NEWS ROUNDUP

Canadian's death could alter wolf debate in U.S. The November death of a man in northern Saskatchewan is thought to be the first documented case of healthy wolves killing a human in North America since 1900, an event that is likely to figure in the debate over wolf management policies in the United States. On Nov. 8, student Joel Carnegie, 22, was walking alone near a remote camp owned by a mining exploration company when it is believed that he was killed by wolves. Though an investigation is continuing, some wolves in the area had been attracted to a garbage dump and appeared to be less fearful of humans. The death in Saskatchewan "will change the semantics of the discussion," said Pam Troxell, coordinator of the Timber Wolf Alliance in Ashland, Wis. "People have already talked to me — 'if it happened up there, will it happen here?'" she said. "I think that it will be another factor in the debate — that wolves can kill people," said Adrian Wydeven, a DNR biologist and Wisconsin's top wolf expert. There have been other wolf attacks, including one in an area near where Carnegie was killed. Paquet said he interviewed a worker who was jogging to work in 2004 from his quarters when he was attacked by a lone wolf. The worker, who was also an artist and painted pictures of wolves, was in excellent physical condition — over 6 feet tall and weighed 220 pounds. He was able to get the wolf in a headlock and escape....
Plans to import water challenged Conservationists are attacking two water importation projects for the North Valleys in Washoe County, saying one will devastate wetlands in Honey Lake Valley and the other would destroy Dry Valley. Working for Sierra Club and the new group called the Great Basin Water Network, Reno hydrologist Tom Myers delivered the critique of the two projects to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management late this week. With the public comment period now closed for an environmental study of both two projects, the BLM is expected to make a decision within a few months on whether to permit a 28-mile long pipeline across federal lands....
Juniper trees being cleared for bighorns A hill of juniper trees on a section of state school land here has been cleared to open up lambing grounds for bighorn sheep along the Little Missouri River. Some area ranchers say it's a waste of time and money. The state Game and Fish Department in Dickinson worked on the project Wednesday to improve the sheep habitat by clearing dozens of junipers south of Medora. Volunteers from the Minnesota-Wisconsin chapter of the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep also helped. Bighorn ewes seek areas with an escape route. They also require a clear area to help them spot predators. Some local ranchers refused access across their land, forcing workers to haul equipment an extra mile. Doug Tescher, of rural Medora, is a rancher who refused access. "I don't think it's going to work," he said. "It would probably be cheaper to get rid of the coyotes."....
Editorial: Bond condition ends no-lose litigation Among economists, there's a concept known as “willingness to pay.” The general idea is that people say they want all sorts of things, but a truer measure of what they value is what they're willing to pay for and how much they're willing to pay. It's in that context that we find intriguing a federal judge's recent order requiring environmental groups to post a $100,000 bond to halt a logging project on a Montana national forest while they appeal a ruling permitting the logging. While we certainly don't think substantial bonds should be required in all cases in which people or groups challenge the actions of government agencies, some situations seem to warrant them. This is one. In disputes such as this one, there are two ways for logging opponents to win. One is on the merits of their case. The other is by playing out the clock. The timber in question involves trees killed by insects. Dead standing trees have value for lumber, but their salvage value diminishes relatively quickly as the wood deteriorates. Those who oppose salvage logging projects can prevail in court if they can show the Forest Service erred in its planning, preparation or administration of the timber sale. But they also can win on the ground if their lawsuits and appeals can drag things out long enough for the timber to lose its value and no one wants to buy it....
Desert land plan nearing completion After 13 years of often contentious debate and sometimes reluctant compromise, a federal land-use plan for the western Mojave Desert is nearing completion. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is preparing its response to 33 written protests to the plan, which would regulate 3.2 million acres of federal land in a 6.4-million-acre planning area in four counties. The sweeping plan outlines a strategy to protect the endangered desert tortoise and Mohave ground squirrel along with nearly 100 other sensitive animal and plant species while streamlining procedures for potential developers to comply with state and federal endangered species acts before moving ahead with projects in the fast-growing region. The proposal's habitat conservation plan has been accepted tentatively by local governmental agencies. It will take about 18 months to win final approval....
Column: Eminent domain by another name Eminent domain occurs when government takes private property. The Constitution requires that government pay "just compensation" to the owner when eminent domain is exercised. What do you call it when government takes away the use of private property, but leaves the title in the name of the property owner? The Constitution makes no provision for this function of government, but government is exercising this function, with increasing regularity and severity. The function is called "comprehensive planning" – in reality, it is social engineering. White County, Georgia, is about to adopt a plan for the "Protection of Mountains and Hillsides," which will severely restrict how private land owners may use their land. If any owner's land happens to slope as much as 25 percent, the owner may not use it at all, unless the lot is at least 1.5 acres. Then, he may disturb no more than 30 percent. If he wishes to build a home, with a driveway, the total "impervious" area may not exceed 20 percent of the land. This resolution in White County will empower government to take away the use of 70 percent of the land of a private owner. The owner must continue to pay taxes on 100 percent of the property, but may use only 30 percent....
ESA reform effort continues Congress appears to be on the road to reforming the federal Endangered Species Act, widely praised by some as an environmental godsend and vilified as overly oppressive by others. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act, HR3824, in September. Earlier this month, U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, introduced S2110, the Collaborative Recovery of the Endangered Species Act, or CRESA. According to Crapo and co-sponsor Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., a key component of S2110 is incentives to private landowners, including tax breaks and conservation banking. Conservation banking encourages voluntary conservation efforts and partnerships. It is a market-driven program used successfully in several states that allows landowners to profit from conservation efforts through use of conservation credits, they said. The proposed tax incentives will reward landowners who help recover species. However, they may mean CRESA will receive a hearing next year before the Senate Finance Committee. Both Crapo and Lincoln are on that committee. Additionally, there are regulatory incentives for landowners who voluntarily contribute to recovery with simpler procedures and through farm bill programs, they said....
Ecological jewel on brink of change Amid the sprawling sameness of Alaska's tundra is an oval pool of fresh water nine times the size of Lake Washington. Teshekpuk Lake supports one of the largest bird-nesting sites in North America. Inupiat hunters camp here among the heather and wild poppies to track wolverines or shoot ducks or net eellike burbot and catch whitefish. Biologists consider Teshekpuk as ecologically significant as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Now the Bush administration is on the brink of opening it to oil drilling, infuriating even the Native Alaskans who benefit most from oil, and many who have pushed to open up ANWR. Yet the debate is virtually unknown throughout the rest of the country....
Oil drilling alters landscape, life for tiny Inupiat village Rising like a missile silo from the hopelessly flat coastal plain was a monument to the best and worst of their future: an oil rig, drilling a well for the ConocoPhillips Alpine Oil Field. "Kind of hard to miss, isn't it?" Ahtuangaruak asked in a near whisper. The hunt for energy is marching across the Arctic, and arguments are raging over how oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) might alter life for Alaska's Natives. Some answers may lie here, in the village of Nuiqsut, population 450, about 100 miles west of ANWR. Despite oil drilling that the industry insists is the least intrusive ever done, this community is already experiencing the mix of progress and decay that comes from having oil in the backyard....
Navajos acting to stop uranium rush in state The price of uranium has tripled in the past two years, bringing with it the possibility of another uranium rush in Arizona, the state with the richest deposits of the ore and, along with New Mexico, the worst legacy associated with its mining. Last year, 700 mining claims were filed and 100 test holes were bored into the wild, remote high desert in northern Arizona. Secondary supplies of uranium on the world market have virtually dried up, and China, India and Japan are clamoring for uranium for their burgeoning domestic nuclear-power industries. Uranium now fetches $36 a pound on the spot market. Four years ago, it was going for just over $7 a pound. But not everyone is happy about the search for new mine sites. Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., stirred to action by the memory of how dangerous uranium mining can be, issued an executive order in November banning negotiations with uranium companies or uranium exploration on the three-state Navajo Nation, which was engulfed by a public health tragedy after the first wave of uranium mining began on its reservation in the 1950s. Dozens of premature deaths of Navajo miners and passed-on genetic defects have been attributed to uranium exposure....
Men face bribery charges A second Farmington businessman faces charges of trying to bribe an employee of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. A federal grand jury in Albuquerque last month indicted Curtis Slade, 43, on charges of offering a bribe to Ralph Mason of the BLM's Farmington field office. Slade is a former business partner of Norman Geoff McMahon, 71, who was indicted earlier last month on four similar counts. Slade and McMahon owned NewCo Aggregate and both were involved in securing mining permits from the BLM. McMahon is accused of giving Mason $7,000 between Dec. 15, 2000, and Feb. 15, 2002 in connection with a BLM permit to mine humate, an organic mineral used in fertilizer and soil supplements. Mason, who resigned on Dec. 3, 2003, was a geologist handling the permit process. The new indictment accuses Slade of giving Mason $4,000 for permits to mine sand and gravel....
Weeding out bad science Global warming, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the danger to humans of nuclear radiation, the environmental harm of DDT, the miraculous benefits supposedly coming from cloning and human stem cell research, the scientific certainty of Darwinian evolution. These are some of the prevailing scientific myths or mistruths Tom Bethell sets straight in his new book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science." Bethell, a conservative English-born journalist known for his excellent writing and critical thinking, is a longtime editor at The American Spectator magazine. I talked to him by telephone Thursday from his home in Washington, D.C.: Q: If science is supposed to be about seeking the truth and being neutral, how can it be politically correct or incorrect? A: Well, science can get politicized when the facts are uncertain. This has allowed people, in some cases unscrupulous people, to exploit the prestige of science. At first people don't necessarily realize that. They know that water is made of oxygen and hydrogen -- how do you politicize that? But then you come to something like global warming, when you are talking about the average temperature on the surface of the Earth and comparing it with the temperature hundreds of years ago, when they didn't have thermometers, and projecting it 100 years into the future, and the uncertainties are just huge. So it becomes possible for unprincipled people to exploit the prestige of science on some issues. Q: Besides global warming, what other scientific truths are hidden from public view because they are politically incorrect? A: A number of environmental issues, I would say. In fact, I quote an interesting guy called Patrick Moore in the book who was a founder of Greenpeace who kind of rethought his whole position. He reports that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a lot of people on the Left, who had been essentially advocates on behalf of socialist causes, realized it was not going to work out, so they came over to the environmental movement. Such issues as endangered species have also been politicized....
Claiming the mountain Two hundred years ago, explorer Zebulon Pike spied a soaring peak north of his campsite on the Arkansas River, in the heart of what would later become the city of Pueblo. Fascinated by a mountain to the north that “appeared like a small blue cloud,” according to his journal, Pike and three of his men spent several days plowing through waist-deep snow in an attempt to reach the mountain before freezing weather, snow and inadequate clothing turned them back. It was one of those brief moments in history awash with irony, for the explorer whose name would later grace the mountain was about the last person to drift off the plains who didn’t in some way leave his physical mark on the peak....
'John Wayne made real movies. There ain't no queer in cowboy' Jim-Bob Zimmerschied is not a happy cowboy. "They've gone and killed John Wayne with this movie," he says angrily, beer in hand. "I've been doing this job all my life and I ain't never met no gay cowboy. It wouldn't be right." The target of Mr Zimmerschied's outburst is Brokeback Mountain, the Hollywood Western-with-a-twist that opens in London this week and is already being tipped for Oscar success. Flushed by Bud Lite, Mr Zimmerschied, a squat walrus-moustachioed man in a hat and check shirt, was in full flow. "John Wayne and Will Rogers, they made real cowboy movies. They portrayed us like we are. There ain't no queer in cowboy and I don't care for anyone suggesting there is." When he was distracted by one of the two bar-room brawls - both apparently unrelated to the Brokeback Mountain issue - an even drunker young man stepped up to the plate. "If you gave me the choice between watching that movie and being hung by the neck, I'd tie the noose myself," he slurred....
On the Edge of Common Sense: There's renewed interest in ag culture Agriculture, in the broad sense, is enjoying a renewed respect. Enrollment in ag curriculums in universities has been increasing; Vo Ag classes and FFA memberships are thriving in spite of often apathetic or even hostile school administrations. Anti-agricultural industries including extremist "green" groups, animal rights loonies and even well-meaning but ill-informed obstructionists are being relegated to irrelevance. This change in the public's attitude toward modern farming practices including the use of herbicides, antibiotics, dewormers, growth stimulants, genetically modified foods, feedlot practices, hog confinement, poultry production and others, may be related to the condition of our world today....