Editorial: Safer Beef
Fears of another case of mad cow disease in the United States have faded for the time being because tests on the most recent suspect animal came back negative. But that is no reason to feel confident about the American beef supply. American cows still eat food that can potentially infect them with mad cow disease. American meatpackers use dangerous methods that other countries ban. And the United States Department of Agriculture does not require enough testing to ensure that American beef is completely safe. U.S.D.A. officials and spokesmen for the meatpacking industry argue that the public is protected by current safety procedures. The chance of human infection is indeed very low - but the disease that mad cow induces in human is always fatal, so extreme caution is warranted. The Agriculture Department is hamstrung by its dual and conflicting mission: to promote the nation's meat industry and to protect the consumer. It's clear which is winning. Instead of winning other nations' trust by improving safety, Washington relies on clout. President Bush has personally lobbied Japan to accept American beef. Beef producers need not improve their safety practices when the Agriculture Department acts as their marketing arm. It is time for Americans to have the protection of a food safety agency separate from U.S.D.A....
===
Friday, August 12, 2005
New Mexico Governor Declares Border Emergency To Free Up Funds
Gov. Bill Richardson on Friday declared an emergency in four New Mexico counties along the border, an action that lets him free up money to be spent on everything from fighting drug smuggling to fencing a livestock yard. The executive order, issued after Richardson toured the area around Columbus, makes $750,000 immediately available to Dona Ana, Luna, Grant and Hidalgo counties. He pledged an additional $1 million. ''Recent developments have convinced me this action is necessary - including violence directed at law enforcement, damage to property and livestock, increased evidence of drug smuggling and an increase in the number of undocumented immigrants,'' he said. The new fence will help prevent cattle from Mexico straying across the border, officials said. ''We don't want contagious diseases to contaminate our food supply and disrupt our agricultural economy,'' Richardson said in a statement before his trip. Daniel Manzanares, executive director of the Livestock Board, said at least 100 cattle from Mexico have been found in the area. The agency hasn't traced any outbreaks of disease to Mexican cattle, but Manzanares said he suspects some have carried bovine tuberculosis into New Mexico....
===
Gov. Bill Richardson on Friday declared an emergency in four New Mexico counties along the border, an action that lets him free up money to be spent on everything from fighting drug smuggling to fencing a livestock yard. The executive order, issued after Richardson toured the area around Columbus, makes $750,000 immediately available to Dona Ana, Luna, Grant and Hidalgo counties. He pledged an additional $1 million. ''Recent developments have convinced me this action is necessary - including violence directed at law enforcement, damage to property and livestock, increased evidence of drug smuggling and an increase in the number of undocumented immigrants,'' he said. The new fence will help prevent cattle from Mexico straying across the border, officials said. ''We don't want contagious diseases to contaminate our food supply and disrupt our agricultural economy,'' Richardson said in a statement before his trip. Daniel Manzanares, executive director of the Livestock Board, said at least 100 cattle from Mexico have been found in the area. The agency hasn't traced any outbreaks of disease to Mexican cattle, but Manzanares said he suspects some have carried bovine tuberculosis into New Mexico....
===
GAO REPORT
Air Pollution: Estimated Emissions from Two New Mexicali Power Plants Are Low, but Health Impacts Are Unknown. GAO-05-823, August 12.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-823
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05823high.pdf
===
Air Pollution: Estimated Emissions from Two New Mexicali Power Plants Are Low, but Health Impacts Are Unknown. GAO-05-823, August 12.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-823
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05823high.pdf
===
NEWS ROUNDUP
High court rules preserving trees around eagle nest not a taking The Oregon Supreme Court ruled today that a timber company did not qualify for compensation from the state when the Oregon Department of Forestry barred it from cutting down trees around a bald eagle nest. Reversing a ruling by the Oregon Court of Appeals, the Oregon Supreme Court in Salem concluded that regulating private property in line with public policy is not equivalent to taking a piece of property for public use, and in any event, the Department of Forestry had allowed logging on most of the property. In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Rives Kistler, the Supreme Court found that a state wildlife regulation does not amount to a taking when it bars logging, and the state constitution clause guaranteeing compensation when private property is taken for a public use applies only when the full economic use of the property is denied, not just a portion....
Agreement reached in group's lawsuit over grayling The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to determine by April 2007 if the fluvial arctic grayling should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity also requires FWS to pay the group's attorney's fees - $111,408. It was approved by U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. "The settlement agreement doesn't presuppose that the grayling will be listed," said Doug Peterson, a Fish and Wildlife Services fisheries biologist in Helena. "We will go through the process of evaluating its status." In May 2003, the center sued FWS, saying the agency hadn't done enough to protect the river-dwelling fish that has been reduced to a single, self-sustaining population in a stretch of the Big Hole River in southwestern Montana. The fish was once found throughout the upper Missouri River drainage....
Wildlife agency issues guidelines for wetlands Federal guidelines released Thursday for protecting seasonal wetlands favor development over species protection in a handful of fast-growing California counties. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided that protecting all areas containing the so-called vernal pools would be too costly to the state's economy. The agency's revised guidelines are the latest version of a federal critical habitat plan that an environmental group has successfully challenged in court. They could lead to additional housing developments in a state where the median home price is about $450,000, 2½ times the national median. The wildlife agency says it tried to strike a balance between the pressure to build more homes in California's quickly developing Central Valley and the well-being of 15 rare species that dwell only in the shallow and temporary pools....
FWS approves conservation easement program for Front The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has approved a conservation easement program that could restrict development along the Rocky Mountain Front. The decision establishes the Rocky Mountain Front Conservation Area and gives FWS the power to buy easements on 170,000 acres of private land from among 561,700 acres that are eligible for protection. The program goes into effect next month, but $1 million in federal funding won't be available until later this fall. A number of landowners are already on the waiting list to put easements on their land, said Dave Gillund, project leader at Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Landowners who take part in the voluntarily program can use their land for agriculture but face restrictions on subdivisions and commercial developments. In exchange, they get a one-time payment from the federal government. The amount of the payment are determined through an appraisal and negotiations with FWS. About 55,000 acres along the Front already are protected by easements, while other areas are protected by preserves and wildlife management areas....
BLM plans horse roundup in southern Red Desert The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is planning to round up about 1,000 wild horses from the southern Red Desert starting next week. The roundups will target the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek wild horse management areas, as well as any horses outside those areas. "We are exceeding our management levels for these two wild horse populations," said Alan Shepherd, head of the Wyoming BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program....
Column: Endangered Roberts? Some loud voices on the Green Left — the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and Friends of the Earth — are going after John Roberts. Listen in. Their yelling reveals a lot about the current state of the environmental movement. It also indicates what President Bush should expect in spades if in the future he nominates a judge with a longer environmental record. The bone of contention that the enviros are currently gnawing at is Roberts’s minority opinion in Rancho Viejo v. Norton. The Sierra Club complains that Roberts “strongly implied that Congress does not have the Constitutional authority to protect certain species under the Endangered Species Act.” Earthjustice (formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) warns that in “a key environmental case, Judge Roberts questioned the constitutionality of Endangered Species Act safeguards.” Based on that, Earthjustice sent out an e-mail claiming that “much of what we know about Judge Roberts is quite troubling.” And Friends of the Earth claims that a “recent case dealing with the Endangered Species Act raises troubling concerns about Robert’s commitment to upholding Congress’s constitutional right to pass laws that protect our air, land and water.” Rancho Viejo v. Norton really shouldn’t rate high in propaganda value for Roberts’s opponents....
Colorado River plan applauded, criticized Water officials from California, Arizona and Nevada have joined with the federal government to enact a 50-year plan designed to both protect the lower Colorado River and ensure human needs are met. "This agreement represents the largest, the longest term, and the most innovative partnership plan for habitat restoration on a river system in the United States," said Craig Manson, assistant secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, part of the U.S. Department of Interior. Labeled the "Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Plan," the program is intended to protect threatened and endangered species along 400 miles of river from Lake Mead to the Mexican border, while ensuring an uninterrupted flow of water and power. More than 8,000 acres of riverside, marsh and backwater habitat will be restored for at least 26 native species, including six federally protected species, among them the razorback sucker, bonytail chub and humpback chub. Critics, however, aren't so enthusiastic about the program derived through a "cooperative conservation" strategy endorsed by the Bush administration. "It is 'cooperation' between the water users, power producers and federal government to provide legal and political protection from litigation," claimed Michael Cohen of The Pacific Institute....
Decatur cowboy up for run toward NFR Trevor Brazile's season has been something like a train chugging up a mountain. The three-time world all-around champion has made gradual progress, but not with any great speed. However, after last weekend, like the slow-moving train, he hopes he might have finally reached the summit and will soon be picking up steam. Brazile hopes that his recent success could result in a clearer view of his final destination – the National Finals Rodeo in December. He turned in a gangbuster performance at the Dodge City (Kan.) Roundup Rodeo Sunday when he broke the arena record in tie-down roping with a 6.9-second run en route to the aggregate championship. He also competed in team roping and steer roping, making it to the final round in both, earning the all-around title for the third consecutive year. He finished with a payday of $9,994. That pushed his season earnings in the all-around category to $107,551 and, more importantly, moved him to eighth place in the tie-down event....
===
High court rules preserving trees around eagle nest not a taking The Oregon Supreme Court ruled today that a timber company did not qualify for compensation from the state when the Oregon Department of Forestry barred it from cutting down trees around a bald eagle nest. Reversing a ruling by the Oregon Court of Appeals, the Oregon Supreme Court in Salem concluded that regulating private property in line with public policy is not equivalent to taking a piece of property for public use, and in any event, the Department of Forestry had allowed logging on most of the property. In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Rives Kistler, the Supreme Court found that a state wildlife regulation does not amount to a taking when it bars logging, and the state constitution clause guaranteeing compensation when private property is taken for a public use applies only when the full economic use of the property is denied, not just a portion....
Agreement reached in group's lawsuit over grayling The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to determine by April 2007 if the fluvial arctic grayling should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity also requires FWS to pay the group's attorney's fees - $111,408. It was approved by U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. "The settlement agreement doesn't presuppose that the grayling will be listed," said Doug Peterson, a Fish and Wildlife Services fisheries biologist in Helena. "We will go through the process of evaluating its status." In May 2003, the center sued FWS, saying the agency hadn't done enough to protect the river-dwelling fish that has been reduced to a single, self-sustaining population in a stretch of the Big Hole River in southwestern Montana. The fish was once found throughout the upper Missouri River drainage....
Wildlife agency issues guidelines for wetlands Federal guidelines released Thursday for protecting seasonal wetlands favor development over species protection in a handful of fast-growing California counties. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided that protecting all areas containing the so-called vernal pools would be too costly to the state's economy. The agency's revised guidelines are the latest version of a federal critical habitat plan that an environmental group has successfully challenged in court. They could lead to additional housing developments in a state where the median home price is about $450,000, 2½ times the national median. The wildlife agency says it tried to strike a balance between the pressure to build more homes in California's quickly developing Central Valley and the well-being of 15 rare species that dwell only in the shallow and temporary pools....
FWS approves conservation easement program for Front The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has approved a conservation easement program that could restrict development along the Rocky Mountain Front. The decision establishes the Rocky Mountain Front Conservation Area and gives FWS the power to buy easements on 170,000 acres of private land from among 561,700 acres that are eligible for protection. The program goes into effect next month, but $1 million in federal funding won't be available until later this fall. A number of landowners are already on the waiting list to put easements on their land, said Dave Gillund, project leader at Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Landowners who take part in the voluntarily program can use their land for agriculture but face restrictions on subdivisions and commercial developments. In exchange, they get a one-time payment from the federal government. The amount of the payment are determined through an appraisal and negotiations with FWS. About 55,000 acres along the Front already are protected by easements, while other areas are protected by preserves and wildlife management areas....
BLM plans horse roundup in southern Red Desert The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is planning to round up about 1,000 wild horses from the southern Red Desert starting next week. The roundups will target the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek wild horse management areas, as well as any horses outside those areas. "We are exceeding our management levels for these two wild horse populations," said Alan Shepherd, head of the Wyoming BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program....
Column: Endangered Roberts? Some loud voices on the Green Left — the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and Friends of the Earth — are going after John Roberts. Listen in. Their yelling reveals a lot about the current state of the environmental movement. It also indicates what President Bush should expect in spades if in the future he nominates a judge with a longer environmental record. The bone of contention that the enviros are currently gnawing at is Roberts’s minority opinion in Rancho Viejo v. Norton. The Sierra Club complains that Roberts “strongly implied that Congress does not have the Constitutional authority to protect certain species under the Endangered Species Act.” Earthjustice (formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) warns that in “a key environmental case, Judge Roberts questioned the constitutionality of Endangered Species Act safeguards.” Based on that, Earthjustice sent out an e-mail claiming that “much of what we know about Judge Roberts is quite troubling.” And Friends of the Earth claims that a “recent case dealing with the Endangered Species Act raises troubling concerns about Robert’s commitment to upholding Congress’s constitutional right to pass laws that protect our air, land and water.” Rancho Viejo v. Norton really shouldn’t rate high in propaganda value for Roberts’s opponents....
Colorado River plan applauded, criticized Water officials from California, Arizona and Nevada have joined with the federal government to enact a 50-year plan designed to both protect the lower Colorado River and ensure human needs are met. "This agreement represents the largest, the longest term, and the most innovative partnership plan for habitat restoration on a river system in the United States," said Craig Manson, assistant secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, part of the U.S. Department of Interior. Labeled the "Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Plan," the program is intended to protect threatened and endangered species along 400 miles of river from Lake Mead to the Mexican border, while ensuring an uninterrupted flow of water and power. More than 8,000 acres of riverside, marsh and backwater habitat will be restored for at least 26 native species, including six federally protected species, among them the razorback sucker, bonytail chub and humpback chub. Critics, however, aren't so enthusiastic about the program derived through a "cooperative conservation" strategy endorsed by the Bush administration. "It is 'cooperation' between the water users, power producers and federal government to provide legal and political protection from litigation," claimed Michael Cohen of The Pacific Institute....
Decatur cowboy up for run toward NFR Trevor Brazile's season has been something like a train chugging up a mountain. The three-time world all-around champion has made gradual progress, but not with any great speed. However, after last weekend, like the slow-moving train, he hopes he might have finally reached the summit and will soon be picking up steam. Brazile hopes that his recent success could result in a clearer view of his final destination – the National Finals Rodeo in December. He turned in a gangbuster performance at the Dodge City (Kan.) Roundup Rodeo Sunday when he broke the arena record in tie-down roping with a 6.9-second run en route to the aggregate championship. He also competed in team roping and steer roping, making it to the final round in both, earning the all-around title for the third consecutive year. He finished with a payday of $9,994. That pushed his season earnings in the all-around category to $107,551 and, more importantly, moved him to eighth place in the tie-down event....
===
Thursday, August 11, 2005
FLE
NEW FOREST SERVICE LAW ENFORCEMENT CHIEF LACKS CREDENTIALS
In an unprecedented step, the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service has appointed a new Director of Law Enforcement and Investigations who lacks any previous law enforcement experience, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). To accommodate the move, the agency has hurriedly amended its manual to remove the requirement that the Director of Law Enforcement must be a peace officer, i.e., GS-1811 Criminal Investigator, and to allow the position "Top Secret access" without the normal background checks. On July 20, 2005, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth named John Twiss, a long-time Forest Service employee who has spent a good portion of his career in staff positions within Washington. D.C. headquarters, as the Director of Law Enforcement and Investigations effective July 24. Twiss is the first person without any law enforcement qualifications or credentials to occupy the top law enforcement slot. In his new job, Twiss will oversee approximately 660 Special Agents and uniformed Law Enforcement Officers who investigate resource crimes, such as timber theft and fossil poaching, as well as a range of other crimes, such as clandestine drug labs, on 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering more than 193 million acres. In addition to his lack of experience, Twiss' appointment also reverses a decade of progress in increasing the professionalism of the Forest Service law enforcement program in that a civilian will be making decisions about how criminal and other sensitive investigations will be conducted. Twiss has also signaled he will seek to end the independence of the law enforcement program by making investigators answer to the forest supervisors and rangers who are often the subject of investigations or may be embarrassed by the outcomes of internal probes. After a series of scandals in the early 1990s involving cover-ups of timber-theft, illegal alien exploitation and prostitution, Congress mandated that the Forest Service law enforcement be independent of, or "stove-piped" from, the agency chain-of-command....
ATTACKS ON NATIONAL PARK LAW ENFORCEMENT HIT ANOTHER ALL-TIME HIGH
Threats, harassment and attacks against National Park Service rangers and U.S. Park Police officers reached a new record in 2004, according to agency records released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Chronically understaffed NPS law enforcement is facing growing homeland security needs and increasingly violent situations with static resources and little agency support. National Park Service commissioned law enforcement officers were victims of assaults 111 times in 2004, nearly a third of which resulted in injury. This figure tops the 2003 total of 106 assaults and the 2002 total of 98. Law enforcement work in the National Park Service is the most dangerous in federal service. National Park Service officers are 12 times more likely to be killed or injured as a result of an assault than FBI agents. Overall, NPS law enforcement has a morbidity rate triple that of the next worst federal agency....
Pentagon to Increase Domestic Surveillance for Counterterrorism
The Department of Defense has developed a new strategy in counterterrorism that would increase military activities on American soil, particularly in the area of intelligence gathering. The move is sparking concern among civil liberties advocates and those who fear an encroaching military role in domestic law enforcement. Critics say the fears raised by the Pentagon are being used as a justification for the military to conduct wider, more intrusive surveillance on American citizens. "Do we want, as a free people, with the notion of privacy enshrined in the Constitution and based on the very clear limits and defined role of government, to be in a society where not just the police, but the military are on the street corners gathering intelligence on citizens, sharing that data, manipulating that data?" asked former Rep. Bob Barr (search ), R-Ga., a constitutional law expert and civil libertarian. "This document provides a blueprint for doing just that." Barr said the new strategy is a back-door means of following through with a 2002 plan to create a massive, centralized information database using public and private records of individuals, called "Total Information Awareness." Congress killed TIA in 2003 because of civil liberties and privacy concerns....Go here(pdf) to view the new strategy....
Chertoff: Privacy fears not justified
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday that Americans need to ease their concerns about turning over personal information to the government - especially if they want to fly safe from terrorism. Chertoff said there is too much worry over a plan by the Transportation Security Administration to collect passengers' full names and birth dates before they board. "The average American gives information up to get a CVS (drugstore discount) card that is far more in-depth than TSA's going to be looking at," Chertoff told reporters and editors at USA TODAY's headquarters in McLean, Va. "But I actually make that case that giving up a little bit more information protects privacy." "Would you rather give up your address and date of birth to a secure database and not be pulled aside and questioned," he said, "or would you rather not give it up and have an increased likelihood that you're going to be called out of line and someone's going to do a secondary search of your bag and they're going to ask you a lot of personal questions in the full view of everybody else?" Chertoff vowed to implement Secure Flight, a plan by the federal government to screen out potential terrorists by scrutinizing the backgrounds of passengers....
Civil-liberties board struggles into existence
A civil-liberties board ordered by the U.S. Congress last year has never met to discuss its job of protecting rights in the fight against terrorism, and critics say it is a toothless, underfunded shell with inadequate support from President Bush. Lawmakers including some Republicans, civil-rights advocates, a member of the Sept. 11 Commission and a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have expressed concerns. Lanny Davis, the only prominent liberal among the five people Bush nominated after a six-month delay, said he had not received a call from anyone related to the board since it was formally announced in June. Davis said he could not comment on specifics because the members had not yet met. The inactivity comes at a time when Congress is nearing reauthorization of several provisions of the Patriot Act, a controversial law that gave the government new powers to go after suspected terrorists. The intelligence reform law of December 2004 called for the oversight board in response to a recommendation from the Sept. 11 Commission, which feared increased governmental powers needed to fight terrorism could erode civil liberties....
Big Brother and the Bureaucrats
In April, Mr. Bolton told Congress that when he was an under secretary at the State Department, he repeatedly circumvented the privacy protections that govern federal eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant. In Mr. Bolton's defense, it emerged that his actions were in keeping with a widespread - though unacknowledged - practice in Washington. This was fairly shocking news even to those with long experience overseeing or reporting on our security agencies, and it flies in the face of three decades of assurances by the government that it does not spy on its own citizens. Congress cannot let the controversy be rendered moot by Mr. Bolton's recess appointment. It should begin a broader investigation immediately. But even as enshrined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the prohibition on domestic spying without a warrant has always been something of a legal fiction: the standard practice is to go ahead and eavesdrop on the conversations of foreigners, even if the party on the other end of the line is an American citizen. Summaries of these conversations are then routinely distributed throughout the relevant government agencies. The privacy of the American citizens involved is putatively preserved by replacing their names with the phrase "U.S. person" in the summary. During the Bolton hearings, however, it emerged that when he was at the State Department, Mr. Bolton on several occasions received summaries of intercepts between foreigners and "U.S. persons" and requested that the spy agency tell him who those Americans were. Without asking Mr. Bolton to show any cause for his request or going through a review process, the agency complied. Following this revelation, Newsweek discovered that from January 2004 to May 2005, the National Security Agency had supplied names of some 10,000 American citizens in this informal fashion to policy makers at many departments, other American intelligence services and law enforcement agencies....
Ex-lawmaker blasts Patriot Act
Most people would be hard-pressed to fill a room with card-carrying members of the National Rifle Association along with the American Civil Liberties Union without a shot being fired. But that's what former Republican Congressman Bob Barr did Tuesday night at Pensacola Junior College when he warned conservatives and liberals alike about the dangers of the USA Patriot Act. Some provisions of the law enacted in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will expire in December. Congress, however, is expected to vote on renewing those provisions, which include unlimited roving wiretaps, home invasions without warrants, seizure of personal finance and medical records -- even what magazines you buy. He told those in attendance Tuesday that those "sunset provisions" violate the Bill of Rights and urged them to call their legislators. "We all lose," Barr said to about 100 people ranging from teens to senior citizens. "They have the right to invade your privacy, gain access to your information without a reasonable suspicion that you have done wrong. That's the essence of privacy and freedom." Retired special agent David A. Akerman, 59, joined the ACLU when President Bush signed the Patriot Act. "I spent 30 years dealing with terrorism insurgency and U.S. government security operations, and I see no need for it," Akerman said. "I never had trouble getting a warrant from a judge."....
===
NEW FOREST SERVICE LAW ENFORCEMENT CHIEF LACKS CREDENTIALS
In an unprecedented step, the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service has appointed a new Director of Law Enforcement and Investigations who lacks any previous law enforcement experience, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). To accommodate the move, the agency has hurriedly amended its manual to remove the requirement that the Director of Law Enforcement must be a peace officer, i.e., GS-1811 Criminal Investigator, and to allow the position "Top Secret access" without the normal background checks. On July 20, 2005, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth named John Twiss, a long-time Forest Service employee who has spent a good portion of his career in staff positions within Washington. D.C. headquarters, as the Director of Law Enforcement and Investigations effective July 24. Twiss is the first person without any law enforcement qualifications or credentials to occupy the top law enforcement slot. In his new job, Twiss will oversee approximately 660 Special Agents and uniformed Law Enforcement Officers who investigate resource crimes, such as timber theft and fossil poaching, as well as a range of other crimes, such as clandestine drug labs, on 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering more than 193 million acres. In addition to his lack of experience, Twiss' appointment also reverses a decade of progress in increasing the professionalism of the Forest Service law enforcement program in that a civilian will be making decisions about how criminal and other sensitive investigations will be conducted. Twiss has also signaled he will seek to end the independence of the law enforcement program by making investigators answer to the forest supervisors and rangers who are often the subject of investigations or may be embarrassed by the outcomes of internal probes. After a series of scandals in the early 1990s involving cover-ups of timber-theft, illegal alien exploitation and prostitution, Congress mandated that the Forest Service law enforcement be independent of, or "stove-piped" from, the agency chain-of-command....
ATTACKS ON NATIONAL PARK LAW ENFORCEMENT HIT ANOTHER ALL-TIME HIGH
Threats, harassment and attacks against National Park Service rangers and U.S. Park Police officers reached a new record in 2004, according to agency records released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Chronically understaffed NPS law enforcement is facing growing homeland security needs and increasingly violent situations with static resources and little agency support. National Park Service commissioned law enforcement officers were victims of assaults 111 times in 2004, nearly a third of which resulted in injury. This figure tops the 2003 total of 106 assaults and the 2002 total of 98. Law enforcement work in the National Park Service is the most dangerous in federal service. National Park Service officers are 12 times more likely to be killed or injured as a result of an assault than FBI agents. Overall, NPS law enforcement has a morbidity rate triple that of the next worst federal agency....
Pentagon to Increase Domestic Surveillance for Counterterrorism
The Department of Defense has developed a new strategy in counterterrorism that would increase military activities on American soil, particularly in the area of intelligence gathering. The move is sparking concern among civil liberties advocates and those who fear an encroaching military role in domestic law enforcement. Critics say the fears raised by the Pentagon are being used as a justification for the military to conduct wider, more intrusive surveillance on American citizens. "Do we want, as a free people, with the notion of privacy enshrined in the Constitution and based on the very clear limits and defined role of government, to be in a society where not just the police, but the military are on the street corners gathering intelligence on citizens, sharing that data, manipulating that data?" asked former Rep. Bob Barr (search ), R-Ga., a constitutional law expert and civil libertarian. "This document provides a blueprint for doing just that." Barr said the new strategy is a back-door means of following through with a 2002 plan to create a massive, centralized information database using public and private records of individuals, called "Total Information Awareness." Congress killed TIA in 2003 because of civil liberties and privacy concerns....Go here(pdf) to view the new strategy....
Chertoff: Privacy fears not justified
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday that Americans need to ease their concerns about turning over personal information to the government - especially if they want to fly safe from terrorism. Chertoff said there is too much worry over a plan by the Transportation Security Administration to collect passengers' full names and birth dates before they board. "The average American gives information up to get a CVS (drugstore discount) card that is far more in-depth than TSA's going to be looking at," Chertoff told reporters and editors at USA TODAY's headquarters in McLean, Va. "But I actually make that case that giving up a little bit more information protects privacy." "Would you rather give up your address and date of birth to a secure database and not be pulled aside and questioned," he said, "or would you rather not give it up and have an increased likelihood that you're going to be called out of line and someone's going to do a secondary search of your bag and they're going to ask you a lot of personal questions in the full view of everybody else?" Chertoff vowed to implement Secure Flight, a plan by the federal government to screen out potential terrorists by scrutinizing the backgrounds of passengers....
Civil-liberties board struggles into existence
A civil-liberties board ordered by the U.S. Congress last year has never met to discuss its job of protecting rights in the fight against terrorism, and critics say it is a toothless, underfunded shell with inadequate support from President Bush. Lawmakers including some Republicans, civil-rights advocates, a member of the Sept. 11 Commission and a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have expressed concerns. Lanny Davis, the only prominent liberal among the five people Bush nominated after a six-month delay, said he had not received a call from anyone related to the board since it was formally announced in June. Davis said he could not comment on specifics because the members had not yet met. The inactivity comes at a time when Congress is nearing reauthorization of several provisions of the Patriot Act, a controversial law that gave the government new powers to go after suspected terrorists. The intelligence reform law of December 2004 called for the oversight board in response to a recommendation from the Sept. 11 Commission, which feared increased governmental powers needed to fight terrorism could erode civil liberties....
Big Brother and the Bureaucrats
In April, Mr. Bolton told Congress that when he was an under secretary at the State Department, he repeatedly circumvented the privacy protections that govern federal eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant. In Mr. Bolton's defense, it emerged that his actions were in keeping with a widespread - though unacknowledged - practice in Washington. This was fairly shocking news even to those with long experience overseeing or reporting on our security agencies, and it flies in the face of three decades of assurances by the government that it does not spy on its own citizens. Congress cannot let the controversy be rendered moot by Mr. Bolton's recess appointment. It should begin a broader investigation immediately. But even as enshrined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the prohibition on domestic spying without a warrant has always been something of a legal fiction: the standard practice is to go ahead and eavesdrop on the conversations of foreigners, even if the party on the other end of the line is an American citizen. Summaries of these conversations are then routinely distributed throughout the relevant government agencies. The privacy of the American citizens involved is putatively preserved by replacing their names with the phrase "U.S. person" in the summary. During the Bolton hearings, however, it emerged that when he was at the State Department, Mr. Bolton on several occasions received summaries of intercepts between foreigners and "U.S. persons" and requested that the spy agency tell him who those Americans were. Without asking Mr. Bolton to show any cause for his request or going through a review process, the agency complied. Following this revelation, Newsweek discovered that from January 2004 to May 2005, the National Security Agency had supplied names of some 10,000 American citizens in this informal fashion to policy makers at many departments, other American intelligence services and law enforcement agencies....
Ex-lawmaker blasts Patriot Act
Most people would be hard-pressed to fill a room with card-carrying members of the National Rifle Association along with the American Civil Liberties Union without a shot being fired. But that's what former Republican Congressman Bob Barr did Tuesday night at Pensacola Junior College when he warned conservatives and liberals alike about the dangers of the USA Patriot Act. Some provisions of the law enacted in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will expire in December. Congress, however, is expected to vote on renewing those provisions, which include unlimited roving wiretaps, home invasions without warrants, seizure of personal finance and medical records -- even what magazines you buy. He told those in attendance Tuesday that those "sunset provisions" violate the Bill of Rights and urged them to call their legislators. "We all lose," Barr said to about 100 people ranging from teens to senior citizens. "They have the right to invade your privacy, gain access to your information without a reasonable suspicion that you have done wrong. That's the essence of privacy and freedom." Retired special agent David A. Akerman, 59, joined the ACLU when President Bush signed the Patriot Act. "I spent 30 years dealing with terrorism insurgency and U.S. government security operations, and I see no need for it," Akerman said. "I never had trouble getting a warrant from a judge."....
===
GAO REPORT
Clean Water Act: Improved Resource Planning Would Help EPA Better Respond to Changing Needs and Fiscal Constraints. GAO-05-721, July 22. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-721
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05721high.pdf
===
Clean Water Act: Improved Resource Planning Would Help EPA Better Respond to Changing Needs and Fiscal Constraints. GAO-05-721, July 22. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-721
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05721high.pdf
===
NEWS ROUNDUP
BLM: Drilling will bring haze For the first time, public land officials acknowledged that increased natural gas drilling in Sublette County will possibly reduce visibility in Wyoming's two national parks -- as well as five wilderness areas and a roadless area. The Bureau of Land Management, in a supplemental air quality study for the Jonah Infill Drilling Project released this week, said the cumulative effects of more drilling will likely lead to haze above acceptable threshold levels in the national parks in the early stages of drilling. Haze would be caused by both release of pollutants from drilling and from increased traffic and wood stove smoke. That haze will affect Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, the Bridger, Popo Agie, Fitzpatrick, Teton and Washakie wilderness areas, and the Wind River roadless area....
Loggers chase off suspected arsonist A suspected arsonist was thwarted in his attempt to set fire to heavy timber near Missoula by a pair of loggers working in nearby woods Tuesday morning. While deep in the Gold Creek drainage about 17 miles northeast of Missoula, loggers saw the man trying to set Plum Creek Timber Co. property ablaze, Missoula County Sheriff Mike McMeekin confirmed Wednesday night. As the loggers moved toward the man, he fled, leaving behind an active fire, which the workers quickly extinguished. The incident, which authorities hoped to keep quiet while it was under investigation, was aired in frustration by Bob Sandman, incident commander for the Interstate 90 fires, at a community information session in Alberton on Wednesday night....
County purchases conservation easement on land near Three Forks Nearly 10 square miles of farmland and wildlife habitat will be protected as a result of the Gallatin County Commission's decision Tuesday to contribute $300,000 toward a conservation easement. The property belongs to the Dyk family and is 11 miles north of Three Forks near Clarkston, Gallatin County Open Lands Coordinator Mike Harris explained Wednesday. The mix of wheat fields and rolling hills is considered prime antelope and elk habitat by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. For the Dyk ranch easement, several groups pitched in to come up with the $1 million needed, including $200,000 from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, $150,000 from the Ted Turner Foundation and $70,000 from the Doris Duke Foundation....
Ensign says Forest Service will expedite Incline Lake purchase The U.S. Forest Service has agreed to help expedite a proposal to purchase more than 775 acres at Incline Lake along the Mount Rose Highway overlooking Lake Tahoe, Sen. John Ensign said Wednesday. The agency's commitment could make it possible for public acquisition of the land to be completed within a year, the Nevada Republican said during a tour of the site. "I have secured a commitment from the U.S. Forest Service that they will start laying the groundwork for this purchase immediately, allowing us to add this property to northern Nevada's must-visit list much faster than usual," Ensign said....
Air pollution increasing in Columbia River Gorge Something about the wind whistling down the Columbia River Gorge defines an image of clean pristine air from the sparsely settled regions east of the Cascades. No longer. "It's a very polluted soup," said Bob Bachman, a meteorologist and air resource specialist with the U.S. Forest Service. "You have very high nitrogen deposition rates," he said. "If you have a nice green yard and over-fertilize it, it turns brown and dies. That's what high levels of nitrogen deposition can do." Deposition rates at the upper levels of the eastern gorge are as high as they are in Southern California, he said....
Logging project is off-limits After three weeks of protests and blockades of the Hobson fire-salvage timber sale near Galice, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management closed public access to the logging project Tuesday. About 5.5 miles of Road 2411 and 4.5 miles of the Hobson Horn Trail, the only entryways to the sale, will remain closed to the public until Oct. 31. "Every other day protesters are throwing logs and boulders on the road to try to stop logging," said Patty Burel, spokeswoman for the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. "Technically, there has been two structures and one platform (erected by protesters to block logging). "The situation is unsafe for loggers, protesters, contractors and Forest Service and BLM employees, and for that reason, we issued the temporary road closures."....
Who built rural roads and when? Utah officials expected that challenges would be mounted to rural road claims they are making under an agreement signed by former Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Gale Norton in 2003. They are getting them. Last year the state was forced to abandon its initial claim to a 99-mile road in Juab County known as the Weiss Highway after research revealed that the road was, in fact, built by federal road crews during the Great Depression. Now an environmental group is challenging two more backcountry roads the state is claiming in Millard County, for many of the same reasons. The Washington D.C.-based Wilderness Society says the Bureau of Land Management should reject Utah's claims to the roads - Alexa Lane and Snake Pass - because it cannot conclusively prove that it constructed the roads....
Top BLM official in Colorado named agency’s new director for Nevada Ron Wenker, the top official for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Colorado who worked 10 years as an agency field manager in Winnemucca, was named Wednesday the BLM’s new state director for Nevada. Wenker is expected to assume the post in October. He succeeds former BLM Nevada Director Bob Abbey, 54, who announced his retirement in June after 25 years with the agency. BLM State Director Kathleen Clarke announced his appointment Wednesday in a statement from Washington D.C., along with the appointment of Sally Wisely, currently BLM’s Utah director, as his replacement in Colorado....
Desert plea: Don't take our water Utah's west desert is one of the most remote and sparsely populated regions in the state, and the nation. So maybe it only seemed like everyone who lives there descended upon downtown Salt Lake City on Wednesday. Dozens of residents, government and education officials from the area - along with neighbors from across the state line in Nevada - arrived at the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building following a 220-mile relay run from Baker, Nev., to deliver bundles of letters to congressional and state leaders. Their plea to Utah and its leaders: Reject a proposal by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to tap wells on the Nevada side of the line and transport the water to Las Vegas via a 500-mile network of pipelines....
Wild horses test positive for chronic anemia Two wild horses in remote Ouray, Summit County, have tested positive for equine infectious anemia (EIA), federal and state officials said. Although there is no harm to humans, the chronic condition causes anemia, fever, weight loss and even death in horses. EIA is a contagious disease transmitted by biting insects. The infected horses, captured in a routine roundup of horses and burros by the Bureau of Land Management, were euthanized August 5. The remaining 13 in the group have been quarantined for a minimum of 60 days, until testing proves there are no signs of the virus. Because the location of the animals was so remote (about 55 miles southeast of Vernal), BLM officials and state animal health officials say there is no immediate reason to believe that the virus could spread....
New spotted owl rescue bids get under way "Alarming" studies showing Washington's spotted owl population dropping fast prompted federal and state officials this week to announce two initiatives that could protect the bird and the old-growth forests where it thrives. The focus of the timber wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the spotted owl was supposed to be saved mostly on federal land under a 1994 settlement hammered out by the Clinton administration. But a casualty of that settlement was a plan produced by federal scientists to guide the owl's recovery. It was dropped by the Clinton administration amid the tension of the timber struggle. This week, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said the Bush administration has authorized them to write a new owl-rescue blueprint. It's a requirement of the Endangered Species Act, whose protections were extended to the owl 15 years ago....
Take a Bough That's why the first-time author spun a New Yorker essay into the recently published The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed. The book centers on the dark-of-night destruction, in 1997, of a rare Sitka spruce in British Columbia's rugged, outlying Queen Charlotte Islands. The massive, 300-year-old tree -- which sported golden needles in the midst of a verdant forest -- was revered by the local Haida people, protected by the province's otherwise-voracious logging industry, and gawked at by tourists (who could even stay at the Golden Spruce Motel). But all that came to an end when a disgruntled, semi-psychotic timber surveyor cut the tree down. Grant Hadwin's action was intended as a protest against unconscionable old-growth logging in B.C. -- the "Brazil of the North" -- but it was met with outrage across the province, and eventually (thanks in part to Vaillant's magazine coverage in 2002) across the continent. Hadwin upped the fascination and furor when he disappeared in a kayak on his way to stand trial for the arbicide; his gear was discovered several months later on a nearby island, and his whereabouts remain unknown....
Viral disease confirmed in Montana horse A horse in Yellowstone County has tested positive for vesicular stomatitis, a viral disease that affects livestock and causes blister-like lesions similar to those associated with the more serious foot-and-mouth disease, Montana's state veterinarian said Wednesday. The case, involving a horse in the Laurel area, is the first in Montana since 1982, Tom Linfield said. He said the premises, including five horses, is under quarantine. This restricts the movement of the animals and is to remain in effect for three weeks after the lesions in the affected horse have healed, he said. The diagnosis could mean that horses and other livestock considered susceptible to VS, such as cattle and swine, will have to meet import requirements imposed by other states in response, he said....
Images From the Battleground Lyle Robinson's Tres Bellotas Ranch sits in a cradle of hills right on the Mexican border. It's a pretty place. Sprawling Mulberry trees shade the brick house and oak trees--bellotas in Spanish--decorate the surrounding landscape. This time of year, during the monsoon season, the oaks drop acorns that cowboys and others working this land, 13 miles southwest of Arivaca, have prized as summer snacks for centuries. It hardly seems possible that such a peaceful-looking spot could be the scene of anything momentous. But it is. Everyone in America has a stake in what's happening on the Tres Bellotas. Everyone in America should know about the events that play out daily on this remote ground, and on neighboring ranches, because they explain our present and foretell our future. This is a place where all the rhetoric from the president and his government about homeland security crumbles to pieces on the hot ground....long but interesting read....
Former Reata chef announces newest venture Cowboy chef Grady Spears, formerly of Reata and Worthington Hotel’s Chisholm Club, announced Wednesday that he is launching a new ranch-house eatery on far west Camp Bowie. Author of Cowboy in the Kitchen and other books, Spears said in a statement that he plans a full-service establishment -- part restaurant, part retail market -- described as the sort of place where locals gather to swap stories, "fill up on unpretentious regional food," or stop by for ice-cold beer. Spears will create a small, focused menu featuring dishes commonly found in any rural Texas market or ranch house, using items supplied by local ranchers and farmers, the statement said....
O'Connor recalls Arizona ranch days An Arizona cowgirl paused in her home state Tuesday to tell an overflow crowd about the life she led on a ranch before heading off to 24 years of riding herd on the nation's laws. O'Connor and her co-author brother, H. Alan Day, shared the podium to talk about their book, Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest. Asked what their father would say about his daughter's ascension to what many have characterized as "the most powerful woman in America," O'Connor said it would be: "Here I am on this godforsaken ranch and nothing works, and I can't get any help. If you're so darned powerful, why don't you . . . " Her words were drowned out by laughter....
Windmill devotees explain love affair Ray Cirbo, 78, has since 1988 been obsessed with the old-fashioned water pumping devices. After retiring as an electrician at his doctor's behest -- Cirbo had two quadruple-bypass surgeries after having heart attacks -- he started buying junked, torn up windmills and restoring them. Now, more than a dozen, refurbished to near mint condition, dot the front yard of his Weld County home. Another 20, in various states of disrepair, line the fence, waiting to be repaired. "There's something about windmills that fascinates me," said the man who calls himself "Ray the Windmill Man." Cirbo, who repairs the windmills and then sells them to people all over the country, bought his first fixer-upper from a friend in Lafayette....
===
BLM: Drilling will bring haze For the first time, public land officials acknowledged that increased natural gas drilling in Sublette County will possibly reduce visibility in Wyoming's two national parks -- as well as five wilderness areas and a roadless area. The Bureau of Land Management, in a supplemental air quality study for the Jonah Infill Drilling Project released this week, said the cumulative effects of more drilling will likely lead to haze above acceptable threshold levels in the national parks in the early stages of drilling. Haze would be caused by both release of pollutants from drilling and from increased traffic and wood stove smoke. That haze will affect Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, the Bridger, Popo Agie, Fitzpatrick, Teton and Washakie wilderness areas, and the Wind River roadless area....
Loggers chase off suspected arsonist A suspected arsonist was thwarted in his attempt to set fire to heavy timber near Missoula by a pair of loggers working in nearby woods Tuesday morning. While deep in the Gold Creek drainage about 17 miles northeast of Missoula, loggers saw the man trying to set Plum Creek Timber Co. property ablaze, Missoula County Sheriff Mike McMeekin confirmed Wednesday night. As the loggers moved toward the man, he fled, leaving behind an active fire, which the workers quickly extinguished. The incident, which authorities hoped to keep quiet while it was under investigation, was aired in frustration by Bob Sandman, incident commander for the Interstate 90 fires, at a community information session in Alberton on Wednesday night....
County purchases conservation easement on land near Three Forks Nearly 10 square miles of farmland and wildlife habitat will be protected as a result of the Gallatin County Commission's decision Tuesday to contribute $300,000 toward a conservation easement. The property belongs to the Dyk family and is 11 miles north of Three Forks near Clarkston, Gallatin County Open Lands Coordinator Mike Harris explained Wednesday. The mix of wheat fields and rolling hills is considered prime antelope and elk habitat by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. For the Dyk ranch easement, several groups pitched in to come up with the $1 million needed, including $200,000 from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, $150,000 from the Ted Turner Foundation and $70,000 from the Doris Duke Foundation....
Ensign says Forest Service will expedite Incline Lake purchase The U.S. Forest Service has agreed to help expedite a proposal to purchase more than 775 acres at Incline Lake along the Mount Rose Highway overlooking Lake Tahoe, Sen. John Ensign said Wednesday. The agency's commitment could make it possible for public acquisition of the land to be completed within a year, the Nevada Republican said during a tour of the site. "I have secured a commitment from the U.S. Forest Service that they will start laying the groundwork for this purchase immediately, allowing us to add this property to northern Nevada's must-visit list much faster than usual," Ensign said....
Air pollution increasing in Columbia River Gorge Something about the wind whistling down the Columbia River Gorge defines an image of clean pristine air from the sparsely settled regions east of the Cascades. No longer. "It's a very polluted soup," said Bob Bachman, a meteorologist and air resource specialist with the U.S. Forest Service. "You have very high nitrogen deposition rates," he said. "If you have a nice green yard and over-fertilize it, it turns brown and dies. That's what high levels of nitrogen deposition can do." Deposition rates at the upper levels of the eastern gorge are as high as they are in Southern California, he said....
Logging project is off-limits After three weeks of protests and blockades of the Hobson fire-salvage timber sale near Galice, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management closed public access to the logging project Tuesday. About 5.5 miles of Road 2411 and 4.5 miles of the Hobson Horn Trail, the only entryways to the sale, will remain closed to the public until Oct. 31. "Every other day protesters are throwing logs and boulders on the road to try to stop logging," said Patty Burel, spokeswoman for the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. "Technically, there has been two structures and one platform (erected by protesters to block logging). "The situation is unsafe for loggers, protesters, contractors and Forest Service and BLM employees, and for that reason, we issued the temporary road closures."....
Who built rural roads and when? Utah officials expected that challenges would be mounted to rural road claims they are making under an agreement signed by former Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Gale Norton in 2003. They are getting them. Last year the state was forced to abandon its initial claim to a 99-mile road in Juab County known as the Weiss Highway after research revealed that the road was, in fact, built by federal road crews during the Great Depression. Now an environmental group is challenging two more backcountry roads the state is claiming in Millard County, for many of the same reasons. The Washington D.C.-based Wilderness Society says the Bureau of Land Management should reject Utah's claims to the roads - Alexa Lane and Snake Pass - because it cannot conclusively prove that it constructed the roads....
Top BLM official in Colorado named agency’s new director for Nevada Ron Wenker, the top official for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Colorado who worked 10 years as an agency field manager in Winnemucca, was named Wednesday the BLM’s new state director for Nevada. Wenker is expected to assume the post in October. He succeeds former BLM Nevada Director Bob Abbey, 54, who announced his retirement in June after 25 years with the agency. BLM State Director Kathleen Clarke announced his appointment Wednesday in a statement from Washington D.C., along with the appointment of Sally Wisely, currently BLM’s Utah director, as his replacement in Colorado....
Desert plea: Don't take our water Utah's west desert is one of the most remote and sparsely populated regions in the state, and the nation. So maybe it only seemed like everyone who lives there descended upon downtown Salt Lake City on Wednesday. Dozens of residents, government and education officials from the area - along with neighbors from across the state line in Nevada - arrived at the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building following a 220-mile relay run from Baker, Nev., to deliver bundles of letters to congressional and state leaders. Their plea to Utah and its leaders: Reject a proposal by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to tap wells on the Nevada side of the line and transport the water to Las Vegas via a 500-mile network of pipelines....
Wild horses test positive for chronic anemia Two wild horses in remote Ouray, Summit County, have tested positive for equine infectious anemia (EIA), federal and state officials said. Although there is no harm to humans, the chronic condition causes anemia, fever, weight loss and even death in horses. EIA is a contagious disease transmitted by biting insects. The infected horses, captured in a routine roundup of horses and burros by the Bureau of Land Management, were euthanized August 5. The remaining 13 in the group have been quarantined for a minimum of 60 days, until testing proves there are no signs of the virus. Because the location of the animals was so remote (about 55 miles southeast of Vernal), BLM officials and state animal health officials say there is no immediate reason to believe that the virus could spread....
New spotted owl rescue bids get under way "Alarming" studies showing Washington's spotted owl population dropping fast prompted federal and state officials this week to announce two initiatives that could protect the bird and the old-growth forests where it thrives. The focus of the timber wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the spotted owl was supposed to be saved mostly on federal land under a 1994 settlement hammered out by the Clinton administration. But a casualty of that settlement was a plan produced by federal scientists to guide the owl's recovery. It was dropped by the Clinton administration amid the tension of the timber struggle. This week, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said the Bush administration has authorized them to write a new owl-rescue blueprint. It's a requirement of the Endangered Species Act, whose protections were extended to the owl 15 years ago....
Take a Bough That's why the first-time author spun a New Yorker essay into the recently published The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed. The book centers on the dark-of-night destruction, in 1997, of a rare Sitka spruce in British Columbia's rugged, outlying Queen Charlotte Islands. The massive, 300-year-old tree -- which sported golden needles in the midst of a verdant forest -- was revered by the local Haida people, protected by the province's otherwise-voracious logging industry, and gawked at by tourists (who could even stay at the Golden Spruce Motel). But all that came to an end when a disgruntled, semi-psychotic timber surveyor cut the tree down. Grant Hadwin's action was intended as a protest against unconscionable old-growth logging in B.C. -- the "Brazil of the North" -- but it was met with outrage across the province, and eventually (thanks in part to Vaillant's magazine coverage in 2002) across the continent. Hadwin upped the fascination and furor when he disappeared in a kayak on his way to stand trial for the arbicide; his gear was discovered several months later on a nearby island, and his whereabouts remain unknown....
Viral disease confirmed in Montana horse A horse in Yellowstone County has tested positive for vesicular stomatitis, a viral disease that affects livestock and causes blister-like lesions similar to those associated with the more serious foot-and-mouth disease, Montana's state veterinarian said Wednesday. The case, involving a horse in the Laurel area, is the first in Montana since 1982, Tom Linfield said. He said the premises, including five horses, is under quarantine. This restricts the movement of the animals and is to remain in effect for three weeks after the lesions in the affected horse have healed, he said. The diagnosis could mean that horses and other livestock considered susceptible to VS, such as cattle and swine, will have to meet import requirements imposed by other states in response, he said....
Images From the Battleground Lyle Robinson's Tres Bellotas Ranch sits in a cradle of hills right on the Mexican border. It's a pretty place. Sprawling Mulberry trees shade the brick house and oak trees--bellotas in Spanish--decorate the surrounding landscape. This time of year, during the monsoon season, the oaks drop acorns that cowboys and others working this land, 13 miles southwest of Arivaca, have prized as summer snacks for centuries. It hardly seems possible that such a peaceful-looking spot could be the scene of anything momentous. But it is. Everyone in America has a stake in what's happening on the Tres Bellotas. Everyone in America should know about the events that play out daily on this remote ground, and on neighboring ranches, because they explain our present and foretell our future. This is a place where all the rhetoric from the president and his government about homeland security crumbles to pieces on the hot ground....long but interesting read....
Former Reata chef announces newest venture Cowboy chef Grady Spears, formerly of Reata and Worthington Hotel’s Chisholm Club, announced Wednesday that he is launching a new ranch-house eatery on far west Camp Bowie. Author of Cowboy in the Kitchen and other books, Spears said in a statement that he plans a full-service establishment -- part restaurant, part retail market -- described as the sort of place where locals gather to swap stories, "fill up on unpretentious regional food," or stop by for ice-cold beer. Spears will create a small, focused menu featuring dishes commonly found in any rural Texas market or ranch house, using items supplied by local ranchers and farmers, the statement said....
O'Connor recalls Arizona ranch days An Arizona cowgirl paused in her home state Tuesday to tell an overflow crowd about the life she led on a ranch before heading off to 24 years of riding herd on the nation's laws. O'Connor and her co-author brother, H. Alan Day, shared the podium to talk about their book, Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest. Asked what their father would say about his daughter's ascension to what many have characterized as "the most powerful woman in America," O'Connor said it would be: "Here I am on this godforsaken ranch and nothing works, and I can't get any help. If you're so darned powerful, why don't you . . . " Her words were drowned out by laughter....
Windmill devotees explain love affair Ray Cirbo, 78, has since 1988 been obsessed with the old-fashioned water pumping devices. After retiring as an electrician at his doctor's behest -- Cirbo had two quadruple-bypass surgeries after having heart attacks -- he started buying junked, torn up windmills and restoring them. Now, more than a dozen, refurbished to near mint condition, dot the front yard of his Weld County home. Another 20, in various states of disrepair, line the fence, waiting to be repaired. "There's something about windmills that fascinates me," said the man who calls himself "Ray the Windmill Man." Cirbo, who repairs the windmills and then sells them to people all over the country, bought his first fixer-upper from a friend in Lafayette....
===
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Up to the antlers in elk There’s a pest ruining Bud Gates’ haystacks, tearing down his fences and eating his crops. The lifelong cattle rancher lives in rural, northwestern Eagle County, and is a less-than-enthusiastic neighbor to the largest elk herd in North America. Elk, after all, don’t pay much attention to trespassing laws. “It’s not so much what they eat, it’s what they destroy,” Gates said. “By the time they urinate all over the haystacks, the cattle won’t even eat it.” State wildlife officials estimate just under 42,000 elk live in the northwest corner of Eagle County, near the communities of Sweetwater and Burns....
BLM airs out position on air quality on Roan The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will be better off working to prevent air pollution on the Roan Plateau than monitoring it, an agency official said Tuesday. Jamie Connell, manager of the BLM’s Glenwood Springs Field Office, explained the agency’s plans for protecting air quality on the plateau during a meeting in Parachute. The BLM got together with representatives of government agencies cooperating with the BLM as it prepares its management plan for the plateau. Nicholls said the activity contemplated for the plateau is projected to result in visibility standards being exceeded in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison near Montrose and the Mount Zirkel wilderness near Steamboat Springs one day per year at most. Benzene and formaldehyde emissions could exceed standards regionally but would still be within the Environmental Protection Agency’s acceptable range, he said. Parachute town administrator Juanita Satterfield reiterated concerns the town has about sufficiently protecting the Roan Plateau watershed, the source of the town’s water supply. She said sediment from well pads and other gas drilling activity has doubled sediment in that water supply in just the past two years. Satterfield also is worried about the prospect of illegal use of water on the plateau for drilling on top....
BLM drops oil, gas plans The Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday dropped plans for oil and gas drilling near the border of Canyonlands National Park in eastern Utah. The National Park Service had objected to the plans, saying drilling rigs would mar the spectacular views at the 527-square-mile park. BLM spokesman Don Banks said the bureau is reevaluating oil and gas development around the park with an eye to reducing the historic impact. "In the Canyonlands region, much of the land is currently under lease and over the years, dating back a half-century or so, more than 50 wells have been drilled. But there's been very little activity recently, and those old disturbances have been reclaimed," Banks said Tuesday. The BLM had previously withdrawn two parcels in the park's "viewshed," and on Tuesday dropped another two parcels about four miles east of the Canyonland's Needles district....
Gas group hears lawsuit warning Get a handle on who will be responsible for monitoring energy development in the Pinedale Anticline, or a judge most likely will decide for you, a state planning official told members of a federal advisory group here Tuesday. The group should decide soon who will ultimately be responsible for oversight of measures outlined in the final decision issued by the Bureau of Land Management in 2000 for the big natural gas project, Rob Sanford with the governor's planning office told members of the Pinedale Anticline Working Group. "You need to look at that decision and see if it's being done on the ground and determine who's responsible for this oversight of the terms of the decision...," Sanford said. "Will it be this group or the task groups or the BLM? You have to decide that, or a judge will answer that question for you."....
New energy law limits public's say in decisions A day after President Bush signed into law the sweeping Energy Policy Act, environmental and citizen activist organizations continued their angry denouncements of the bill they say is a multibillion-dollar giveaway to wealthy energy companies undeserving of taxpayer subsidies. But those who want to speak out against the new law may be in for a shock: Its provisions include new limits on public participation in energy-related decisions, alterations of clean water law and pre-emption of states' rights when it comes to building electricity transmission lines and liquefied natural gas port facilities. The bill alters the National Environmental Policy Act to allow the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to take shortcuts when granting permits for oil and gas drilling and essentially cuts the public out of the process, said Scott Groene, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance....
Chinese rig at work The first wave of Chinese workers and their rigs are up and running in the Piceance Basin in Garfield County, the state's oil and natural gas hot spot. Last week, a rig built in China's Sichuan province - set up by Chinese engineers and managed by a company run by Pakistani immigrants - began drilling its first well near Parachute, west of Rifle. And next month, two more Chinese rigs and workers will start drilling wells in Garfield and Moffat counties. A U.S. shortage of labor and equipment is driving local energy companies to seek out partnerships with the Chinese. "It is a matter of price and time," explained Bill Croyle, a partner in Western Energy Advisors....
Editorial: Chinese rigs will ease bottleneck We hope the news that a Chinese drilling rig with several Chinese technicians is now operating in Colorado's Piceance Basin doesn't trigger more alarm about the outsourcing - or insourcing, as it should be called in this case - of American jobs to foreigners. One big reason for the Chinese rigs and crews (more are on the way) is that energy production is already at full tilt and Americans trained for these jobs for the most part have more than they can do. During the resulting labor and equipment shortage, searching offshore for help is a no-brainer strategy for relieving a major bottleneck to energy production. This nation benefits in many ways, including the creation of good ancillary jobs....
Editorial: Huntsman must act to protect Utah's outdoor treasures The tsunami-like rush of oil and gas companies to explore and drill in some of the most scenic places in Utah will have a lasting impact, one that Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. should be taking a lead role in mitigating. The governor promised during his election campaign last year that he would "expend political capital" to protect the economic interests of Utahns. When he spoke to the Outdoor Retailers Association in January, he vowed to make protection of Utah's precious recreational treasures a priority. So far, however, Huntsman's leadership on the issue of what reasonable limits might be placed on the extractive industries in order to protect Utah's $5 billion-a-year tourism has been notably lacking. Which raises this question: If the governor isn't willing to speak and to act boldly to preserve Utah lands that are highly favored for river-running, fishing, hunting, hiking, backpacking and trail riding by off-road-vehicles, how effective a champion of economic development can he be?....
Thar's Uranium in Them Thar Hills Would-be uranium miners are dusting off their Geiger counters. A worldwide shortage of uranium is pumping up prices and has led to a rush for mining claims in the western United States. More than 15,000 new claims have been filed in uranium-rich states in the last year, up from just a few the year before. "This year alone we've received about 6,000," said Pam Stilles at the Bureau of Land Management's office in Cheyenne, Wyoming. "It's happened overnight." Wyoming, which has some of the biggest uranium deposits in the United States, hadn't seen more than 100 new mining claims over the last 10 years combined. But now claim offices are jumping across the region. Utah and Colorado, two big players in the market, have gone from virtually no new claims for years, according to the BLM, to a combined 8,500 and rising in uranium-rich counties in 2005....
U.S. Bureau of Land Management backtracks on grazing rules The Center for Biological Diversity expressed skepticism today regarding the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) announcement that it plans to supplement its June 2005 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed national rule changes that seek to “improve the agency’s working relationship with ranchers.” The original EIS is full of doctored science and controversial policies that jeopardize the health of 160 million acres of public land and cut the public out of the decision-making process. “We sincerely hope that the BLM has reconsidered its decision and will produce a supplement to the EIS that dramatically improves the rules and contains sound scientific opinion, wildlife protection measures, and more opportunities for public participation,” said Greta Anderson, botanist and range restoration coordinator with the Center for Biological Diversity. “However, we suspect that the agency is only trying to cover its tracks and avoid legal action on their seriously flawed EIS.”....
Feds claim ranch owners negligent in starting fire The U.S. government filed a lawsuit Monday against the owners of a western Colorado hunting ranch, alleging employees ignited a 2003 wildfire that burned about 5,300 acres and cost more than $2 million to fight. Federal prosecutors claim the owners and employees of Colorado Nature Ranch acted negligently when they started the Brush Mountain Fire while trying to clear brush on the ranch about 30 miles northeast of Grand Junction. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Denver. According to the lawsuit, ranch employees were involved in a brush-clearing project on the ranch in the spring and summer of 2003 and continued to burn piles of brush even after Garfield County commissioners issued a fire ban July 1....
Federal judge blocks another timber sale A federal judge has blocked a third planned sale of timber from the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin, ruling the U.S. Forest Service failed to fully assess the impacts of the logging on the environment. The ruling Monday byU.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman of Milwaukee said the forest service must consider the cumulative impacts of six national forest timber sales approved by the agency in 2003 instead of assessing the sales individually. The ruling blocked the timber sale of about 5,600 acres that straddle Sawyer and Ashland counties near Clam Lake until the federal government complies the National Environmental Policy Act....
Horseback riders repair stretch of Spanish Creek Trail Volunteers at the Spanish Creek Campground shoveled 30 pounds of gravel into buckets and then dumped six of them into mules' packs. The mules mostly did the rest. "I'm just like a truck driver or an engineer on a train," Bob Hoverson, who on Tuesday was leading the Nine Mile Mule Pack Train, of the U.S. Forest Service, from the campground into the Gallatin National Forest's wilderness. There, volunteers with Gallatin Valley Backcountry Horsemen were repairing a one-and-a-half-mile stretch of the Spanish Creek Trail. Hikers, bikers and horseback riders use the trail, and the Horsemen adopted it so that everyone could continue to enjoy it, Rich Inman, president of the organization supporting backcountry recreation on horseback, said. The team of stock animals, based near Missoula, were to make six trips into the woods Tuesday and several more on Wednesday and Thursday, hauling gravel that one or two volunteers then spread out over the trail....
National designation for Sedona's Red Rock area? The idea has been kicked around for much of the past decade and appeared to be on the fast track two years ago. After all, it seemed to be a natural pairing - the awe-inspiring Red Rock country in the Sedona area becoming a federally designated National Scenic Area, like the Columbia River Gorge in the Pacific Northwest and California's Mono Lake. But even with Coconino National Forest, the city of Sedona and supervisors of Coconino and Yavapai counties supporting the measure, it has died on the vine thus far among the Arizona congressional delegation. Sedona-area realtors complain that such a designation would tie the hands of private-property interests and have found a receptive ear in U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., who represents the Sedona area....
Witwer aims to protect landowners, access to 14ers Private landowners who allow hikers on their property should be protected from lawsuits when those hikers get hurt, a Genesee lawmaker said last week. Rep. Rob Witwer reserved a bill title last week in response to several landowners who have asked hikers to stay off their property. Those landowners own private mining claims around four of the state's 14,000-foot peaks. The issue made headlines earlier this year when three landowners with mining claims around four fourteeners — Mount Democrat, Mount Bross, Mount Cameron and Mount Lincoln — told the U.S. Forest Service they didn't want hikers crossing their claims in order to reach the famed summits. The mountains are popular because they're straightforward hikes and all four can be climbed in a day....
Horse power helps maintain the trail The Pacific Crest Trail is not just a hiking trail but an equestrian freeway spanning three states. It's built to specifications that horses can handle, with more gentle descents than some hiking trails, one reason hikers find it so enjoyable. While about 300 hikers attempt the full 2,650-mile trail each year, only four parties on horseback are known to have completed it. Most equestrians use the trail for weekend or weeklong adventures. And, similar to conflicts between cars and big rigs on the freeway, there is friction between hikers and horseback riders on the Pacific Crest Trail....
Details scant on federal plan for spotted owl The shy northern spotted owl – last decade’s symbol of the Pacific Northwest logging wars – once again finds itself at the center of the dispute. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has agreed to develop a recovery plan for the rare bird, which has been listed as threatened with extinction since 1990. It’s too early to say whether it would further restrict logging in forests where the owl lives. “We are in the very early stages of developing a process for doing this,” said Joan Jewett, a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service spokeswoman in Portland. The move comes about nine months after the service reaffirmed its decision to extend Endangered Species Act protection to the creature....
Starting from scratch The crux of the effort is a transplant procedure that more recently features Zimmerman Lake as an important hub in providing a source of eggs from a free-ranging stock. Trouble is, DNA testing now reveals that the greenbacks established in Zimmerman in 1996 are not genetically pure. The current Zimmerman greenbacks resemble the pure strain in every way discernible to the unscientific eye. But continued use of progeny from this source to establish populations in additional waters would perpetuate a genetic flaw. Faced with hard choices, the recovery team elected to err on the side of caution. The solution? Eliminate the Zimmerman stock and start over, which is precisely what DOW biologist Ken Kehmeier and his crew will accomplish with a massive injection of the chemical Fintrol....
Three snails, one shrimp designed as endangered species The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday it will list four invertebrates found in New Mexico and Texas as endangered and designate critical habitat for them. The decision settles a federal lawsuit filed in April 2004 by the Center for Biological Diversity and Forest Guardians. The groups sued the agency and Interior Secretary Gale Norton, claiming the survival of the four species was being threatened by groundwater depletion, water pollution, oil and gas development and destruction of their habitat. The four species are three types of tiny snails - the Roswell springsnail, Koster's tryonia and Pecos assiminea - and a freshwater shrimp called Noel's amphipod. All four are found within the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Roswell, N.M. The Pecos assiminea also is found in West Texas....
In switch, scientist backs dam removal An Idaho biologist who argued for a quarter-century that fish ladders were good enough to prevent salmon from dying out now says four dams on the Snake River in Washington state ought to be removed to help the endangered fish. Don Chapman, 74, wants to get rid of the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite dams, between the Idaho border and where the Snake River flows into the Columbia River. They produce an average of 1,239 megawatts of power, enough to light Seattle, and allow barge shipping of grain and other goods from Lewiston, Idaho, to Portland. Chapman for years worked as a consultant for electric utilities, arguing that man-made bypass systems for fish, such as ladders and barges, were enough to keep salmon populations viable. He now says warming of the Columbia River and its tributaries, and changes in the Pacific Ocean that may be caused by global warming, necessitate breaching of barriers to help fish migrate upstream....
Editorial: Utah should be skeptical of city's designs on water You can't drink the bottom half of a glass of water. Yet the ranchers who eke out a living along the Utah-Nevada border have good reason to believe that that is exactly what Las Vegas is trying to do, and they rightly fear what may happen to the top half as a result. The water authority that serves the mushrooming city of light says it is not casting its thirsty eye on the water that by law and tradition belongs to - or at least is used by - ranchers and other Snake Valley residents. It just wants the water next to it, and under it, as it reaches out to slake the growth of a community that has more than doubled in population in the past 15 years. The plan is to sink some wells near Baker, Nev., and pipe 25,000 acre-feet of water a year via a 500-mile pipeline into the parched cisterns of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Even though the pipeline won't cross the state line, it is clear that the project will have a hydrological impact on Utah. And, so, Utah state officials must sign off on it. Those officials should be very reluctant to do so, certainly not without exhaustive scientific study that has yet to be done. If the ranchers are right, they are far from the only ones who would suffer from the Vegas plan....
Column: The beginning of everywhere For me, this is the crux of the matter, because a local rancher, Tom Maclay, has proposed turning Lob Peak into a year-round resort, including ski lifts, a golf course and condos. He's carved ski runs into the hillside above his home on his land and has petitioned the forest service to extend his operation all the way to the summit of Lob Peak. He envisions a little Vail or Sun Valley, I imagine, or Alta. Although current land-use plans forbid development, he's looking for loopholes and ways around it -- which he just might find. What is at stake, I believe, is not one more mountain, one less mountain lion, or 10,000 more jobs. It is a sense of wholeness, of integrity and the idea of proportion. What's only now becoming understood, and still very hazily, is the idea that the interior and exterior landscapes depend on each other. What is unhealthy in one is reflected in the other. Emerson called us "part and parcel of nature," but we behave as though nature is something "out there."....
FDA: Progress Made In Revising Cattle Feed Ban The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has still made no changes to its mad-cow safeguard policy for cattle 18 months after announcing it needed to be strengthened, but officials are now claiming progress in the agency's efforts. Review of public feedback on FDA proposals to overhaul its "feed ban" is finished, spokeswoman Rae Jones said, and the agency has drafted a new rule being considered for publication. If the rule is agreed upon at the FDA, the agency will once again hold a public comment session. "A draft proposed regulation is under review," Jones said. The FDA oversees the safety of animal feed, and mad-cow disease - or bovine spongiform encephalopathy - is believed to spread through feed if it contains infected bovine material....
Rooster's tale The bright colors belie a bleak future for the 600-acre ranch. D.C. Cogburn, 66, lost a torturous two-year-long lawsuit against two hot-air balloonists who he claims panicked his ostriches into a lethal stampede. Disaster blew in on Feb. 3, 2002 - "my birthday," Cogburn noted - when two enormous hot-air balloons, propane burners roaring, loomed over his ranch near Picacho Peak. Cogburn said the ostriches mistook the balloons for predators. The ostriches stampeded, trampling 7,000 feet of fence to the ground. Two dozen ostriches died of injuries within days....
Woman hopes to lasso help to honor the last of the cowboys Anita Witt reluctantly accepts the fact that ranching is disappearing in the Roaring Fork Valley. But she's determined to preserve the legacy of the ranchers and cowboys. Witt, a longtime Missouri Heights resident and historian, wrote a book recently that tells the story of the last of the cowboys. Now she's part of a team that's trying to preserve interviews with those old cowpokes on film. Witt is working with the Mt. Sopris Historical Society, American Spirit Productions, and producers Chip Comins & Jolie Ramo to condense 20 hours of interviews into a 30-minute or so documentary called "Last of the Cowboys." It's important, she said, for future generations to understand what the valley was like before it was developed. The interviews were with 26 ranchers living in the Roaring Fork or lower Colorado River valleys. All subjects are elderly men who are second- or third-generation ranchers....
Home on the ranch Nowadays, people may think of the American cowboy's life as simplistic, as Hollywood portrays it in movies. But John Smith's life has been far from simple. On March 15, 1925, the day Smith was born, he began his life on a Texas ranch, and his future as a cowboy, on the 44,000-acre Smith Ranch, between Childress and Wellington, Texas, near the Red River. "My grandmother would put a pillow on the saddle horn and Granddaddy would put me in front and he rode in a trot, just riding," Smith said....
===
Up to the antlers in elk There’s a pest ruining Bud Gates’ haystacks, tearing down his fences and eating his crops. The lifelong cattle rancher lives in rural, northwestern Eagle County, and is a less-than-enthusiastic neighbor to the largest elk herd in North America. Elk, after all, don’t pay much attention to trespassing laws. “It’s not so much what they eat, it’s what they destroy,” Gates said. “By the time they urinate all over the haystacks, the cattle won’t even eat it.” State wildlife officials estimate just under 42,000 elk live in the northwest corner of Eagle County, near the communities of Sweetwater and Burns....
BLM airs out position on air quality on Roan The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will be better off working to prevent air pollution on the Roan Plateau than monitoring it, an agency official said Tuesday. Jamie Connell, manager of the BLM’s Glenwood Springs Field Office, explained the agency’s plans for protecting air quality on the plateau during a meeting in Parachute. The BLM got together with representatives of government agencies cooperating with the BLM as it prepares its management plan for the plateau. Nicholls said the activity contemplated for the plateau is projected to result in visibility standards being exceeded in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison near Montrose and the Mount Zirkel wilderness near Steamboat Springs one day per year at most. Benzene and formaldehyde emissions could exceed standards regionally but would still be within the Environmental Protection Agency’s acceptable range, he said. Parachute town administrator Juanita Satterfield reiterated concerns the town has about sufficiently protecting the Roan Plateau watershed, the source of the town’s water supply. She said sediment from well pads and other gas drilling activity has doubled sediment in that water supply in just the past two years. Satterfield also is worried about the prospect of illegal use of water on the plateau for drilling on top....
BLM drops oil, gas plans The Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday dropped plans for oil and gas drilling near the border of Canyonlands National Park in eastern Utah. The National Park Service had objected to the plans, saying drilling rigs would mar the spectacular views at the 527-square-mile park. BLM spokesman Don Banks said the bureau is reevaluating oil and gas development around the park with an eye to reducing the historic impact. "In the Canyonlands region, much of the land is currently under lease and over the years, dating back a half-century or so, more than 50 wells have been drilled. But there's been very little activity recently, and those old disturbances have been reclaimed," Banks said Tuesday. The BLM had previously withdrawn two parcels in the park's "viewshed," and on Tuesday dropped another two parcels about four miles east of the Canyonland's Needles district....
Gas group hears lawsuit warning Get a handle on who will be responsible for monitoring energy development in the Pinedale Anticline, or a judge most likely will decide for you, a state planning official told members of a federal advisory group here Tuesday. The group should decide soon who will ultimately be responsible for oversight of measures outlined in the final decision issued by the Bureau of Land Management in 2000 for the big natural gas project, Rob Sanford with the governor's planning office told members of the Pinedale Anticline Working Group. "You need to look at that decision and see if it's being done on the ground and determine who's responsible for this oversight of the terms of the decision...," Sanford said. "Will it be this group or the task groups or the BLM? You have to decide that, or a judge will answer that question for you."....
New energy law limits public's say in decisions A day after President Bush signed into law the sweeping Energy Policy Act, environmental and citizen activist organizations continued their angry denouncements of the bill they say is a multibillion-dollar giveaway to wealthy energy companies undeserving of taxpayer subsidies. But those who want to speak out against the new law may be in for a shock: Its provisions include new limits on public participation in energy-related decisions, alterations of clean water law and pre-emption of states' rights when it comes to building electricity transmission lines and liquefied natural gas port facilities. The bill alters the National Environmental Policy Act to allow the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to take shortcuts when granting permits for oil and gas drilling and essentially cuts the public out of the process, said Scott Groene, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance....
Chinese rig at work The first wave of Chinese workers and their rigs are up and running in the Piceance Basin in Garfield County, the state's oil and natural gas hot spot. Last week, a rig built in China's Sichuan province - set up by Chinese engineers and managed by a company run by Pakistani immigrants - began drilling its first well near Parachute, west of Rifle. And next month, two more Chinese rigs and workers will start drilling wells in Garfield and Moffat counties. A U.S. shortage of labor and equipment is driving local energy companies to seek out partnerships with the Chinese. "It is a matter of price and time," explained Bill Croyle, a partner in Western Energy Advisors....
Editorial: Chinese rigs will ease bottleneck We hope the news that a Chinese drilling rig with several Chinese technicians is now operating in Colorado's Piceance Basin doesn't trigger more alarm about the outsourcing - or insourcing, as it should be called in this case - of American jobs to foreigners. One big reason for the Chinese rigs and crews (more are on the way) is that energy production is already at full tilt and Americans trained for these jobs for the most part have more than they can do. During the resulting labor and equipment shortage, searching offshore for help is a no-brainer strategy for relieving a major bottleneck to energy production. This nation benefits in many ways, including the creation of good ancillary jobs....
Editorial: Huntsman must act to protect Utah's outdoor treasures The tsunami-like rush of oil and gas companies to explore and drill in some of the most scenic places in Utah will have a lasting impact, one that Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. should be taking a lead role in mitigating. The governor promised during his election campaign last year that he would "expend political capital" to protect the economic interests of Utahns. When he spoke to the Outdoor Retailers Association in January, he vowed to make protection of Utah's precious recreational treasures a priority. So far, however, Huntsman's leadership on the issue of what reasonable limits might be placed on the extractive industries in order to protect Utah's $5 billion-a-year tourism has been notably lacking. Which raises this question: If the governor isn't willing to speak and to act boldly to preserve Utah lands that are highly favored for river-running, fishing, hunting, hiking, backpacking and trail riding by off-road-vehicles, how effective a champion of economic development can he be?....
Thar's Uranium in Them Thar Hills Would-be uranium miners are dusting off their Geiger counters. A worldwide shortage of uranium is pumping up prices and has led to a rush for mining claims in the western United States. More than 15,000 new claims have been filed in uranium-rich states in the last year, up from just a few the year before. "This year alone we've received about 6,000," said Pam Stilles at the Bureau of Land Management's office in Cheyenne, Wyoming. "It's happened overnight." Wyoming, which has some of the biggest uranium deposits in the United States, hadn't seen more than 100 new mining claims over the last 10 years combined. But now claim offices are jumping across the region. Utah and Colorado, two big players in the market, have gone from virtually no new claims for years, according to the BLM, to a combined 8,500 and rising in uranium-rich counties in 2005....
U.S. Bureau of Land Management backtracks on grazing rules The Center for Biological Diversity expressed skepticism today regarding the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) announcement that it plans to supplement its June 2005 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed national rule changes that seek to “improve the agency’s working relationship with ranchers.” The original EIS is full of doctored science and controversial policies that jeopardize the health of 160 million acres of public land and cut the public out of the decision-making process. “We sincerely hope that the BLM has reconsidered its decision and will produce a supplement to the EIS that dramatically improves the rules and contains sound scientific opinion, wildlife protection measures, and more opportunities for public participation,” said Greta Anderson, botanist and range restoration coordinator with the Center for Biological Diversity. “However, we suspect that the agency is only trying to cover its tracks and avoid legal action on their seriously flawed EIS.”....
Feds claim ranch owners negligent in starting fire The U.S. government filed a lawsuit Monday against the owners of a western Colorado hunting ranch, alleging employees ignited a 2003 wildfire that burned about 5,300 acres and cost more than $2 million to fight. Federal prosecutors claim the owners and employees of Colorado Nature Ranch acted negligently when they started the Brush Mountain Fire while trying to clear brush on the ranch about 30 miles northeast of Grand Junction. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Denver. According to the lawsuit, ranch employees were involved in a brush-clearing project on the ranch in the spring and summer of 2003 and continued to burn piles of brush even after Garfield County commissioners issued a fire ban July 1....
Federal judge blocks another timber sale A federal judge has blocked a third planned sale of timber from the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin, ruling the U.S. Forest Service failed to fully assess the impacts of the logging on the environment. The ruling Monday byU.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman of Milwaukee said the forest service must consider the cumulative impacts of six national forest timber sales approved by the agency in 2003 instead of assessing the sales individually. The ruling blocked the timber sale of about 5,600 acres that straddle Sawyer and Ashland counties near Clam Lake until the federal government complies the National Environmental Policy Act....
Horseback riders repair stretch of Spanish Creek Trail Volunteers at the Spanish Creek Campground shoveled 30 pounds of gravel into buckets and then dumped six of them into mules' packs. The mules mostly did the rest. "I'm just like a truck driver or an engineer on a train," Bob Hoverson, who on Tuesday was leading the Nine Mile Mule Pack Train, of the U.S. Forest Service, from the campground into the Gallatin National Forest's wilderness. There, volunteers with Gallatin Valley Backcountry Horsemen were repairing a one-and-a-half-mile stretch of the Spanish Creek Trail. Hikers, bikers and horseback riders use the trail, and the Horsemen adopted it so that everyone could continue to enjoy it, Rich Inman, president of the organization supporting backcountry recreation on horseback, said. The team of stock animals, based near Missoula, were to make six trips into the woods Tuesday and several more on Wednesday and Thursday, hauling gravel that one or two volunteers then spread out over the trail....
National designation for Sedona's Red Rock area? The idea has been kicked around for much of the past decade and appeared to be on the fast track two years ago. After all, it seemed to be a natural pairing - the awe-inspiring Red Rock country in the Sedona area becoming a federally designated National Scenic Area, like the Columbia River Gorge in the Pacific Northwest and California's Mono Lake. But even with Coconino National Forest, the city of Sedona and supervisors of Coconino and Yavapai counties supporting the measure, it has died on the vine thus far among the Arizona congressional delegation. Sedona-area realtors complain that such a designation would tie the hands of private-property interests and have found a receptive ear in U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., who represents the Sedona area....
Witwer aims to protect landowners, access to 14ers Private landowners who allow hikers on their property should be protected from lawsuits when those hikers get hurt, a Genesee lawmaker said last week. Rep. Rob Witwer reserved a bill title last week in response to several landowners who have asked hikers to stay off their property. Those landowners own private mining claims around four of the state's 14,000-foot peaks. The issue made headlines earlier this year when three landowners with mining claims around four fourteeners — Mount Democrat, Mount Bross, Mount Cameron and Mount Lincoln — told the U.S. Forest Service they didn't want hikers crossing their claims in order to reach the famed summits. The mountains are popular because they're straightforward hikes and all four can be climbed in a day....
Horse power helps maintain the trail The Pacific Crest Trail is not just a hiking trail but an equestrian freeway spanning three states. It's built to specifications that horses can handle, with more gentle descents than some hiking trails, one reason hikers find it so enjoyable. While about 300 hikers attempt the full 2,650-mile trail each year, only four parties on horseback are known to have completed it. Most equestrians use the trail for weekend or weeklong adventures. And, similar to conflicts between cars and big rigs on the freeway, there is friction between hikers and horseback riders on the Pacific Crest Trail....
Details scant on federal plan for spotted owl The shy northern spotted owl – last decade’s symbol of the Pacific Northwest logging wars – once again finds itself at the center of the dispute. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has agreed to develop a recovery plan for the rare bird, which has been listed as threatened with extinction since 1990. It’s too early to say whether it would further restrict logging in forests where the owl lives. “We are in the very early stages of developing a process for doing this,” said Joan Jewett, a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service spokeswoman in Portland. The move comes about nine months after the service reaffirmed its decision to extend Endangered Species Act protection to the creature....
Starting from scratch The crux of the effort is a transplant procedure that more recently features Zimmerman Lake as an important hub in providing a source of eggs from a free-ranging stock. Trouble is, DNA testing now reveals that the greenbacks established in Zimmerman in 1996 are not genetically pure. The current Zimmerman greenbacks resemble the pure strain in every way discernible to the unscientific eye. But continued use of progeny from this source to establish populations in additional waters would perpetuate a genetic flaw. Faced with hard choices, the recovery team elected to err on the side of caution. The solution? Eliminate the Zimmerman stock and start over, which is precisely what DOW biologist Ken Kehmeier and his crew will accomplish with a massive injection of the chemical Fintrol....
Three snails, one shrimp designed as endangered species The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday it will list four invertebrates found in New Mexico and Texas as endangered and designate critical habitat for them. The decision settles a federal lawsuit filed in April 2004 by the Center for Biological Diversity and Forest Guardians. The groups sued the agency and Interior Secretary Gale Norton, claiming the survival of the four species was being threatened by groundwater depletion, water pollution, oil and gas development and destruction of their habitat. The four species are three types of tiny snails - the Roswell springsnail, Koster's tryonia and Pecos assiminea - and a freshwater shrimp called Noel's amphipod. All four are found within the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Roswell, N.M. The Pecos assiminea also is found in West Texas....
In switch, scientist backs dam removal An Idaho biologist who argued for a quarter-century that fish ladders were good enough to prevent salmon from dying out now says four dams on the Snake River in Washington state ought to be removed to help the endangered fish. Don Chapman, 74, wants to get rid of the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite dams, between the Idaho border and where the Snake River flows into the Columbia River. They produce an average of 1,239 megawatts of power, enough to light Seattle, and allow barge shipping of grain and other goods from Lewiston, Idaho, to Portland. Chapman for years worked as a consultant for electric utilities, arguing that man-made bypass systems for fish, such as ladders and barges, were enough to keep salmon populations viable. He now says warming of the Columbia River and its tributaries, and changes in the Pacific Ocean that may be caused by global warming, necessitate breaching of barriers to help fish migrate upstream....
Editorial: Utah should be skeptical of city's designs on water You can't drink the bottom half of a glass of water. Yet the ranchers who eke out a living along the Utah-Nevada border have good reason to believe that that is exactly what Las Vegas is trying to do, and they rightly fear what may happen to the top half as a result. The water authority that serves the mushrooming city of light says it is not casting its thirsty eye on the water that by law and tradition belongs to - or at least is used by - ranchers and other Snake Valley residents. It just wants the water next to it, and under it, as it reaches out to slake the growth of a community that has more than doubled in population in the past 15 years. The plan is to sink some wells near Baker, Nev., and pipe 25,000 acre-feet of water a year via a 500-mile pipeline into the parched cisterns of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Even though the pipeline won't cross the state line, it is clear that the project will have a hydrological impact on Utah. And, so, Utah state officials must sign off on it. Those officials should be very reluctant to do so, certainly not without exhaustive scientific study that has yet to be done. If the ranchers are right, they are far from the only ones who would suffer from the Vegas plan....
Column: The beginning of everywhere For me, this is the crux of the matter, because a local rancher, Tom Maclay, has proposed turning Lob Peak into a year-round resort, including ski lifts, a golf course and condos. He's carved ski runs into the hillside above his home on his land and has petitioned the forest service to extend his operation all the way to the summit of Lob Peak. He envisions a little Vail or Sun Valley, I imagine, or Alta. Although current land-use plans forbid development, he's looking for loopholes and ways around it -- which he just might find. What is at stake, I believe, is not one more mountain, one less mountain lion, or 10,000 more jobs. It is a sense of wholeness, of integrity and the idea of proportion. What's only now becoming understood, and still very hazily, is the idea that the interior and exterior landscapes depend on each other. What is unhealthy in one is reflected in the other. Emerson called us "part and parcel of nature," but we behave as though nature is something "out there."....
FDA: Progress Made In Revising Cattle Feed Ban The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has still made no changes to its mad-cow safeguard policy for cattle 18 months after announcing it needed to be strengthened, but officials are now claiming progress in the agency's efforts. Review of public feedback on FDA proposals to overhaul its "feed ban" is finished, spokeswoman Rae Jones said, and the agency has drafted a new rule being considered for publication. If the rule is agreed upon at the FDA, the agency will once again hold a public comment session. "A draft proposed regulation is under review," Jones said. The FDA oversees the safety of animal feed, and mad-cow disease - or bovine spongiform encephalopathy - is believed to spread through feed if it contains infected bovine material....
Rooster's tale The bright colors belie a bleak future for the 600-acre ranch. D.C. Cogburn, 66, lost a torturous two-year-long lawsuit against two hot-air balloonists who he claims panicked his ostriches into a lethal stampede. Disaster blew in on Feb. 3, 2002 - "my birthday," Cogburn noted - when two enormous hot-air balloons, propane burners roaring, loomed over his ranch near Picacho Peak. Cogburn said the ostriches mistook the balloons for predators. The ostriches stampeded, trampling 7,000 feet of fence to the ground. Two dozen ostriches died of injuries within days....
Woman hopes to lasso help to honor the last of the cowboys Anita Witt reluctantly accepts the fact that ranching is disappearing in the Roaring Fork Valley. But she's determined to preserve the legacy of the ranchers and cowboys. Witt, a longtime Missouri Heights resident and historian, wrote a book recently that tells the story of the last of the cowboys. Now she's part of a team that's trying to preserve interviews with those old cowpokes on film. Witt is working with the Mt. Sopris Historical Society, American Spirit Productions, and producers Chip Comins & Jolie Ramo to condense 20 hours of interviews into a 30-minute or so documentary called "Last of the Cowboys." It's important, she said, for future generations to understand what the valley was like before it was developed. The interviews were with 26 ranchers living in the Roaring Fork or lower Colorado River valleys. All subjects are elderly men who are second- or third-generation ranchers....
Home on the ranch Nowadays, people may think of the American cowboy's life as simplistic, as Hollywood portrays it in movies. But John Smith's life has been far from simple. On March 15, 1925, the day Smith was born, he began his life on a Texas ranch, and his future as a cowboy, on the 44,000-acre Smith Ranch, between Childress and Wellington, Texas, near the Red River. "My grandmother would put a pillow on the saddle horn and Granddaddy would put me in front and he rode in a trot, just riding," Smith said....
===
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Home again, but it's changed Wearing gray stubble and a sweat-soaked ball cap, 72-year-old Buddy Lobato rambles up a rough dirt road in a faded sky- blue Toyota pickup, leaving a thick cloud of dust in his wake. He brings the truck to an abrupt stop in front of a padlocked gate and hops out. With calloused hands, he pulls a silver key from the pocket of his work jeans and swings the metal gate open. The mountainous land he calls la merced, meaning "the gift" in Spanish, spreads for 124 square miles before him. He's home again after 45 years. "I never expected to be back. But I never gave up hope," he says. Lobato, a fifth-generation Hispanic rancher who began grazing 20 head of cattle on the land last summer, is one of 519 descendants of San Luis Valley homesteaders given legal permission in the past year - including 410 on July 26 - to return to a land that had been off limits for more than 40 years. Up to 1,000 settlers' descendants may eventually be given keys to the property....
Lawsuit says government erred in allowing wolf kills A federal agency didn't follow required procedures when giving Michigan and Wisconsin permission to kill wolves that attack livestock or pets, an animal protection group says. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued permits allowing the two states to use lethal control measures against problem wolves. Michigan's permit, received in April, says the state can kill up to 20 per year. In a lawsuit filed last week, the Humane Society of the United States and 11 other organizations said the agency failed to notify the public and take comments before issuing the permits, steps required under the Endangered Species Act....
Spotted owl is on a dangerous decline In Washington, the plan to save the spotted owl is not working. The little-seen bird that launched the gut-wrenching timber wars of the early 1990s is declining in this state at nearly twice the rate predicted by federal scientists. And the pace at which the bird is spiraling toward extinction is quickening, researchers say. Some of the steepest declines are in the Cascades just east of Seattle. Two-thirds of the owl nesting sites known in Washington a dec-ade ago have been abandoned, according to state researchers. Some of those forests on private land already have been cut, meaning it will be many decades before those lands shelter spotted owls again -- if ever....
Study aims to protect rare plant A study this summer of the rare blowout penstemon - a plant that was considered extinct for 20 years until it was rediscovered in Nebraska in 1968 - is expected to help protect the species and its sand dune habitat. The plant was found in shifting sand dunes in central Wyoming in 1996 by Frank Blomquist, a U.S. Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologist. This summer, that population was studied by BLM staff, two university professors, a botanist with the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database and an intern with the Chicago Botanic Gardens....
Ferret release scheduled State and federal wildlife officials plan to reintroduce a group of black-footed ferrets north of here in an effort to expand the range of the first reintroduced colony. Martin Grenier, a biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said about 50 captive ferrets from the department's Sybille Canyon facility - and possibly wild-born ferrets from South Dakota's Conata Basin - would be released this fall both north and south of the Shirley Basin site where the nation's first black-footed ferret reintroduction was a success. "Both areas are as good as any potential black-footed ferret habitat in North America," Grenier said. "By releasing more black-footed ferrets close to the established populations, it helps ensure the long-term viability of the species in the area," he said. "Ultimately we hope these successful reintroductions will serve to get the animal removed from the endangered species list."....
Otters to get federal standing Sea otters that live from southwestern Cook Inlet to the tip of the Aleutian Chain will now get more federal protection and a biological investigation into why their population has crashed by more than two-thirds since 1980. Alaska's southwest stock of northern sea otters will be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, officials with the local office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday. If published today in the Federal Register as scheduled, the decision will take effect Sept. 8. Within a few months, officials hope to appoint a team that will find out what, if anything, people can do to help the animals recover, said biologist Doug Burn, sea otter team leader for the agency in Anchorage....
A new push for elusive oil shale A series of tight deadlines set forth in the nation's new energy bill will force the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to lease lands in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming for oil-shale and tar sands development within 2 1/2 years. One of the key provisions for Utah is the language backed by the state's senior U.S. senator, Republican Orrin Hatch, aimed at reviving the U.S. oil shale and tar sands development, which went bust in the 1980s. In the run-up to the bill's Aug. 1 passage, Hatch said that while it would be years before the oil shale resource could be on the market, the bill would send a message "to everyone, including [the Department of the] Interior, that we're tired of messing around."....
Safe treatment of wild horses urged during federal roundup Advocates for wild horses Monday urged humane treatment for the 90 or so animals of the Spring Creek herd that the Bureau of Land Management says it will round up Aug. 21 from the battered desert rangeland of Disappointment Valley. The BLM intends to cut the herd from just over 100 horses to about 35 in an effort to restore some health to the range, which also supports a few hundred head of cattle as well as elk and other wildlife. The area also is being considered for oil and gas development. BLM officials held a hearing Monday in Dolores on their plans to ultimately cull 58 adults and 15 foals from the Spring Creek herd, the smallest of four wild federally managed herds in the state....
Wilderness deal no longer OK with judge A federal judge on Monday at least temporarily withdrew his 2003 approval of the controversial "No More Wilderness" settlement between Utah and the Interior Department, saying he did not want the court to become part of what is essentially a policy dispute over how the federal government manages public lands in the state. At the same time, U.S. District Court Judge Dee Benson emphasized that the settlement itself remains valid and in place. During a motion hearing at the Frank Moss Federal Courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City, Benson said that he never intended for his approval of the settlement to be considered a consent decree - and thus binding in perpetuity. He feared that such a reading of the agreement would tie the hands of future administrations in their ability to manage public lands as they see fit....
Dinosaur discovery Eyes pinned to the ground, fossil hunters Greg Kovalchuk and Mike Kelly were searching Central Oregon's dusty crevices for mollusk fossils late last summer when Kelly saw it. On a spot on Bureau of Land Management land near Prineville was a jagged rock marked with a white triangle. Kelly instantly knew it was a tooth. Nearby, he found a black and bone-colored cone-shaped tooth with striations and enamel. Twenty feet away on a slope, Kovalchuk spotted a piece of jawbone sticking out of the dirt. The earth was spilling 100 million-year-old secrets from a time when dinosaurs prowled on land and reptiles slithered in and out of oceans. The self-trained paleontologists found what is believed to be the first remains of a marine reptile called the plesiosaur that has been found in the Pacific Northwest....
It's bug versus weed in eastern Idaho pest battle Federal land managers are hoping a half-million beetles released last month in eastern Idaho will help them combat an outbreak of noxious weeds. Bureau of Land Management officials near Medicine Lodge released black dot spurge flea beetles and brown-legged spurge flea beetles to eat leafy spurge. They've resorted to so-called biological controls because they can't spray chemicals everywhere. Leafy spurge is feared because it can produce allergic reactions or blindness in humans and lesions on cattle....
USDA wants faster elk-feeding phase-out A federal agriculture agency is pushing a plan to quickly phase out supplemental feeding of elk here in order to best protect against the disease brucellosis. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, outlined its position in a May letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- the agency charged with examining how to eradicate the disease and manage elk and bison in the Jackson Hole area. The Casper Star-Tribune received a copy of the letter this week. Written by John R. Clifford, deputy administrator for veterinary services for APHIS, the letter supports elimination of supplemental feeding of elk and bison on the National Elk Refuge within five years -- Alternative 6 in a recently released draft bison and elk management plan. With the most aggressive timeline of any of the six alternatives, it also calls for fewer elk on the National Elk Refuge than "preferred alternative" of Fish and Wildlife....
Adult grizzly bear moved An adult male grizzly bear was relocated to the North Fork of the Shoshone River drainage this weekend after killing a sheep on public land. Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service trapped the bear Saturday in the Upper Green River drainage on the Bridger-Teton National Forest, where it had killed a sheep on a grazing allotment. The bear was relocated five miles east of Yellowstone National Park. The release site is northwest of Cody on the Shoshone National Forest and falls within the Grizzly Bear Recovery Zone....
Study: Wolves may help control wasting disease Predation by wolves may be an effective way to stop a deadly brain disease of deer and elk in Colorado, according to a recent study. A modeling study based on conditions at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado shows wolves could have "potent effects" on the rate of chronic wasting disease in the park's overabundant elk herds, according to three researchers. Existing control efforts, which focus on intensive culling to reduce herd numbers, have been expensive and, so far, ineffective....
Public lands are seeing an explosion in pot growing, and not by hippies FAMED for the biggest trees in the world, Sequoia National Park is now No. 1 in another flora department: marijuana growing, with more land carved up by pot growers than any other park. Parts of Sequoia, including the Kaweah River drainage and areas off Mineral King Road, are no-go zones for visitors and park rangers during the April-to-October growing season, when drug lords cultivate pot on an agribusiness-scale fit for the Central Valley. "It's so big that we have to focus our resources on one or two areas at a time, because otherwise it's beyond our scope," says Sequoia's lone special agent assigned to the marijuana war, who, for his own safety, can't be identified....
Remains may return to Sand Creek site With the coming creation of a national historic site where militiamen killed more than 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women and children in a surprise attack in November 1864, tribal officials plan to return some of their ancestors' remains to the location. President Bush last week signed a bill authorizing the National Park Service to take over land to create the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site near this Eastern Plains town. Tribal officials know of the remains of seven people killed in the attack and have already taken possession of three sets, said Steve Brady, a co-chairman of the Northern Cheyenne's Sand Creek Massacre Committee....
Trading green for green If you own a home in Las Vegas and want to make a buck, your most likely bet is to grab a shovel and attack your lawn. Homeowners there have been ripping out their grass feverishly in the name of water conservation, pulling up enough in the past few years to cover 900 football fields. The sod killers get $1 from the local water district for every square foot of green they remove. Now Flagstaff is following suit with its own one-time $500 rebate for households that remove at least 1,500 square feet of grass and replace it with rock or, ideally, hardy, native plants that don't need much water....
Anti-phone town not willing to change Ana Maria Spagna has to think hard about how long it's been since she talked on a telephone. Two months, she figures, maybe longer. It's not that Spagna is anti-social or suffering from some weird phone phobia. It's just that she, like nearly everyone else here in this remote mountain village, doesn't have a phone. And she'd like to keep it that way. More than a century after telephones came to towns like Seattle, a small company called WeavTel is pushing to connect Stehekin to the outside world. But instead of embracing the idea, many of the town's 100 or so year-round residents are fighting hard to keep WeavTel and the telephones out....
It's All Trew: Wild and woolly tales of animal encounters A neighbor working on a harvest crew in Rocky Ford, Colo., recalled waiting in line, sitting in a loaded grain truck at an elevator. He watched a string of dairy cows pass by alongside the fence across the road. Following close behind came a border collie faithfully bringing his herd in for the evening milking. About 15 minutes later, the dog returned in a long run barking at every leap. After another 15 minutes, he appeared again driving one cow he had missed. It figures that the dog's owner taught the dog to fetch the cows but needed to teach him how to count. A traveler near Miami, Texas, became sleepy and stiff from sitting. He stopped at a roadside windmill where some sheep were grazing nearby. Stepping over the fence, he stretched his back and started jogging toward the windmill to get a drink of cool water....
===
Home again, but it's changed Wearing gray stubble and a sweat-soaked ball cap, 72-year-old Buddy Lobato rambles up a rough dirt road in a faded sky- blue Toyota pickup, leaving a thick cloud of dust in his wake. He brings the truck to an abrupt stop in front of a padlocked gate and hops out. With calloused hands, he pulls a silver key from the pocket of his work jeans and swings the metal gate open. The mountainous land he calls la merced, meaning "the gift" in Spanish, spreads for 124 square miles before him. He's home again after 45 years. "I never expected to be back. But I never gave up hope," he says. Lobato, a fifth-generation Hispanic rancher who began grazing 20 head of cattle on the land last summer, is one of 519 descendants of San Luis Valley homesteaders given legal permission in the past year - including 410 on July 26 - to return to a land that had been off limits for more than 40 years. Up to 1,000 settlers' descendants may eventually be given keys to the property....
Lawsuit says government erred in allowing wolf kills A federal agency didn't follow required procedures when giving Michigan and Wisconsin permission to kill wolves that attack livestock or pets, an animal protection group says. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued permits allowing the two states to use lethal control measures against problem wolves. Michigan's permit, received in April, says the state can kill up to 20 per year. In a lawsuit filed last week, the Humane Society of the United States and 11 other organizations said the agency failed to notify the public and take comments before issuing the permits, steps required under the Endangered Species Act....
Spotted owl is on a dangerous decline In Washington, the plan to save the spotted owl is not working. The little-seen bird that launched the gut-wrenching timber wars of the early 1990s is declining in this state at nearly twice the rate predicted by federal scientists. And the pace at which the bird is spiraling toward extinction is quickening, researchers say. Some of the steepest declines are in the Cascades just east of Seattle. Two-thirds of the owl nesting sites known in Washington a dec-ade ago have been abandoned, according to state researchers. Some of those forests on private land already have been cut, meaning it will be many decades before those lands shelter spotted owls again -- if ever....
Study aims to protect rare plant A study this summer of the rare blowout penstemon - a plant that was considered extinct for 20 years until it was rediscovered in Nebraska in 1968 - is expected to help protect the species and its sand dune habitat. The plant was found in shifting sand dunes in central Wyoming in 1996 by Frank Blomquist, a U.S. Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologist. This summer, that population was studied by BLM staff, two university professors, a botanist with the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database and an intern with the Chicago Botanic Gardens....
Ferret release scheduled State and federal wildlife officials plan to reintroduce a group of black-footed ferrets north of here in an effort to expand the range of the first reintroduced colony. Martin Grenier, a biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said about 50 captive ferrets from the department's Sybille Canyon facility - and possibly wild-born ferrets from South Dakota's Conata Basin - would be released this fall both north and south of the Shirley Basin site where the nation's first black-footed ferret reintroduction was a success. "Both areas are as good as any potential black-footed ferret habitat in North America," Grenier said. "By releasing more black-footed ferrets close to the established populations, it helps ensure the long-term viability of the species in the area," he said. "Ultimately we hope these successful reintroductions will serve to get the animal removed from the endangered species list."....
Otters to get federal standing Sea otters that live from southwestern Cook Inlet to the tip of the Aleutian Chain will now get more federal protection and a biological investigation into why their population has crashed by more than two-thirds since 1980. Alaska's southwest stock of northern sea otters will be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, officials with the local office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday. If published today in the Federal Register as scheduled, the decision will take effect Sept. 8. Within a few months, officials hope to appoint a team that will find out what, if anything, people can do to help the animals recover, said biologist Doug Burn, sea otter team leader for the agency in Anchorage....
A new push for elusive oil shale A series of tight deadlines set forth in the nation's new energy bill will force the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to lease lands in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming for oil-shale and tar sands development within 2 1/2 years. One of the key provisions for Utah is the language backed by the state's senior U.S. senator, Republican Orrin Hatch, aimed at reviving the U.S. oil shale and tar sands development, which went bust in the 1980s. In the run-up to the bill's Aug. 1 passage, Hatch said that while it would be years before the oil shale resource could be on the market, the bill would send a message "to everyone, including [the Department of the] Interior, that we're tired of messing around."....
Safe treatment of wild horses urged during federal roundup Advocates for wild horses Monday urged humane treatment for the 90 or so animals of the Spring Creek herd that the Bureau of Land Management says it will round up Aug. 21 from the battered desert rangeland of Disappointment Valley. The BLM intends to cut the herd from just over 100 horses to about 35 in an effort to restore some health to the range, which also supports a few hundred head of cattle as well as elk and other wildlife. The area also is being considered for oil and gas development. BLM officials held a hearing Monday in Dolores on their plans to ultimately cull 58 adults and 15 foals from the Spring Creek herd, the smallest of four wild federally managed herds in the state....
Wilderness deal no longer OK with judge A federal judge on Monday at least temporarily withdrew his 2003 approval of the controversial "No More Wilderness" settlement between Utah and the Interior Department, saying he did not want the court to become part of what is essentially a policy dispute over how the federal government manages public lands in the state. At the same time, U.S. District Court Judge Dee Benson emphasized that the settlement itself remains valid and in place. During a motion hearing at the Frank Moss Federal Courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City, Benson said that he never intended for his approval of the settlement to be considered a consent decree - and thus binding in perpetuity. He feared that such a reading of the agreement would tie the hands of future administrations in their ability to manage public lands as they see fit....
Dinosaur discovery Eyes pinned to the ground, fossil hunters Greg Kovalchuk and Mike Kelly were searching Central Oregon's dusty crevices for mollusk fossils late last summer when Kelly saw it. On a spot on Bureau of Land Management land near Prineville was a jagged rock marked with a white triangle. Kelly instantly knew it was a tooth. Nearby, he found a black and bone-colored cone-shaped tooth with striations and enamel. Twenty feet away on a slope, Kovalchuk spotted a piece of jawbone sticking out of the dirt. The earth was spilling 100 million-year-old secrets from a time when dinosaurs prowled on land and reptiles slithered in and out of oceans. The self-trained paleontologists found what is believed to be the first remains of a marine reptile called the plesiosaur that has been found in the Pacific Northwest....
It's bug versus weed in eastern Idaho pest battle Federal land managers are hoping a half-million beetles released last month in eastern Idaho will help them combat an outbreak of noxious weeds. Bureau of Land Management officials near Medicine Lodge released black dot spurge flea beetles and brown-legged spurge flea beetles to eat leafy spurge. They've resorted to so-called biological controls because they can't spray chemicals everywhere. Leafy spurge is feared because it can produce allergic reactions or blindness in humans and lesions on cattle....
USDA wants faster elk-feeding phase-out A federal agriculture agency is pushing a plan to quickly phase out supplemental feeding of elk here in order to best protect against the disease brucellosis. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, outlined its position in a May letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- the agency charged with examining how to eradicate the disease and manage elk and bison in the Jackson Hole area. The Casper Star-Tribune received a copy of the letter this week. Written by John R. Clifford, deputy administrator for veterinary services for APHIS, the letter supports elimination of supplemental feeding of elk and bison on the National Elk Refuge within five years -- Alternative 6 in a recently released draft bison and elk management plan. With the most aggressive timeline of any of the six alternatives, it also calls for fewer elk on the National Elk Refuge than "preferred alternative" of Fish and Wildlife....
Adult grizzly bear moved An adult male grizzly bear was relocated to the North Fork of the Shoshone River drainage this weekend after killing a sheep on public land. Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service trapped the bear Saturday in the Upper Green River drainage on the Bridger-Teton National Forest, where it had killed a sheep on a grazing allotment. The bear was relocated five miles east of Yellowstone National Park. The release site is northwest of Cody on the Shoshone National Forest and falls within the Grizzly Bear Recovery Zone....
Study: Wolves may help control wasting disease Predation by wolves may be an effective way to stop a deadly brain disease of deer and elk in Colorado, according to a recent study. A modeling study based on conditions at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado shows wolves could have "potent effects" on the rate of chronic wasting disease in the park's overabundant elk herds, according to three researchers. Existing control efforts, which focus on intensive culling to reduce herd numbers, have been expensive and, so far, ineffective....
Public lands are seeing an explosion in pot growing, and not by hippies FAMED for the biggest trees in the world, Sequoia National Park is now No. 1 in another flora department: marijuana growing, with more land carved up by pot growers than any other park. Parts of Sequoia, including the Kaweah River drainage and areas off Mineral King Road, are no-go zones for visitors and park rangers during the April-to-October growing season, when drug lords cultivate pot on an agribusiness-scale fit for the Central Valley. "It's so big that we have to focus our resources on one or two areas at a time, because otherwise it's beyond our scope," says Sequoia's lone special agent assigned to the marijuana war, who, for his own safety, can't be identified....
Remains may return to Sand Creek site With the coming creation of a national historic site where militiamen killed more than 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women and children in a surprise attack in November 1864, tribal officials plan to return some of their ancestors' remains to the location. President Bush last week signed a bill authorizing the National Park Service to take over land to create the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site near this Eastern Plains town. Tribal officials know of the remains of seven people killed in the attack and have already taken possession of three sets, said Steve Brady, a co-chairman of the Northern Cheyenne's Sand Creek Massacre Committee....
Trading green for green If you own a home in Las Vegas and want to make a buck, your most likely bet is to grab a shovel and attack your lawn. Homeowners there have been ripping out their grass feverishly in the name of water conservation, pulling up enough in the past few years to cover 900 football fields. The sod killers get $1 from the local water district for every square foot of green they remove. Now Flagstaff is following suit with its own one-time $500 rebate for households that remove at least 1,500 square feet of grass and replace it with rock or, ideally, hardy, native plants that don't need much water....
Anti-phone town not willing to change Ana Maria Spagna has to think hard about how long it's been since she talked on a telephone. Two months, she figures, maybe longer. It's not that Spagna is anti-social or suffering from some weird phone phobia. It's just that she, like nearly everyone else here in this remote mountain village, doesn't have a phone. And she'd like to keep it that way. More than a century after telephones came to towns like Seattle, a small company called WeavTel is pushing to connect Stehekin to the outside world. But instead of embracing the idea, many of the town's 100 or so year-round residents are fighting hard to keep WeavTel and the telephones out....
It's All Trew: Wild and woolly tales of animal encounters A neighbor working on a harvest crew in Rocky Ford, Colo., recalled waiting in line, sitting in a loaded grain truck at an elevator. He watched a string of dairy cows pass by alongside the fence across the road. Following close behind came a border collie faithfully bringing his herd in for the evening milking. About 15 minutes later, the dog returned in a long run barking at every leap. After another 15 minutes, he appeared again driving one cow he had missed. It figures that the dog's owner taught the dog to fetch the cows but needed to teach him how to count. A traveler near Miami, Texas, became sleepy and stiff from sitting. He stopped at a roadside windmill where some sheep were grazing nearby. Stepping over the fence, he stretched his back and started jogging toward the windmill to get a drink of cool water....
===
Monday, August 08, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Keeping the water clean Roger Muggli knows the value of energy. The Muggli Bros. alfalfa pellet processing plant just outside Miles City, Mont., spends about $10,000 for utilities every winter. The Muggli ranch also relies on flood-irrigation from the Tongue River to sustain 1,650 acres of alfalfa and barley crops, which are the base of the pellet plant. "I am acutely aware of energy costs. I know we need affordable energy," Muggli barked into his cell phone recently, taking a break from his daily ranch work. "But what the hell kind of a tax base will we have if this valley goes to hell?" Coal-bed methane producers on the Wyoming side of the Tongue pull large volumes of groundwater from coal seams in order to produce gas, and they'd like to add more of the by-product water to the Tongue and other Montana-bound waters....
Well near Helena yields no gas Natural gas exploration near here revealed no gas, and Canada's Suncor Energy Inc., which exercised mineral rights owned by the family of Montana's senior U.S. senator, is preparing to remove equipment from the site. An environmental group said the news strengthens the case against petroleum exploration in Montana's environmentally sensitive Rocky Mountain Front, where the mountains meet the plains. The petroleum industry said that assertion is not supported by facts. The $10 million drilling of a 16,000-foot well at Flesher Pass near Helena began in March and ended last month. The Helena area's last gas well, drilled by Unocal in 1988, also was dry....
Protect the corridor? Pronghorn antelope have traveled through here for thousands of years, gradually adapting to roads and subdivisions as they migrate between the high peaks of the Tetons and warmer, flatter lands of the Red Desert. But the animals, which make the 160-mile trek every spring and fall, may not be prepared for the metamorphosis coming to this sagebrush-covered swath of western Wyoming. What was once a quiet landscape is becoming a land of gas rigs and expensive housing developments. Conservationists are concerned the pronghorns' journey -- thought to be the second-longest land-based animal migration in the Western Hemisphere -- will get lost in the local population boom, much of which is due to a dramatic increase in energy development. A number of local groups have proposed the creation of the country's first "national migration corridor" to protect the traveling animals....
A Sense of Deja Boom The word frenzy wouldn't really begin to describe what's going on in and around this county seat of 1,400, where active gas wells outnumber residents by almost 2 to 1. In Sublette County alone, more than a billion cubic feet of gas is being extracted every day. Just over the horizon from Mayor Rose Skinner's window at Town Hall, 40 drilling crews work around the clock, sending drill bits deep beneath the Jonah and Pinedale Gas Fields. Across a landscape that once served as a backdrop for Marlboro Man commercials, roughnecks install new roads and lay miles of heavy pipe. Shiny new pickups crowd busy Pine Street, and saloons like the Cowboy Bar & Lounge draw rowdy patrons every payday. "We're happy to ride this boom," says Mayor Skinner, 84, "as far as it'll take us." Yet listen closely, and there's a forlorn quiver in her voice--indeed in the voices of many of this state's half-million hard-boiled residents. Dating back to the 1920s, there's never been an energy boom in Wyoming without a bust trailing behind it. The never-ending cycles are an enduring part of life here. Boom is better, no doubt about that. But folks in Pinedale know that even good times bring issues of their own. And while the getting's good, state leaders are searching for ways to get Wyoming off its economic roller coaster....
Column: Lies from Big Oil The oil and gas industry in New Mexico is starting to sound like tobacco companies. Their lobbyists tell us repeatedly that there's no danger to public health in their explorations and extractions. And just like the tobacco industry's refusal to admit that smoking causes cancer, energy lobbyists here absurdly refuse to admit that mining and drilling around aquifers causes any danger to fresh water supplies. One oil lobbyist in New Mexico recently went so far as to proclaim that spills and accidents from oil drilling were "biodegradable" and would cause no problem for the environment. Let's look at Otero Mesa and its vast supplies of fresh water - enough, some say, to supply a million people for 100 years. Saying there's no danger to that water from drilling for crude and natural gas is like saying no human error is possible or that oil drilling didn't involve the use of hazardous chemicals or that oil isn't often accompanied by brine or that New Mexico didn't already have 6,700 documented incidents of groundwater contamination from pits in which excess crude oil and its water products are dumped. In leasing Otero Mesa for oil and gas exploration, the Bureau of Land Management has a plan in which 70 percent of its proposed leasing area has not one special provision for groundwater protection....
Park Service objects to oil lease as spoiling Canyonlands view The National Park Service has filed objections with the Bureau of Land Management over plans for oil and gas drilling in eastern Utah, saying the rigs would spoil the expansive, lonely view from Canyonlands National Park. The BLM plans to lease two parcels outside the 527-square-mile park, where drill rigs would compete with a landscape of towering buttes and mesa tops against the 12,000-foot La Sal mountains. The bureau dropped two other nearby parcels over Park Service objections, and BLM officials say they'll reconsider objections a week before the Aug. 16 auction to other leasing tracts. The auction is set to offer 198,000 acres of BLM and national forest lands for oil and gas drilling. About 3,200 acres proposed for leasing "contribute to the exceptional landscape as viewed and experienced from the rims on BLM lands and as viewed from scenic overlooks within Canyonlands National Park," Tony Schetzsle, the agency's southeast Utah group superintendent, objected in a letter....
Drilling on Front leases still on hold Natural gas leases on Bureau of Land Management acreage along Montana's Rocky Mountain Front will remain off-limits until a far-reaching study is complete. In the interim, those opposed to drilling are being encouraged to work with lease holders on trades or buyouts. "Before we take any action, we need a land-use plan," Rebecca Watson, assistant secretary of land and minerals management for the Department of Interior, said in a recent interview. With development potentially on hold until at least 2010, those opposed to drilling are encouraged to work out options for buying or swapping existing leases, she said. "When we made this announcement, we invited folks to use this time to work with their congressional delegation and find other solutions," she said....
Livestock on BLM lands in Jarbidge safe for now On Friday, attorneys for the BLM, Western Watersheds and intervening entities such as Simplot Livestock -- an affected livestock producer -- agreed that the BLM would notify permittees that same day of Winmill's order. The parties further agreed that livestock producers will not be required to remove animals before Aug. 19. The BLM and livestock producers affected by Winmill's decision still have the opportunity to ask for a stay of the order or to appeal it. "Right now, we're still assessing what we're going to do," said Jeff Steele, Jarbidge district manager. "We have some real concerns as far as the livestock operators out there." Steele estimates that about 3,840 animals would typically be on the 28 allotments but the figure is likely less now due to the recent Clover Fire. The BLM has conducted a number of projects in the Jarbidge Resource Area to improve rangeland conditions, Steele said....
Walden Language to Protect Steens Mountain Landowners In Oregon Approved by House The U.S. House of Representatives last week approved legislation which included a provision requested by U.S. Representative Greg Walden (R-OR) in which the Congress expresses its strong support for landowners to have full access to their property on Steens Mountain. He added, "Today, however, bureaucratic red tape hamstrings landowners and lessees with over-burdensome regulations, which only allow them access to their property at certain times, force them to use arduous and time-consuming routes, and even dictate what types of vehicles they can use to access their property. This is decidedly not what our cooperative spirit intended when we developed the Act, nor what was supported by my colleagues in the Congress upon its passage." The legislation states: "The managers urge the Bureau to comply with the provision of the Steens Act and allow landowner, lessee and inholder access to their property within the boundary of the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area. Unless funding is provided for land acquisition or exchange, landowners should be afforded full access to their property." (H-Rept. 109-80, pg. 14)....
Hit and miss The assessment John Novotny's team wanted to do wouldn't have cost the homeowner near Big Timber a dime. It would be a quick run-through of the fire hazards on his forested property, detailing what could be done -- with financial help from the federal government -- to help survive a wildfire that Novotny saw as all but inevitable. But the homeowner declined, leery of having a bunch of his trees in the narrow canyon in southern Montana marked for removal. It's a response Novotny has run into more than once in the last year, as the veteran firefighter has knocked on doors, preaching the gospel of defensible space to any homeowner willing to listen. And even trees in the nearby forest -- ignitable, "like the white tip of match" -- couldn't help him change some minds, he said....
Editorial: Judge rightly upholds rule protecting old-growth forests A million acres of old-growth forests in the Northwest that may be home to endangered and threatened plant and animal species could be affected by the outcome of a court dispute over a reasonable Clinton-era rule that requires Forest Service managers to look for those species before logging. Those old-growth forest habitats must be protected. Last week, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Seattle ruled correctly that the Bush administration acted illegally in eliminating the look-before-you-log rule before federal agencies determined whether threatened species would be adequately protected without it. At risk are more than a million acres of old-growth forests that are outside forest reserves set up in the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan to protect northern spotted owls. The plan left areas of old growth open to possible logging but rightly required logging companies to first look for the presence of threatened species before cutting down old trees that might provide them homes....
America's public forests landlocked by sea of development America's national forests are beginning to resemble "islands" of green wilderness, increasingly trapped by an expanding sea of new houses, a forestry researcher will report today at the 90th annual Ecological Society of America (ESA) meeting in Montreal, Canada. The widening circle of development around forests such as the Cleveland National Forest in Southern California is serving to block natural corridors, or wild "highways" that enable plants and wildlife to move easily between nearby forests, says Volker Radeloff, a forestry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Radeloff analyzed government census data on housing increases in and near all U.S. national forests between 1950 and 2000. "(In an isolated state), a forest cannot function as well for biodiversity," says Radeloff, who conducted his analysis in collaboration with UW-Madison graduate students and the North Central Research Station of the United States Forest Service. Radeloff's findings also highlight significant growth within the forests themselves. Between 1950 and 2000, the number of housing units within national forest boundaries increased from 500,000 to 1.5 million, an increase Radeloff largely attributes to inholdings, or parcels of forest land owned by private citizens....
U.S. Senate OKs bill on land swap A massive and controversial federal and private land swap proposed for Northern Arizona may be closer to reality with recent passage of a Senate bill. But uncertainty remains over how much longer the rancher involved is willing to wait. The long-stalled exchange would involve Yavapai Ranch owner Fred Ruskin turning over about 35,000 acres of his land southeast of Seligman to Prescott National Forest in return for federal land scattered throughout the Coconino and Prescott national forests, mostly near or in cities. The more than 15,000 acres that Ruskin would get include a 2,200-acre parcel bordering Interstate 17 and Arizona 260 near Camp Verde. It also includes more than 2,000 acres that Ruskin could sell to Flagstaff and Williams for use by the cities for airport and other municipal and industrial expansion....
Pretty killers You might mistake Malta starthistle for a wildflower. The bright yellow blooms look pretty enough. But this weed is a disaster for Arizona. It can poison livestock. It degrades wildlife habitat. It increases erosion, because its taproot does little to hold soil in place. It's pushing out native plants, including the endangered Arizona cliffrose. It's ruining campgrounds in the Tonto National Forest, taking them over in spiny thickets. When there's a flood or an earthquake or hurricane, we pull out all the stops. But weeds? It's hard to get people to take them seriously. Yet weeds like Malta starthistle are laying waste to Arizona's distinctive landscape. They're replacing native vegetation and fueling vast wildfires that wipe out desert plants for good. More and more stretches of the Sonoran Desert are losing saguaros, chollas, ocotillos and palo verde trees. The magical scenery that exists nowhere else on earth, with its strange creatures like javelinas and Gila monsters, is disappearing....
Supporters of roadless land keep fighting losing battle Bell Meadow is at the heart of an 8,200-acre area officially designated as roadless by Stanislaus National Forest administrators. It's also in the hearts of many Californians who hunt, hike or fish. That makes Bell Meadow and other roadless areas in California's Sierra Nevada a potent political tool in the nationwide debate over whether to allow mining, oil drilling and logging in the remaining roadless remnants within America's national forests. The Bush administration is winning that debate at the moment. In May, the administration announced it was dropping a Clinton administration ban on road building, logging, and oil and gas drilling on 58 million acres of roadless forest lands. Wilderness areas are the most protected federal lands, guaranteed forever free of motor traffic and development. Next are roadless areas, places that are still pristine but which weren't granted wilderness protection to leave open the possibility of someday logging or mining there. The rule change is most likely to make a difference soon in forests in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and Montana, where companies are seeking to tap oil and gas deposits....
Court blocks logging plan for Alaskan forest A federal appeals court has struck down a plan that allows logging on roadless areas in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, handing environmentalists a victory in a battle over wild lands in the world's largest intact temperate rain forest. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a 1997 plan adopted by the U.S. Forest Service under the Clinton administration exaggerated the demand for Tongass timber, failed to take into account the effect on wildlife and didn't adequately consider options that called for timber-cutting in fewer roadless areas. "This is a huge win," said Niel Lawrence, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the conservation groups that challenged the plan in court....
Valley of the Dam Dam! Water, Power, Politics, and Preservation in Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite National Park By John Warfield Simpson. Pantheon. 384 pages. Yosemite National Park is a beautiful land of betrayal. The name of the valley, with its towering waterfalls in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, was taken from the Yosemite Indians, who were massacred and driven from their sacred home by the U.S. Army in 1851. Fifteen years later, Congress pledged to preserve Yosemite as the world's first national park. But budget cuts crippled efforts to manage the wilderness as a public recreation area, and it was quickly overrun by poachers, vandals, timber companies and profiteers who opened saloons and hotels inside the park. The federal government promised to prevent any harm to Yosemite's meadows, forests and cliffs. But in 1923 it broke its word by allowing the city of San Francisco to flood a 1,900-acre section of the park and raise a 30-story-tall hydroelectric dam and eight-mile-long municipal reservoir. The drowning of the park's Hetch Hetchy valley under 117 billion gallons of water is the subject of John Warfield Simpson's new book, Dam!....
Column: The truth on rec fees I am one of the critics of public-land user fees that Interior Secretary Gale Norton referred to in a recent Denver Post guest commentary that praised the federal fee program. Norton tries to blur the distinction between the national parks and the vast tracts of undeveloped land managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Entrance fees at national parks have never been part of this debate. Instead, the issue is whether Americans should be charged just to drive through a national forest, to park at a trailhead and go for a hike, to use a picnic table at a Bureau of Land Management scenic overlook, or to reach undeveloped backcountry. The trial fee program touted by Norton as an "enormous success" (called fee demo) authorized fees for all of those things, and was one of the most unpopular changes to public land policy in our history. Fee demo couldn't have survived an honest legislative process. Instead, it was buried in a huge spending bill....
Forest Service wants to close some roads on Reno's Peavine Peak The U.S. Forest Service is pushing to close some roads on a mountain popular with off-road vehicle enthusiasts, mountain bikers and hikers, saying a "free-for-all" situation is damaging the peak. About 75 miles of roads and trails on Peavine Peak just northwest of the city would be closed under a travel management plan unveiled by the agency. At the same time, the Forest Service is seeking to keep more than 100 miles of existing roads and trails open for motorized and non-motorized travel on the 8,260-foot peak....
Great Basin ranchers fight Vegas water grab This speck of a town nestled at the foot of the Deep Creek Mountains is miles from anywhere with pavement, and as such is an oasis, both literally and figuratively, in the harsh environment of Utah's west desert. Runoff from the mountain canyons and gurgling springs and seeps furnish greenery and livelihoods in a place that would otherwise be devoid of both. Can such a fragile environment survive a proposal by southern Nevada water officials to pump 25,000 acre-feet of water annually from groundwater wells near Baker, Nev., to Las Vegas via 500 miles of pipeline? Not to hear rancher Cecil Garland tell it. Take a closer look around, the 79-year-old says, and it doesn't take long to spot the withered vegetation and dried-up springs that dot the land - proof positive to Garland and others that the drought that has gripped the Great Basin for most of the decade has yet to release its hold. Even after the best water year in two decades....
Federal inaction unravels Klamath water rights pact Lack of federal support has derailed what was heralded earlier this year as a milestone agreement between the Klamath Tribes and irrigators above Upper Klamath Lake in the Klamath Basin. The agreement that sought to resolve longstanding disputes over water rights hinged on millions of dollars in federal funding to buy out newer water rights and implement water restoration projects. But federal officials have shown no interest in allocating the funds, said former state Sen. Steve Harper, R-Klamath Falls, who helped broker the agreement. “We sure haven’t seen action,” Harper said last week. Water remains a contentious and controversial issue in the basin, where the federal government’s cutoff of irrigation water in summer 2001 led to protests and national media attention....
Oregon moves to conserve sage grouse Oregon adopted a new plan for conserving sage grouse Friday that seeks to keep populations stable through voluntary habitat improvements coordinated by local councils. Meeting in Salem, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted the plan unanimously, putting Oregon in line with Bush administration policy and most Western states that promote voluntary efforts and local control rather than mandatory federal regulation. "I think it's a good plan," John O'Keefe, who represented private landowners on a team that helped craft the sage grouse plan, said from his cattle ranch in Adel. "We tried to make it so local working groups can steer the (sage grouse) effort, can recognize where the issues are and address those. There is a lot of room and a lot of focus now on voluntary projects."....
Final EIS released in plan to poison Bob lakes A final environmental impact statement has been released for a project that would poison fish in 21 lakes in and around the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex and restock them with westslope cutthroat trout. The state Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bonneville Power Administration have to agree to the plan, which could help keep the state fish off the endangered species list. The agencies are expected to issue their decisions this fall. The EIS offers four alternatives to carrying out the project, ranging from no action, to carrying out the proposed plan using a combination of horse packing, aircraft and motorboats in the wilderness area, where there are motorized vehicle restrictions. Another option would involve removing as many hybrid trout from the lakes as possible, and then stocking the lakes with westslope cutthroat on a "frequent or annual" basis in an attempt to dominate the remaining hybrid trout....
Leapin’ Lizards! Iguanas running wild along the Hillsboro Canal area In Boca Raton, and other areas of Palm Beach County, iguanas that can reach six feet in length are multiplying rapidly. Native to Central and South America, the voracious, fleet-footed iguana has no natural enemies in the suburbs of South Florida. “And that’s too bad,” said Della Simmons who lives just across the county line in Deerfield Beach. “That’s too bad they have no enemies here, because they sure do stink.” Between Boca Raton’s southern border and the Broward County city of Deerfield Beach is the Hillsboro Canal. Living along the canal is an increasingly number of large iguanas, according to both Boca Raton and Deerfield Beach users of Pioneer Park just across the county line in Deerfield Beach. “We see them there all the time – all along the canal and in the park itself,” Maria Ruiz said....
Reid to lockhorns with ram Both were born in the same state. Both have loyal constituencies and perks that come with their leadership positions. But politics and economics have conspired to put Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and his neighbor, a desert bighorn sheep nicknamed Horndog, on a collision course. The senator is pushing a $234 million Las Vegas-area project, the Hoover Dam Bypass, which includes a four-lane bridge and connector roads that will allow traffic to go around the dam. But that expansion threatens Horndog, the alpha ram of a herd of about 55 desert bighorn sheep in the Eldorado Mountains above Hoover Dam, who have to cross U.S. Highway 93 to get to a park they favor in Boulder City....
Groups Split Over Risks to Grizzlies in Yellowstone Park As the Bush administration prepares to remove Yellowstone's grizzly bears from the endangered species list, a schism has emerged in the environmental movement over whether the bears remain at risk. The nation's largest environmental group, the National Wildlife Federation, says it now supports delisting the bears, whose numbers have bounced back impressively after three decades of federal protection. But a number of powerful organizations, including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice, say that the future of the grizzlies is still in doubt. They are threatening to sue the Bush administration if, as expected, it removes Yellowstone grizzlies from the list....
Coyotes in the Suburbs, Bears in the Backyard Unlike their western counterparts, newly arrived coyote populations in the northeastern United States are having a hard time surviving, despite an apparently abundant and healthy diet of rabbits, deer, and plants. Daniel Bogan (New York State Museum) and colleagues found that some 80 percent of these large predators are killed each year, mostly by people in the area. Out of twenty-one coyotes radio-tracked by the researchers, seven were killed by cars, six were shot and one was poisoned. The researchers suggest that because the coyotes are still learning how to adjust to roads and other hazards, their populations are failing to thrive in habitat that otherwise serves their needs quite nicely...Human-bear conflicts are on the rise in New Jersey, the most densely peopled state of the United States. In 2003, some 3,000 reported incidences occurred between people and the black bear (Ursus americanus), up from only 285 reported cases in 1995. Not only have black bear numbers been increasing since 1970, the bears are frequenting suburban areas, increasing their likelihood of coming into contact with people....
When Extinct Isn't: Questioning the term after a bird's return The video images may be tiny, grainy, dark and fleeting, but many looking at them see something glorious: evidence that at least one ivory-billed woodpecker--an 18- to 20-inch-tall bird with a wingspan of some 30 inches, last seen in the U.S. in 1944--is alive in the bottomland forest of eastern Arkansas. After a year of traipsing and canoeing through the Big Woods and its bayous, many inconclusive recordings of ivory-bill-like calls, seven good sightings and one fortuitous videotaping, scientists and conservationists announced in April that the bird was not extinct after all. If the discovery holds up, the ivory-billed woodpecker will not be the only U.S. species recently returned from oblivion. In May, just a few days after the ivory-bill news, the Nature Conservancy announced the discovery in Alabama of three snails listed as extinct. A few weeks later, botanists at the University of California at Berkeley reported finding the Mount Diablo buckwheat, a tiny pink-flowered plant that had not been seen since 1936. At least 24 species of other presumed or possibly extinct plants, insects and other organisms have been found during natural heritage surveys in North America since 1974, according to Mark Schaefer, president of NatureServe, a nonprofit conservation group based in Arlington, Va. There are examples from elsewhere as well....
Global Warming's Effects Extend To World's Smallest Butterfly The latest issue of Conservation Biology examines the viability of the Sinai baton blue and the results of human population pressures. The study predicts that in the absence of global warming, grazing, and plant collection (three activities directly linked to humans) the world's smallest butterfly would persist for at least 200 years. The population could withstand small increases in grazing intensity that would decrease their climate, but not increases in temperature. As the level of global warming raises its impact, extinction rapidly accelerates. This implies "... that there may be an annual average temperature, specific to each endangered species, above which extinction becomes much more likely," authors Martin Hoyle and Mike James state. There is no such threshold of grazing pressure. The authors mapped the entire global range of this butterfly and obtained data on the intensity of livestock grazing....
The fish that saves Del Rio The San Felipe Gambusia is not a majestic fish. Yet some people in this Val Verde County city think that the tiny creature, which inhabits a creek by the same name, holds the key to keeping Texas' powerful water marketers at bay and protecting their springs from thirsty metropolises that increasingly are turning their eyes toward this part of the state. In fact, though Del Rio residents and Austin-based environmental activists are petitioning the federal government to place the gambusia on the endangered-species list, many advocates are upfront about their desire to see federal protection for the fish morph into something else. They envision it as an ironclad mechanism for protecting San Felipe Springs from over-pumping and a tiny local symbol for a big global issue: that of water supply and demand and the commercial interests that would attempt to anticipate and capitalize on potential shortages....
Don't shoo these dragonflies, they're endangered Armed with butterfly nets, thick rubber boots and just a dash of mosquito repellent, Bob Gillespie and Scott Kelley go out into marshy meadows in pursuit of the jewel of all bugs - the elusive Hine's emerald dragonfly. Declared endangered in Missouri and federally, the Hine's emerald dragonfly is known to exist in just four states. It was discovered in Missouri in 1999. "Nobody really looked for it before, but it's been here for thousands of years," said Gillespie, the natural history regional biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation. Based in Cape Girardeau, Gillespie is the Hine's emerald dragonfly recovery leader for all of Missouri....Wow, for "all" of Missouri. He better hope them fly-eatin' iguanas don't migrate from Florida....
Minnow numbers rise The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation wants the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to increase the number of endangered Rio Grande silvery minnows that can be found dead this year. The bureau said Thursday in a news release that the incidental take should be increased because the minnow population is bigger now than it was when the limit was set at 760 in 2003. "This is a thrilling moment because we have so many fish out there," said Jennifer Gimbel, acting area manager for the bureau in Albuquerque. "We didn't anticipate we'd have this kind of recovery." However, more fish in the Rio Grande also means more fish will likely die as the river dries up. Almost 25 miles of river in sections south of Albuquerque are dry, and more than 500 minnows have been found dead so far. The bureau and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expect to exceed the current take limit soon even though they are meeting minimum water flow requirements and pumping water into the river....
Nampa plant closes, leaving 408 without jobs More than 400 workers at a Nampa meat processing plant lost their jobs Friday when the plant was closed. The announcement was made Friday by Swift & Co., which has operated the cattle processing plant at 3611 E. Amity since 2002. Until then, it was owned by ConAgra Beef Co. The plant employed 560 people in May 2003, the company said, just before the U.S. border was closed to live Canadian cattle after a case of mad cow disease was discovered. Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture opened the border to live Canadian cattle under 30 months of age. The Nampa plant, however, processes older animals for ground beef and other beef products. Laura Wilder, executive director of the Idaho Beef Council, said the closure was not surprising. "The plant has been struggling since the Canadian border first closed," she said. "So it's not a big surprise, but it is disappointing to see this happen because the plant provided an important service for the local beef industry."....
Dude ranches survive rough ride Still struggling to regain the business they lost after 9/11, Colorado's dude ranches are looking in their own backyards for visitors to fill their bunkhouses. "The past three years have been tough, which is why we've been thinking outside of the box," said Karen May, co-owner of the North Fork Ranch in Shawnee. "Every dollar helps. You need to change with the times." It's still unclear whether the quest for in-state visitors - and other out-of- the-box revenue-boosting ideas - will solve dude ranches' problems. Three guest ranches are currently for sale, and if mountain land values continue to skyrocket, experts say, more may follow....
Keeping the cows home On a hot July day in southern Utah, ranchers and farmers corralled themselves into a conference room to hear Daniel Dygert's lecture about how to avoid going to jail. The attorney's talk had nothing to do with standoffs involving federal agents or confrontations with environmentalists. It did, however, have everything to do with mending fences - the wooden and barbed-wire kind - and what can happen if ranchers refuse. In December, a Cache Valley cattleman was charged with manslaughter in the death of a 40-year-old woman whose car collided with a cow. The case, which goes to trial on Nov. 14, is the first of its kind in Utah, at least in recent history, and ranchers and farmers are understandably nervous. They have always had to worry about lawsuits and insurance claims caused by livestock getting loose, damaging the neighbor's property or wandering onto roads. Prosecutors say the Cache Valley case is an anomaly brought about by a stubborn rancher who flouted fencing laws for years. But the decision to bring criminal charges has ushered in a new era of liability and, some ranchers say, hostility....
Vandals Take an Expensive Toll on Ranchers' Fences Rancher J.D. Scott crouches down to inspect a wooden post, snapped in half and buried among the wheat grass atop the mountainous Long Divide that separates Cache and Box Elder Counties. There are tire tracks on either side of the fence. "Damn," he says. "How did a pickup make it up here this far?" Scott has taken down license numbers and snapped pictures of trespassers to curtail vandalism on his property but, in 40 years, he has yet to see anyone prosecuted for knocking down a fence. Ranchers are financially and legally liable if their livestock gets loose and causes damage or injures someone, yet law enforcement lets other culprits -- recreationists and trespassers who leave gates open and mow down fences -- go free....
Desert bloom Writing on the Wind, An Anthology of West Texas Women Writers edited by Lou Halsell Rodenberger, Laura Payne Butler and Jacqueline Kolosov Texas Tech University Press, $21.95. If that's the case with you, try reading Writing on the Wind, An Anthology of West Texas Women Writers, where 25 women from academia share their essays, memoirs, fiction and poetry based on the landscape that, in one way or another, helped fashion their formidable literary talents. The fullness of regional life is so engagingly chronicled here that you may never again think of West Texas without understanding the passions inspired by this seemingly empty land. These are stories about family, legacy, marriage, divorce, religion, all of them played out in relentless weather and under an all-encompassing sky. The simultaneously lovely and horribly arid land inspires these writers to delve into the contrasts between the harsh and beautiful, writes one of the collection's editors, Lou Halsell Rodenberger. The women featured in this collection do focus on contrasts between the young and old, the East and West, wet and the dry, the new and the old social norms....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Market variables leave forecasters in a stew The beef market for the last two years must be driving economists nuts! There are so many factors affecting the price of cattle other than supply and demand, that the playing field is littered with mortar craters! It would be analogous to a basketball game where baskets count, but one could also earn points by the number of hot dogs sold to visiting fans, near misses, the basketball futures, dress code violations, percentage of left-handers in the World Series and number of junior high kids over 6 feet 4 inches tall! Logic has no bearing on the market fluctuations....
===
Keeping the water clean Roger Muggli knows the value of energy. The Muggli Bros. alfalfa pellet processing plant just outside Miles City, Mont., spends about $10,000 for utilities every winter. The Muggli ranch also relies on flood-irrigation from the Tongue River to sustain 1,650 acres of alfalfa and barley crops, which are the base of the pellet plant. "I am acutely aware of energy costs. I know we need affordable energy," Muggli barked into his cell phone recently, taking a break from his daily ranch work. "But what the hell kind of a tax base will we have if this valley goes to hell?" Coal-bed methane producers on the Wyoming side of the Tongue pull large volumes of groundwater from coal seams in order to produce gas, and they'd like to add more of the by-product water to the Tongue and other Montana-bound waters....
Well near Helena yields no gas Natural gas exploration near here revealed no gas, and Canada's Suncor Energy Inc., which exercised mineral rights owned by the family of Montana's senior U.S. senator, is preparing to remove equipment from the site. An environmental group said the news strengthens the case against petroleum exploration in Montana's environmentally sensitive Rocky Mountain Front, where the mountains meet the plains. The petroleum industry said that assertion is not supported by facts. The $10 million drilling of a 16,000-foot well at Flesher Pass near Helena began in March and ended last month. The Helena area's last gas well, drilled by Unocal in 1988, also was dry....
Protect the corridor? Pronghorn antelope have traveled through here for thousands of years, gradually adapting to roads and subdivisions as they migrate between the high peaks of the Tetons and warmer, flatter lands of the Red Desert. But the animals, which make the 160-mile trek every spring and fall, may not be prepared for the metamorphosis coming to this sagebrush-covered swath of western Wyoming. What was once a quiet landscape is becoming a land of gas rigs and expensive housing developments. Conservationists are concerned the pronghorns' journey -- thought to be the second-longest land-based animal migration in the Western Hemisphere -- will get lost in the local population boom, much of which is due to a dramatic increase in energy development. A number of local groups have proposed the creation of the country's first "national migration corridor" to protect the traveling animals....
A Sense of Deja Boom The word frenzy wouldn't really begin to describe what's going on in and around this county seat of 1,400, where active gas wells outnumber residents by almost 2 to 1. In Sublette County alone, more than a billion cubic feet of gas is being extracted every day. Just over the horizon from Mayor Rose Skinner's window at Town Hall, 40 drilling crews work around the clock, sending drill bits deep beneath the Jonah and Pinedale Gas Fields. Across a landscape that once served as a backdrop for Marlboro Man commercials, roughnecks install new roads and lay miles of heavy pipe. Shiny new pickups crowd busy Pine Street, and saloons like the Cowboy Bar & Lounge draw rowdy patrons every payday. "We're happy to ride this boom," says Mayor Skinner, 84, "as far as it'll take us." Yet listen closely, and there's a forlorn quiver in her voice--indeed in the voices of many of this state's half-million hard-boiled residents. Dating back to the 1920s, there's never been an energy boom in Wyoming without a bust trailing behind it. The never-ending cycles are an enduring part of life here. Boom is better, no doubt about that. But folks in Pinedale know that even good times bring issues of their own. And while the getting's good, state leaders are searching for ways to get Wyoming off its economic roller coaster....
Column: Lies from Big Oil The oil and gas industry in New Mexico is starting to sound like tobacco companies. Their lobbyists tell us repeatedly that there's no danger to public health in their explorations and extractions. And just like the tobacco industry's refusal to admit that smoking causes cancer, energy lobbyists here absurdly refuse to admit that mining and drilling around aquifers causes any danger to fresh water supplies. One oil lobbyist in New Mexico recently went so far as to proclaim that spills and accidents from oil drilling were "biodegradable" and would cause no problem for the environment. Let's look at Otero Mesa and its vast supplies of fresh water - enough, some say, to supply a million people for 100 years. Saying there's no danger to that water from drilling for crude and natural gas is like saying no human error is possible or that oil drilling didn't involve the use of hazardous chemicals or that oil isn't often accompanied by brine or that New Mexico didn't already have 6,700 documented incidents of groundwater contamination from pits in which excess crude oil and its water products are dumped. In leasing Otero Mesa for oil and gas exploration, the Bureau of Land Management has a plan in which 70 percent of its proposed leasing area has not one special provision for groundwater protection....
Park Service objects to oil lease as spoiling Canyonlands view The National Park Service has filed objections with the Bureau of Land Management over plans for oil and gas drilling in eastern Utah, saying the rigs would spoil the expansive, lonely view from Canyonlands National Park. The BLM plans to lease two parcels outside the 527-square-mile park, where drill rigs would compete with a landscape of towering buttes and mesa tops against the 12,000-foot La Sal mountains. The bureau dropped two other nearby parcels over Park Service objections, and BLM officials say they'll reconsider objections a week before the Aug. 16 auction to other leasing tracts. The auction is set to offer 198,000 acres of BLM and national forest lands for oil and gas drilling. About 3,200 acres proposed for leasing "contribute to the exceptional landscape as viewed and experienced from the rims on BLM lands and as viewed from scenic overlooks within Canyonlands National Park," Tony Schetzsle, the agency's southeast Utah group superintendent, objected in a letter....
Drilling on Front leases still on hold Natural gas leases on Bureau of Land Management acreage along Montana's Rocky Mountain Front will remain off-limits until a far-reaching study is complete. In the interim, those opposed to drilling are being encouraged to work with lease holders on trades or buyouts. "Before we take any action, we need a land-use plan," Rebecca Watson, assistant secretary of land and minerals management for the Department of Interior, said in a recent interview. With development potentially on hold until at least 2010, those opposed to drilling are encouraged to work out options for buying or swapping existing leases, she said. "When we made this announcement, we invited folks to use this time to work with their congressional delegation and find other solutions," she said....
Livestock on BLM lands in Jarbidge safe for now On Friday, attorneys for the BLM, Western Watersheds and intervening entities such as Simplot Livestock -- an affected livestock producer -- agreed that the BLM would notify permittees that same day of Winmill's order. The parties further agreed that livestock producers will not be required to remove animals before Aug. 19. The BLM and livestock producers affected by Winmill's decision still have the opportunity to ask for a stay of the order or to appeal it. "Right now, we're still assessing what we're going to do," said Jeff Steele, Jarbidge district manager. "We have some real concerns as far as the livestock operators out there." Steele estimates that about 3,840 animals would typically be on the 28 allotments but the figure is likely less now due to the recent Clover Fire. The BLM has conducted a number of projects in the Jarbidge Resource Area to improve rangeland conditions, Steele said....
Walden Language to Protect Steens Mountain Landowners In Oregon Approved by House The U.S. House of Representatives last week approved legislation which included a provision requested by U.S. Representative Greg Walden (R-OR) in which the Congress expresses its strong support for landowners to have full access to their property on Steens Mountain. He added, "Today, however, bureaucratic red tape hamstrings landowners and lessees with over-burdensome regulations, which only allow them access to their property at certain times, force them to use arduous and time-consuming routes, and even dictate what types of vehicles they can use to access their property. This is decidedly not what our cooperative spirit intended when we developed the Act, nor what was supported by my colleagues in the Congress upon its passage." The legislation states: "The managers urge the Bureau to comply with the provision of the Steens Act and allow landowner, lessee and inholder access to their property within the boundary of the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area. Unless funding is provided for land acquisition or exchange, landowners should be afforded full access to their property." (H-Rept. 109-80, pg. 14)....
Hit and miss The assessment John Novotny's team wanted to do wouldn't have cost the homeowner near Big Timber a dime. It would be a quick run-through of the fire hazards on his forested property, detailing what could be done -- with financial help from the federal government -- to help survive a wildfire that Novotny saw as all but inevitable. But the homeowner declined, leery of having a bunch of his trees in the narrow canyon in southern Montana marked for removal. It's a response Novotny has run into more than once in the last year, as the veteran firefighter has knocked on doors, preaching the gospel of defensible space to any homeowner willing to listen. And even trees in the nearby forest -- ignitable, "like the white tip of match" -- couldn't help him change some minds, he said....
Editorial: Judge rightly upholds rule protecting old-growth forests A million acres of old-growth forests in the Northwest that may be home to endangered and threatened plant and animal species could be affected by the outcome of a court dispute over a reasonable Clinton-era rule that requires Forest Service managers to look for those species before logging. Those old-growth forest habitats must be protected. Last week, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Seattle ruled correctly that the Bush administration acted illegally in eliminating the look-before-you-log rule before federal agencies determined whether threatened species would be adequately protected without it. At risk are more than a million acres of old-growth forests that are outside forest reserves set up in the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan to protect northern spotted owls. The plan left areas of old growth open to possible logging but rightly required logging companies to first look for the presence of threatened species before cutting down old trees that might provide them homes....
America's public forests landlocked by sea of development America's national forests are beginning to resemble "islands" of green wilderness, increasingly trapped by an expanding sea of new houses, a forestry researcher will report today at the 90th annual Ecological Society of America (ESA) meeting in Montreal, Canada. The widening circle of development around forests such as the Cleveland National Forest in Southern California is serving to block natural corridors, or wild "highways" that enable plants and wildlife to move easily between nearby forests, says Volker Radeloff, a forestry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Radeloff analyzed government census data on housing increases in and near all U.S. national forests between 1950 and 2000. "(In an isolated state), a forest cannot function as well for biodiversity," says Radeloff, who conducted his analysis in collaboration with UW-Madison graduate students and the North Central Research Station of the United States Forest Service. Radeloff's findings also highlight significant growth within the forests themselves. Between 1950 and 2000, the number of housing units within national forest boundaries increased from 500,000 to 1.5 million, an increase Radeloff largely attributes to inholdings, or parcels of forest land owned by private citizens....
U.S. Senate OKs bill on land swap A massive and controversial federal and private land swap proposed for Northern Arizona may be closer to reality with recent passage of a Senate bill. But uncertainty remains over how much longer the rancher involved is willing to wait. The long-stalled exchange would involve Yavapai Ranch owner Fred Ruskin turning over about 35,000 acres of his land southeast of Seligman to Prescott National Forest in return for federal land scattered throughout the Coconino and Prescott national forests, mostly near or in cities. The more than 15,000 acres that Ruskin would get include a 2,200-acre parcel bordering Interstate 17 and Arizona 260 near Camp Verde. It also includes more than 2,000 acres that Ruskin could sell to Flagstaff and Williams for use by the cities for airport and other municipal and industrial expansion....
Pretty killers You might mistake Malta starthistle for a wildflower. The bright yellow blooms look pretty enough. But this weed is a disaster for Arizona. It can poison livestock. It degrades wildlife habitat. It increases erosion, because its taproot does little to hold soil in place. It's pushing out native plants, including the endangered Arizona cliffrose. It's ruining campgrounds in the Tonto National Forest, taking them over in spiny thickets. When there's a flood or an earthquake or hurricane, we pull out all the stops. But weeds? It's hard to get people to take them seriously. Yet weeds like Malta starthistle are laying waste to Arizona's distinctive landscape. They're replacing native vegetation and fueling vast wildfires that wipe out desert plants for good. More and more stretches of the Sonoran Desert are losing saguaros, chollas, ocotillos and palo verde trees. The magical scenery that exists nowhere else on earth, with its strange creatures like javelinas and Gila monsters, is disappearing....
Supporters of roadless land keep fighting losing battle Bell Meadow is at the heart of an 8,200-acre area officially designated as roadless by Stanislaus National Forest administrators. It's also in the hearts of many Californians who hunt, hike or fish. That makes Bell Meadow and other roadless areas in California's Sierra Nevada a potent political tool in the nationwide debate over whether to allow mining, oil drilling and logging in the remaining roadless remnants within America's national forests. The Bush administration is winning that debate at the moment. In May, the administration announced it was dropping a Clinton administration ban on road building, logging, and oil and gas drilling on 58 million acres of roadless forest lands. Wilderness areas are the most protected federal lands, guaranteed forever free of motor traffic and development. Next are roadless areas, places that are still pristine but which weren't granted wilderness protection to leave open the possibility of someday logging or mining there. The rule change is most likely to make a difference soon in forests in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and Montana, where companies are seeking to tap oil and gas deposits....
Court blocks logging plan for Alaskan forest A federal appeals court has struck down a plan that allows logging on roadless areas in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, handing environmentalists a victory in a battle over wild lands in the world's largest intact temperate rain forest. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a 1997 plan adopted by the U.S. Forest Service under the Clinton administration exaggerated the demand for Tongass timber, failed to take into account the effect on wildlife and didn't adequately consider options that called for timber-cutting in fewer roadless areas. "This is a huge win," said Niel Lawrence, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the conservation groups that challenged the plan in court....
Valley of the Dam Dam! Water, Power, Politics, and Preservation in Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite National Park By John Warfield Simpson. Pantheon. 384 pages. Yosemite National Park is a beautiful land of betrayal. The name of the valley, with its towering waterfalls in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, was taken from the Yosemite Indians, who were massacred and driven from their sacred home by the U.S. Army in 1851. Fifteen years later, Congress pledged to preserve Yosemite as the world's first national park. But budget cuts crippled efforts to manage the wilderness as a public recreation area, and it was quickly overrun by poachers, vandals, timber companies and profiteers who opened saloons and hotels inside the park. The federal government promised to prevent any harm to Yosemite's meadows, forests and cliffs. But in 1923 it broke its word by allowing the city of San Francisco to flood a 1,900-acre section of the park and raise a 30-story-tall hydroelectric dam and eight-mile-long municipal reservoir. The drowning of the park's Hetch Hetchy valley under 117 billion gallons of water is the subject of John Warfield Simpson's new book, Dam!....
Column: The truth on rec fees I am one of the critics of public-land user fees that Interior Secretary Gale Norton referred to in a recent Denver Post guest commentary that praised the federal fee program. Norton tries to blur the distinction between the national parks and the vast tracts of undeveloped land managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Entrance fees at national parks have never been part of this debate. Instead, the issue is whether Americans should be charged just to drive through a national forest, to park at a trailhead and go for a hike, to use a picnic table at a Bureau of Land Management scenic overlook, or to reach undeveloped backcountry. The trial fee program touted by Norton as an "enormous success" (called fee demo) authorized fees for all of those things, and was one of the most unpopular changes to public land policy in our history. Fee demo couldn't have survived an honest legislative process. Instead, it was buried in a huge spending bill....
Forest Service wants to close some roads on Reno's Peavine Peak The U.S. Forest Service is pushing to close some roads on a mountain popular with off-road vehicle enthusiasts, mountain bikers and hikers, saying a "free-for-all" situation is damaging the peak. About 75 miles of roads and trails on Peavine Peak just northwest of the city would be closed under a travel management plan unveiled by the agency. At the same time, the Forest Service is seeking to keep more than 100 miles of existing roads and trails open for motorized and non-motorized travel on the 8,260-foot peak....
Great Basin ranchers fight Vegas water grab This speck of a town nestled at the foot of the Deep Creek Mountains is miles from anywhere with pavement, and as such is an oasis, both literally and figuratively, in the harsh environment of Utah's west desert. Runoff from the mountain canyons and gurgling springs and seeps furnish greenery and livelihoods in a place that would otherwise be devoid of both. Can such a fragile environment survive a proposal by southern Nevada water officials to pump 25,000 acre-feet of water annually from groundwater wells near Baker, Nev., to Las Vegas via 500 miles of pipeline? Not to hear rancher Cecil Garland tell it. Take a closer look around, the 79-year-old says, and it doesn't take long to spot the withered vegetation and dried-up springs that dot the land - proof positive to Garland and others that the drought that has gripped the Great Basin for most of the decade has yet to release its hold. Even after the best water year in two decades....
Federal inaction unravels Klamath water rights pact Lack of federal support has derailed what was heralded earlier this year as a milestone agreement between the Klamath Tribes and irrigators above Upper Klamath Lake in the Klamath Basin. The agreement that sought to resolve longstanding disputes over water rights hinged on millions of dollars in federal funding to buy out newer water rights and implement water restoration projects. But federal officials have shown no interest in allocating the funds, said former state Sen. Steve Harper, R-Klamath Falls, who helped broker the agreement. “We sure haven’t seen action,” Harper said last week. Water remains a contentious and controversial issue in the basin, where the federal government’s cutoff of irrigation water in summer 2001 led to protests and national media attention....
Oregon moves to conserve sage grouse Oregon adopted a new plan for conserving sage grouse Friday that seeks to keep populations stable through voluntary habitat improvements coordinated by local councils. Meeting in Salem, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted the plan unanimously, putting Oregon in line with Bush administration policy and most Western states that promote voluntary efforts and local control rather than mandatory federal regulation. "I think it's a good plan," John O'Keefe, who represented private landowners on a team that helped craft the sage grouse plan, said from his cattle ranch in Adel. "We tried to make it so local working groups can steer the (sage grouse) effort, can recognize where the issues are and address those. There is a lot of room and a lot of focus now on voluntary projects."....
Final EIS released in plan to poison Bob lakes A final environmental impact statement has been released for a project that would poison fish in 21 lakes in and around the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex and restock them with westslope cutthroat trout. The state Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bonneville Power Administration have to agree to the plan, which could help keep the state fish off the endangered species list. The agencies are expected to issue their decisions this fall. The EIS offers four alternatives to carrying out the project, ranging from no action, to carrying out the proposed plan using a combination of horse packing, aircraft and motorboats in the wilderness area, where there are motorized vehicle restrictions. Another option would involve removing as many hybrid trout from the lakes as possible, and then stocking the lakes with westslope cutthroat on a "frequent or annual" basis in an attempt to dominate the remaining hybrid trout....
Leapin’ Lizards! Iguanas running wild along the Hillsboro Canal area In Boca Raton, and other areas of Palm Beach County, iguanas that can reach six feet in length are multiplying rapidly. Native to Central and South America, the voracious, fleet-footed iguana has no natural enemies in the suburbs of South Florida. “And that’s too bad,” said Della Simmons who lives just across the county line in Deerfield Beach. “That’s too bad they have no enemies here, because they sure do stink.” Between Boca Raton’s southern border and the Broward County city of Deerfield Beach is the Hillsboro Canal. Living along the canal is an increasingly number of large iguanas, according to both Boca Raton and Deerfield Beach users of Pioneer Park just across the county line in Deerfield Beach. “We see them there all the time – all along the canal and in the park itself,” Maria Ruiz said....
Reid to lockhorns with ram Both were born in the same state. Both have loyal constituencies and perks that come with their leadership positions. But politics and economics have conspired to put Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and his neighbor, a desert bighorn sheep nicknamed Horndog, on a collision course. The senator is pushing a $234 million Las Vegas-area project, the Hoover Dam Bypass, which includes a four-lane bridge and connector roads that will allow traffic to go around the dam. But that expansion threatens Horndog, the alpha ram of a herd of about 55 desert bighorn sheep in the Eldorado Mountains above Hoover Dam, who have to cross U.S. Highway 93 to get to a park they favor in Boulder City....
Groups Split Over Risks to Grizzlies in Yellowstone Park As the Bush administration prepares to remove Yellowstone's grizzly bears from the endangered species list, a schism has emerged in the environmental movement over whether the bears remain at risk. The nation's largest environmental group, the National Wildlife Federation, says it now supports delisting the bears, whose numbers have bounced back impressively after three decades of federal protection. But a number of powerful organizations, including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice, say that the future of the grizzlies is still in doubt. They are threatening to sue the Bush administration if, as expected, it removes Yellowstone grizzlies from the list....
Coyotes in the Suburbs, Bears in the Backyard Unlike their western counterparts, newly arrived coyote populations in the northeastern United States are having a hard time surviving, despite an apparently abundant and healthy diet of rabbits, deer, and plants. Daniel Bogan (New York State Museum) and colleagues found that some 80 percent of these large predators are killed each year, mostly by people in the area. Out of twenty-one coyotes radio-tracked by the researchers, seven were killed by cars, six were shot and one was poisoned. The researchers suggest that because the coyotes are still learning how to adjust to roads and other hazards, their populations are failing to thrive in habitat that otherwise serves their needs quite nicely...Human-bear conflicts are on the rise in New Jersey, the most densely peopled state of the United States. In 2003, some 3,000 reported incidences occurred between people and the black bear (Ursus americanus), up from only 285 reported cases in 1995. Not only have black bear numbers been increasing since 1970, the bears are frequenting suburban areas, increasing their likelihood of coming into contact with people....
When Extinct Isn't: Questioning the term after a bird's return The video images may be tiny, grainy, dark and fleeting, but many looking at them see something glorious: evidence that at least one ivory-billed woodpecker--an 18- to 20-inch-tall bird with a wingspan of some 30 inches, last seen in the U.S. in 1944--is alive in the bottomland forest of eastern Arkansas. After a year of traipsing and canoeing through the Big Woods and its bayous, many inconclusive recordings of ivory-bill-like calls, seven good sightings and one fortuitous videotaping, scientists and conservationists announced in April that the bird was not extinct after all. If the discovery holds up, the ivory-billed woodpecker will not be the only U.S. species recently returned from oblivion. In May, just a few days after the ivory-bill news, the Nature Conservancy announced the discovery in Alabama of three snails listed as extinct. A few weeks later, botanists at the University of California at Berkeley reported finding the Mount Diablo buckwheat, a tiny pink-flowered plant that had not been seen since 1936. At least 24 species of other presumed or possibly extinct plants, insects and other organisms have been found during natural heritage surveys in North America since 1974, according to Mark Schaefer, president of NatureServe, a nonprofit conservation group based in Arlington, Va. There are examples from elsewhere as well....
Global Warming's Effects Extend To World's Smallest Butterfly The latest issue of Conservation Biology examines the viability of the Sinai baton blue and the results of human population pressures. The study predicts that in the absence of global warming, grazing, and plant collection (three activities directly linked to humans) the world's smallest butterfly would persist for at least 200 years. The population could withstand small increases in grazing intensity that would decrease their climate, but not increases in temperature. As the level of global warming raises its impact, extinction rapidly accelerates. This implies "... that there may be an annual average temperature, specific to each endangered species, above which extinction becomes much more likely," authors Martin Hoyle and Mike James state. There is no such threshold of grazing pressure. The authors mapped the entire global range of this butterfly and obtained data on the intensity of livestock grazing....
The fish that saves Del Rio The San Felipe Gambusia is not a majestic fish. Yet some people in this Val Verde County city think that the tiny creature, which inhabits a creek by the same name, holds the key to keeping Texas' powerful water marketers at bay and protecting their springs from thirsty metropolises that increasingly are turning their eyes toward this part of the state. In fact, though Del Rio residents and Austin-based environmental activists are petitioning the federal government to place the gambusia on the endangered-species list, many advocates are upfront about their desire to see federal protection for the fish morph into something else. They envision it as an ironclad mechanism for protecting San Felipe Springs from over-pumping and a tiny local symbol for a big global issue: that of water supply and demand and the commercial interests that would attempt to anticipate and capitalize on potential shortages....
Don't shoo these dragonflies, they're endangered Armed with butterfly nets, thick rubber boots and just a dash of mosquito repellent, Bob Gillespie and Scott Kelley go out into marshy meadows in pursuit of the jewel of all bugs - the elusive Hine's emerald dragonfly. Declared endangered in Missouri and federally, the Hine's emerald dragonfly is known to exist in just four states. It was discovered in Missouri in 1999. "Nobody really looked for it before, but it's been here for thousands of years," said Gillespie, the natural history regional biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation. Based in Cape Girardeau, Gillespie is the Hine's emerald dragonfly recovery leader for all of Missouri....Wow, for "all" of Missouri. He better hope them fly-eatin' iguanas don't migrate from Florida....
Minnow numbers rise The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation wants the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to increase the number of endangered Rio Grande silvery minnows that can be found dead this year. The bureau said Thursday in a news release that the incidental take should be increased because the minnow population is bigger now than it was when the limit was set at 760 in 2003. "This is a thrilling moment because we have so many fish out there," said Jennifer Gimbel, acting area manager for the bureau in Albuquerque. "We didn't anticipate we'd have this kind of recovery." However, more fish in the Rio Grande also means more fish will likely die as the river dries up. Almost 25 miles of river in sections south of Albuquerque are dry, and more than 500 minnows have been found dead so far. The bureau and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expect to exceed the current take limit soon even though they are meeting minimum water flow requirements and pumping water into the river....
Nampa plant closes, leaving 408 without jobs More than 400 workers at a Nampa meat processing plant lost their jobs Friday when the plant was closed. The announcement was made Friday by Swift & Co., which has operated the cattle processing plant at 3611 E. Amity since 2002. Until then, it was owned by ConAgra Beef Co. The plant employed 560 people in May 2003, the company said, just before the U.S. border was closed to live Canadian cattle after a case of mad cow disease was discovered. Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture opened the border to live Canadian cattle under 30 months of age. The Nampa plant, however, processes older animals for ground beef and other beef products. Laura Wilder, executive director of the Idaho Beef Council, said the closure was not surprising. "The plant has been struggling since the Canadian border first closed," she said. "So it's not a big surprise, but it is disappointing to see this happen because the plant provided an important service for the local beef industry."....
Dude ranches survive rough ride Still struggling to regain the business they lost after 9/11, Colorado's dude ranches are looking in their own backyards for visitors to fill their bunkhouses. "The past three years have been tough, which is why we've been thinking outside of the box," said Karen May, co-owner of the North Fork Ranch in Shawnee. "Every dollar helps. You need to change with the times." It's still unclear whether the quest for in-state visitors - and other out-of- the-box revenue-boosting ideas - will solve dude ranches' problems. Three guest ranches are currently for sale, and if mountain land values continue to skyrocket, experts say, more may follow....
Keeping the cows home On a hot July day in southern Utah, ranchers and farmers corralled themselves into a conference room to hear Daniel Dygert's lecture about how to avoid going to jail. The attorney's talk had nothing to do with standoffs involving federal agents or confrontations with environmentalists. It did, however, have everything to do with mending fences - the wooden and barbed-wire kind - and what can happen if ranchers refuse. In December, a Cache Valley cattleman was charged with manslaughter in the death of a 40-year-old woman whose car collided with a cow. The case, which goes to trial on Nov. 14, is the first of its kind in Utah, at least in recent history, and ranchers and farmers are understandably nervous. They have always had to worry about lawsuits and insurance claims caused by livestock getting loose, damaging the neighbor's property or wandering onto roads. Prosecutors say the Cache Valley case is an anomaly brought about by a stubborn rancher who flouted fencing laws for years. But the decision to bring criminal charges has ushered in a new era of liability and, some ranchers say, hostility....
Vandals Take an Expensive Toll on Ranchers' Fences Rancher J.D. Scott crouches down to inspect a wooden post, snapped in half and buried among the wheat grass atop the mountainous Long Divide that separates Cache and Box Elder Counties. There are tire tracks on either side of the fence. "Damn," he says. "How did a pickup make it up here this far?" Scott has taken down license numbers and snapped pictures of trespassers to curtail vandalism on his property but, in 40 years, he has yet to see anyone prosecuted for knocking down a fence. Ranchers are financially and legally liable if their livestock gets loose and causes damage or injures someone, yet law enforcement lets other culprits -- recreationists and trespassers who leave gates open and mow down fences -- go free....
Desert bloom Writing on the Wind, An Anthology of West Texas Women Writers edited by Lou Halsell Rodenberger, Laura Payne Butler and Jacqueline Kolosov Texas Tech University Press, $21.95. If that's the case with you, try reading Writing on the Wind, An Anthology of West Texas Women Writers, where 25 women from academia share their essays, memoirs, fiction and poetry based on the landscape that, in one way or another, helped fashion their formidable literary talents. The fullness of regional life is so engagingly chronicled here that you may never again think of West Texas without understanding the passions inspired by this seemingly empty land. These are stories about family, legacy, marriage, divorce, religion, all of them played out in relentless weather and under an all-encompassing sky. The simultaneously lovely and horribly arid land inspires these writers to delve into the contrasts between the harsh and beautiful, writes one of the collection's editors, Lou Halsell Rodenberger. The women featured in this collection do focus on contrasts between the young and old, the East and West, wet and the dry, the new and the old social norms....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Market variables leave forecasters in a stew The beef market for the last two years must be driving economists nuts! There are so many factors affecting the price of cattle other than supply and demand, that the playing field is littered with mortar craters! It would be analogous to a basketball game where baskets count, but one could also earn points by the number of hot dogs sold to visiting fans, near misses, the basketball futures, dress code violations, percentage of left-handers in the World Series and number of junior high kids over 6 feet 4 inches tall! Logic has no bearing on the market fluctuations....
===
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)