NEWS ROUNDUP

‘Moyers on America: Is God Green?’ "God created this world. He commissioned us to take care of it, and that's that," declares the Rev. Tri Robinson, a rancher and pastor of the evangelical Vineyard Boise Church in Boise, Idaho. Rev. Robinson, a strict creationist and a strong supporter of President George W. Bush, is not exactly your typical tree-hugger, but like many in a growing movement in the conservative Christian community, he views a responsibility to protect the environment as a biblically mandated obligation for believers. Both the movement and its wider political ramifications are examined by veteran newsman Bill Moyers in "Is God Green?" the thought-provoking second installment of the three-part "Moyers on America" series airing Wednesday, Oct. 11, 9-10 p.m. EDT on PBS (check local listings). Though the program points out a history of hostility between evangelicals and environmentalists, Rev. Robinson represents a viewpoint that sees a profound connection between God and his creation; by respecting the latter we reverence the former. To do otherwise, according to Allen Johnson, who founded Christians for the Mountains, an advocacy group in West Virginia, is a sin and breaks the covenant God made with mankind in Genesis entrusting us with the stewardship of his handiwork. This is bigger than just a few church groups recycling trash and planting trees. A burgeoning environmental awareness has converts among the highest levels of the evangelical camp, including the Rev. Richard Cizik, president of the powerful National Association of Evangelicals in Washington....
Crowd proof that water is serious issue More then 90 people showed up Tuesday in Watford City to make sure the State Water Commission understands that out west, where there isn't much, water is king. The commission took comments on a plan by Zenergy Inc. to drill a fresh water well for every oil well west of Alexander - potentially up to 140 of each. The water coming up with oil in that area is salt saturated, saltier than water coming up with most oil wells in the state. The hearing was for 21 permanent fresh water well permits, of which 10 are already drilled and operating under temporary permits. The commission said it does a better job of keeping track of underground water than any state in the union. If local ranch water starts getting depleted, pumping would be curtailed, the commission said. The commission also promised it would recognize that the local ranch zone of water - about 150 feet deep - is interrelated to the deeper zone where Zenergy would be required to go for water. Peter Skedsvold, a local Alexander rancher, asked the commission to deny the requests....
Judge bans snowmobiles to protect caribou in northern Idaho A judge has declared nearly 470 square miles of national forest land in northern Idaho off-limits to snowmobiles in an effort to save the last mountain caribou herd in the contiguous 48 states. In a 31-page ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert H. Whaley banned snowmobiles throughout a caribou recovery zone in the Idaho Panhandle National Forests until the U.S. Forest Service develops a winter recreation strategy taking into account the impact of the loud, exhaust-spewing devices on the herd. Estimates of the herd in the Selkirk Mountains, which extend into southeast British Columbia from around Priest Lake, Idaho, northeast of Spokane, run to about three dozen animals, a "precarious finger-hold" on survival, Whaley wrote. Citing aerial photographs that show snowmobile tracks crisscrossing caribou routes to vital feeding areas, the judge added, "The court chooses to be overprotective rather than under-protective." The ban does not apply to hundreds of miles of state-owned land east of Priest Lake and offers a slim chance that limited snowmobiling might still be allowed in part of the recovery zone. Whaley gave environmental groups and the forest service a week to develop a proposal for a more trail-specific approach....
Land swap for Mt. Hood fails U.S. test Federal government investigators challenge as inadequate land appraisals that justify the trade of public and private property in a pending Mount Hood wilderness bill, saying taxpayers could not be sure they were getting a fair deal. In a letter released Tuesday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, investigators said the two appraisals did not meet industry standards for private or government appraisals. Significantly, the appraisals may have underestimated the value of publicly owned land at Government Camp, the GAO said. At issue is an exchange between a reluctant U.S. Forest Service, which owns 120 acres at Government Camp, and Mt. Hood Meadows, which owns 769 acres near the Cooper Spur ski area on the mountain's northeast slopes. The GAO's revelations pose serious problems for Oregon's congressional delegation. Oregon's representatives are trying to reconcile two conflicting versions of a Mount Hood wilderness bill this year, both of which include the proposed land swap. U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., a key sponsor of the House bill, has said the exchange is pivotal to the wilderness legislation....Go here to read the GAO letter.
Roadless areas' economic benefits cited The assumption that natural areas are valuable only when used for logging, grazing, drilling or other development leads to biased decisions that favor development over preservation, says the author of a report on New Mexico's roadless areas. The state's 1.6 million acres of roadless national forests and more than 100,000 acres in Valle Vidal in northern New Mexico generate tens of millions of dollars a year in the economic benefits of clean water, outdoor recreation and forests that absorb carbon dioxide, according to the study commissioned by a Santa Fe-based environmental group, Forest Guardians. Environmentalists contend the study released Monday supports their argument for permanent protection for roadless areas in national forests. The state has petitioned the Bush administration to protect all of New Mexico's roadless national forest areas and the Valle Vidal. In New Mexico, the Forest Guardian's report concluded that economic benefits from roadless areas include $42 million annually in water quality benefits from 530,000 acre-feet of clean water flowing from road less land. The study said the economy reaps $22 million to $24 million associated with absorption of carbon dioxide that otherwise would remain in the atmosphere and exacerbate global warming. It also said recreational use that doesn't depend on motorized vehicles generates $27 million....Go here(pdf) to read the report.
Statements from indicted fire manager allowed at trial A federal judge says a former U-S Forest Service fire commander's confession that he started two fires can be used against him at his trial. The attorney for Van Bateman wanted the statements thrown out, saying they were coerced. But District Judge Paul Rosenblatt found last week that there was no coercion and that investigators gave him a chance to leave, take breaks and to be silent. The 56-year-old now faces a November trial on two counts of setting timber fires and two counts of arson on public lands. He could get 50 years in prison if convicted of all the crimes. Bateman was a well-known fire manager in the Coconino National Forest....
Government goes with partial Alaska sale A judge has halted part of a federal lease sale of oil-rich land on Alaska's North Slope, but the government on Tuesday said it can still sell sections outside an area environmentalists want to preserve for migratory birds and calving caribou. The ruling expressly forbade the government from selling leases to tracts in the northeast section of the reserve, but left room for sales in the northwest section, according to Danielle Allen, a spokeswoman for the bureau in Alaska. After consulting attorneys on Tuesday, the bureau decided it did not have to close the 5.5 million acres in the northwestern area it had offered for lease. "We believe the northwest tracts are on very sound legal footing," Dougan said. The bureau will announce the high bidders for the northwest tracts on Wednesday, as planned, Dougan said. The bureau had received bids for 940,000 acres as of last week's deadline, she said....
BLM Gathers Over 500 Wild Horses From Fire-Ravaged Nevada The Bureau of Land Management has rounded up more than 500 wild horses from northeastern Nevada rangeland devastated by wildfires, the agency said Tuesday. Nearly 1 million acres mainly in Elko County burned this year from a series of fires that began in June and continued for three months. Biologists have said the fires destroyed critical habitat for wildlife and livestock and could take decades to restore. The BLM removed the wild horses from the Little Humboldt and Rock Creek Herd Management areas. Officials said some of the horses will be kept in a contracted facility in Fallon and released back on the range at a later date, and some mares were moved to adjacent pastures....
Biologists euthanize an endangered sheep Biologists on Tuesday euthanized a Peninsular bighorn sheep released into the San Jacinto Mountains above Palm Springs after realizing the animal was seriously injured by coyotes. The sheep had been released there recently to help a herd of the endangered species. Jane Hendron, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said her agency and the state's wildlife agency authorized biologists with the Bighorn Institute near Palm Desert to carry out the euthanization. Jim DeForge, the institute's executive director, said he and some biologists carried antibiotics into the mountains hoping to treat the captive-born sheep that was released into the wild last Thursday and was seen limping Sunday. DeForge said an examination revealed the animal was badly wounded and had to be euthanized....
Oregon regulators vote to remove Chiloquin Dam Officials have decided to remove the Chiloquin dam, which blocks the passage of endangered Lost River and short-nosed suckers to spawning areas up the Sprague River. The Modoc Point Irrigation District voted to remove the structure last week and met Monday to ratify the vote. Removing the dam was identified as a key project for helping endangered suckers after the Endangered Species Act forced irrigation water to be shut off to most of the 1,000 farms on the Klamath Reclamation Project during a 2001 drought. The move was intended to maintain water levels in Upper Klamath Lake — the project's main reservoir and the primary habitat of the suckers. The U.S. Department of the Interior will pay for removal of the 92-year-old dam. The agency also will pay to install a new pumping station, and will give the district a $2.4-million to create a fund to pay for operation and maintenance of the pump station. "We're excited," said Irrigation district board member Pete Bourdet. "This is what we've worked for. I personally have spent the last two years working on this."....
Mexican Garter Snake Denied Protection under Endangered Species Act Responding to a petition and lawsuit from the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced today that the Mexican Garter Snake does not warrant protection as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In its determination, FWS recognized that the garter snake is extirpated from 85-90 percent of its range in the U.S., declining, and severely threatened by multiple factors in both the U.S. and Mexico. However, the agency still concluded that the species should not be protected. Dependent on the dwindling rivers and streams of the southwest U.S. and northern Mexico, the Mexican Garter Snake has been extirpated from most of its U.S. range, including the Colorado, Gila, and much of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro Rivers. The decline of the Mexican Garter Snake is closely linked to the deteriorating quality of streamside habitats, the disappearance of native frogs and native fishes and the rampant introduction and spread of non-native species, such as bullfrogs, sunfish and bass. “The decline of the Mexican garter snake is symptomatic of an extremely widespread decline in the aquatic fauna of the Southwest,” stated Dr. Phil Rosen, herpetologist with the University of Arizona....
“Hot & Cold Media Spin: A Challenge To Journalists Who Cover Global Warming” I am going to speak today about the most media-hyped environmental issue of all time, global warming. I have spoken more about global warming than any other politician in Washington today. My speech will be a bit different from the previous seven floor speeches, as I focus not only on the science, but on the media’s coverage of climate change. Global Warming -- just that term evokes many members in this chamber, the media, Hollywood elites and our pop culture to nod their heads and fret about an impending climate disaster. As the senator who has spent more time speaking about the facts regarding global warming, I want to address some of the recent media coverage of global warming and Hollywood’s involvement in the issue. And of course I will also discuss former Vice President Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920’s until the 1960’s they warned of global warming. From the 1950’s until the 1970’s they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years. Recently, advocates of alarmism have grown increasingly desperate to try to convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral issue of our generation. Just last week, the vice president of London’s Royal Society sent a chilling letter to the media encouraging them to stifle the voices of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism....
Old-fashioned land scams go high-tech An elderly woman from the East Coast roams the Arizona desert in search of her land. She's looking for a tidy lot in a subdivision and instead finds an arid wasteland in the middle of nowhere. She gets lost, runs out of gas and water and has to be rescued by a rancher. She had bought the land on the Internet, sight unseen, according to Mary Utley, spokeswoman with the Arizona Department of Real Estate. The Internet is reviving a grand old American tradition: land scams. Thousands of lots in phantom subdivisions that were sold decades ago to people who hoped to build retirement homes in warm states are reappearing on online sites such as the Internet giant eBay. The new wave of land scams has the potential to snooker millions more around the world because of the Internet's broad and instantaneous reach....
Study Finds Thousands Receive Farm Disaster Aid At Least Every Other Year for Over Two Decades Pressure is building in Congress for pre-election enactment of a $6.55 billion farm disaster aid bill, by far the most expensive such measure in history. Proponents of the bill describe the crop and livestock impacts of recent dry weather in the Great Plains as unusually severe, likening it to the conditions during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. But there is nothing unusual about this year's clamor for emergency agricultural disaster aid, millions of dollars of which will go to the very same farmers and ranchers who have collected it every other year, or more frequently, for decades. Over the past 21 years, taxpayers have provided $26 billion in emergency agricultural disaster aid to more than two million farm and ranch operations, a new Environmental Working Group (EWG) farm-by-farm data investigation of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) records has found. The Agriculture Department sent out disaster aid checks every year for the past two decades, with payouts exceeding one billion dollars in 11 of the 21 years studied. The EWG analysis found that the vast majority of the 2 million farmers and ranchers who have received disaster aid over the past 21 years have received it infrequently, with 75 percent collecting payments three years or less out of 21. However, a minority of the recipients are chronic beneficiaries of disaster funds, with some 21,000 of them (about one percent) collecting disaster aid more than 11 years out of 21, amounting to $2.8 billion, or more than 10 percent of the total payments. These chronic beneficiaries received an average of $118,000 in disaster aid over the period, and collected aid checks on average for 12 of the 21 years....
Triplet calves born in Idaho, defying 1-in-105,000 odds Odds-defying triplet calves, a heifer and two bulls, that were born on a northcentral Idaho ranch are healthy and growing, said the rancher and Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine employee who found them in his pasture. Experts at the school in neighboring eastern Washington say the odds of triplets born to beef cattle are about 1 in 105,000. "I couldn't believe it," said Mike Carpenter, who with his wife, Gayle, raises registered Simmental beef cattle about four miles south of this Latah County town near the north slopes of Moscow Mountain. Carpenter is also a herds manager at the vet school at Washington State. "I don't want too many of these," he said, after finding the calves last week. "Once is enough." Neighbors are visiting with cameras. Professors at the vet school say they've only seen triplets in dairy cows. But that's not the most amazing thing about last week's phenomenon, says Ahmad Tibary, a professor of large animal breeding and obstetrics at WSU. "The most exceptional thing about these triplets is that all are doing well," Tibary said. Keeping the newborn animals alive wasn't easy, Carpenter said. When the Carpenters found them, two of the triplets had apparently already nursed on their mother, but the third was lying down and needed help....
A peek at Aztec life A young husband on his deathbed dictates a list of valuables he wants to go to his wife. It turns out the goods he wants his wife to have actually belong to his mother, a widow who inherited the possessions from her own family. The man dies, and a bitter lawsuit between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law lands in court. The mother-in-law eventually wins, retaining possession of nine parcels of land, two houses, a number of blankets, a corn granary, a metal hoe blade, a horse, seven cacao bean crushers and ceremonial cups for drinking chocolate. t was not an important case in the annals of jurisprudence, but it is an unusual one, the arguments being clearly laid out on hand-rendered court documents in pictographic style. The disputants were Aztec women arguing in front of a Spanish judge in 1576, 55 years after Spain conquered what is now Mexico City. The court documents have been in Chicago for more than 100 years, part of one of the world's most important collections of colonial Mexican historical records....
On the Road to a Hanging Mike Kearby’s new book provides a rare glimpse into the experiences of a black cowboy in the American West. The Road to a Hanging deals with the experiences of Free Anderson, an ex-slave and Union Civil War Army Sergeant. Set in 1868, Anderson is framed by outlaw Sheriff Jubal Thompson. Awaiting hanging in “The Flats,” known as the toughest town in Texas, Anderson finds help from ex-slave Clara Mason and Civil War friend Parks Scott. Parks rescues Anderson from the hangman’s noose and the two men urgently ride to the far reaches of West Texas to find proof on Anderson’s innocence. Kearby said Anderson is probably the first black hero in a fiction book in the last 15 years. “It’s kind of [Free’s] trials and tribulation during reconstruction,” explained Kearby. “You can relate it to Parker County because Bose Ikard and Charles Goodnight are mentioned. In fact, [Free] is part of one of their trail drives early on.” Charles Goodnight, made famous by Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Lonesome Dove, was a cattle rancher in West Texas. He and Bose Ikard, a real ex-slave and top hand, teamed up with Oliver Loving to drive cattle north from Texas along what would become known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail....