NEWS ROUNDUP

The bureau of "nature conservancy" One of TNC's most recent actions as a bureau has been the signing of an agreement with the Southwestern Region of the USDA Forest Service by their Arizona and New Mexico Chapters. TNC will also be working with the Bureau of Land Management. It is reported that TNC was hired through a "no bid" contract to do GIS mapping. The question was raised as to why the Forest Service and BLM did not contact the United States Geological Survey to do this work, but no one has given an answer. TNC will compile a vegetation database for Region 3 National Forests. Opponents to TNC doing this work say this agreement will: "... determine the desired future conditions, develop its own new standards for data interpretation, interpret old and new data by these new self-created standards, establish hypotheses, and evaluate them under the adaptive management and monitoring system." This will mean that TNC intends to make up their own rules as they go along, and they will be training Forest Service employees. Opponents are speaking out loud and clear that they believe: "... the next 20 or more years of Forest policy will be founded on the work of an immensely wealthy private corporation (the world's largest private landowner) with its own selfish agendas, minimal, if any, financial transparency, a checkered reputation, and minimal, if any, public accountability." Legislators tried to get the contract pulled by the appropriations committee, but couldn't get the job done. There are concerns that access to this information could be readily available, and could be used against farmers and ranchers....
Treasury Nominee Is Ideologically, Ethically Challenged The Senate should reject President Bush’s nomination of Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson for Treasury secretary. Under Paulson’s leadership, Goldman Sachs participated in ethically, and perhaps legally, questionable business practices. Paulson also supports the economy-killing Kyoto Protocol and has demonstrated little respect for private property rights. On the ethical front, Paulson has refused to answer questions about his apparent use of Goldman Sachs’ corporate assets to advance his personal interests. In 2002, Paulson used at least $35 million of shareholder money to help environmental groups stop a “sustainable forestry” project in Tierra del Fuego, Chile. Environmental groups had delayed the project for years—to the point where financial stress on the project developer became acute and forced the sale of the land. Goldman swept in and bought the land, promptly turning it over to Paulson’s environmental allies. The environmental groups involved in the transaction included The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the actual recipient of the land donation from Goldman Sachs. At the time of the transaction, Paulson was a member of the board of directors of TNC—after the transaction he was elevated to chairman. Paulson’s son is now listed on tax returns as a “trustee” of WCS’....
Bush's pick to head Treasury Department is conservationist as well as financier Much vaunted as chair of the investment firm Goldman Sachs since 1999, Paulson is less known for his role at The Nature Conservancy, the world's largest conservation organization. He joined the group's board of directors in 2001 and now serves as board chair. TNC President and CEO Steve McCormick hails Paulson as "a voice for environmental issues at the highest levels of business and government. His mark on the conservancy is indelible. He has helped us think big -- very big -- about our conservation ambitions." He's put this view into action at Goldman Sachs. In 2004, under Paulson's watch, Goldman donated 680,000 acres of wilderness in southern Chile to the Wildlife Conservation Society, to the consternation of a few shareholders. Paulson also worked with environmental groups including the World Resources Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council to develop a comprehensive environmental policy framework [PDF] for Goldman Sachs, unveiled last November. "It's certainly one of the most far-reaching that has been developed among leading companies," said WRI Senior Associate Jon Sohn. He said the policy statement broke ground by essentially calling for mandatory government limits on greenhouse-gas emissions and by saying the company would encourage its clients to adhere to high environmental standards. Paulson also gives big to green causes. He and his wife Wendy, a former TNC board member who leads bird walks in New York City's Central Park, this spring donated $100 million of their Goldman stock to an environmentally focused family foundation. In the 2002 and 2004 election cycles, they donated $608,000 to the League of Conservation Voters, which works to elect candidates with strong environmental records, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Paulson's remaining net worth is estimated at more than $700 million, and according to The New York Times, he's privately expressed plans to give that wealth away. Though reportedly a Republican -- he raised at least $100,000 for Bush's 2004 reelection campaign -- Paulson is at odds with many in the GOP over climate change. He sees it as a serious problem that can't be adequately addressed with voluntary measures, and he's committed Goldman Sachs to making a 7 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions from its offices by 2012....
Bush's Treasury nominee brings new views on environment to U.S.administration Henry Paulson probably will find the tightrope he will walk as President George W. Bush's Treasury secretary will span a wider gulf than the one between his current twin jobs as chairman of Goldman Sachs and The Nature Conservancy. Both Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street powerhouse, and the world's richest environmental group consider global warming a dire threat that requires government-mandated reductions in carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere like a greenhouse. Bush does not. Steve McCormick, president of The Nature Conservancy, said Paulson will not shy from sharing his views on global warming in Bush's Cabinet. "He is unhesitant in expressing his opinion when he thinks it's the right thing to do,'' McCormick said. ''I'm sure that if there's an opportunity for Hank to provide his point of view on this issue, he will take advantage of it.'' Environmentalists normally critical of Bush believe they may have an advocate with access to the president's ear. ''It isn't every day that the Sierra Club finds itself welcoming a nomination to George W. Bush's Cabinet while ultraconservatives decry the move,'' said Carl Pope, the Sierra Club's executive director....
Army Builders Accept Blame Over Flooding In a sweeping new study of the causes of the disaster in New Orleans last year, the Army Corps of Engineers concludes that the levees it built in the city were an incomplete patchwork of protection, containing flaws in design and construction and not built to handle a storm anywhere near the strength of Hurricane Katrina. "The hurricane protection system in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana was a system in name only," said the draft of the nine-volume report, released yesterday in New Orleans. Several outside engineering panels that have been critical of the corps have come to similar conclusions, and have found a more extensive chain of flaws in the design, construction and maintenance of the 350-mile levee system. But the 6,113-page report is remarkable for being a product of the corps' own official investigation, which brought together 150 experts from government, academia and business to study what went wrong and how to build better systems for the future. The region's network of levees, floodwalls, pumps and gates lacked any built-in resilience that would have allowed the system to remain standing and provide protection even if water flowed over the tops of levees and floodwalls, the report's investigators found. Flaws in the levee design that allowed breaches in the city's drainage canals were not foreseen, and those floodwalls failed even though the storm waters did not rise above the level that the walls were designed to hold....
Column: Investigation into Wolf Creek project warranted I fully support Sen. Ken Salazar and Congressman John Salazar in their call for an investigation into whether insider politics unduly influenced the recent U.S. Forest Service approval of the controversial proposed Village at Wolf Creek in Mineral County. As a result of the serious allegations that political influence may have been "improperly or illegally exerted" in the approval process, I concur with Ken Salazar that further action on the application should be suspended until the internal investigation has been completed. Just in the past few days, Sen. Salazar's concerns have gained traction with the announcement by the inspector general of the federal agency overseeing the approvals that she was evaluating the allegations. No one is pre-judging the outcome; it simply seems prudent to investigate the facts that first came to light when a former high-ranking Forest Service employee, Ed Ryberg, alleged that political influence may have tainted the process and may have improperly benefited the project's owners, which include Texas developer "Red" McCombs....
A fine-feathered fest In 1824, when Jim Bridger made his way down the Bear River to the mouth of the Great Salt Lake in a buffalo-hide canoe, he reported that he had seen "millions of ducks and geese." When John C. Fremont visited the Bear River delta in 1843, he, too, was awestruck by the numbers of birds he found. "The waterfowl made this morning a noise like thunder," he wrote in his report. "The whole morass was animated with multitudes of waterfowl." In 1849, Capt. Howard Stansbury also commented upon the "the immense flocks of wild geese and ducks" and added that "I had seen large flocks of these birds before, in various parts of our country, and especially upon the Potomac, but never did I behold anything like the immense numbers here congregated together. Thousands of acres, as far as the eye could reach, seemed literally covered with them, presenting a scene of busy, animated cheerfulness, in most graceful contrast with the dreary, silent solitude by which we were immediately surrounded." But as settlers began moving into the area, they began diverting water from the Bear River for use in settlements upstream. By the turn of the 20th century the marshy lands of the river's delta had begun to dry up, and the flocks of birds began to diminish. Some visionary local citizens were not alone in worrying about this trend. Concern about lost habitat and endangered species was also reaching the highest levels of government. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt, afraid that a national fad for feathers in hats would wipe out native birds such as the great egret, set aside Florida's 3-acre Pelican Island as a protected place where birds could live undisturbed by humans. The National Wildlife Refuge System was born, and quickly added to with the establishment of other refuges. Meanwhile, back on the Bear River, outbreaks of avian botulism were decimating already reduced populations of waterfowl, and the public outcry for action was growing....
Judge weighs hold on delisting of owl A federal judge is considering a request from environmentalists to put a hold on removing the endangered pygmy owl from the endangered species list. The bird's Sonoran Desert habitat is in imminent danger from several developments, attorney Michael Senatore said Thursday, citing a declaration outlining a half-dozen projects totaling at least 1,200 homes on 4,300 acres. The projects had been undergoing federal environmental reviews until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided in mid-April to take the bird off the endangered list. Then the reviews were terminated, leaving the developers free to build once they get federal and local building permits. The Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity used these same projects in mid-May in an unsuccessful effort to get a brief, temporary restraining order halting the delisting that would have lasted a few weeks. On Thursday, however, the groups were seeking a longer-term injunction blocking the delisting until a federal judge can make a final ruling on the entire case — which could take six months. .S. District Judge Susan Bolton took the case under advisement after attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department and home-builder groups took turns finding fault with the environmentalists' arguments. They said these and other threats alleged by environmentalists were speculative and that the vast majority of pygmy-owl habitat is already protected because it lies in national monuments, national wildlife refuges or Indian reservations — not private land....
Editorial: Government isn’t nature’s best friend Endangered species watchers wanting a glimpse of the wily and rare Devil’s Hole pupfish can now find a few of them in an unlikely place — the Shark Reef aquarium at The Mandalay Bay Casino on the Las Vegas strip. The diminutive pupfish probably can’t hold a candle to the strip’s other attractions; the lions at the MGM Grand, the pirate ship at Treasure Island or the dancing fountains at Bellagio. But that’s not the reason for the change of habitat. Two male and two female pupfish, which normally inhabit a pool in remote Death Valley, have been moved to the casino as an insurance policy against their possible disappearance in the wild. Five fingerling pupfish also have been moved to an aquarium in Arizona with the hope of preserving the species. That leaves only 37 adult pupfish living in Death Valley. Isn’t it a little risky putting pupfish in Shark Reef? Not much more risky than entrusting them to the care of bumbling federal wildlife bureaucrats, who pushed the species closer to the brink in 2004 when improperly stored fish traps, being used by researchers to count the pupfish, were washed into Devil’s Hole by a flash flood. A third of the pupfish died in the traps. No mention of the debacle was made in news accounts of the pupfish’s relocation we read last week. But now you know the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say....
Aquifer level not only gauge for water limits Even though recent rains have raised the Edwards Aquifer level in a key San Antonio index well, watering restrictions still hang over the city's head. The index well level is just one of three key measurements that can trigger drought restrictions. Aquifer managers also look at how much water is flowing from the aquifer into San Marcos and Comal Springs, where an endangered species of fish lives. And despite the recent rains, one of those yardsticks, the average daily water flow into the San Marcos Springs, is not doing so well. Wednesday, the average daily flows at San Marcos fell to 108 cubic feet per second. The rules of the Edwards Aquifer Authority, which regulates pumping from the huge natural underground reservoir, call for water use cutbacks to begin when the running five-day average flow at San Marcos falls below 110 cfs. The five-day average through Wednesday was 111 cfs, putting it very close to triggering the restrictions....
11-foot crocodile captured in Miami-Dade Veteran trapper Todd Hardwick said it was the biggest crocodile he had seen in urban Miami-Dade County in his 20-year crocodile-catching career. The 11-foot crocodile was captured Wednesday night in a south Miami-Dade neighborhood. Hardwick, of Pesky Critters, a wildlife nuisance control company, roped the 360-pound creature along a canal bank in Cutler Bay and wildlife officials relocated it Thursday. Alligator attacks have gotten all the attention lately, but now crocodiles might be rearing their heads, he said. Hardwick first heard about the crocodile on Mother's Day, when he was called to an alligator sighting in a canal in a residential neighborhood. When Hardwick saw it was a crocodile, he reported it to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. On Wednesday night, Hardwick got an emergency call from wildlife authorities that the crocodile was in someone's backyard. Hardwick said he approached the crocodile with a rope, expecting it to leap back in the canal. "He stood his ground, opened his mouth, stared at me and gave me a hiss and a growl," he said....
Christo river art faces delay Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s dream of draping the Arkansas River with seven miles of fabric is so problematic that federal officials already know they probably won’t give the artists the quick go-ahead they seek. The Bureau of Land Management — the first in a series of agencies that must approve the contentious “Over the River” — has warned the artists their proposal is in trouble. “We were telling them it wasn’t looking good,” said BLM planning and environmental coordinator Pete Zwaneveld. “We know we have problems with the bighorn sheep, bald eagles, with congestion on the highway.” The husband-and-wife team has asked to halt the environmental assessment now under way and instead pursue approval through a more rigorous, complicated review known as an environmental impact statement that could delay the project for at least a year — longer if there are appeals. “Christo and Jeanne-Claude are very patient people,” said Jonita Davenport, project director for “Over the River.”....
Shale oil — now? A company says it can produce oil from shale mined from Utah within two or three years, at a cost of about $40 per barrel, and that notion has leaders in Washington, D.C., interested in ways to make it happen. "It is potentially part of our future, and it could be a big part," Domenici said. "Enterprise, initiative and innovation are going to drive the investment of money into shale oil, and it's going to produce crude oil." Romit Bhattacharya, chief executive officer of Oil Tech, gave Domenici an education in shale processing at a remote site that the company currently uses for research. "There's too many people who say it can't be done. It will be done," Bhattacharya told Domenici. The company owns land leases for mineral rights on more than 38,000 acres throughout the Green River Formation in Utah. The small research site has already produced oil that can be sold to a refinery. That site could be modified to produce 1,000 barrels a day. Each additional processing site could be built in six to eight months. Bhattacharya told Domenici that how much shale Oil Tech processes depends on access to available resources. The processing involves heating the shale to extract the oil. It's estimated that Utah has more oil in shale deposits than there is oil in Saudi Arabia, according to John Baardson, chief executive officer of Oil Tech partner BAARD Energy....
New fire forecast expects busy season for Western ranges Wildfire potential is rising on the rangelands across the West due to an unusually thick blanket of grasses that are drying out quickly, according to a new forecast issued by federal land managers Thursday. "Anything in the rangelands, we are looking at above-normal fire danger because of all that fine fuel," said Tom Wordell, head of the Predictive Services Unit at the National Interagency Fire Center here. "The long-lead forecasts show the entire West to be warmer than normal with portions drier than normal in June and July, so if that pans out, we could get accelerated snowmelt and rapid drying in the mountains as well." The national wildland fire outlook calls for normal fire danger across much of the West. in early June, but the potential will increase to above normal later in the month if temperatures climb as forecasters anticipate. In low-elevation areas of the Southwest, normally bare ranges are flush with grasses due to a wet winter and carry-over vegetation from last year's similarly high precipitation....
Editorial: No need to loosen salvage logging rules Salvage logging has this image problem _ it sounds like roadside litter pickup, and that works to the great benefit of timber companies and their pals in Congress. As long as they keep people thinking salvage amounts to cleaning up a few trashed trees after a forest fire, they can keep rewriting federal law to the loggers' liking. The reality is that salvage timber now accounts for more than one-third of the wood coming out of our national forests. So it is a valuable commodity to timber companies. But it's also a critical contributor to forest regrowth after fires, as well as floods and windstorms. Arguably, industrial-scale logging on these damaged landscapes should be governed more carefully, not less, than harvests in healthy forests. But a bill that cleared the U.S. House this month moves in the other direction. It provides a fast-track alternative to normal environmental reviews, requiring forest managers to research their logging options within 30 days after a fire (or other damaging event), and prepare a plan within 90. The public can comment on the planning during that same 90 days _ before any plan is available for review _ and can't appeal the result except in federal court, where judges, too, are directed to expedite review. This so-called Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act has nothing to do with research, recovery or emergency response, but with increasing salvage-timber production _ by some 40 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office....
How Delicate Was Dean? What did Dean Potter do on Delicate Arch, and how did he do it? Those questions have percolated in the climbing world since May 7, when Potter—a 34-year-old professional climber who splits his time between Moab, Utah, and Yosemite National Park—scampered to the top of Delicate Arch, a fragile landmark in southern Utah's Arches National Park. Potter's climb touched off a storm that has led to condemnation from close friends and mentors, virulent criticism from many climbers, and strict new climbing regulations in the park itself. What has remained a mystery, though, is exactly how Potter conducted the climb, and whether it was quite as delicate as many believe. As Outside has learned, it wasn't, and there's even a chance Potter did permanent damage to Delicate Arch's famously soft sandstone....
EPA Won't Regulate Water Transfers The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will not regulate transfers of water from one place to another _ no matter how polluted the water is at the start. The EPA proposal would let water transfer authorities, corporate farmers and other businesses skip having to obtain a Clean Water Act permit in certain cases. The exemption would apply to water, even if it contains pollution, that is moved in tunnels, channels or natural streams and isn't put to industrial, municipal or commercial uses. A permit would still be required if the process of the water transfer itself might introduce pollutants. The idea is to allow "needed flexibility to protect water quality, prevent costly litigation and promote the public good," said Benjamin Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water....
Editorial: Heads in the sand - and proud of it At a press conference Wednesday at the state Capitol, the group Environmental Action marked Dependence Day, "the day when the United States effectively runs out of domestic oil and must rely completely on foreign imports for the remainder of the year." The idea is that the United States produces 41 percent of its oil, enough to supply Americans for only five months a year. We import the rest. Our economic vitality could indeed be held hostage by unfriendly or unstable foreign suppliers of this crucial energy source. But there is good news. Untapped, domestic offshore reserves of crude oil and natural gas could help fuel the nation for decades. There may be enough new natural gas offshore to satisfy demand (at today's level) for 18 years. Unfortunately, Environmental Action wants no new fossil fuels. Instead, the group demands higher fuel-economy standards, more alternative energy and, of course, expanded mass transit. In this view, oil and coal are bad. So is natural gas, which until recently environmentalists lauded because it burns cleanly. And nuclear power. These folks seem to have problems with any energy source that sustains contemporary civilization....
If only McCain and Kennedy lived on ranches in southern Arizona I know how to kill the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill and the illusions that inspire it. We need every citizen to spend a day at John and Pat King's Anvil Ranch in southern Arizona. The experience would create an overnight revolution in America's view of this domestic crisis. The Kings live every day with barking dogs, vandalism, guns at their bedside, trash on their land, and most tragically, human remains. The bodies of seven illegals were found on the 50,000-acre Anvil last year. “Can you imagine dying of heat prostration out there?” says Pat King, a 62-year-old former nurse. “It has got to be the most awful thing. I wish the two countries would get together and stop this. In this whole 50-mile area, there is no law. It's a frontier.” I visited the Anvil a week ago Sunday. The night before, the Minutemen had wrapped up a month-long watch at the ranch, and the nationwide demonstrations to demand rights for illegal immigrants would begin the next morning. I've visited many Arizona ranches, and it always surprises me how quickly I can travel from Tucson to a combat zone. It takes 50 minutes to reach Anvil's headquarters in heavily-crossed Altar Valley, located to the southwest of the city. Even with that proximity, most people in Tucson—to say nothing of Maine or Washington, D.C.—live in blissful ignorance of the worsening situation here. When Pat discusses the problem with friends, they say, “Don't you think you're exaggerating?” No one would ask that if they saw the 40 bicycles stacked against one of the Anvil's out-buildings. They're the favored means of transportation for drug smugglers, who pack their cargo onto saddlebags and pedal across our border, then abandon the bikes. As for vandalism, Pat describes what they experience today as “wanton,”—water troughs filled with garbage, pipes cut, valves hammered to pieces. She jokes that they're thinking of putting a tetherball by the troughs to occupy the illegals so they aren't so destructive. “You have to understand, we're under siege here,” she says. “Every day my son and husband check water and fences and redo the damage they've done. Not to get on with our work, but to undo the damage. Every. Day.” Micaela McGibbon, Pat's daughter, took me on a ranch tour, and in one mile we crossed 30 smuggling trails. In a wash, we inspected sophisticated brush huts in which illegals rest during trips north. But this nightmare comes right to the Kings' doorstep. Imagine living under permanent stakeout. The Kings do. They removed mesquite trees from around their house because illegals would hide underneath them and wait for the house to empty. For nine years, the family has been unable to leave home unless someone stays to guard against burglars. They celebrate Christmas in shifts. On Christmas Eve, Pat's son and daughter-in-law go to Tucson to visit family, and when they return John and Pat go on Christmas morning....
Deep roots: The power of the farm lobby If anyone has an insider's view of the cozy and enduring alliances that maintain America's generous farm subsidy program, it's Larry Combest. He spent 18 years representing west Texas cotton country in Congress, fighting for subsidies on Capitol Hill while reaping political benefits back home. He chaired the House Agriculture Committee the last time Congress rewrote the farm bill, legislation that provided farmers a windfall of federal largess. Now, after leaving Congress, he's on the farm lobby's payroll with the job of persuading his former colleagues to keep the good times rolling. Combest's success in protecting subsidies means consumers pay twice, once at the grocery store and again on their tax bills. Regular as the harvest for 73 years, the renewal of farm subsidies is being challenged by a coalition that includes the Bush administration, environmentalists and fiscal conservatives. Congress is expected to rewrite the farm bill next year. But Combest is hardly trembling. The "real environment," personified by Combest, is a self-perpetuating cycle of money, votes and political power that has made agriculture one of Washington's most entrenched special interests, even as the number of farmers has dwindled to about 1 percent of the population....
Plowed by bad harvest This year's poor wheat harvest will likely thresh local economies that usually profit from custom combine crews passing through and from farmers' trade, merchants and agricultural experts said. Businesses ranging from campgrounds to cafes are feeling the hurt from a puny harvest that ended almost before it began. Ag experts have forecast wheat production for Texas at 35.1 million bushels - down 63 percent compared to last year, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. "Drought has devastated the wheat crop," Bob Garino, NASS acting Texas director, stated in a media release. "Acres harvested for grain are at the lowest level since 1925, and grain production hasn't been this low since 1971." The forecast for Oklahoma is 68.2 million bushels - a 47 percent decrease from last year, according to the NASS. In North Texas and southern Oklahoma, elevators are logging a harvest that's 4 percent to 10 percent of last year's, according to previous Times Record News reports. Locally, the yield has dropped from 30 bushels per acre or so of past years to a measly 15 bushels or less. Farmers aim to produce 40 bushels an acre....
Kaycee cancels Sheepherders Rodeo The annual Kaycee Sheepherders Rodeo has been cancelled, officials say. “It was a hard vote -- probably one of the hardest things we've ever done,” Joni Harlan, a member of the Sheepherders Rodeo committee, said of the decision to end the 19-year-old event. “It was like being at one of our best friends' funerals. ... But the writing was on the wall.” The Sheepherders Rodeo celebrated the work of the sheep industry and included a dog trial for working sheepdogs. It featured such events as men's and women's sheep-hooking and children's sheep-riding, and there was a street dance in town during the evenings. The committee cited hot July weather, declines in crowds and trouble staying profitable as the major reasons for the rodeo's demise. Not to mention the work involved by the dozen or so organizers who endured days of sometimes blazing temperatures to produce the rodeo, according to local rancher Betty Furnival, who helped found the event with her husband, Bob. “When we first started, we had the crowds. We were feeding 500 to 600 people at those free barbecues,” she said. “But really, 100-degree weather, people just won't sit in it -- it's just too hot. You look up in the stands and you might have 100 people or less -- it just got discouraging.” Furnival said the event organizers had considered changing the dates, or even having it in the evenings. In the end, they decided there was no way to keep the rodeo going....
For equine entertainment, Mr. Ed has nothing on cloned-mule races Move over Butch Cassidy — Winnemucca, Nev., soon will have a new most exciting moment. Cloned mule racing. That's right, the tiny Nevada town, in which Cassidy may or may not have held up a bank in 1900, will host the first-ever professional event to include cloned animals. Idaho Gem and Idaho Star were cloned at the University of Idaho — take that Boise State — and trained in different environments. They will race against natural mules Saturday in separate heats. And, in case you're thinking road trip, there will be a final and a consolation final Sunday. "We know there's going to be a huge turnout to see how they compete," said Don Jacklin, an innovator in the cloning project and president of the American Mule Racing Association. It will be a weekend of firsts, Jacklin said. • It will be the first time that a clone has been in a professional competitive event. • It will be the first time clones have competed against non-clones. • And, if Idaho Gem and Idaho Star qualify for the same race Sunday, it will be the first time two clones have competed against each other....