and amazingly still is, in the remote corners of Southeastern Arizona. The poet is the medium, and through him move the words and lives of real people, their joys, their hurts, their loves and their faults. He doesn't shy away from the loneliness of loss, either: the loss of friends, lovers, partners and a way of life. You see, this is the real life of the cowboys, not some dreary, overwrought, cheesy dime-store crap....

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