NEWS ROUNDUP
'Fracking' regulation may undo energy bill Environmentalists have launched a new offensive against an oil-drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing that could throw up a roadblock to the new energy bill Congress is considering, much as the dispute over the issue of liability for the gasoline additive MTBE contributed to the bill's breakdown during the last session. So far, the oil industry and its allies on Capitol Hill have been able fight off proposals for tighter regulation of the practice, which critics said can lead to the pollution of underground water supplies that supply rural towns and ranchers. Hydraulic fracturing is the process of injecting hundreds or even thousands of gallons of highly pressurized fluids into the ground in order to fracture rock formations and allow oil and natural gas trapped in them to flow into wells where they can be brought to the surface....
Judge refuses second attempt to stop Biscuit logging A federal judge has refused a second time to stop logging in an old growth forest reserve on the Siskiyou National Forest burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire. In a 30-page ruling issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan denied a preliminary injunction sought by the Cascadia Wildlands Project, concluding that their arguments did not raise serious questions, and were not likely to prevail in a full trial. The lawsuit had sought to shut down the Fiddler timber sale on grounds that the U.S. Forest Service failed to fully consider or disclose the environmental consequences of the logging, particularly the threat of spreading a deadly root rot disease affecting Port Orford cedar. Sparked by lightning, the Biscuit fire burned 500,000 acres in the summer of 2002, making it the largest fire in the country that year. It has since become a battleground — with the Bush administration and the timber industry on one side, and environmental groups and some Democrats on the other — over how best to restore the forest and habitat critical to the northern spotted owl and salmon....
"Toad Tunnels" Built to Help Amphibians Cross Roads John Serrao, a naturalist in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, says that unless Buffo americanus and other amphibians get help crossing the road, their local populations will disappear. Scott Jackson, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, said one way to help amphibians survive road crossings is to construct so-called amphibian tunnels beneath the pavement. European countries have constructed these amphibian tunnels for decades. Jackson led a team that installed the first such tunnel in the U.S., which was built in Amherst in 1987....
Miami caviar importer must pay $1 million for illegal smuggling One of the country's largest caviar importers was sentenced to pay $1 million in fines on Friday after its executives admitted to illegally smuggling the delicacy into the United States, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Judge Alan S. Gold sentenced Miami-based Optimus Inc., which has done business under the names Marky's Caviar and the International Food Emporium, on federal wildlife and smuggling charges, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement. Gold ordered the money to be paid to an account used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to provide financial incentives for information leading to wildlife law violators. Optimus, one of America's largest importers of sturgeon caviar, must also adhere to a strict wildlife compliance plan and will be supervised by the government and courts during years of probation. Company executives admitted that they had purchased about 5.9 tons of smuggled caviar in five shipments....
Forum arranged on goose-cattle conflict They swarm onto pastures to graze like mini-cows, and become de facto additions to many ranchers' herds. Aleutian cackling geese, thousands of which stop over in the Humboldt County area during their spring migration, can rob cattle -- and hence a key part of the local economy -- of nourishing spring grass. The geese, which nest in the Aleutian Islands, have recovered from precipitously low numbers, and an estimate this week had 40,000 geese in Humboldt County. Geese need to eat to make their migration, and they prefer short-grass pastures. The impact hasn't gone unnoticed....
Groups seek more notice on BLM leases Three conservation groups said Friday that they are asking the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for four months' advance notice of oil and natural gas lease sales in Wyoming and for notification of landowners who would be affected by proposed lease offerings. The request from the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Powder River Basin Resource Council and Wyoming Outdoor Council comes after the federal agency announced new requirements for protesting oil and gas lease sales. Currently, notice of proposed lease sales are made at least 45 days before the sale date, and protests can be filed up to 4 p.m. the day before a scheduled lease sale. But under the new plan, set to take effect with a June lease sale, protests would have to be filed no later than 30 days after notice is made, the BLM said. Officials have said they're trying to make the protest process fairer for all involved. But the conservation groups contend the plan doesn't allow adequate review time....
Groups demand clarity on drill plan Conservation groups and citizens Friday claimed the formal comments from the Colorado Oil and Gas Association to the Bureau of Land Management on its draft management plan for the Roan Plateau run counter to earlier industry public comments and presentations that called for much less natural-gas development in the area. The industry group, along with two others, submitted comments that called on the BLM to develop a new alternative to allow year-round natural-gas drilling on the 34,758 acres of public lands on top of the plateau, where some 3,000 wells would be drilled, with 40-acre spacing over the 127,000-acre plateau planning area. The Roan Plateau is between Rifle and Parachute. The Save Roan Plateau coalition that submitted comments to prevent drilling on top claimed industry officials said at a Jan. 28 Garfield County Commissioners hearing and a Feb. 9 BLM Northwest Resource Advisory Council meeting, among others, that they favored “best management practices” and extra protections for what the BLM calls “areas of critical environmental concern” on the plateau’s top. Industry officials had also said they could limit development on top of the plateau to existing roads and outlined a “responsible use” or “common sense” alternative to develop the plateau’s energy resources, the coalition said. That included a statement that less than 1 percent of the surface on top of the plateau would be affected and that any development would utilize strict safeguards. Now, the coalition said the industry group has called for about 16 percent of the surface to be disturbed....
Gas exec: BLM can’t stop drilling It would be illegal for the Bureau of Land Management to bar or delay natural-gas drilling on top of the Roan Plateau between Rifle and Parachute, an energy industry official said Thursday. If access to the 73,602-acre area is even delayed, the BLM would violate the 1998 congressional act that transferred the area from the Department of Energy to the BLM, said Colorado Oil and Gas Association Executive Vice President Greg Schnacke. However, Schnacke said the energy industry has not threatened legal action against the federal government if access is denied or delayed when the final plan comes out, scheduled for this fall....
Governor questions grazing on national monument Gov. Ted Kulongoski is urging the federal government to stop trying to maintain cattle grazing on the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, when it was created to protect native species. A letter from the governor's office to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management criticizes the latest version of the management plan the agency is drawing up, arguing that it is trying to get around the language that established the monument and that calls for eliminating livestock grazing if it is shown to harm the native plants and animals. "The Monument Proclamation makes it very clear that protection of biological diversity is the primary purpose for creating the Monument," Mike Carrier, natural resources policy director for Kulongoski, wrote in the April 13 letter to Elaine Marquis-Brong, state director of BLM in Oregon. "Any secondary use, including pre-existing uses, must show compatibility with the primary purpose. In the matter of grazing, the BLM will have difficulty meeting this stated purpose even with its planned approach."....
Editorial: We've Got Issues Whatever the merits of their arguments, we think it all to the good that Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, and Adam Werbach (henceforth known as "the reapers," to save on syllables and to amuse ourselves) are attempting to spark an open, public debate over the future of environmentalism -- if it has one, that is. It's not enough for the leaders of the environmental movement to discuss these issues in closed-door meetings and the privacy of their offices, or via email and listservs. The debate over environmentalism's current health and future prospects deserves a wide airing, open to voices rarely heard in the boardrooms of big green organizations. We'll be bringing an array of perspectives on the movement's future to the pages of Grist in coming weeks and months. In this editorial, we clarify what we see as the most salient issues and constructive questions emerging as part of this debate....
U.S. Appeals Injunction Barring Canada Cattle A court order blocking U.S. imports of cattle from Canada is causing ``enormous hardship to the domestic meat processing industry,'' the Justice Department said in its appeal of the injunction. The brief said the government plan to ease a nearly two-year- old ban on Canadian cattle doesn't pose a threat to humans from mad cow disease. The appeal is in response to a March 2 court order issued by U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull in Billings, Montana, in a lawsuit filed by a ranchers group known as R-CALF. "The injunction enhances the economic position of the plaintiffs, who are its only real beneficiary, while inflicting harm on others,'' the Justice Department wrote in its appeal, filed yesterday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said this week that the domestic meatpacking industry will permanently lose jobs to Canada unless the ban is lifted soon. Canada's cattle processing capacity had increased 20 percent in the past year and there are projections it would increase another 10 percent by the end of this year, he said in March....
White House may ease ‘downer cattle’ ban The Bush administration said on Friday it may allow some injured cattle to be slaughtered for human food, easing a regulation that the Agriculture Department adopted 15 months ago after the nation's first case of mad cow disease. Consumer groups said they oppose any changes in regulations aimed at keeping the deadly disease out of the food supply. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns suggested that the ban on downer cattle may be eased after the USDA completes an enhanced surveillance program of U.S. cattle later this year. "There is a compelling argument: If you've got an animal that's clearly under 30 months that broke a leg in transit, there is no threat of BSE whatsoever," Johanns told reporters after addressing the National Cattlemen's Beef Association....
Cowboys adapt to rising fuel prices A survey of college rodeo contestants and coaches during Friday's slack round at the 50th annual Ropin' and Riggin Days at The Arena at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds revealed just how thrifty and adaptive these cowboys and cowgirls can be when confronting a problem. "I think they're finding ways to throw more people into the rig, if they can," Eastern Wyoming College coach Jake Clark said. "... You hear conversations about, 'Let's fuel up here or let's fuel up there.' They used to never think about that. They'd fuel up anywhere. College rodeo is sanctioned by the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, not the National Collegiate Athletic Association. In other words, unlike big-time football or even lesser-know NCAA sports such as gymnastics, where student-athletes' trips are covered by their schools, college rodeo is a club sport with a budget that matches its lower-rung status. In general, college rodeo contestants are charged with providing their own way to and from the 10 regular-season rodeos, hauling their own horses if they compete in timed events, feeding themselves, making their lodging accommodations and paying their $40 entry fees per event. Unlike NCAA athletes, college rodeo contestants not only are allowed to compete for cash, but compete professionally on the side....
‘The feeling is so nice’ Dr. Nacho Rodriguez, Mexico City physician, roper and author, got a special feeling when he walked into the Will Rogers Museum in Claremore. Nacho and Kem Rogers, son of Jim Rogers, are in Claremore for the Will Rogers Wild West International Expo. A defining moment in Will Rogers life was the summer of 1893. He was 13 and his mother had just died. His father took him to the Chicago World’s Fair, where he saw Vincente Oropeza, a Mexican vaquero and part-time matador who introduced trick roping to America. A young Will went home and started practicing with a vengeance on a skill that would later be his trademark on stage and in the movies....
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Saturday, April 16, 2005
Friday, April 15, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Rancher's attorney challenges report A report by the U.S. Interior Department's inspector general about a controversial settlement between a Thermopolis rancher and the Bureau of Land Management has been harshly criticized by a conservative Wyoming lawyer and an environmental advocacy group. This criticism of the Inspector General Earl Devaney's report has also led to calls for an investigation into whether federal appeals court nominee William G. Myers III lied when he said he was not aware of the terms of the settlement until months after the deal. Cheyenne-based lawyer Karen Budd-Falen wrote that Devaney's report was "extremely biased and intentionally or negligently fails to report the relevant facts." She represents rancher Frank Robbins in his long-running legal battles with the BLM's Worland office. Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Ethics, said Budd-Falen's report has provided "a much more nuanced understanding" of how the Robbins settlement was reached. Budd-Falen's report also firmly establishes that the settlement was not crafted by "a runaway staffer," Ruch said, but by Robert Comer, a politically appointed subordinate to Myers who kept Interior's top leadership "fully in the loop."....
Toad habitat designated The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated more than 11,000 acres of critical habitat for the endangered Southwestern arroyo toad, but the $1.8 billion plan excludes land along the Santa Clara River and San Francisquito Creek. The service's formal report was released Wednesday, the same day the Santa Clara River was listed by a national environmental group as one of 10 waterways threatened by development. The service's plan calls for 11,695 acres stretching from Santa Barbara to San Bernardino counties to be designated as critical habitat, a reduction from its originally proposed plan to designate 95,655 acres that included San Diego. Local environmentalists say the scaled-back acreage is due to pressure from the building industries....
Wolf bill loses free radio receiver requirement A proposed law requiring gray wolves to be radio collared is moving forward without a controversial amendment forcing the state to provide free radio receivers to landowners who want them. Senate Bill 461 would require wildlife managers to equip one wolf from every wolf pack near a population or livestock center with a radio collar so the pack can be tracked. That's all it did in its original form, but the House later amended it to require Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to also give radio receivers to any landowners living in an area frequented by wolves, if the property owners asked for them. The amendment significantly raised the bill's cost and could have bankrupted the agency's budget to implement its wolf management plan, which is required by the federal government before it will delist the wolf as an endangered species....
Snacking sea lions scarfing up sparse Columbia chinook run At the Bonneville Dam, more than 140 miles from the Pacific Ocean, spring has emerged as the season of the sea lion. Dozens of bewhiskered bulls congregate in pursuit of prized Columbia River chinook that this year, so far, are in acutely short supply. As of late Tuesday, about 200 of the spring chinook, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act, had gone through the dam's fish passage, compared with the 10-year average of 3,085 for the same date. It's the worst early showing in decades, with biologists unsure whether this run of hatchery and threatened wild salmon is very late, very weak or some combination of the two. To protect those salmon milling below the dam, the biologists are preparing a sea-lion battle strategy that includes noisemakers, sonar and eventually grates to keep them out of the fish ladders, an effort reminiscent of the Seattle campaign in the 1980s and '90s to keep sea lions away from steelhead moving through the Ballard Locks....
Bears with us Two years after Treadwell’s death, he is coming back to life in many forms. Werner Herzog’s documentary about him, Grizzly Man, premiered in Whitefish the first weekend of April after turning heads earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Superior author Mike Lapinski’s in-depth look into Treadwell’s life and death, Death in the Grizzly Maze, is fresh on bookstore shelves. Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company has purchased the rights to Treadwell’s story, with Leo himself expected to star in an upcoming Hollywood version of Treadwell’s life. This focus on Treadwell, which many bear biologists and officials fear will lead to an escalation of behavior dangerous to both humans and bears, comes at a time when human-bear conflicts are a growing issue. Last year, a record 31 grizzlies were killed due to human interaction in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. The grizzly population, estimated at just over 1,000 in the Lower 48, hasn’t taken a hit like that since 1974, the year before grizzlies were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Black bears, too, are feeling the squeeze as communities like Missoula continue to edge into the hills and forests. This year, warm spring days are about to draw bears out of their dens, hungry and seeking forage that’s dwindled in the face of several years’ drought. At the same time, the growing pressure on bears is being met by a handful of innovators intent on improving human-bear relations, and new research, new products and new management styles are seeking to undo the damage done by the Treadwells of the world....
Life in Death Valley Thanks to record rain — more than 6 inches instead of the less than 2 inch average — no one alive has ever seen a wildflower bloom in Death Valley like this one. When the television networks got the word they sent camera crews, and you know how it is. If one media outlet has a story, all media outlets need the story. The response has been part religious pilgrimage, part Woodstock nation. Thousands upon thousands of people — some days up to 10,000 more visitors than is typical — descending on a desert valley with a few narrow, two-lane strips of asphalt running through it. Never mind that motels are booked solid within and outside park boundaries. They are camping in every imaginable type of rig and tent. And when the wind is too strong to pitch a tent, they sleep in their cars or on the ground under bushes, scorpions be damned. No hardship seems too great to see the acres and acres of desert gold sunflowers and purple phacelia sweeping across the desert floor and up the alluvial fans — what the National Park Service is calling "one of the best wildflower blooms in modern history."....
Legislators vow help for park resident At age 82, Betty Dick figures she doesn't have many more years to live at her seasonal home inside Rocky Mountain National Park. Some members of Congress don't believe that - not from the energy she showed during subcommittee testimony Thursday. Still, they expressed sympathy for her fight against the National Park Service and pledged to push through special legislation blocking her planned eviction this summer. "We don't want to kick Ms. Dick out of her house," said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House Resources subcommittee on national parks. "We'll try to expedite this as quickly as we can." Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., brought Dick's cause to Capitol Hill, pushing for legislation to prevent her eviction after a 25-year-old agreement ends July 16. Seated next to a skeptical Park Service official, Dick told the panel about a complicated legal dispute dating to the 1970s that put her in her current predicament....
Baucus seeks buyout of Front leases Montana's congressional Republicans won't sign a letter in which Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., tells owners of Rocky Mountain Front petroleum leases that compensation will be sought if they surrender those leases so the area's natural environment is not disturbed. Baucus on Thursday sent a draft of the letter to the other two members of the state's congressional delegation, Sen. Conrad Burns and Rep. Denny Rehberg, and asked them to sign it. The letter discourages leaseholders from wasting ‘‘years and millions fighting to explore for uncertain — and likely limited — oil and gas reserves'' on federal lands along the Front, a wildlife-rich area where the mountains meet the Plains in western Montana....
Bureau of Land Management takes site down In the latest move related to a long-running dispute over the security of information about the Indian Trust Fund, the Interior Department recently shut down the Bureau of Land Management Web site after an inspector general identified vulnerabilities. Bureau officials took the site off-line April 8, two days after the release of a report from Interior's inspector general, whose investigators found that because of poor network security and weak access controls, "we could have easily compromised the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the identified Indian Trust data residing on such systems." Agency officials said the inspector general’s report prompted the Web site shutdown. Cobell v. Norton is a class-action lawsuit filed almost nine years ago. It involves Interior's oversight of the Indian Trust fund. Plaintiffs have accused Interior officials of doing a poor job of protecting trust data from hackers....
EPA Nominee Blocked Over 'Clear Skies' Test President Bush's widely praised nomination of Stephen L. Johnson to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency hit a roadblock yesterday when a lone Democratic senator placed a hold on the career scientist's confirmation. Johnson had received an enthusiastic welcome from environmentalists, industry advocates and both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill even as his confirmation faced some obstacles. Yesterday's hold was placed by Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.), who has long demanded that the EPA conduct scientific reviews of two legislative plans introduced in recent years as alternatives to President Bush's signature air pollution proposal, the "Clear Skies" initiative. Carper said he would not lift the hold until the EPA gave him an "ironclad" guarantee it would evaluate the other plans....
Column: Texans turning to Legislature for protection of private property Embedded in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is a fundamental protection for landowners and homeowners: Private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation. Public entities are entitled to take property when there is a demonstrable public good — such as condemning property for use as road right of ways, new schools and flood control. If private property is taken this way, people who own the land are guaranteed a just compensation. In 1995, we passed SB 14 to accomplish that purpose. As environmental regulations in some parts of our state have grown more stringent over the past two decades or so, the definition of what constitutes "takings" has blurred. We are at a critical point where some types of environmental regulations are, in effect, takings because they cause dramatic devaluation of private property. If such regulations are for the betterment of the general public, then the landowner who pays a dear price in loss of value should, under both state and federal constitutions, be compensated fairly. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Austin....
U.S. denies having 2 BSE cases in 1997 The U.S. Department of Agriculture admits there were problems with the samples taken from two cows in 1997, but insists the animals did not have mad cow disease. Ron DeHaven, administrator of the USDA's Animal and Plant Inspection Service, said that while key parts of the animals' brains needed to make an accurate diagnosis were missing and not tested, it was better to test what they had. "We had two choices: run the tests with the samples that we had, or not run them at all," DeHaven said "If we had something to hide, we could make an argument for not running the samples at all. "In this case, we chose to run the samples with the tissues that we had and subject them to three different tests to compensate for the fact that we may not have the perfect tissues."....
Cattlemen Tip Their Hats to the President in Oval Office Meeting Cattle industry leaders representing the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) met with President Bush today in the White House’s Oval Office and presented him with a sand-colored beaver cowboy hat as thanks for the president’s support of America’s cattlemen. NCBA President Jim McAdams, President-Elect Mike John, Vice President John Queen, along with CEO Terry Stokes, Vice President of Government Affairs Jay Truitt and Executive Director of Legislative Affairs Bryan Dierlam joined the president for a rare Oval Office meeting this afternoon. “We supported the president during his campaign and we celebrated when he won a second term in office,” says McAdams, who – like the president – hails from Texas. “We wanted to present him with this hat as an inauguration gift and thank him for all he’s done for cattle ranchers across the country.” Included in the cattlemen’s delegation were Trent and Melissa Johnson of Greeley Hat Works in Greeley, Colo., who made the president’s cowboy hat. Johnson says the president’s hat is truly one-of-a-kind with a solid gold "W" etched on a custom silver buckle and featuring Bush's name embroidered on the inside of a multi-colored sweatband....
Inaugural Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo The rough and tumble world of ranch rodeo takes on a softer side as the inaugural Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo makes its debut at the 2005 Cowboy Roundup USA at the Tri-State Fairgrounds in Amarillo, Texas, June 4. "Cowboy Roundup USA has a tremendous 18-year history of celebrating the cowboy spirit," said CRR chair Phyllis Payne. "The Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo will take that celebration to the next another, recognizing the tremendous contributions of women to our region's ranching heritage and Western culture." The Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo is designed to showcase the ranch work skills of women in five events - sorting, branding, doctoring, team tying and a ranch horse competition - similar to their male counterparts who compete in the Coors Ranch Rodeo, which is the anchor event of Cowboy Roundup USA weekend. Each team of four women will earn points toward bragging rights of being named the championship team, plus championship buckles and other awards from sponsors. Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo is open to women who live on a ranch, work on a ranch, or who are ranch-raised and spend extra time working on a family ranching operation....
Cowboy Era Lives Again in Lavish Festival Near Edgewood Who says the Wild West is dead? The rough-and-tumble days of yesteryear will come to life from April 28 to May 1 when more than 2,000 authentically dressed cowboys, mountain men, 19th-century soldiers and pioneers descend on the Edgewood area for the World Championships in Cowboy Action Shooting. No need to worry about random bullets flying, however. The 24th annual End of Trail championships and Wild West Jubilee is a civilized affair the whole family can enjoy. Sponsored by the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS), the four-day event is making its debut on SASS' new 480-acre Founders Ranch southwest of Edgewood. The ranch, purchased in January 2004, will become the permanent home of the event. With a theme of "Enchanted West: The History of Old West New Mexico," visitors and participants alike will get a full-scale immersion in the cowboy lifestyle of the late 1800s. Activities include historical re-enactments, equestrian events, cavalry encampments, cowboy music and poetry, gunfighter stunt shows, educational seminars, stagecoach and buggy rides, chuckwagon cooking competitions and trick roping....
Don't forget to send every damn thing you made last year to the IRS!
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Rancher's attorney challenges report A report by the U.S. Interior Department's inspector general about a controversial settlement between a Thermopolis rancher and the Bureau of Land Management has been harshly criticized by a conservative Wyoming lawyer and an environmental advocacy group. This criticism of the Inspector General Earl Devaney's report has also led to calls for an investigation into whether federal appeals court nominee William G. Myers III lied when he said he was not aware of the terms of the settlement until months after the deal. Cheyenne-based lawyer Karen Budd-Falen wrote that Devaney's report was "extremely biased and intentionally or negligently fails to report the relevant facts." She represents rancher Frank Robbins in his long-running legal battles with the BLM's Worland office. Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Ethics, said Budd-Falen's report has provided "a much more nuanced understanding" of how the Robbins settlement was reached. Budd-Falen's report also firmly establishes that the settlement was not crafted by "a runaway staffer," Ruch said, but by Robert Comer, a politically appointed subordinate to Myers who kept Interior's top leadership "fully in the loop."....
Toad habitat designated The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated more than 11,000 acres of critical habitat for the endangered Southwestern arroyo toad, but the $1.8 billion plan excludes land along the Santa Clara River and San Francisquito Creek. The service's formal report was released Wednesday, the same day the Santa Clara River was listed by a national environmental group as one of 10 waterways threatened by development. The service's plan calls for 11,695 acres stretching from Santa Barbara to San Bernardino counties to be designated as critical habitat, a reduction from its originally proposed plan to designate 95,655 acres that included San Diego. Local environmentalists say the scaled-back acreage is due to pressure from the building industries....
Wolf bill loses free radio receiver requirement A proposed law requiring gray wolves to be radio collared is moving forward without a controversial amendment forcing the state to provide free radio receivers to landowners who want them. Senate Bill 461 would require wildlife managers to equip one wolf from every wolf pack near a population or livestock center with a radio collar so the pack can be tracked. That's all it did in its original form, but the House later amended it to require Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to also give radio receivers to any landowners living in an area frequented by wolves, if the property owners asked for them. The amendment significantly raised the bill's cost and could have bankrupted the agency's budget to implement its wolf management plan, which is required by the federal government before it will delist the wolf as an endangered species....
Snacking sea lions scarfing up sparse Columbia chinook run At the Bonneville Dam, more than 140 miles from the Pacific Ocean, spring has emerged as the season of the sea lion. Dozens of bewhiskered bulls congregate in pursuit of prized Columbia River chinook that this year, so far, are in acutely short supply. As of late Tuesday, about 200 of the spring chinook, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act, had gone through the dam's fish passage, compared with the 10-year average of 3,085 for the same date. It's the worst early showing in decades, with biologists unsure whether this run of hatchery and threatened wild salmon is very late, very weak or some combination of the two. To protect those salmon milling below the dam, the biologists are preparing a sea-lion battle strategy that includes noisemakers, sonar and eventually grates to keep them out of the fish ladders, an effort reminiscent of the Seattle campaign in the 1980s and '90s to keep sea lions away from steelhead moving through the Ballard Locks....
Bears with us Two years after Treadwell’s death, he is coming back to life in many forms. Werner Herzog’s documentary about him, Grizzly Man, premiered in Whitefish the first weekend of April after turning heads earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Superior author Mike Lapinski’s in-depth look into Treadwell’s life and death, Death in the Grizzly Maze, is fresh on bookstore shelves. Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company has purchased the rights to Treadwell’s story, with Leo himself expected to star in an upcoming Hollywood version of Treadwell’s life. This focus on Treadwell, which many bear biologists and officials fear will lead to an escalation of behavior dangerous to both humans and bears, comes at a time when human-bear conflicts are a growing issue. Last year, a record 31 grizzlies were killed due to human interaction in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. The grizzly population, estimated at just over 1,000 in the Lower 48, hasn’t taken a hit like that since 1974, the year before grizzlies were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Black bears, too, are feeling the squeeze as communities like Missoula continue to edge into the hills and forests. This year, warm spring days are about to draw bears out of their dens, hungry and seeking forage that’s dwindled in the face of several years’ drought. At the same time, the growing pressure on bears is being met by a handful of innovators intent on improving human-bear relations, and new research, new products and new management styles are seeking to undo the damage done by the Treadwells of the world....
Life in Death Valley Thanks to record rain — more than 6 inches instead of the less than 2 inch average — no one alive has ever seen a wildflower bloom in Death Valley like this one. When the television networks got the word they sent camera crews, and you know how it is. If one media outlet has a story, all media outlets need the story. The response has been part religious pilgrimage, part Woodstock nation. Thousands upon thousands of people — some days up to 10,000 more visitors than is typical — descending on a desert valley with a few narrow, two-lane strips of asphalt running through it. Never mind that motels are booked solid within and outside park boundaries. They are camping in every imaginable type of rig and tent. And when the wind is too strong to pitch a tent, they sleep in their cars or on the ground under bushes, scorpions be damned. No hardship seems too great to see the acres and acres of desert gold sunflowers and purple phacelia sweeping across the desert floor and up the alluvial fans — what the National Park Service is calling "one of the best wildflower blooms in modern history."....
Legislators vow help for park resident At age 82, Betty Dick figures she doesn't have many more years to live at her seasonal home inside Rocky Mountain National Park. Some members of Congress don't believe that - not from the energy she showed during subcommittee testimony Thursday. Still, they expressed sympathy for her fight against the National Park Service and pledged to push through special legislation blocking her planned eviction this summer. "We don't want to kick Ms. Dick out of her house," said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House Resources subcommittee on national parks. "We'll try to expedite this as quickly as we can." Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., brought Dick's cause to Capitol Hill, pushing for legislation to prevent her eviction after a 25-year-old agreement ends July 16. Seated next to a skeptical Park Service official, Dick told the panel about a complicated legal dispute dating to the 1970s that put her in her current predicament....
Baucus seeks buyout of Front leases Montana's congressional Republicans won't sign a letter in which Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., tells owners of Rocky Mountain Front petroleum leases that compensation will be sought if they surrender those leases so the area's natural environment is not disturbed. Baucus on Thursday sent a draft of the letter to the other two members of the state's congressional delegation, Sen. Conrad Burns and Rep. Denny Rehberg, and asked them to sign it. The letter discourages leaseholders from wasting ‘‘years and millions fighting to explore for uncertain — and likely limited — oil and gas reserves'' on federal lands along the Front, a wildlife-rich area where the mountains meet the Plains in western Montana....
Bureau of Land Management takes site down In the latest move related to a long-running dispute over the security of information about the Indian Trust Fund, the Interior Department recently shut down the Bureau of Land Management Web site after an inspector general identified vulnerabilities. Bureau officials took the site off-line April 8, two days after the release of a report from Interior's inspector general, whose investigators found that because of poor network security and weak access controls, "we could have easily compromised the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the identified Indian Trust data residing on such systems." Agency officials said the inspector general’s report prompted the Web site shutdown. Cobell v. Norton is a class-action lawsuit filed almost nine years ago. It involves Interior's oversight of the Indian Trust fund. Plaintiffs have accused Interior officials of doing a poor job of protecting trust data from hackers....
EPA Nominee Blocked Over 'Clear Skies' Test President Bush's widely praised nomination of Stephen L. Johnson to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency hit a roadblock yesterday when a lone Democratic senator placed a hold on the career scientist's confirmation. Johnson had received an enthusiastic welcome from environmentalists, industry advocates and both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill even as his confirmation faced some obstacles. Yesterday's hold was placed by Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.), who has long demanded that the EPA conduct scientific reviews of two legislative plans introduced in recent years as alternatives to President Bush's signature air pollution proposal, the "Clear Skies" initiative. Carper said he would not lift the hold until the EPA gave him an "ironclad" guarantee it would evaluate the other plans....
Column: Texans turning to Legislature for protection of private property Embedded in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is a fundamental protection for landowners and homeowners: Private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation. Public entities are entitled to take property when there is a demonstrable public good — such as condemning property for use as road right of ways, new schools and flood control. If private property is taken this way, people who own the land are guaranteed a just compensation. In 1995, we passed SB 14 to accomplish that purpose. As environmental regulations in some parts of our state have grown more stringent over the past two decades or so, the definition of what constitutes "takings" has blurred. We are at a critical point where some types of environmental regulations are, in effect, takings because they cause dramatic devaluation of private property. If such regulations are for the betterment of the general public, then the landowner who pays a dear price in loss of value should, under both state and federal constitutions, be compensated fairly. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Austin....
U.S. denies having 2 BSE cases in 1997 The U.S. Department of Agriculture admits there were problems with the samples taken from two cows in 1997, but insists the animals did not have mad cow disease. Ron DeHaven, administrator of the USDA's Animal and Plant Inspection Service, said that while key parts of the animals' brains needed to make an accurate diagnosis were missing and not tested, it was better to test what they had. "We had two choices: run the tests with the samples that we had, or not run them at all," DeHaven said "If we had something to hide, we could make an argument for not running the samples at all. "In this case, we chose to run the samples with the tissues that we had and subject them to three different tests to compensate for the fact that we may not have the perfect tissues."....
Cattlemen Tip Their Hats to the President in Oval Office Meeting Cattle industry leaders representing the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) met with President Bush today in the White House’s Oval Office and presented him with a sand-colored beaver cowboy hat as thanks for the president’s support of America’s cattlemen. NCBA President Jim McAdams, President-Elect Mike John, Vice President John Queen, along with CEO Terry Stokes, Vice President of Government Affairs Jay Truitt and Executive Director of Legislative Affairs Bryan Dierlam joined the president for a rare Oval Office meeting this afternoon. “We supported the president during his campaign and we celebrated when he won a second term in office,” says McAdams, who – like the president – hails from Texas. “We wanted to present him with this hat as an inauguration gift and thank him for all he’s done for cattle ranchers across the country.” Included in the cattlemen’s delegation were Trent and Melissa Johnson of Greeley Hat Works in Greeley, Colo., who made the president’s cowboy hat. Johnson says the president’s hat is truly one-of-a-kind with a solid gold "W" etched on a custom silver buckle and featuring Bush's name embroidered on the inside of a multi-colored sweatband....
Inaugural Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo The rough and tumble world of ranch rodeo takes on a softer side as the inaugural Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo makes its debut at the 2005 Cowboy Roundup USA at the Tri-State Fairgrounds in Amarillo, Texas, June 4. "Cowboy Roundup USA has a tremendous 18-year history of celebrating the cowboy spirit," said CRR chair Phyllis Payne. "The Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo will take that celebration to the next another, recognizing the tremendous contributions of women to our region's ranching heritage and Western culture." The Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo is designed to showcase the ranch work skills of women in five events - sorting, branding, doctoring, team tying and a ranch horse competition - similar to their male counterparts who compete in the Coors Ranch Rodeo, which is the anchor event of Cowboy Roundup USA weekend. Each team of four women will earn points toward bragging rights of being named the championship team, plus championship buckles and other awards from sponsors. Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo is open to women who live on a ranch, work on a ranch, or who are ranch-raised and spend extra time working on a family ranching operation....
Cowboy Era Lives Again in Lavish Festival Near Edgewood Who says the Wild West is dead? The rough-and-tumble days of yesteryear will come to life from April 28 to May 1 when more than 2,000 authentically dressed cowboys, mountain men, 19th-century soldiers and pioneers descend on the Edgewood area for the World Championships in Cowboy Action Shooting. No need to worry about random bullets flying, however. The 24th annual End of Trail championships and Wild West Jubilee is a civilized affair the whole family can enjoy. Sponsored by the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS), the four-day event is making its debut on SASS' new 480-acre Founders Ranch southwest of Edgewood. The ranch, purchased in January 2004, will become the permanent home of the event. With a theme of "Enchanted West: The History of Old West New Mexico," visitors and participants alike will get a full-scale immersion in the cowboy lifestyle of the late 1800s. Activities include historical re-enactments, equestrian events, cavalry encampments, cowboy music and poetry, gunfighter stunt shows, educational seminars, stagecoach and buggy rides, chuckwagon cooking competitions and trick roping....
Don't forget to send every damn thing you made last year to the IRS!
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Thursday, April 14, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Grazing cattle on Arizona public land complex issue At 70 and with Irish skin stippled by decades under the Arizona sun, Terry Wheeler wouldn't be mistaken for Kevin Costner. Yet Wheeler is a real rancher, and he still "rides, walks and clambers," as he puts it, over the rangeland of Gila County. He's rebuilding his herd after the drought forced him and other ranchers off their allotments in the Tonto National Forest in 2002. Many cattle were sold at a loss. Today, with beef prices high, these ranchers have little to sell and plenty of debt. Taking the herds off the Tonto produced a further complication. The old cattle were bred for the rough country. Wheeler estimates it will take five years for the new herds to become acclimatized. Yet this is not a story of white hats vs. black hats. In the new West, Wheeler is an actor in a long drama about changing conceptions of public lands and the place of a natural resources economy in 21st century Arizona....
More Mormon crickets hatching across region Mormon crickets are hatching from Elko to rural valleys north of Reno as Northern Nevada enters its sixth season of infestation by the creepy insects. A heavy winter and a couple of wintry blasts of weather this spring did not halt the infestation as hoped and continued problems now appear inevitable, Jeff Knight, Nevada’s state entomologist, said Tuesday. “It will be as bad or more than likely worse than last year,” Knight said. “We’re going to be stretched to our limits.”....
Governor asks Forest Service to hold off Biscuit salvage logging Gov. Ted Kulongoski asked the U.S. Forest Service to hold off selling timber killed by the 2002 Biscuit fire in areas that were put off-limits to logging during the Clinton administration. In a letter to Regional Forester Linda Goodman dated April 1, the governor argued that logging in so-called roadless areas before a lawsuit brought by environmentalists is decided violates the public trust at a time when tensions are already high over cutting old growth forests. Kulongoski added that his own administrative challenge to the logging plan raised issues similar to those in the lawsuit, which he felt had a good chance of prevailing in court. "He feels it would really be in Oregon's best interest and the Forest Service's best interest to wait," Mike Carrier, the governor's natural resources adviser, said Wednesday....
Colorado hopes to bolster declining numbers of sage grouse State wildlife biologists will draft a plan to try to reverse the decline in sage grouse numbers in northwestern Colorado, an effort environmentalists say is critical because of increasing oil and gas drilling. John Toolen, a biologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, said a conservation plan will be written for the greater sage grouse in the Roan, West Parachute and Piceance creek drainages with input from the public. Increased drilling and home construction, drought, overgrazing by livestock and fire suppression, which appears to favor pinyon and juniper trees over sagebrush, have been blamed for the drop in the bird's numbers....
Roan Plateau Lawsuit Concern Emerges A Bureau of Land Management official says she believes the agency could be sued if it recommends against oil and gas drilling on top of western Colorado's Roan Plateau, a hot spot in the debate over Western energy development. Jamie Connell, manager of the BLM's field office in Glenwood Springs, said she believes federal law leaves the agency no choice but to lease some land on top of the plateau to energy companies. "I think we would be questioned if we leased zero acres," Connell told the Glenwood Springs Post Independent....
Interior Department Affirms BLM's Record of Decision to Approve Land Exchange for Phelps Dodge Phelps Dodge Corp. (NYSE: PD - News) said today the U.S. Department of the Interior has affirmed the Bureau of Land Management's June 29, 2004, Record of Decision supporting a land exchange with the company. The action allows the development of a proposed copper mining operation near Safford, Ariz., to continue to move forward. The exchange will transfer to the public valuable, environmentally sensitive land owned by Phelps Dodge in exchange for land of equal value located next to the company's property near Safford. The land Phelps Dodge will receive will be used primarily for support facilities and as a buffer to the proposed mining operations....
BLM shortening time to protest oil, gas leases The Bureau of Land Management is issuing new requirements for protesting oil and gas lease sales in Wyoming, including shortening the time people have to file a protest, a move the agency says is intended to make the leasing process more fair to all involved. The BLM in Wyoming said the changes could become the model for a policy on leases nationwide. But some environmentalists say it will make it more difficult to raise concerns over leasing in sensitive wildlife habitat. "From where I sit, I feel that the existing leasing process overall is already dramatically tilted or stacked in industry's favor," said Peter Aengst, energy campaign coordinator with the Northern Rockies region of The Wilderness Society. "What BLM is proposing to do is stack or tilt it more to industry's favor, and possibly to the detriment of other values."....
Column: Environmental Heresies Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power. Reversals of this sort have occurred before. Wildfire went from universal menace in mid-20th century to honored natural force and forestry tool now, from “Only you can prevent forest fires!” to let-burn policies and prescribed fires for understory management. The structure of such reversals reveals a hidden strength in the environmental movement and explains why it is likely to keep on growing in influence from decade to decade and perhaps century to century. The success of the environmental movement is driven by two powerful forces—romanticism and science—that are often in opposition....
Column: Greens Go Nuclear? The environmental movement was largely built on opposition to nuclear power. Who can forget the high seas adventures of Greenpeace's flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, in the 1970s and 80s, sailing its ragtag crew into danger zones in the Pacific to stop US and French nuclear tests? Or the anti-nuke campaigns of the German Green Party, whose members laid themselves across train tracks to block shipments of nuclear fuel and radioactive waste? No issue is as integral to the identity of modern environmentalists. No issue, that is, except perhaps global warming; which is why a number of prominent environmentalists have begun to rethink their positions on nuclear power. In the past year, British scientist James Lovelock, developer of the Gaia theory, futurist Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, Hugh Montefiore, longtime trustee of Friends of the Earth, and others have publicly called for massive new investments in nuclear energy....
US House Committees OK Energy Legislation House committees moved forward Wednesday with legislation to update US energy policy, allowing oil drilling in an Alaskan refuge and providing $8 billion in tax breaks for energy-saving technology. The committees approved parts of an energy package that will be folded into a broad bill that aims to boost domestic oil and natural gas supplies, which will be sent to the House floor for a final vote next week. Despite objections from Democratic lawmakers, the House Resources Committee voted to allow oil companies to drill in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Giving oil companies access to the refuge's 1.5-million acre coastal plain and billions of barrels of crude oil is a key part of the Bush administration's national energy plan to help reduce US oil imports. The committee voted 30 to 13 against a Democratic-sponsored amendment to drop the ANWR drilling language.....
US House Panel Rejects Boost in Car Mileage Rule A US House committee on Wednesday voted against requiring US automakers to ratchet up fuel efficiency to a fleet average of 33 miles per gallon by 2014 from the current 27.5 mpg for passenger cars. The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 36 to 10 against the proposal to raise federal mileage requirements, which was offered as an amendment to a broad energy bill. Democrat Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who sponsored the proposal, said higher fuel standards were needed to reduce oil demand and make the United States less dependent on foreign petroleum suppliers like OPEC. But committee Democrats from Michigan, where the auto industry is based, said Congress can't mandate what type of automobiles Detroit should make....
Alaska Native corporation a lead player for oil on wildlife refuge Along a flat expanse of tundra, a wooden post marks the spot where a drill rig bit more than three miles into the sandstone rock beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's coastal plain. This is the only well ever drilled inside an area once ranked by many geologists as the best oil prospect in North America. It was sunk on an island of private land within the federal refuge, and the results remain secret. The owner of the land is an Inupiat Eskimo corporation that could emerge as one of the big winners if Congress agrees to open ANWR to drilling, a move environmentalists have long opposed. The Inupiat corporation is called Arctic Slope Regional Corp., and it owns 92,160 subsurface acres. Its executives impatiently await the congressional action needed to extract oil from inside the refuge....
Fill 'er up — Lake Powell set for runoff from deep snowpack It's only a few inches higher now, but rising . . . upwards of 45 feet is the prediction. That, at least, is the latest forecast on the rise of Lake Powell over the next few months. The April hydrologist report from the Bureau of Reclamation states there is enough snowpack in the Upper Colorado Basin to take the lake level from its current elevation — 3,555.4 — to its expected peak sometime in July at 3,600 feet, which, if conditions allow, would raise the level of the lake 44.6 feet. This report, which came out April 6, does not include precipitation that will fall between now and the end of the rainy season, which would include the last two storm fronts that moved through Utah and into lower Colorado this week. Nor does it address the possibility that the release of water from the Glen Canyon Dam could be reduced. Current requirements are that 8.23 million acre-feet of water be released downstream annually. In a tug-of-war for water, the upper basin states want the total release lowered, while the lower basin states want it to remain at 8.23 million acre-feet, despite the fact that the lower states had an exceptionally wet winter and received more than 2 million acre-feet of additional water. A decision on the release figure is expected later this month....
Water to be cut off for some To help their downstream neighbors in Nebraska, water users along the North Platte River in east-central Wyoming will face more restrictions due to the continued drought, now stretching into its sixth year. Because of the needs of irrigators and water consumers in the Inland Lakes of western Nebraska and due to continued low runoff forecasts, Wyoming State Engineer Patrick Tyrrell announced that water use will be limited to holders of senior rights older than Dec. 6, 1904, upstream from Guernsey Reservoir. The limits will remain in place until May 1. The restrictions will allow four Nebraska Panhandle lakes - Big and Little Lake Alice, Winters Creek Lake and Lake Minatare - to accrue water they are entitled to under a U.S. Supreme Court decision....
Proposal to replace river locks moves forward in Senate A long-debated plan to replace locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers survived a key test on Wednesday after skirting a divisive battle to reform the Army Corps of Engineers. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., declined to join Democrats pushing for new controls on the corps and instead voted with Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond of Missouri and other Republicans in helping pass the $2.5 billion river proposal through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The Mississippi-Illinois river proposal, hampered by scandal and scorned by environmentalists, moves next to the Senate floor, where would-be reformers will be adding more muscle to efforts to add provisions that would rein in the corps. Chief among them is Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. The Midwestern project is the biggest in cost and scope in a multi-billion-dollar Water Resources Development Act, which would be the nation's first full-scale water projects legislation in five years....
Rough on the range A solar collector sits beside the little trailer where Saul Sanchez lives, catching energy that powers the lights, the radio and the small television in his home, set in the middle of a fallowed field where he tends a flock of hundreds of sheep. At one time, the trailer may have been used for weekend getaways. Now it is Sanchez's home for about eight months out of the year and moves with the sheep. Though modest at best, some would say it's a palace compared to the abodes of other sheepherders scattered throughout the Central Valley. It has running water, a toilet that works, lights, heating and cooling. But he may be the exception. California's rural sheepherders lack many of those amenities, according to a new report, "Watching Sheep and Waiting for Justice," issued last month by the Central California Legal Services Inc....
Judy Alter Honored With Wister Award From Western Writers of America Judy Alter, award-winning writer and director of TCU Press, will receive the prestigious Owen Wister Award from Western Writers of America for lifetime achievement. "I never even dreamt of such an honor," says Alter, 66. "It puts me in the company of people I'm in awe of and also some of my good friends like Elmer Kelton, Dale Walker, Jeannie Williams, Don Worcester and others." The nonprofit Western Writers of America (www.westernwriters.org) was founded in 1953 to promote and honor Western literature. The Wister Award, previously called the Levi Strauss Saddleman Award, is presented annually to a living author. Previous winners include Mari Sandoz, A.B. Guthrie Jr. and Robert M. Utley....
Local cowboy carves his horses He is known for a lot of things - his days as a marine in World War II, as a gardener - but he takes special pleasure in talking about his days as a cowboy. Naturally, Skip carves horses ... quarter horses, mules, anything that a cowboy might associate himself with. This time Skip had a number of new horses to show me. Carved from basswood, which was supplied by a brother from Minnesota, they are as true to form that it is humanly possible to make them. They are carved, scraped, and polished into fine pieces that he sells or gives to other cowboys, westerners that he rodeoed with or rode with. He's nearly 79, by his own admission not able to ride like he used to, but one gets the impression that if you showed up at his Grand Coulee house with a horse, he'd climb on and ride away. Skip says, "the birthdays now come faster than the paydays."....
Breakin' horses Shoop was raised in Colorado where he spent most of his formative years near Trinidad. He wasn't very old when his bronc-busting dad taught him, his two brothers (Ray and Zeke) and even the boys' two younger sisters to saddle-break horses, Shoop said. "Dad taught us all how to break horses as a means to have something to fall back on," Shoop said, while leading a 4-year-old colt to the circle pen. "Well, I guess I've been falling back on it my whole life." Shoop married a local girl, Diana Ritter (now Shoop) and settled down and has been breaking and training horses on his land northwest of Pryor for 12 years. Diana is a barrel racer, Shoop said, and even the couple's children are beginning to take dad's lead by getting active in the business. Shoop led the colt that he said someday will be his roping horse into a circle pen constructed of an outer rail and lined entirely with split hard wood logs standing 10 feet or more....
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Grazing cattle on Arizona public land complex issue At 70 and with Irish skin stippled by decades under the Arizona sun, Terry Wheeler wouldn't be mistaken for Kevin Costner. Yet Wheeler is a real rancher, and he still "rides, walks and clambers," as he puts it, over the rangeland of Gila County. He's rebuilding his herd after the drought forced him and other ranchers off their allotments in the Tonto National Forest in 2002. Many cattle were sold at a loss. Today, with beef prices high, these ranchers have little to sell and plenty of debt. Taking the herds off the Tonto produced a further complication. The old cattle were bred for the rough country. Wheeler estimates it will take five years for the new herds to become acclimatized. Yet this is not a story of white hats vs. black hats. In the new West, Wheeler is an actor in a long drama about changing conceptions of public lands and the place of a natural resources economy in 21st century Arizona....
More Mormon crickets hatching across region Mormon crickets are hatching from Elko to rural valleys north of Reno as Northern Nevada enters its sixth season of infestation by the creepy insects. A heavy winter and a couple of wintry blasts of weather this spring did not halt the infestation as hoped and continued problems now appear inevitable, Jeff Knight, Nevada’s state entomologist, said Tuesday. “It will be as bad or more than likely worse than last year,” Knight said. “We’re going to be stretched to our limits.”....
Governor asks Forest Service to hold off Biscuit salvage logging Gov. Ted Kulongoski asked the U.S. Forest Service to hold off selling timber killed by the 2002 Biscuit fire in areas that were put off-limits to logging during the Clinton administration. In a letter to Regional Forester Linda Goodman dated April 1, the governor argued that logging in so-called roadless areas before a lawsuit brought by environmentalists is decided violates the public trust at a time when tensions are already high over cutting old growth forests. Kulongoski added that his own administrative challenge to the logging plan raised issues similar to those in the lawsuit, which he felt had a good chance of prevailing in court. "He feels it would really be in Oregon's best interest and the Forest Service's best interest to wait," Mike Carrier, the governor's natural resources adviser, said Wednesday....
Colorado hopes to bolster declining numbers of sage grouse State wildlife biologists will draft a plan to try to reverse the decline in sage grouse numbers in northwestern Colorado, an effort environmentalists say is critical because of increasing oil and gas drilling. John Toolen, a biologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, said a conservation plan will be written for the greater sage grouse in the Roan, West Parachute and Piceance creek drainages with input from the public. Increased drilling and home construction, drought, overgrazing by livestock and fire suppression, which appears to favor pinyon and juniper trees over sagebrush, have been blamed for the drop in the bird's numbers....
Roan Plateau Lawsuit Concern Emerges A Bureau of Land Management official says she believes the agency could be sued if it recommends against oil and gas drilling on top of western Colorado's Roan Plateau, a hot spot in the debate over Western energy development. Jamie Connell, manager of the BLM's field office in Glenwood Springs, said she believes federal law leaves the agency no choice but to lease some land on top of the plateau to energy companies. "I think we would be questioned if we leased zero acres," Connell told the Glenwood Springs Post Independent....
Interior Department Affirms BLM's Record of Decision to Approve Land Exchange for Phelps Dodge Phelps Dodge Corp. (NYSE: PD - News) said today the U.S. Department of the Interior has affirmed the Bureau of Land Management's June 29, 2004, Record of Decision supporting a land exchange with the company. The action allows the development of a proposed copper mining operation near Safford, Ariz., to continue to move forward. The exchange will transfer to the public valuable, environmentally sensitive land owned by Phelps Dodge in exchange for land of equal value located next to the company's property near Safford. The land Phelps Dodge will receive will be used primarily for support facilities and as a buffer to the proposed mining operations....
BLM shortening time to protest oil, gas leases The Bureau of Land Management is issuing new requirements for protesting oil and gas lease sales in Wyoming, including shortening the time people have to file a protest, a move the agency says is intended to make the leasing process more fair to all involved. The BLM in Wyoming said the changes could become the model for a policy on leases nationwide. But some environmentalists say it will make it more difficult to raise concerns over leasing in sensitive wildlife habitat. "From where I sit, I feel that the existing leasing process overall is already dramatically tilted or stacked in industry's favor," said Peter Aengst, energy campaign coordinator with the Northern Rockies region of The Wilderness Society. "What BLM is proposing to do is stack or tilt it more to industry's favor, and possibly to the detriment of other values."....
Column: Environmental Heresies Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power. Reversals of this sort have occurred before. Wildfire went from universal menace in mid-20th century to honored natural force and forestry tool now, from “Only you can prevent forest fires!” to let-burn policies and prescribed fires for understory management. The structure of such reversals reveals a hidden strength in the environmental movement and explains why it is likely to keep on growing in influence from decade to decade and perhaps century to century. The success of the environmental movement is driven by two powerful forces—romanticism and science—that are often in opposition....
Column: Greens Go Nuclear? The environmental movement was largely built on opposition to nuclear power. Who can forget the high seas adventures of Greenpeace's flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, in the 1970s and 80s, sailing its ragtag crew into danger zones in the Pacific to stop US and French nuclear tests? Or the anti-nuke campaigns of the German Green Party, whose members laid themselves across train tracks to block shipments of nuclear fuel and radioactive waste? No issue is as integral to the identity of modern environmentalists. No issue, that is, except perhaps global warming; which is why a number of prominent environmentalists have begun to rethink their positions on nuclear power. In the past year, British scientist James Lovelock, developer of the Gaia theory, futurist Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, Hugh Montefiore, longtime trustee of Friends of the Earth, and others have publicly called for massive new investments in nuclear energy....
US House Committees OK Energy Legislation House committees moved forward Wednesday with legislation to update US energy policy, allowing oil drilling in an Alaskan refuge and providing $8 billion in tax breaks for energy-saving technology. The committees approved parts of an energy package that will be folded into a broad bill that aims to boost domestic oil and natural gas supplies, which will be sent to the House floor for a final vote next week. Despite objections from Democratic lawmakers, the House Resources Committee voted to allow oil companies to drill in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Giving oil companies access to the refuge's 1.5-million acre coastal plain and billions of barrels of crude oil is a key part of the Bush administration's national energy plan to help reduce US oil imports. The committee voted 30 to 13 against a Democratic-sponsored amendment to drop the ANWR drilling language.....
US House Panel Rejects Boost in Car Mileage Rule A US House committee on Wednesday voted against requiring US automakers to ratchet up fuel efficiency to a fleet average of 33 miles per gallon by 2014 from the current 27.5 mpg for passenger cars. The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 36 to 10 against the proposal to raise federal mileage requirements, which was offered as an amendment to a broad energy bill. Democrat Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who sponsored the proposal, said higher fuel standards were needed to reduce oil demand and make the United States less dependent on foreign petroleum suppliers like OPEC. But committee Democrats from Michigan, where the auto industry is based, said Congress can't mandate what type of automobiles Detroit should make....
Alaska Native corporation a lead player for oil on wildlife refuge Along a flat expanse of tundra, a wooden post marks the spot where a drill rig bit more than three miles into the sandstone rock beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's coastal plain. This is the only well ever drilled inside an area once ranked by many geologists as the best oil prospect in North America. It was sunk on an island of private land within the federal refuge, and the results remain secret. The owner of the land is an Inupiat Eskimo corporation that could emerge as one of the big winners if Congress agrees to open ANWR to drilling, a move environmentalists have long opposed. The Inupiat corporation is called Arctic Slope Regional Corp., and it owns 92,160 subsurface acres. Its executives impatiently await the congressional action needed to extract oil from inside the refuge....
Fill 'er up — Lake Powell set for runoff from deep snowpack It's only a few inches higher now, but rising . . . upwards of 45 feet is the prediction. That, at least, is the latest forecast on the rise of Lake Powell over the next few months. The April hydrologist report from the Bureau of Reclamation states there is enough snowpack in the Upper Colorado Basin to take the lake level from its current elevation — 3,555.4 — to its expected peak sometime in July at 3,600 feet, which, if conditions allow, would raise the level of the lake 44.6 feet. This report, which came out April 6, does not include precipitation that will fall between now and the end of the rainy season, which would include the last two storm fronts that moved through Utah and into lower Colorado this week. Nor does it address the possibility that the release of water from the Glen Canyon Dam could be reduced. Current requirements are that 8.23 million acre-feet of water be released downstream annually. In a tug-of-war for water, the upper basin states want the total release lowered, while the lower basin states want it to remain at 8.23 million acre-feet, despite the fact that the lower states had an exceptionally wet winter and received more than 2 million acre-feet of additional water. A decision on the release figure is expected later this month....
Water to be cut off for some To help their downstream neighbors in Nebraska, water users along the North Platte River in east-central Wyoming will face more restrictions due to the continued drought, now stretching into its sixth year. Because of the needs of irrigators and water consumers in the Inland Lakes of western Nebraska and due to continued low runoff forecasts, Wyoming State Engineer Patrick Tyrrell announced that water use will be limited to holders of senior rights older than Dec. 6, 1904, upstream from Guernsey Reservoir. The limits will remain in place until May 1. The restrictions will allow four Nebraska Panhandle lakes - Big and Little Lake Alice, Winters Creek Lake and Lake Minatare - to accrue water they are entitled to under a U.S. Supreme Court decision....
Proposal to replace river locks moves forward in Senate A long-debated plan to replace locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers survived a key test on Wednesday after skirting a divisive battle to reform the Army Corps of Engineers. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., declined to join Democrats pushing for new controls on the corps and instead voted with Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond of Missouri and other Republicans in helping pass the $2.5 billion river proposal through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The Mississippi-Illinois river proposal, hampered by scandal and scorned by environmentalists, moves next to the Senate floor, where would-be reformers will be adding more muscle to efforts to add provisions that would rein in the corps. Chief among them is Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. The Midwestern project is the biggest in cost and scope in a multi-billion-dollar Water Resources Development Act, which would be the nation's first full-scale water projects legislation in five years....
Rough on the range A solar collector sits beside the little trailer where Saul Sanchez lives, catching energy that powers the lights, the radio and the small television in his home, set in the middle of a fallowed field where he tends a flock of hundreds of sheep. At one time, the trailer may have been used for weekend getaways. Now it is Sanchez's home for about eight months out of the year and moves with the sheep. Though modest at best, some would say it's a palace compared to the abodes of other sheepherders scattered throughout the Central Valley. It has running water, a toilet that works, lights, heating and cooling. But he may be the exception. California's rural sheepherders lack many of those amenities, according to a new report, "Watching Sheep and Waiting for Justice," issued last month by the Central California Legal Services Inc....
Judy Alter Honored With Wister Award From Western Writers of America Judy Alter, award-winning writer and director of TCU Press, will receive the prestigious Owen Wister Award from Western Writers of America for lifetime achievement. "I never even dreamt of such an honor," says Alter, 66. "It puts me in the company of people I'm in awe of and also some of my good friends like Elmer Kelton, Dale Walker, Jeannie Williams, Don Worcester and others." The nonprofit Western Writers of America (www.westernwriters.org) was founded in 1953 to promote and honor Western literature. The Wister Award, previously called the Levi Strauss Saddleman Award, is presented annually to a living author. Previous winners include Mari Sandoz, A.B. Guthrie Jr. and Robert M. Utley....
Local cowboy carves his horses He is known for a lot of things - his days as a marine in World War II, as a gardener - but he takes special pleasure in talking about his days as a cowboy. Naturally, Skip carves horses ... quarter horses, mules, anything that a cowboy might associate himself with. This time Skip had a number of new horses to show me. Carved from basswood, which was supplied by a brother from Minnesota, they are as true to form that it is humanly possible to make them. They are carved, scraped, and polished into fine pieces that he sells or gives to other cowboys, westerners that he rodeoed with or rode with. He's nearly 79, by his own admission not able to ride like he used to, but one gets the impression that if you showed up at his Grand Coulee house with a horse, he'd climb on and ride away. Skip says, "the birthdays now come faster than the paydays."....
Breakin' horses Shoop was raised in Colorado where he spent most of his formative years near Trinidad. He wasn't very old when his bronc-busting dad taught him, his two brothers (Ray and Zeke) and even the boys' two younger sisters to saddle-break horses, Shoop said. "Dad taught us all how to break horses as a means to have something to fall back on," Shoop said, while leading a 4-year-old colt to the circle pen. "Well, I guess I've been falling back on it my whole life." Shoop married a local girl, Diana Ritter (now Shoop) and settled down and has been breaking and training horses on his land northwest of Pryor for 12 years. Diana is a barrel racer, Shoop said, and even the couple's children are beginning to take dad's lead by getting active in the business. Shoop led the colt that he said someday will be his roping horse into a circle pen constructed of an outer rail and lined entirely with split hard wood logs standing 10 feet or more....
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Wednesday, April 13, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Florida landowner fights to keep `hole in doughnut' On a patch of rugged wilderness, with alligators, bears and an occasional panther for neighbors, a partially disabled former Navy frogman is nearing the end of a battle to save his homestead from an $8 billion plan to restore the development-battered Everglades. As the Florida Department of Environmental Protection threatens to acquire the 160-acre property under eminent domain--a process by which a government can seize private property for public use--Jesse Hardy has refused the state's final offer of $4.5 million, and so far has not been satisfied with property offered for a land swap. Florida officials contend that Hardy's land would be threatened by flooding under the plan. But the bearded Hardy said that a private study had determined that his land would be flood free, at 13 feet above sea level, when waters rise because of the state and federal Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan for Central and Southern Florida. Described as the world's largest ecosystem restoration effort, that program covers an 18,000-square-mile area with the goal of restoring the annual southward flow of rainwater through sawgrass and cypress forests from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. "This is not the Everglades; that's a reference to that river of grass that grows 30 miles thataway," Hardy said, pointing to the ground and then to the southeast. "No, no, no, there's nothing here to restore. I'm 13 feet above sea level. There will never be a sheetflow of water here. There never was any heavy-duty standing water here.".... a tip of the hat to Julie at Property Rights Research....
Turning prairie dogs into a farmer's friend, not foe Conservation groups on Tuesday announced the purchase of 46,000 acres of desert grasslands in northern Mexico, a project aimed at converting pesky prairie dogs into valuable farm tools, while also saving the lives of the potentially endangered creatures. The joint effort between a U.S. nonprofit organization and its Mexican counterpart is to demonstrate that the black-tailed prairie dog — seen as an intrusive rodent in much of the western United States and northern Mexico — can help grazing lands thrive. In Mexico, the Nature Conservancy, with help from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is developing a management plan involving "working" prairie dogs at the El Uno cattle ranch, located outside the small town of Janos, about 45 miles south of the New Mexico border. A "grass bank" will let local ranchers graze cattle at El Uno while allowing the soil on their own lands to rest and recuperate....
Column: Old West vs. New West Life was much simpler when I viewed the battle to "save" the West through a black-and-white lens. As a young environmentalist, it was easier to condemn my adversaries' beliefs without scrutinizing my own. And it was easier to attack my adversaries when I didn't know them. I have agonized over this for years now. At the heart of this land war - and that's what we should call it - is a conflict of cultures. On one side stand the "New Westerners," mostly urbanites who consider themselves environmentalists, but whose connection to the land comes through recreation. On the other side are the "Old Westerners," most of whom live and work in small rural communities and make their living from the land. In the past three decades, each side of the conflict has so caricatured their opponents that they have, in the process, turned themselves into cartoon characters as well....
Judicial Nominee Under Scrutiny Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) called Tuesday for an investigation into whether William G. Myers III, a nominee for the federal appeals court in San Francisco, lied when he told a Senate committee that he was not aware of the terms of a controversial settlement the Interior Department had made with a politically connected Wyoming rancher until months after the deal was signed. Myers was the top lawyer at the department in the first term of the Bush administration, when the agreement was consummated. Feingold said a memo from Karen Budd-Falen, the rancher's lawyer, "directly contradicts Mr. Myers' written response to a question I submitted." A spokeswoman for Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said he was reviewing the information regarding Myers, who cleared the committee on a 10-8 party-line vote last month. An aide to panel chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said the nominee "was thoroughly vetted and investigated by the White House, the Department of Justice, the American Bar Assn. and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee."....
Gov't backs off cutting aid to farmers After two months of fierce resistance from farmers and Congress, the Bush administration has dropped an effort to cut government payments to farmers. Bush asked Congress in February to slash billions of dollars from payments to large farm operations, dropping the maximum farmers are allowed to collect from $360,000 to $250,000 and closing loopholes allowing some growers to obtain millions of dollars. He also proposed to cut all farm payments by 5 percent. On Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told key senators that while spending must be reduced to hold down the federal deficit, he is willing to look elsewhere in agriculture programs for cuts. "Perhaps the administration has finally begun to hear the roar from the heartland," said Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.... Roar?? Sounded more like a big whine to me....
Public-lands ranchers: Should you trust this man? Andy Kerr, who has been an environmental activist for more than 20 years, was a key figure in the struggle to curtail logging in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, he is the director of the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign, which seeks to pass legislation that would allow the federal government to buy federal grazing allotments from ranchers and permanently retire the land from grazing. HCN executive director Paul Larmer recently interviewed Kerr about his transformation from lawsuit-wielding agitator to carrot-carrying negotiator....
A New Line of Defense for Landowners Thanks to the American Land Foundation (ALF), property owners have a new line of defense in the never ending battle to protect their property from state and federal regulation. ALF’s latest program, LandGuard creates a link between the nation’s top property rights attorneys and America’s landowners to provide expert protection and advice. ALF, a non-profit organization, was founded over a decade ago with a goal to educate and help landowners fight government regulation of private property. Over the last decade, ALF president, Dan Byfield, has spent countless hours counseling landowners who found themselves facing threats from government agencies or individual groups intent on taking or controlling their private property. With each phone call, Byfield realized landowners were losing their battles because they waited too long to act or they didn’t have adequate legal counsel. He knew there had to be a better way. Byfield determined that what landowners needed most was access to immediate advice from qualified property rights lawyers, preferably in the landowner’s geographical area and at a price that wouldn’t break the bank....Go here to learn more about LandGuard....
Judge allows timber sale to go forward A federal judge has rejected a challenge to one of the keystones in the White House's Healthy Forests Initiative, allowing a timber sale to continue on the Lolo National Forest without full environmental review. "What he said is that the categorical exclusion is a tool that can be used," said Chris West, "and it can be done quickly - before the value of timber is lost." West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, applauded the decision by U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula to allow logging to continue on the Lolo's Camp Salvage timber sale. The sale was administered under new federal regulations that allow for "categorical exclusions," - exemptions from normal environmental reviews and public-comment requirements for sales that fall into a narrow category. To qualify for categorical exclusion status, the sale must be of dead or dying timber, on 250 acres or fewer, with less than one-half mile of temporary road building. Barring any "extraordinary circumstances," the categorical exclusion means there is no need for a full environmental analysis or environmental impact statement....
Wal-Mart, NFWF commended by Norton Interior Secretary Gale Norton today commended the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Wal-Mart for developing an innovative conservation partnership under which the company will contribute $35 million over the next 10 years to conserve and protect vital wildlife habitat across the country. Under the "Acres for America" program, Wal-Mart pledges to conserve at least 138,000 acres of habitat, equal to the footprint of all its stores and facilities in the United States. However, the amount of habitat actually conserved will be much higher, as the Foundation already has reached an agreement to acquire more than 6,000 acres to be added to Catahoula National Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana and a permanent conservation easement on more than 312,000 acres of forests, rivers and wetlands in Maine. "'Acres for America' demonstrates the power of cooperative conservation and partnership," Norton said at a ceremony at the National Geographic Society. "With its generous contribution, Wal-Mart is empowering the foundation to protect and restore important areas of wildlife habitat that otherwise might never be conserved. The company is setting a standard of corporate stewardship that I hope other companies will emulate."....
Land near Grand Canyon to be protected Bolstered by a $1 million grant from retail giant Wal-Mart, conservation groups plan to protect almost 900,000 acres of wilderness, including land stretching along 125 miles of the Grand Canyon's North Rim. Conservationists said the $4.5 million purchase of two private ranches, totaling about 1,000 acres, also will help protect more than 850,000 acres that are attached to the land through grazing permits from the North Rim to the Utah line. The acquisition connects three national monuments, two national recreation areas and eight wilderness areas, shielding them from further development and restoring overgrazed lands to nurture endangered species in the region....
Ranch redefines large-scale conservation Lava Lake Land & Livestock, based near Carey, is redefining the face of Western sheep ranching and conservation. The company, which was recently honored with the Idaho Wildlife Society's special recognition award, was created out of several sheep outfits bought five years ago by a San Francisco couple named Brian and Kathleen Bean. The company's holdings include 24,000 acres of private land and grazing privileges on 730,000 acres of public land allotments. The award was given to the ranch in recognition of the company's work to accomplish "landscape scale conservation" in South Central Idaho. Landscape-scale conservation moves the focus from individual species to an entire landscape to protect plant communities and wildlife, especially species that need large areas to survive, said Tess O'Sullivan, Lava Lake's program manager for science and conservation....
U.S. forests look for sites to close down Your favorite national forest campsite will soon be competing for its survival, while the ranger station down the road may show up for sale on the Internet. The U.S. Forest Service is ranking recreation sites such as campgrounds and trailheads for closure, because it can no longer afford to maintain them all. Oregon's Deschutes and Winema national forests are among the first nationwide to undertake the reviews. The squeeze is driven in part because President Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative, a push to thin flammable Western forests, is diverting money away from the upkeep of forest facilities. The Forest Service is also attempting to sell offices and compounds that bustled during the logging heyday decades ago but now sit idle. Its officials hope cash from the sales will help keep other decaying facilities from falling apart....
Wyoming county plans to appeal wolf ruling of U.S. district judge The ability to shoot wolves as predators is worth fighting for, Park County commissioners said Tuesday. They vowed to continue their legal support of Wyoming's dual-classification wolf-management plan by appealing U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson's recent dismissal of the three-party lawsuit filed against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Interior. Park County will be a "plaintiff intervenor," once again joining forces with the state of Wyoming and the Wolf Coalition. It will appeal Johnson's decision to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. "I feel very strongly about this," said Commissioner Marie Fontaine. "We've been misinformed a number of times along the way. The number of wolves here is overwhelming, especially being so close to Yellowstone National Park." Because Wyoming wants wolves classified both as a trophy game animal and a predator, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will not approve Wyoming's management plan. Predator status won't preserve the 15 packs needed to remove the animal from Endangered Species Act protection, the agency says....
Refuge expansion proposed The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is exploring a proposal to add the Barnes Ranch and perhaps the Agency Lake Ranch to the Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. Under two proposed additions, the Fish and Wildlife Service would purchase the 2,671-acre Barnes Ranch, which is in private ownership, and either cooperatively manage the 7,125-acre Agency Lake Ranch with the Bureau of Reclamation, or acquire the Agency Lake property. The refuge currently includes almost 15,000 acres of mostly freshwater marsh and open water on Upper Klamath Lake, including habitat for endangered Lost River and shortnose suckers, and a variety of resident and migratory birds. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say the refuge additions would increase water storage in the Upper Klamath Basin, and improve fish and wildlife habitat....
Governor backs industry plan A Bureau of Land Management plan to allow more drilling in the Jonah natural gas field near Pinedale doesn't give companies enough flexibility to tap all the gas that's available, Gov. Dave Freudenthal says. At the same time, the plan's attempt to limit disturbance from development would provide only marginal benefit to wildlife habitat, the governor has concluded. As a result, Freudenthal supports EnCana Oil & Gas Inc.'s proposal to allow drilling of wells with few restrictions within the existing Jonah field, in exchange for a commitment from the company to improve wildlife habitat in areas surrounding the field, according to a Tuesday letter he wrote to the BLM....
U.S. eyes oil shale resources Faced with record-high crude oil imports and prices, U.S. lawmakers held a one-day hearing Tuesday to examine tapping domestic oil shale on federal lands, a resource some geologists say could yield 1.9 trillion barrels of oil. Oil shale formations, largely found out West, release low-grade oil when mined, crushed, and subjected to high temperatures. Companies like Royal Dutch/Shell Group, already armed with the technology to develop oil shale, would be the likely benefactors if the Senate folds legislation to open the fields into a future energy bill. The interest is certainly there. Over the past four months more than 30 companies and individuals have sent recommendations to the Bureau of Land Management on how to go about leasing mineral rights on oil federal oil shale properties. Even the Defense Department has joined in, seeing an opportunity to perhaps boost jet fuel supplies. Senator Pete Domenici, the Republican chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said at the hearing he is looking at tax incentives to encourage developing oil shale....
Colo. River users at odds over flow The seven states that share the Colorado River are unlikely to agree on how much to refill Lake Powell this year, leaving the decision to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Colorado's top water planner said Tuesday. Five of the driest years on record have left Lake Powell, the giant impoundment on the Utah- Arizona line, two-thirds empty. Meanwhile, record precipitation this winter has helped produce a dramatic rebound in Lake Mead, Powell's equally large downstream sibling, which is now nearly two-thirds full. To help restore balance to the system, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming want the Bureau of Reclamation to capture more water than planned behind Lake Powell's Glen Canyon Dam. They plan to make that request next week....
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Florida landowner fights to keep `hole in doughnut' On a patch of rugged wilderness, with alligators, bears and an occasional panther for neighbors, a partially disabled former Navy frogman is nearing the end of a battle to save his homestead from an $8 billion plan to restore the development-battered Everglades. As the Florida Department of Environmental Protection threatens to acquire the 160-acre property under eminent domain--a process by which a government can seize private property for public use--Jesse Hardy has refused the state's final offer of $4.5 million, and so far has not been satisfied with property offered for a land swap. Florida officials contend that Hardy's land would be threatened by flooding under the plan. But the bearded Hardy said that a private study had determined that his land would be flood free, at 13 feet above sea level, when waters rise because of the state and federal Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan for Central and Southern Florida. Described as the world's largest ecosystem restoration effort, that program covers an 18,000-square-mile area with the goal of restoring the annual southward flow of rainwater through sawgrass and cypress forests from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. "This is not the Everglades; that's a reference to that river of grass that grows 30 miles thataway," Hardy said, pointing to the ground and then to the southeast. "No, no, no, there's nothing here to restore. I'm 13 feet above sea level. There will never be a sheetflow of water here. There never was any heavy-duty standing water here.".... a tip of the hat to Julie at Property Rights Research....
Turning prairie dogs into a farmer's friend, not foe Conservation groups on Tuesday announced the purchase of 46,000 acres of desert grasslands in northern Mexico, a project aimed at converting pesky prairie dogs into valuable farm tools, while also saving the lives of the potentially endangered creatures. The joint effort between a U.S. nonprofit organization and its Mexican counterpart is to demonstrate that the black-tailed prairie dog — seen as an intrusive rodent in much of the western United States and northern Mexico — can help grazing lands thrive. In Mexico, the Nature Conservancy, with help from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is developing a management plan involving "working" prairie dogs at the El Uno cattle ranch, located outside the small town of Janos, about 45 miles south of the New Mexico border. A "grass bank" will let local ranchers graze cattle at El Uno while allowing the soil on their own lands to rest and recuperate....
Column: Old West vs. New West Life was much simpler when I viewed the battle to "save" the West through a black-and-white lens. As a young environmentalist, it was easier to condemn my adversaries' beliefs without scrutinizing my own. And it was easier to attack my adversaries when I didn't know them. I have agonized over this for years now. At the heart of this land war - and that's what we should call it - is a conflict of cultures. On one side stand the "New Westerners," mostly urbanites who consider themselves environmentalists, but whose connection to the land comes through recreation. On the other side are the "Old Westerners," most of whom live and work in small rural communities and make their living from the land. In the past three decades, each side of the conflict has so caricatured their opponents that they have, in the process, turned themselves into cartoon characters as well....
Judicial Nominee Under Scrutiny Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) called Tuesday for an investigation into whether William G. Myers III, a nominee for the federal appeals court in San Francisco, lied when he told a Senate committee that he was not aware of the terms of a controversial settlement the Interior Department had made with a politically connected Wyoming rancher until months after the deal was signed. Myers was the top lawyer at the department in the first term of the Bush administration, when the agreement was consummated. Feingold said a memo from Karen Budd-Falen, the rancher's lawyer, "directly contradicts Mr. Myers' written response to a question I submitted." A spokeswoman for Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said he was reviewing the information regarding Myers, who cleared the committee on a 10-8 party-line vote last month. An aide to panel chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said the nominee "was thoroughly vetted and investigated by the White House, the Department of Justice, the American Bar Assn. and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee."....
Gov't backs off cutting aid to farmers After two months of fierce resistance from farmers and Congress, the Bush administration has dropped an effort to cut government payments to farmers. Bush asked Congress in February to slash billions of dollars from payments to large farm operations, dropping the maximum farmers are allowed to collect from $360,000 to $250,000 and closing loopholes allowing some growers to obtain millions of dollars. He also proposed to cut all farm payments by 5 percent. On Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told key senators that while spending must be reduced to hold down the federal deficit, he is willing to look elsewhere in agriculture programs for cuts. "Perhaps the administration has finally begun to hear the roar from the heartland," said Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.... Roar?? Sounded more like a big whine to me....
Public-lands ranchers: Should you trust this man? Andy Kerr, who has been an environmental activist for more than 20 years, was a key figure in the struggle to curtail logging in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, he is the director of the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign, which seeks to pass legislation that would allow the federal government to buy federal grazing allotments from ranchers and permanently retire the land from grazing. HCN executive director Paul Larmer recently interviewed Kerr about his transformation from lawsuit-wielding agitator to carrot-carrying negotiator....
A New Line of Defense for Landowners Thanks to the American Land Foundation (ALF), property owners have a new line of defense in the never ending battle to protect their property from state and federal regulation. ALF’s latest program, LandGuard creates a link between the nation’s top property rights attorneys and America’s landowners to provide expert protection and advice. ALF, a non-profit organization, was founded over a decade ago with a goal to educate and help landowners fight government regulation of private property. Over the last decade, ALF president, Dan Byfield, has spent countless hours counseling landowners who found themselves facing threats from government agencies or individual groups intent on taking or controlling their private property. With each phone call, Byfield realized landowners were losing their battles because they waited too long to act or they didn’t have adequate legal counsel. He knew there had to be a better way. Byfield determined that what landowners needed most was access to immediate advice from qualified property rights lawyers, preferably in the landowner’s geographical area and at a price that wouldn’t break the bank....Go here to learn more about LandGuard....
Judge allows timber sale to go forward A federal judge has rejected a challenge to one of the keystones in the White House's Healthy Forests Initiative, allowing a timber sale to continue on the Lolo National Forest without full environmental review. "What he said is that the categorical exclusion is a tool that can be used," said Chris West, "and it can be done quickly - before the value of timber is lost." West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, applauded the decision by U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula to allow logging to continue on the Lolo's Camp Salvage timber sale. The sale was administered under new federal regulations that allow for "categorical exclusions," - exemptions from normal environmental reviews and public-comment requirements for sales that fall into a narrow category. To qualify for categorical exclusion status, the sale must be of dead or dying timber, on 250 acres or fewer, with less than one-half mile of temporary road building. Barring any "extraordinary circumstances," the categorical exclusion means there is no need for a full environmental analysis or environmental impact statement....
Wal-Mart, NFWF commended by Norton Interior Secretary Gale Norton today commended the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Wal-Mart for developing an innovative conservation partnership under which the company will contribute $35 million over the next 10 years to conserve and protect vital wildlife habitat across the country. Under the "Acres for America" program, Wal-Mart pledges to conserve at least 138,000 acres of habitat, equal to the footprint of all its stores and facilities in the United States. However, the amount of habitat actually conserved will be much higher, as the Foundation already has reached an agreement to acquire more than 6,000 acres to be added to Catahoula National Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana and a permanent conservation easement on more than 312,000 acres of forests, rivers and wetlands in Maine. "'Acres for America' demonstrates the power of cooperative conservation and partnership," Norton said at a ceremony at the National Geographic Society. "With its generous contribution, Wal-Mart is empowering the foundation to protect and restore important areas of wildlife habitat that otherwise might never be conserved. The company is setting a standard of corporate stewardship that I hope other companies will emulate."....
Land near Grand Canyon to be protected Bolstered by a $1 million grant from retail giant Wal-Mart, conservation groups plan to protect almost 900,000 acres of wilderness, including land stretching along 125 miles of the Grand Canyon's North Rim. Conservationists said the $4.5 million purchase of two private ranches, totaling about 1,000 acres, also will help protect more than 850,000 acres that are attached to the land through grazing permits from the North Rim to the Utah line. The acquisition connects three national monuments, two national recreation areas and eight wilderness areas, shielding them from further development and restoring overgrazed lands to nurture endangered species in the region....
Ranch redefines large-scale conservation Lava Lake Land & Livestock, based near Carey, is redefining the face of Western sheep ranching and conservation. The company, which was recently honored with the Idaho Wildlife Society's special recognition award, was created out of several sheep outfits bought five years ago by a San Francisco couple named Brian and Kathleen Bean. The company's holdings include 24,000 acres of private land and grazing privileges on 730,000 acres of public land allotments. The award was given to the ranch in recognition of the company's work to accomplish "landscape scale conservation" in South Central Idaho. Landscape-scale conservation moves the focus from individual species to an entire landscape to protect plant communities and wildlife, especially species that need large areas to survive, said Tess O'Sullivan, Lava Lake's program manager for science and conservation....
U.S. forests look for sites to close down Your favorite national forest campsite will soon be competing for its survival, while the ranger station down the road may show up for sale on the Internet. The U.S. Forest Service is ranking recreation sites such as campgrounds and trailheads for closure, because it can no longer afford to maintain them all. Oregon's Deschutes and Winema national forests are among the first nationwide to undertake the reviews. The squeeze is driven in part because President Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative, a push to thin flammable Western forests, is diverting money away from the upkeep of forest facilities. The Forest Service is also attempting to sell offices and compounds that bustled during the logging heyday decades ago but now sit idle. Its officials hope cash from the sales will help keep other decaying facilities from falling apart....
Wyoming county plans to appeal wolf ruling of U.S. district judge The ability to shoot wolves as predators is worth fighting for, Park County commissioners said Tuesday. They vowed to continue their legal support of Wyoming's dual-classification wolf-management plan by appealing U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson's recent dismissal of the three-party lawsuit filed against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Interior. Park County will be a "plaintiff intervenor," once again joining forces with the state of Wyoming and the Wolf Coalition. It will appeal Johnson's decision to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. "I feel very strongly about this," said Commissioner Marie Fontaine. "We've been misinformed a number of times along the way. The number of wolves here is overwhelming, especially being so close to Yellowstone National Park." Because Wyoming wants wolves classified both as a trophy game animal and a predator, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will not approve Wyoming's management plan. Predator status won't preserve the 15 packs needed to remove the animal from Endangered Species Act protection, the agency says....
Refuge expansion proposed The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is exploring a proposal to add the Barnes Ranch and perhaps the Agency Lake Ranch to the Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. Under two proposed additions, the Fish and Wildlife Service would purchase the 2,671-acre Barnes Ranch, which is in private ownership, and either cooperatively manage the 7,125-acre Agency Lake Ranch with the Bureau of Reclamation, or acquire the Agency Lake property. The refuge currently includes almost 15,000 acres of mostly freshwater marsh and open water on Upper Klamath Lake, including habitat for endangered Lost River and shortnose suckers, and a variety of resident and migratory birds. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say the refuge additions would increase water storage in the Upper Klamath Basin, and improve fish and wildlife habitat....
Governor backs industry plan A Bureau of Land Management plan to allow more drilling in the Jonah natural gas field near Pinedale doesn't give companies enough flexibility to tap all the gas that's available, Gov. Dave Freudenthal says. At the same time, the plan's attempt to limit disturbance from development would provide only marginal benefit to wildlife habitat, the governor has concluded. As a result, Freudenthal supports EnCana Oil & Gas Inc.'s proposal to allow drilling of wells with few restrictions within the existing Jonah field, in exchange for a commitment from the company to improve wildlife habitat in areas surrounding the field, according to a Tuesday letter he wrote to the BLM....
U.S. eyes oil shale resources Faced with record-high crude oil imports and prices, U.S. lawmakers held a one-day hearing Tuesday to examine tapping domestic oil shale on federal lands, a resource some geologists say could yield 1.9 trillion barrels of oil. Oil shale formations, largely found out West, release low-grade oil when mined, crushed, and subjected to high temperatures. Companies like Royal Dutch/Shell Group, already armed with the technology to develop oil shale, would be the likely benefactors if the Senate folds legislation to open the fields into a future energy bill. The interest is certainly there. Over the past four months more than 30 companies and individuals have sent recommendations to the Bureau of Land Management on how to go about leasing mineral rights on oil federal oil shale properties. Even the Defense Department has joined in, seeing an opportunity to perhaps boost jet fuel supplies. Senator Pete Domenici, the Republican chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said at the hearing he is looking at tax incentives to encourage developing oil shale....
Colo. River users at odds over flow The seven states that share the Colorado River are unlikely to agree on how much to refill Lake Powell this year, leaving the decision to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Colorado's top water planner said Tuesday. Five of the driest years on record have left Lake Powell, the giant impoundment on the Utah- Arizona line, two-thirds empty. Meanwhile, record precipitation this winter has helped produce a dramatic rebound in Lake Mead, Powell's equally large downstream sibling, which is now nearly two-thirds full. To help restore balance to the system, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming want the Bureau of Reclamation to capture more water than planned behind Lake Powell's Glen Canyon Dam. They plan to make that request next week....
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MAD COW DISEASE
U.S. accused of covering up mad cow cases The United States has covered up cases of mad cow disease in the past eight years, a former U.S. agriculture inspector said Tuesday at a House of Commons committee. Leslie Friedlander repeated a claim he has made before that cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy surfaced in the U.S. long before the disease showed up in Canada, devastating this country's beef industry. Friedlander, who was fired from his job as head of inspections at a meat-packing plant in Philadelphia in 1995 after criticizing what he called unsafe practices, says he's willing to take a lie detector test to prove he is telling the truth. Part of the answer could be in a slaughterhouse in Oriskany Falls, N.Y., which eight years ago may have become the home of the first American case of mad cow. Bobby Godfrey, who worked at the plant, remembers a cow that arrived one day. "I thought it was a mad dog, to tell you the truth," he told CBC's Investigative Unit. "Didn't know what the hell it was. Never seen a cow act like that in all the cows I saw go through there. There was definitely something wrong with it." The suspect cow, which was recorded on video obtained by CBC News, was suspected of being the first American case of BSE. Dr. Masuo Doi was the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) veterinarian in charge of investigating the cow. "Me and my vet, including our inspector, they thought it [the cow] was quite different. They thought it was the BSE," he said. Doi, who recently retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, says he's haunted by fears the right tests were not done and that the case was not properly investigated by his own department. With questions about the first cow still lingering, three months later at the same meat plant there was a second American cow with suspicious symptoms. The second cow's brain was sent for testing and officials were told verbally the tests were negative. Doi made repeated requests for documentary proof of the negative tests. To this day, he's seen nothing. "How many are buried?" he wonders. "Can you really trust our inspection [system?]....
Australian company in Canadian BSE case An Australian stockfeed company has become embroiled in the fallout from the mad cow disease outbreak in North America. Ridley Corporation's subsidiary in Canada is being sued over allegations it allowed ruminant animal products into feed which allegedly caused that country's outbreak. Cattle farmers have launched a $CAN7 billion lawsuit against both the company and the Canadian Government for allegedly bungling the containment of the disease. No one from Ridley Corporation was available for interview, but in a statement the company says it will strenuously defend the court action....
Canadian Cattlemen Organization Says To Sue US Cattle Group A group of Canadian cattle producers is planning to sue the U.S. producer group R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America, alleging damages caused by its efforts to keep the U.S. border closed to all Canadian cattle. A spokesman for R-CALF USA dismissed the threatened suit, calling it a low priority for his group. Morrison maintains that Canadian cattle producers are very upset with R-CALF USA, the border closing and the lack of accuracy in some of the statements made by the producers' group. They are particularly incensed with the whole premise that Canadian cattle aren't safe, according to Morrison. Morrison said it could be argued that Canadian cattle and beef are safer than those in the U.S. because his country has a mandatory identification and tagging system already in place while the U.S. is still formulating its plan. In order to put together its class-action suit against R-CALF USA, Morrison said Fair Market Beef wanted to sign up 1,000 cattle producers who had lost money since March 7. This date was chosen because this was when the USDA would have opened the border if it hadn't been for the injunction from Judge Cebull, he said....
U.S. Wants More Easing of Japan Beef Test Rules The United States urged Japan on Tuesday to exclude beef cattle under the age of 30 months from testing for mad cow disease, the latest sign of U.S. pressure on Japan to ease its testing standards, Kyodo news agency said. Under intense pressure, Japan moved a step closer to easing a ban on U.S. beef in March after the government won approval for plans to drop its policy of testing all cattle for mad cow disease -- known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The request by the U.S. government was made in a letter to Japan's Food Safety Commission (FSC), saying that it would "urge Japan to move even further toward harmonisation with international practice by raising the minimum age limit for BSE testing from 20 months to 30 months," Kyodo said. Approval of the easier policy by the food safety watchdog is a precondition for Japan to implement an October 2004 agreement with the United States to resume imports of American beef from cattle aged below 21 months without conducting mad cow testing....
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U.S. accused of covering up mad cow cases The United States has covered up cases of mad cow disease in the past eight years, a former U.S. agriculture inspector said Tuesday at a House of Commons committee. Leslie Friedlander repeated a claim he has made before that cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy surfaced in the U.S. long before the disease showed up in Canada, devastating this country's beef industry. Friedlander, who was fired from his job as head of inspections at a meat-packing plant in Philadelphia in 1995 after criticizing what he called unsafe practices, says he's willing to take a lie detector test to prove he is telling the truth. Part of the answer could be in a slaughterhouse in Oriskany Falls, N.Y., which eight years ago may have become the home of the first American case of mad cow. Bobby Godfrey, who worked at the plant, remembers a cow that arrived one day. "I thought it was a mad dog, to tell you the truth," he told CBC's Investigative Unit. "Didn't know what the hell it was. Never seen a cow act like that in all the cows I saw go through there. There was definitely something wrong with it." The suspect cow, which was recorded on video obtained by CBC News, was suspected of being the first American case of BSE. Dr. Masuo Doi was the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) veterinarian in charge of investigating the cow. "Me and my vet, including our inspector, they thought it [the cow] was quite different. They thought it was the BSE," he said. Doi, who recently retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, says he's haunted by fears the right tests were not done and that the case was not properly investigated by his own department. With questions about the first cow still lingering, three months later at the same meat plant there was a second American cow with suspicious symptoms. The second cow's brain was sent for testing and officials were told verbally the tests were negative. Doi made repeated requests for documentary proof of the negative tests. To this day, he's seen nothing. "How many are buried?" he wonders. "Can you really trust our inspection [system?]....
Australian company in Canadian BSE case An Australian stockfeed company has become embroiled in the fallout from the mad cow disease outbreak in North America. Ridley Corporation's subsidiary in Canada is being sued over allegations it allowed ruminant animal products into feed which allegedly caused that country's outbreak. Cattle farmers have launched a $CAN7 billion lawsuit against both the company and the Canadian Government for allegedly bungling the containment of the disease. No one from Ridley Corporation was available for interview, but in a statement the company says it will strenuously defend the court action....
Canadian Cattlemen Organization Says To Sue US Cattle Group A group of Canadian cattle producers is planning to sue the U.S. producer group R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America, alleging damages caused by its efforts to keep the U.S. border closed to all Canadian cattle. A spokesman for R-CALF USA dismissed the threatened suit, calling it a low priority for his group. Morrison maintains that Canadian cattle producers are very upset with R-CALF USA, the border closing and the lack of accuracy in some of the statements made by the producers' group. They are particularly incensed with the whole premise that Canadian cattle aren't safe, according to Morrison. Morrison said it could be argued that Canadian cattle and beef are safer than those in the U.S. because his country has a mandatory identification and tagging system already in place while the U.S. is still formulating its plan. In order to put together its class-action suit against R-CALF USA, Morrison said Fair Market Beef wanted to sign up 1,000 cattle producers who had lost money since March 7. This date was chosen because this was when the USDA would have opened the border if it hadn't been for the injunction from Judge Cebull, he said....
U.S. Wants More Easing of Japan Beef Test Rules The United States urged Japan on Tuesday to exclude beef cattle under the age of 30 months from testing for mad cow disease, the latest sign of U.S. pressure on Japan to ease its testing standards, Kyodo news agency said. Under intense pressure, Japan moved a step closer to easing a ban on U.S. beef in March after the government won approval for plans to drop its policy of testing all cattle for mad cow disease -- known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The request by the U.S. government was made in a letter to Japan's Food Safety Commission (FSC), saying that it would "urge Japan to move even further toward harmonisation with international practice by raising the minimum age limit for BSE testing from 20 months to 30 months," Kyodo said. Approval of the easier policy by the food safety watchdog is a precondition for Japan to implement an October 2004 agreement with the United States to resume imports of American beef from cattle aged below 21 months without conducting mad cow testing....
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Tuesday, April 12, 2005
9TH CIRCUIT NOMINEE IN THE LOOP ON GRAZING DEAL — New Questions on Myers’ Veracity Warrant Investigation
Public Employess for Environmental Responsibility
For Immediate Release: April 12, 2005
Contact: Chas Offutt (202) 265-7337
Washington, DC - Contrary to his Senate testimony, William Myers, the controversial former Solicitor for the Department of Interior who has been nominated by President Bush to serve on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, was aware of the terms of an improper settlement reached with a politically connected Wyoming rancher, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and Community Rights Counsel (CRC). The two groups are asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to question one of Myers' former subordinates at the Interior Solicitor's Office.
At issue is whether Myers was telling the truth when he repeatedly assured the Senate that he was not briefed and "did not know" the terms of the controversial settlement with a Wyoming rancher, that was subsequently criticized by the Interior Office of Inspector General. But, according to the rancher's attorney, Myers was fully informed on the progress and key terms by his hand-picked subordinate, Robert Comer, the Regional Solicitor for the Rocky Mountain States. In further support of her contention that Myers was in the loop, the rancher's attorney, Karen Budd-Falen, pointed to a fax directed to Myers, among others, spelling out the settlement terms.
One of the controversies about the settlement was its exclusion of a lawsuit by the rancher against federal employees accusing them of racketeering, under the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO). Myers contended that he was unaware of this provision and the Interior Office of Inspector General maintains Comer misled Myers on this point. In a rebuttal prepared by Budd-Falen, she wrote:
"[The OIG] Report assumes that Comer failed to inform his superiors of the status and issues and positions in the Settlement Agreement, including the RICO issue. This is simply not the case…Due to Robert's [the Assistant U.S. Attorney] repeated insistence that the RICO case not be included in the Settlement Agreement, it was eventually removed by Comer…[Interior and Department of Justice officials] and Bill Myers (Solicitor for the Department of Interior) were all notified of this change." (citations omitted)
"Who is telling the truth, Bill Myers or his trusted aide?" asked PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, who filed the complaint sparking the OIG investigation. "The Senate should hear what Regional Solicitor Comer has to say before it casts a vote on a lifetime appointment for Bill Myers to serve on one of the highest courts in the land."
"This new evidence puts Myers in the Robbins settlement loop," said Doug Kendall, CRC's Executive Director. "It suggests that a central part of Mr. Myers' Senate Judiciary Committee testimony was false. Plainly there needs to be an investigation of these developments."
The settlement agreement virtually immunized the rancher from penalties for grazing violations and left Interior's own employees in legal jeopardy. It was subsequently rescinded. Myers has defended his role in the imbroglio by maintaining that he was not informed about the status or terms of the deal.
###
Go here for pdf documents of PEER's letter, the Budd-Falen memo, etc.
===
Public Employess for Environmental Responsibility
For Immediate Release: April 12, 2005
Contact: Chas Offutt (202) 265-7337
Washington, DC - Contrary to his Senate testimony, William Myers, the controversial former Solicitor for the Department of Interior who has been nominated by President Bush to serve on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, was aware of the terms of an improper settlement reached with a politically connected Wyoming rancher, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and Community Rights Counsel (CRC). The two groups are asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to question one of Myers' former subordinates at the Interior Solicitor's Office.
At issue is whether Myers was telling the truth when he repeatedly assured the Senate that he was not briefed and "did not know" the terms of the controversial settlement with a Wyoming rancher, that was subsequently criticized by the Interior Office of Inspector General. But, according to the rancher's attorney, Myers was fully informed on the progress and key terms by his hand-picked subordinate, Robert Comer, the Regional Solicitor for the Rocky Mountain States. In further support of her contention that Myers was in the loop, the rancher's attorney, Karen Budd-Falen, pointed to a fax directed to Myers, among others, spelling out the settlement terms.
One of the controversies about the settlement was its exclusion of a lawsuit by the rancher against federal employees accusing them of racketeering, under the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO). Myers contended that he was unaware of this provision and the Interior Office of Inspector General maintains Comer misled Myers on this point. In a rebuttal prepared by Budd-Falen, she wrote:
"[The OIG] Report assumes that Comer failed to inform his superiors of the status and issues and positions in the Settlement Agreement, including the RICO issue. This is simply not the case…Due to Robert's [the Assistant U.S. Attorney] repeated insistence that the RICO case not be included in the Settlement Agreement, it was eventually removed by Comer…[Interior and Department of Justice officials] and Bill Myers (Solicitor for the Department of Interior) were all notified of this change." (citations omitted)
"Who is telling the truth, Bill Myers or his trusted aide?" asked PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, who filed the complaint sparking the OIG investigation. "The Senate should hear what Regional Solicitor Comer has to say before it casts a vote on a lifetime appointment for Bill Myers to serve on one of the highest courts in the land."
"This new evidence puts Myers in the Robbins settlement loop," said Doug Kendall, CRC's Executive Director. "It suggests that a central part of Mr. Myers' Senate Judiciary Committee testimony was false. Plainly there needs to be an investigation of these developments."
The settlement agreement virtually immunized the rancher from penalties for grazing violations and left Interior's own employees in legal jeopardy. It was subsequently rescinded. Myers has defended his role in the imbroglio by maintaining that he was not informed about the status or terms of the deal.
###
Go here for pdf documents of PEER's letter, the Budd-Falen memo, etc.
===
Subcommittee Examines Challenges for Grazing and Range Conservation
For Immediate Release
April 12, 2005
Contact Matt Streit or Brian Kennedy at (202) 226-9019
Washington, DC - Tomorrow the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health is holding a hearing on challenges for grazing and range conservation on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands. The hearing will be at 3:30 pm in 1334 Longworth House Office Building.
"Ranchers in the West have continued to see a decline in recent years in the amount of land available for public grazing," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA). "It's imperative the public has continued access to these lands as grazing is vital for local economies and is useful as a land management tool."
Livestock grazing was a central part of settling the West and to this day continues to be a central aspect of rural western communities. The Forest Service and BLM administer roughly 27,000 permits on roughly 250 million acres of public land.
"Scientific research shows that grazing on public lands is a compatible use when properly managed, and an effective tool for rangeland health," said Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR). "We need to make sure that federal policy is appropriate for the range and takes into account the important role ranchers have played in the stewardship of our public lands. I've seen firsthand the good results of positive management practices between public and private lands. Often in the West, the checkerboard landscape of private and public lands necessitates a collaborative partnership to achieve best practices. It's important for the Resources Committee to evaluate what's working and what's not as we strive to make sure our land managers are the best possible stewards of the public lands."
Recently, grazing on public lands has declined. The extended drought in the West, appeals and lawsuits, and compliance with the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and NEPA, have all impacted the amount of livestock grazing on public lands.
###
For Immediate Release
April 12, 2005
Contact Matt Streit or Brian Kennedy at (202) 226-9019
Washington, DC - Tomorrow the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health is holding a hearing on challenges for grazing and range conservation on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands. The hearing will be at 3:30 pm in 1334 Longworth House Office Building.
"Ranchers in the West have continued to see a decline in recent years in the amount of land available for public grazing," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA). "It's imperative the public has continued access to these lands as grazing is vital for local economies and is useful as a land management tool."
Livestock grazing was a central part of settling the West and to this day continues to be a central aspect of rural western communities. The Forest Service and BLM administer roughly 27,000 permits on roughly 250 million acres of public land.
"Scientific research shows that grazing on public lands is a compatible use when properly managed, and an effective tool for rangeland health," said Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR). "We need to make sure that federal policy is appropriate for the range and takes into account the important role ranchers have played in the stewardship of our public lands. I've seen firsthand the good results of positive management practices between public and private lands. Often in the West, the checkerboard landscape of private and public lands necessitates a collaborative partnership to achieve best practices. It's important for the Resources Committee to evaluate what's working and what's not as we strive to make sure our land managers are the best possible stewards of the public lands."
Recently, grazing on public lands has declined. The extended drought in the West, appeals and lawsuits, and compliance with the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and NEPA, have all impacted the amount of livestock grazing on public lands.
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NEWS ROUNDUP
Mo. pups could boost mexican gray wolf population The endangered Mexican gray wolf population could swell by 10 percent this spring, after two wolves in captivity gave birth this weekend, and three more are expecting. The potential for 26 new pups is a welcome development for those working to preserve the rare wolves at the Wild Canid Survival and Research Center in suburban St. Louis. It's not such good news for opponents in a long-running fight against the wolves' reintroduction into the wild. In the 1970s, the wolves disappeared completely from the United States, canid center director Susan Lyndaker Lindsey said. Beginning in 1998, Mexican gray wolves were reintroduced in the Southwest. There are currently about 60 in Arizona and New Mexico, another 200 or so in captivity, Lyndaker Lindsey said....
Truth in the Wild: A Great Dad That Wanders Wide In the gathering darkness four biologists wearing headlamps surround an unconscious wolverine that is flat on its back, legs akimbo. They check a transmitter implanted in its belly and fit another larger one on a collar around its heavily muscled neck. Then they inject the animal with the antidote to the drug that knocked it out, and place it in a box trap. An hour or so later, when the lid of the trap is opened, the animal clambers out and runs into the forest. Every two hours the position of the wolverine - known as M-1 - is fixed by a geo-positioning satellite and recorded in the collar. A few weeks later the wolverine is recaptured, and a record of its travels is downloaded from the collar into a laptop. The result confirms data that the researchers have accumulated over three years. Wolverines are wildly peripatetic....
Fish-noshing sea lions at Bonneville in for a scare Fireworks bombardment, high-pressure water hoses and irritating sounds broadcast underwater -- these are the means of persuasion in store for a pair of sea lions that have stationed themselves inside fish passage structures at Bonneville Dam. Sea lions are gathering in growing numbers at Bonneville Dam to feast on salmon. Until now, the far-ranging marine mammals have not climbed the fish ladders. One individual this year has made repeated runs up and down both of the fishways, eating a steelhead or two in front of visitors and the workers who count salmon. The new behavior presents a significant problem because the presence of sea lions within the narrow fish passageways could deter large numbers of salmon from entering and heading upstream to spawning grounds....
BLM contends mineral rights on claim valueless The Bureau of Land Management says a man's 161 mining claims on 4,360 acres of public land are worthless and cannot be used as a basis for ownership. After a three-year review the BLM filed a complaint that Joe Freeman's claims along Rough and Ready Creek lack enough mineral value to make mining economical. "Minerals have not been found on any of the 161 mining claims in sufficient qualities or quantities to constitute a discovery," the complaint said. "The lands ... are non-mineral in character." To gain ownership claimants must show mineral validity. Freeman can challenge the findings. "This is huge," said Barbara Ullian of Grants Pass, a member of the environmental group Siskiyou Regional Education Project. "Rough and Ready Creek needs to be permanently protected. It's an exceptional place."....
Loggers hear predictions from global-warming experts Some experts say global warming is changing wooded regions across the nation, and Northwest timber industry workers are among those following the phenomenon amid concern it could eventually affect their livelihoods. Glacier National Park is expected to be devoid of its namesake ice formations by 2040, according to U.S. Geological Survey scientists. What's more, the Earth's northern hemisphere has been growing greener over the last two decades as temperatures rise, according to NASA satellite images. For the region's forests, these changes could have serious consequences, said Steven Running, an ecology professor from the University of Montana who was among speakers who addressed 100 loggers at the Intermountain Logging Conference in Spokane last week. They include increased insect plagues and less snowpack, which acts as a wildfire-prevention blanket....
Reps: Protect top of Roan U.S. Rep. John Salazar on Monday formally called on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management not to approve any drilling on top of the Roan Plateau over the next 20 years. Salazar, D-Colo., represents Colorado's 3rd Congressional District. The district includes Garfield County, home to the plateau, which rises to an elevation of 9,000 feet northwest of Rifle. A second Colorado member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., took a like-mannered position Monday. DeGette said drilling should be delayed on the plateau top for the 20-year life of the management plan, or until technology will allow the gas under the top to be accessed from the surrounding base through directional drilling....
Judge rules state can join Salt Creek lawsuit A U.S. District Court judge has ruled that the state can intervene in a lawsuit filed by San Juan County against the federal government over ownership of an overgrown road that runs several miles into Canyonlands National Park. Judge Bruce Jenkins last week ruled that the state could become a party in a suit in which the county is claiming the road under RS 2477, a Civil War-era federal statute that grants broad rights-of-way across unreserved federal lands. The trail in question, known as Salt Creek Road, is an unpaved, ungraded trail that crosses Salt Creek, the third-largest source of water in the park. The road leads to Angel Arch, one of the park's most popular attractions. A federal judge ordered Salt Creek closed to traffic in 1998 in response to a lawsuit brought by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which claimed damage caused by vehicles. The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the court to reexamine the record, but the National Park Service closed the road last June because of damage. The state claims in its complaint that the county maintained and improved the Salt Creek Road for decades before Canyonlands National Park was established. The state also claims the road was used from the 1920s to the mid-1960s to drive cattle and move trail supplies to cowboy camps, in addition to serving as a jeep road for visitors and uranium prospectors into the 1950s....
State asserts rights to trails Gov. Frank Murkowski went out of his way Sunday to show the federal government that Alaska means business about asserting its rights on historic trails the state has identified as RS 2477 routes. The governor flew from Fairbanks to the remote settlement of Coldfoot, 250 miles north of Fairbanks on the Dalton Highway, where he met Iditarod musher Ramy Brooks of Healy and took a dogsled ride on one of three trails the state will file suit on today in the southern Brooks Range to get the Department of Interior to turn over unrestricted rights of way. The Coldfoot to Chandalar Lake Trail, a mining trail established by prospectors in 1906 seeking to strike it rich in the Chandalar Lake gold fields, is one of more than 650 trails the state has identified as historic routes that should have unrestricted public rights of way. The state will file suit against the Department of Interior today in federal district court in Washington, D.C., for quiet title to three of those trails, all located in the vicinity of Coldfoot, as an attempt to gain control of the three trails "for whatever future need we might want." All three trails cross land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management....
Plan to store natural gas in wildlife refuge gains support Federal officials have given preliminary approval to a request by Unocal Corp. to store natural gas in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. The project now is awaiting approval from the Bureau of Land Management. Unocal's proposal calls for storing gas in the Swanson River oil field on the refuge. Company officials say storing gas at the site will ensure there is enough gas for customers, even in high-demand times, such as cold winter days. The company wants to bring gas from wells outside the field and store it in reservoirs there, which would allow quicker delivery to customers. Unocal's lease agreements in the refuge are for exploration and production of oil and gas only, as well as storing some gas found in the refuge. Because gas would be brought into the field from outside sources, federal officials consider the storage proposal a separate use requiring approval....
Pipeline firms get great deals on Indian lands Pipeline companies operating on Navajoland allegedly are getting "sweetheart deals" on rights of ways, according to a December 2004 article published by SmartMoney.com. In August 2003, Alan Balaran, special master overseeing the Cobell v. Norton class-action lawsuit, filed a report in U.S. District Court alleging the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was giving pipeline companies "lowball deals" on Indian land being developed in the San Juan Basin. BIA has denied the charges. A Bureau of Land Management (BLM) spokesman told SmartMoney.com that the Farmington field office has approved more rights of way than any other field office in the United States....
Mobil Fined Nearly $1 Million for Air Pollution on Navajo Lands The U.S. Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced a settlement with Mobil Exploration & Producing U.S. Inc. worth nearly $1 million for alleged Clean Air Act violations that affected air quality on the territory of the Navajo Nation. The violations took place at Mobil’s oil production facility on the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners area near Aneth, Utah. The company will pay a $350,000 penalty and spend about $500,000 on operation improvements to control air pollution at its oil field. Mobil will also spend $99,849 on a public health project that will provide X-ray equipment, an X-ray processor and a pulmonary function testing machine to the Montezuma Creek Community Health Center in Montezuma Creek, Utah....
Power plant plans shrink Black Hills Power has scaled back its plan for a 500-megawatt coal-fired power plant to 100 megawatts, according to the company. The downsizing is due to a lack of transmission capacity to properly market the power, and because of ongoing air quality concerns downwind at national parks in western South Dakota. For example, DEQ's Air Quality Division had issued an emission permit to Black Hills Power in 2002, allowing it to construct WyGen No. 2 at 500 megawatts of capacity. But the National Park Service appealed the permit; then both Black Hills Power and the Park Service asked for time to negotiate emission parameters. The concern for the Park Service is that visibility at Wind Cave National Park and Badlands National Park is so clear that even a modest addition of particulates might be detectable and considered a degradation of visibility. Those negotiations led to an agreement by Black Hills Power to lower the emission design and build what would be the cleanest coal-fired power plant in the nation, according to DEQ. But the Park Service still didn't drop its appeal....
National Park Superintendent Leaves Under Cloud of Controversy Yet is Given 'Prestigious' Award Residents of the Wrangell -- St. Elias National Park and Preserve (WRST) are outraged to hear of the recent bestowal of the Stephen T. Mather Award on former WRST Superintendent Gary Candelaria by the National Park Conservation Association (NPCA). Candelaria left his position under a cloud of controversy several months ago after allegations of inholder harassment, illegal road and trail closures, destruction of resources, selective enforcement, and other issues surfaced, according to Susan Smith, chairman of Residents of the Wrangells. Landowners were forced to join together to form a community organization, Residents of the Wrangells (ROW), in an effort to address and solve their problems with the National Park Service (NPS) and work with Alaskan legislators. "Most outside observers would consider his departure from Alaska as being under a cloud, yes...even disgraced. But NO! He's a hero to the NPCA and the NPS. They give him accolades and awards!" Smith said....
New Poll Says 3 in 5 Would Donate to National Parks on their Federal Tax Returns According to a new poll conducted by Zogby International on behalf of the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), 61% of likely voters expressed the likelihood to donate to the national parks if given the option to do so on their federal tax returns. Based on the number of tax returns filed in 2002, survey results indicate that as much as $650 million could be realized annually with the addition of a check-off box benefiting the parks on federal tax returns. “This outstanding support for our national parks comes at a critical time,” said NPCA President Tom Kiernan. “Funding for America’s national parks is at a ‘bear’ minimum. A tax check-off can help to address the parks’ critical maintenance and natural and cultural preservation needs.”....
Protestors decry hunting of feral pigs on Santa Cruz island Sign-toting demonstrators took to the Santa Barbara waterfront to protest what they call the slaughter of feral pigs on Santa Cruz Island. Hunters hired by federal park officials began shooting the pigs over the weekend.The National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy say thousands of pigs on the island have got to go to save the endangered Santa Cruz Island fox and other imperiled species....
Fishermen seek disaster declaration over tight salmon seasons Commercial salmon fishermen in Oregon and California are seeking federal disaster assistance because of sharp reductions in fishing seasons they blame on continuing water problems in the Klamath Basin. Claiming commercial salmon trollers from Santa Cruz, Calif., to Florence, Ore., could lose up to $100 million from lost fishing opportunities this summer, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations has called on the governors of California and Oregon to support a fisheries disaster declaration from NOAA Fisheries. "This is a disaster of federal making, caused by a policy of letting too little water remain in the Klamath River,'' said Glen Spain of the federation representing about 2,000 boats, most of them from California. "We may be facing future fisheries disasters for the same reasons.'' California Department of Fish and Game biologists have said the likely cause of the low returns this year is the increasing numbers of young fish succumbing to parasites as they migrate to the ocean. Some scientists think the parasites may be proliferating because low wintertime flows no longer flush them out of the river....
N.D. considers Lake of the Woods water transfer North Dakota is considering a plan to transfer water by pipeline from Lake of the Woods, located on the Canada-U.S. border, in the event of a severe drought, which it predicts will occur within 25 years. The proposal is likely to fan Canada-U.S. tensions already simmering over the Devil's Lake project, also in North Dakota, which would transfer poor-quality and parasite-infected water into the Red River running through Manitoba....
Builders, environmentalists set Placer vernal pool pact Developers, environmental groups and federal agencies have agreed to protect fleeting seasonal pools in one of California's fastest-growing areas, south Placer County near Sacramento. Vernal pools and the rare protected species they shelter usually prompt extended fights and delays, but the groups hope the cooperative approach can be repeated elsewhere. This is the first such agreement federal officials could recall in California, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Al Donner. It requires that for every acre of vernal pools that is destroyed by development, two acres are purchased and preserved. The developers agreed to buy three key areas totaling 1,084 acres of seasonal wetlands that are in the immediate path of development, and to pay the Placer County Land Trust to buy at least another 1,000 acres within five years. The agreement also calls for eventually protecting another 3,835 acres. The developers also agree to pay for two studies on the cumulative effects of vernal pool loss in the Central Valley, and whether the current practice of protecting small areas of wetlands around development is enough to maintain the biological diversity of the unique vernal pool species....
A Policy Showdown in Prairie Wetlands The marshes, bogs and seasonal ponds in this heartland state are at the center of a tug of war between two of President Bush's most-valued constituencies — hunters who want to preserved game habitat and farmers who want land they can till. As an avid hunter and the owner of a Texas ranch, Bush has reached out to both groups. Three years ago, he signed a farm bill increasing spending by almost 80%. Last year, Bush invited leaders of several hunting and fishing groups to his ranch to reassure them of his concern for wetlands. Before the election, he vowed: "Instead of just limiting our losses, we will expand wetlands." But interviews and government reports show that, although the administration has offered farmers financial incentives, the primary tools for wetland preservation have been weakened. As the result of a court ruling and administration policy, key Clean Water Act provisions are not being applied in many instances. And an agricultural program that prohibits farmers from draining wetlands has a long history of poor enforcement....
Column: Is Texas' glass half full? You may not see it at first, but if you look closely, you'll see David Dewhurst's size-14 footprint along the banks of the Trinity River. For that matter, you'll see it alongside the Gulf Coast near Galveston and Corpus Christi and in West Texas above the Ogallala Aquifer.Texas' lieutenant governor put his feet down firmly last week on every inch of the state's water policy. So did a bipartisan group of legislators, environmentalists and water experts, led by Democratic Sen. Ken Armbrister of Victoria. If the water reforms they presented pass this year – and let's hope they do – then we Texans will benefit when we turn on the tap, irrigate crops or fish in the Gulf. Senate Bill 3 deals with water conservation, river flows, funding projects and regulating aquifers, among other elements....
Klamath, Salmon Rivers Among Most Threatened A new report, released in Oakland on March 29 by the California Wilderness Coalition, features the Klamath and Salmon River watersheds among California's 10 most threatened wild places. The analysis, the fourth in a series of annual reports, considers the urgency and impact of threats to these landscapes, including water diversions, off road development, logging, and drilling. Several places included in this year's report, such as the Klamath Basin, were listed last year. It is hoped by fishermen's groups, Indian Tribes and environmental activists that the report's release will spur action by the federal and state governments to preserve and restore the Klamath and Salmon rivers and other California wild areas....
Sacramento executives bemoan construction roadblock The Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce began its annual lobbying foray onto Capitol Hill Monday with a dire warning that construction projects - ranging from housing projects to sewer and roads - are grinding to a halt because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' district office is backed up on its processing of wetlands permits. "People use the word delay," said John Hodgson, whose company of the same name oversees large-scale commercial and residential developments in the Sacramento area. "But I'd say that projects are being stopped." Hodgson ticked off a number of projects that, sometimes after years, still don't have the permits from the Corps of Engineers to proceed with construction. These projects involve sensitive wetlands where everyone else, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that oversees the Endangered Species Act, has issued their OK. "The city of Lincoln has been trying to get the Highway 65 bypass out for six or seven years," he said. A new water plant in Elk Grove has been stalled so long that the city could end up in violation of new arsenic standards that the plant was intended to meet, all because a corner of the five-acre property contains a wetlands, he said. And construction at the Sacramento International Airport also is being held up, Hodgson said....
Resurrection Ecology Chases the Red Queen Hypothesis Layered in the sediments of rivers and lakes are the remains of generation upon generation of tiny animals known as zooplankton. In the 1990s, Kerfoot was among a team of scientists studying these creatures in Germany when they made a startling discovery: The zooplankton weren't all dead. Or at least their eggs weren't. "They should have died, but they didn't," Kerfoot said. "They revive, and we don't quite understand how it happens." It doesn't take much to bring them back to life, either. "We just sieve them out of the sediment and wake them up in an incubator," he says. "Then we grow them up. We have entire populations from nearly 100 years ago." A whole new field, termed by Kerfoot resurrection ecology, is emerging from those original discoveries. Its techniques allow scientists to study organisms from the past and compare them with their modern counterparts. As reported recently in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, Kerfoot has been doing just that in Michigan's Portage Lake, reviving eggs from a small, shrimp-like animal, Daphnia retrocurva, from various sediment layers going back to the 1920s....
Ranchers sue Canada over disease Canadian ranchers hard hit by a ban on cattle exports to the United States on Monday sued Canada's federal government, accusing it of negligently allowing mad cow disease to devastate the cattle industry. The coordinated class-action lawsuits, filed in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec, seek at least $5.7 billion, the industry's estimated losses to date, and another $81 million in punitive damages. They claim the federal government introduced a regulation in 1990 that specifically allowed the feeding of cattle parts to other cattle, the method through which mad cow disease is transmitted. That was a full two years after Great Britain had banned the practice because of the risk and about three years after Canada banned cattle imports from the United Kingdom and Ireland that were not from farms certified as free of the disease. It was only in 1997 that Canada banned the practice of feeding cattle to other cattle....
Staging a revival A rare relic from a short, colorful episode in Texas history sits dissolving and crumbling into the dirt of a Cibolo Creek flood plain, near where Old Austin Road used to run. Selma residents had long referred to the small building as an old stagecoach stop and post office. But until about five years ago, nobody knew how old or how significant the structure was. Local historian Jean Heide stumbled onto the first real clue while chasing down her family's genealogy. She had found the name of a stagecoach contractor listed in an 1850 census and later learned he had once lived near the Selma stage stop. Heide was excited. Here was a chance to demystify the foggy past of the craggy building. "It had been folklore for years," she said. "Nobody had ever done any research or documentation on it." Heide put her family history project on hold and focused on the stage stop. The structure was probably built in the late 1840s or early 1850s, possibly when the first stagecoach service began between San Antonio and Austin, she learned. Its walls are made from a mix of lime, sand, pebbles, rock and a few corncobs — altogether, an early form of concrete known as tabby — and it is one of four similarly constructed buildings in Texas, according to a preliminary archaeological report. It's also one of just 13 stage stops left in the state....
100 years of growth Friends and family came from all over the country Saturday to help Molly Yeakel celebrate 100 years of happy memories. "I have so many memories," Molly said. "I can go to bed at night and think about them and dream about them." At the age of 100, Molly has had a full life - much of which she's spent living between Rifle and Glenwood Springs ranching and farming. When she was young, Molly helped her father on the family farm. "I worked in the field with Dad," Molly said. "I even helped him dig ditches. We raised sugar beets. We worked hard pulling them out of the ground. I worked really hard." Molly put off getting married until she felt sure her father would have some help. Her two brothers were very young and couldn't do much on the farm. She was the oldest of eight - six girls and two boys. The farm was in Antlers, a rural community between Silt and Rifle. That's where Molly lived from the time she was 14 until she moved to Glenwood at the age of 66....
Home on the range The afternoon sun floods the Florida prairie in warm light as the dogs circle the cattle, barking and nipping them into a tight circle. Cliff Coddington, a sixth-generation Florida cowboy, looks down from in his saddle, bemused by dogs so well-trained he can just sit back and watch them work. Or maybe, there is something about the look of the land in the fading light after a long day of outdoors that thrills him. Or maybe there is something about herding cattle after all these years. He can't say. Coddington is among the last of a generation from this region raised on small family farms, reared by his parents to be a cowboy and raise cattle. Between rapid development in Florida swallowing farmland and a changing agriculture industry, the small family farm over the last several decades has steadily been disappearing, Coddington says. Unable to survive on their own, people have had to seek work at bigger farms or try another profession. On his mother's side, Coddington's family ranching history dates back to Mary Isibell Williams, who along with her husband, James, were among the first to settle along the Manatee River in the mid-1800s. James was handicapped in the Civil War and Mary Isibell, a real pistol as the story goes, ran the cattle. "She was one of the first cattlewomen in Florida. You can check that history book, 'Singing River,' " Coddington says....
It's All Trew: True life tales are stranger than fiction Ralph Wilkinson, an uncle of mine, reached his eighteenth birthday in the year 1915, living with his folks along Wolf Creek in Ochiltree County. Their ranch was about where the Lake Fryer road turns off of Highway 83 south of Perryton. Ralph was out of school, desperately in love, wanting to get married, broke financially but rich in cowboy knowledge. A job came up driving a herd of cattle to Wyoming taking about three months to go and return. He would save his money and promised his love they could marry as soon as he returned. The herd made it to Wyoming where his boss bought a herd of horses and mules to deliver to Fort Union in southern New Mexico. This took another two months but Ralph would have twice as much money for his upcoming marriage. When he finally returned home, his love had moved to another town and married another man....
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Mo. pups could boost mexican gray wolf population The endangered Mexican gray wolf population could swell by 10 percent this spring, after two wolves in captivity gave birth this weekend, and three more are expecting. The potential for 26 new pups is a welcome development for those working to preserve the rare wolves at the Wild Canid Survival and Research Center in suburban St. Louis. It's not such good news for opponents in a long-running fight against the wolves' reintroduction into the wild. In the 1970s, the wolves disappeared completely from the United States, canid center director Susan Lyndaker Lindsey said. Beginning in 1998, Mexican gray wolves were reintroduced in the Southwest. There are currently about 60 in Arizona and New Mexico, another 200 or so in captivity, Lyndaker Lindsey said....
Truth in the Wild: A Great Dad That Wanders Wide In the gathering darkness four biologists wearing headlamps surround an unconscious wolverine that is flat on its back, legs akimbo. They check a transmitter implanted in its belly and fit another larger one on a collar around its heavily muscled neck. Then they inject the animal with the antidote to the drug that knocked it out, and place it in a box trap. An hour or so later, when the lid of the trap is opened, the animal clambers out and runs into the forest. Every two hours the position of the wolverine - known as M-1 - is fixed by a geo-positioning satellite and recorded in the collar. A few weeks later the wolverine is recaptured, and a record of its travels is downloaded from the collar into a laptop. The result confirms data that the researchers have accumulated over three years. Wolverines are wildly peripatetic....
Fish-noshing sea lions at Bonneville in for a scare Fireworks bombardment, high-pressure water hoses and irritating sounds broadcast underwater -- these are the means of persuasion in store for a pair of sea lions that have stationed themselves inside fish passage structures at Bonneville Dam. Sea lions are gathering in growing numbers at Bonneville Dam to feast on salmon. Until now, the far-ranging marine mammals have not climbed the fish ladders. One individual this year has made repeated runs up and down both of the fishways, eating a steelhead or two in front of visitors and the workers who count salmon. The new behavior presents a significant problem because the presence of sea lions within the narrow fish passageways could deter large numbers of salmon from entering and heading upstream to spawning grounds....
BLM contends mineral rights on claim valueless The Bureau of Land Management says a man's 161 mining claims on 4,360 acres of public land are worthless and cannot be used as a basis for ownership. After a three-year review the BLM filed a complaint that Joe Freeman's claims along Rough and Ready Creek lack enough mineral value to make mining economical. "Minerals have not been found on any of the 161 mining claims in sufficient qualities or quantities to constitute a discovery," the complaint said. "The lands ... are non-mineral in character." To gain ownership claimants must show mineral validity. Freeman can challenge the findings. "This is huge," said Barbara Ullian of Grants Pass, a member of the environmental group Siskiyou Regional Education Project. "Rough and Ready Creek needs to be permanently protected. It's an exceptional place."....
Loggers hear predictions from global-warming experts Some experts say global warming is changing wooded regions across the nation, and Northwest timber industry workers are among those following the phenomenon amid concern it could eventually affect their livelihoods. Glacier National Park is expected to be devoid of its namesake ice formations by 2040, according to U.S. Geological Survey scientists. What's more, the Earth's northern hemisphere has been growing greener over the last two decades as temperatures rise, according to NASA satellite images. For the region's forests, these changes could have serious consequences, said Steven Running, an ecology professor from the University of Montana who was among speakers who addressed 100 loggers at the Intermountain Logging Conference in Spokane last week. They include increased insect plagues and less snowpack, which acts as a wildfire-prevention blanket....
Reps: Protect top of Roan U.S. Rep. John Salazar on Monday formally called on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management not to approve any drilling on top of the Roan Plateau over the next 20 years. Salazar, D-Colo., represents Colorado's 3rd Congressional District. The district includes Garfield County, home to the plateau, which rises to an elevation of 9,000 feet northwest of Rifle. A second Colorado member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., took a like-mannered position Monday. DeGette said drilling should be delayed on the plateau top for the 20-year life of the management plan, or until technology will allow the gas under the top to be accessed from the surrounding base through directional drilling....
Judge rules state can join Salt Creek lawsuit A U.S. District Court judge has ruled that the state can intervene in a lawsuit filed by San Juan County against the federal government over ownership of an overgrown road that runs several miles into Canyonlands National Park. Judge Bruce Jenkins last week ruled that the state could become a party in a suit in which the county is claiming the road under RS 2477, a Civil War-era federal statute that grants broad rights-of-way across unreserved federal lands. The trail in question, known as Salt Creek Road, is an unpaved, ungraded trail that crosses Salt Creek, the third-largest source of water in the park. The road leads to Angel Arch, one of the park's most popular attractions. A federal judge ordered Salt Creek closed to traffic in 1998 in response to a lawsuit brought by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which claimed damage caused by vehicles. The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the court to reexamine the record, but the National Park Service closed the road last June because of damage. The state claims in its complaint that the county maintained and improved the Salt Creek Road for decades before Canyonlands National Park was established. The state also claims the road was used from the 1920s to the mid-1960s to drive cattle and move trail supplies to cowboy camps, in addition to serving as a jeep road for visitors and uranium prospectors into the 1950s....
State asserts rights to trails Gov. Frank Murkowski went out of his way Sunday to show the federal government that Alaska means business about asserting its rights on historic trails the state has identified as RS 2477 routes. The governor flew from Fairbanks to the remote settlement of Coldfoot, 250 miles north of Fairbanks on the Dalton Highway, where he met Iditarod musher Ramy Brooks of Healy and took a dogsled ride on one of three trails the state will file suit on today in the southern Brooks Range to get the Department of Interior to turn over unrestricted rights of way. The Coldfoot to Chandalar Lake Trail, a mining trail established by prospectors in 1906 seeking to strike it rich in the Chandalar Lake gold fields, is one of more than 650 trails the state has identified as historic routes that should have unrestricted public rights of way. The state will file suit against the Department of Interior today in federal district court in Washington, D.C., for quiet title to three of those trails, all located in the vicinity of Coldfoot, as an attempt to gain control of the three trails "for whatever future need we might want." All three trails cross land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management....
Plan to store natural gas in wildlife refuge gains support Federal officials have given preliminary approval to a request by Unocal Corp. to store natural gas in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. The project now is awaiting approval from the Bureau of Land Management. Unocal's proposal calls for storing gas in the Swanson River oil field on the refuge. Company officials say storing gas at the site will ensure there is enough gas for customers, even in high-demand times, such as cold winter days. The company wants to bring gas from wells outside the field and store it in reservoirs there, which would allow quicker delivery to customers. Unocal's lease agreements in the refuge are for exploration and production of oil and gas only, as well as storing some gas found in the refuge. Because gas would be brought into the field from outside sources, federal officials consider the storage proposal a separate use requiring approval....
Pipeline firms get great deals on Indian lands Pipeline companies operating on Navajoland allegedly are getting "sweetheart deals" on rights of ways, according to a December 2004 article published by SmartMoney.com. In August 2003, Alan Balaran, special master overseeing the Cobell v. Norton class-action lawsuit, filed a report in U.S. District Court alleging the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was giving pipeline companies "lowball deals" on Indian land being developed in the San Juan Basin. BIA has denied the charges. A Bureau of Land Management (BLM) spokesman told SmartMoney.com that the Farmington field office has approved more rights of way than any other field office in the United States....
Mobil Fined Nearly $1 Million for Air Pollution on Navajo Lands The U.S. Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced a settlement with Mobil Exploration & Producing U.S. Inc. worth nearly $1 million for alleged Clean Air Act violations that affected air quality on the territory of the Navajo Nation. The violations took place at Mobil’s oil production facility on the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners area near Aneth, Utah. The company will pay a $350,000 penalty and spend about $500,000 on operation improvements to control air pollution at its oil field. Mobil will also spend $99,849 on a public health project that will provide X-ray equipment, an X-ray processor and a pulmonary function testing machine to the Montezuma Creek Community Health Center in Montezuma Creek, Utah....
Power plant plans shrink Black Hills Power has scaled back its plan for a 500-megawatt coal-fired power plant to 100 megawatts, according to the company. The downsizing is due to a lack of transmission capacity to properly market the power, and because of ongoing air quality concerns downwind at national parks in western South Dakota. For example, DEQ's Air Quality Division had issued an emission permit to Black Hills Power in 2002, allowing it to construct WyGen No. 2 at 500 megawatts of capacity. But the National Park Service appealed the permit; then both Black Hills Power and the Park Service asked for time to negotiate emission parameters. The concern for the Park Service is that visibility at Wind Cave National Park and Badlands National Park is so clear that even a modest addition of particulates might be detectable and considered a degradation of visibility. Those negotiations led to an agreement by Black Hills Power to lower the emission design and build what would be the cleanest coal-fired power plant in the nation, according to DEQ. But the Park Service still didn't drop its appeal....
National Park Superintendent Leaves Under Cloud of Controversy Yet is Given 'Prestigious' Award Residents of the Wrangell -- St. Elias National Park and Preserve (WRST) are outraged to hear of the recent bestowal of the Stephen T. Mather Award on former WRST Superintendent Gary Candelaria by the National Park Conservation Association (NPCA). Candelaria left his position under a cloud of controversy several months ago after allegations of inholder harassment, illegal road and trail closures, destruction of resources, selective enforcement, and other issues surfaced, according to Susan Smith, chairman of Residents of the Wrangells. Landowners were forced to join together to form a community organization, Residents of the Wrangells (ROW), in an effort to address and solve their problems with the National Park Service (NPS) and work with Alaskan legislators. "Most outside observers would consider his departure from Alaska as being under a cloud, yes...even disgraced. But NO! He's a hero to the NPCA and the NPS. They give him accolades and awards!" Smith said....
New Poll Says 3 in 5 Would Donate to National Parks on their Federal Tax Returns According to a new poll conducted by Zogby International on behalf of the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), 61% of likely voters expressed the likelihood to donate to the national parks if given the option to do so on their federal tax returns. Based on the number of tax returns filed in 2002, survey results indicate that as much as $650 million could be realized annually with the addition of a check-off box benefiting the parks on federal tax returns. “This outstanding support for our national parks comes at a critical time,” said NPCA President Tom Kiernan. “Funding for America’s national parks is at a ‘bear’ minimum. A tax check-off can help to address the parks’ critical maintenance and natural and cultural preservation needs.”....
Protestors decry hunting of feral pigs on Santa Cruz island Sign-toting demonstrators took to the Santa Barbara waterfront to protest what they call the slaughter of feral pigs on Santa Cruz Island. Hunters hired by federal park officials began shooting the pigs over the weekend.The National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy say thousands of pigs on the island have got to go to save the endangered Santa Cruz Island fox and other imperiled species....
Fishermen seek disaster declaration over tight salmon seasons Commercial salmon fishermen in Oregon and California are seeking federal disaster assistance because of sharp reductions in fishing seasons they blame on continuing water problems in the Klamath Basin. Claiming commercial salmon trollers from Santa Cruz, Calif., to Florence, Ore., could lose up to $100 million from lost fishing opportunities this summer, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations has called on the governors of California and Oregon to support a fisheries disaster declaration from NOAA Fisheries. "This is a disaster of federal making, caused by a policy of letting too little water remain in the Klamath River,'' said Glen Spain of the federation representing about 2,000 boats, most of them from California. "We may be facing future fisheries disasters for the same reasons.'' California Department of Fish and Game biologists have said the likely cause of the low returns this year is the increasing numbers of young fish succumbing to parasites as they migrate to the ocean. Some scientists think the parasites may be proliferating because low wintertime flows no longer flush them out of the river....
N.D. considers Lake of the Woods water transfer North Dakota is considering a plan to transfer water by pipeline from Lake of the Woods, located on the Canada-U.S. border, in the event of a severe drought, which it predicts will occur within 25 years. The proposal is likely to fan Canada-U.S. tensions already simmering over the Devil's Lake project, also in North Dakota, which would transfer poor-quality and parasite-infected water into the Red River running through Manitoba....
Builders, environmentalists set Placer vernal pool pact Developers, environmental groups and federal agencies have agreed to protect fleeting seasonal pools in one of California's fastest-growing areas, south Placer County near Sacramento. Vernal pools and the rare protected species they shelter usually prompt extended fights and delays, but the groups hope the cooperative approach can be repeated elsewhere. This is the first such agreement federal officials could recall in California, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Al Donner. It requires that for every acre of vernal pools that is destroyed by development, two acres are purchased and preserved. The developers agreed to buy three key areas totaling 1,084 acres of seasonal wetlands that are in the immediate path of development, and to pay the Placer County Land Trust to buy at least another 1,000 acres within five years. The agreement also calls for eventually protecting another 3,835 acres. The developers also agree to pay for two studies on the cumulative effects of vernal pool loss in the Central Valley, and whether the current practice of protecting small areas of wetlands around development is enough to maintain the biological diversity of the unique vernal pool species....
A Policy Showdown in Prairie Wetlands The marshes, bogs and seasonal ponds in this heartland state are at the center of a tug of war between two of President Bush's most-valued constituencies — hunters who want to preserved game habitat and farmers who want land they can till. As an avid hunter and the owner of a Texas ranch, Bush has reached out to both groups. Three years ago, he signed a farm bill increasing spending by almost 80%. Last year, Bush invited leaders of several hunting and fishing groups to his ranch to reassure them of his concern for wetlands. Before the election, he vowed: "Instead of just limiting our losses, we will expand wetlands." But interviews and government reports show that, although the administration has offered farmers financial incentives, the primary tools for wetland preservation have been weakened. As the result of a court ruling and administration policy, key Clean Water Act provisions are not being applied in many instances. And an agricultural program that prohibits farmers from draining wetlands has a long history of poor enforcement....
Column: Is Texas' glass half full? You may not see it at first, but if you look closely, you'll see David Dewhurst's size-14 footprint along the banks of the Trinity River. For that matter, you'll see it alongside the Gulf Coast near Galveston and Corpus Christi and in West Texas above the Ogallala Aquifer.Texas' lieutenant governor put his feet down firmly last week on every inch of the state's water policy. So did a bipartisan group of legislators, environmentalists and water experts, led by Democratic Sen. Ken Armbrister of Victoria. If the water reforms they presented pass this year – and let's hope they do – then we Texans will benefit when we turn on the tap, irrigate crops or fish in the Gulf. Senate Bill 3 deals with water conservation, river flows, funding projects and regulating aquifers, among other elements....
Klamath, Salmon Rivers Among Most Threatened A new report, released in Oakland on March 29 by the California Wilderness Coalition, features the Klamath and Salmon River watersheds among California's 10 most threatened wild places. The analysis, the fourth in a series of annual reports, considers the urgency and impact of threats to these landscapes, including water diversions, off road development, logging, and drilling. Several places included in this year's report, such as the Klamath Basin, were listed last year. It is hoped by fishermen's groups, Indian Tribes and environmental activists that the report's release will spur action by the federal and state governments to preserve and restore the Klamath and Salmon rivers and other California wild areas....
Sacramento executives bemoan construction roadblock The Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce began its annual lobbying foray onto Capitol Hill Monday with a dire warning that construction projects - ranging from housing projects to sewer and roads - are grinding to a halt because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' district office is backed up on its processing of wetlands permits. "People use the word delay," said John Hodgson, whose company of the same name oversees large-scale commercial and residential developments in the Sacramento area. "But I'd say that projects are being stopped." Hodgson ticked off a number of projects that, sometimes after years, still don't have the permits from the Corps of Engineers to proceed with construction. These projects involve sensitive wetlands where everyone else, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that oversees the Endangered Species Act, has issued their OK. "The city of Lincoln has been trying to get the Highway 65 bypass out for six or seven years," he said. A new water plant in Elk Grove has been stalled so long that the city could end up in violation of new arsenic standards that the plant was intended to meet, all because a corner of the five-acre property contains a wetlands, he said. And construction at the Sacramento International Airport also is being held up, Hodgson said....
Resurrection Ecology Chases the Red Queen Hypothesis Layered in the sediments of rivers and lakes are the remains of generation upon generation of tiny animals known as zooplankton. In the 1990s, Kerfoot was among a team of scientists studying these creatures in Germany when they made a startling discovery: The zooplankton weren't all dead. Or at least their eggs weren't. "They should have died, but they didn't," Kerfoot said. "They revive, and we don't quite understand how it happens." It doesn't take much to bring them back to life, either. "We just sieve them out of the sediment and wake them up in an incubator," he says. "Then we grow them up. We have entire populations from nearly 100 years ago." A whole new field, termed by Kerfoot resurrection ecology, is emerging from those original discoveries. Its techniques allow scientists to study organisms from the past and compare them with their modern counterparts. As reported recently in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, Kerfoot has been doing just that in Michigan's Portage Lake, reviving eggs from a small, shrimp-like animal, Daphnia retrocurva, from various sediment layers going back to the 1920s....
Ranchers sue Canada over disease Canadian ranchers hard hit by a ban on cattle exports to the United States on Monday sued Canada's federal government, accusing it of negligently allowing mad cow disease to devastate the cattle industry. The coordinated class-action lawsuits, filed in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec, seek at least $5.7 billion, the industry's estimated losses to date, and another $81 million in punitive damages. They claim the federal government introduced a regulation in 1990 that specifically allowed the feeding of cattle parts to other cattle, the method through which mad cow disease is transmitted. That was a full two years after Great Britain had banned the practice because of the risk and about three years after Canada banned cattle imports from the United Kingdom and Ireland that were not from farms certified as free of the disease. It was only in 1997 that Canada banned the practice of feeding cattle to other cattle....
Staging a revival A rare relic from a short, colorful episode in Texas history sits dissolving and crumbling into the dirt of a Cibolo Creek flood plain, near where Old Austin Road used to run. Selma residents had long referred to the small building as an old stagecoach stop and post office. But until about five years ago, nobody knew how old or how significant the structure was. Local historian Jean Heide stumbled onto the first real clue while chasing down her family's genealogy. She had found the name of a stagecoach contractor listed in an 1850 census and later learned he had once lived near the Selma stage stop. Heide was excited. Here was a chance to demystify the foggy past of the craggy building. "It had been folklore for years," she said. "Nobody had ever done any research or documentation on it." Heide put her family history project on hold and focused on the stage stop. The structure was probably built in the late 1840s or early 1850s, possibly when the first stagecoach service began between San Antonio and Austin, she learned. Its walls are made from a mix of lime, sand, pebbles, rock and a few corncobs — altogether, an early form of concrete known as tabby — and it is one of four similarly constructed buildings in Texas, according to a preliminary archaeological report. It's also one of just 13 stage stops left in the state....
100 years of growth Friends and family came from all over the country Saturday to help Molly Yeakel celebrate 100 years of happy memories. "I have so many memories," Molly said. "I can go to bed at night and think about them and dream about them." At the age of 100, Molly has had a full life - much of which she's spent living between Rifle and Glenwood Springs ranching and farming. When she was young, Molly helped her father on the family farm. "I worked in the field with Dad," Molly said. "I even helped him dig ditches. We raised sugar beets. We worked hard pulling them out of the ground. I worked really hard." Molly put off getting married until she felt sure her father would have some help. Her two brothers were very young and couldn't do much on the farm. She was the oldest of eight - six girls and two boys. The farm was in Antlers, a rural community between Silt and Rifle. That's where Molly lived from the time she was 14 until she moved to Glenwood at the age of 66....
Home on the range The afternoon sun floods the Florida prairie in warm light as the dogs circle the cattle, barking and nipping them into a tight circle. Cliff Coddington, a sixth-generation Florida cowboy, looks down from in his saddle, bemused by dogs so well-trained he can just sit back and watch them work. Or maybe, there is something about the look of the land in the fading light after a long day of outdoors that thrills him. Or maybe there is something about herding cattle after all these years. He can't say. Coddington is among the last of a generation from this region raised on small family farms, reared by his parents to be a cowboy and raise cattle. Between rapid development in Florida swallowing farmland and a changing agriculture industry, the small family farm over the last several decades has steadily been disappearing, Coddington says. Unable to survive on their own, people have had to seek work at bigger farms or try another profession. On his mother's side, Coddington's family ranching history dates back to Mary Isibell Williams, who along with her husband, James, were among the first to settle along the Manatee River in the mid-1800s. James was handicapped in the Civil War and Mary Isibell, a real pistol as the story goes, ran the cattle. "She was one of the first cattlewomen in Florida. You can check that history book, 'Singing River,' " Coddington says....
It's All Trew: True life tales are stranger than fiction Ralph Wilkinson, an uncle of mine, reached his eighteenth birthday in the year 1915, living with his folks along Wolf Creek in Ochiltree County. Their ranch was about where the Lake Fryer road turns off of Highway 83 south of Perryton. Ralph was out of school, desperately in love, wanting to get married, broke financially but rich in cowboy knowledge. A job came up driving a herd of cattle to Wyoming taking about three months to go and return. He would save his money and promised his love they could marry as soon as he returned. The herd made it to Wyoming where his boss bought a herd of horses and mules to deliver to Fort Union in southern New Mexico. This took another two months but Ralph would have twice as much money for his upcoming marriage. When he finally returned home, his love had moved to another town and married another man....
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