NEWS ROUNDUP
Western cattlemen urged to buy wild horses The U.S. Bureau of Land Management and a ranchers' group are asking thousands of Western cattlemen to consider buying older wild horses that have been culled from the range. Letters are being sent to more than 15,000 ranchers with BLM grazing permits or leases in an effort to help the agency sell the roughly 7,000 "sale-eligible" wild horses it has in holding areas. BLM says it is required by law to sell the horses, which are older than 10 years or have been passed over for adoption at least three times. Tom Gorey, an agency spokesman, said Tuesday that BLM has reached out to advocacy groups, ranchers and others since the law was passed in December 2004, and considered it logical also to appeal to those who graze livestock on BLM lands. The program is being done in partnership with the Public Lands Council, a ranching trade association. Gorey said that, while the price is usually negotiable, the BLM will ask $10 per head to be consistent....
Off-Road Vehicle Groups Seek a Say in Roadless Lawsuits A coalition of off-road vehicle groups is seeking to intervene in the latest round of lawsuits addressing management of Forest Service Roadless areas. The motion was recently filed in federal court in the Northern District of California by the California Association of 4 Wheel Drive Clubs, United Four Wheel Drive Associations, the American Council of Snowmobile Associations, and the BlueRibbon Coalition. The lawsuits at issue were brought by the states of California, Oregon and New Mexico and numerous environmental organizations led by the Wilderness Society. "These organizations have been actively involved in all aspects of Forest Service recreation management," said Paul Turcke, the Boise, Idaho attorney serving as lead counsel for the recreational groups. "Contrary to their title, many of these roadless lands have well-established routes which the public has long used to gain access to treasured destinations on our public lands. The Recreational Groups seek to join these suits to continue their defense of this legitimate recreational access," Turcke concluded....
Grasslands prairie-dog poisoning completed Crews have finished poisoning prairie dogs on nearly 10,000 acres of federal grasslands in South Dakota and Nebraska in an effort to keep the animals from encroaching onto adjacent private land. The work was finished before the end of January, according to a news release from Don Bright, forest supervisor in charge of the Buffalo Gap and Fort Pierre national grasslands in South Dakota and Oglala National Grassland in Nebraska. “We said that our first response to address the prairie-dog expansion problem would be treatment with rodenticide, followed by more long-term solutions,” Bright said in the news release. Working with the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in Nebraska and contract applicators in South Dakota, the Forest Service completed chemical treatment of 8,953 acres in South Dakota and 965 acres in Nebraska, Bright said....
California's calamity in waiting The scenario is as simple as what unfolded in New Orleans. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is below sea level. It is protected by a network of earthen levees dating to the frontier era, many built by Chinese laborers following completion of the trans-Sierra railroad. Through this delta flow the waters of Northern California, which are channeled southward to the semi-arid reaches of Central and Southern California via a network of aqueducts and pipelines representing a multibillion-dollar investment by state and federal government across 75 years of construction. Ringing the delta is a rich empire of agriculture and suburban development. Should a magnitude 6.5 earthquake strike the San Francisco Bay Area — almost a certainty by mid-century, though it could happen today — about 30 major failures can be expected in the earthen levees. About 3,000 homes and 85,000 acres of cropland would be submerged. Saltwater from San Francisco Bay would invade the system, forcing engineers to shut down the pumps that ship water to Central and Southern California while the levees were being repaired. This would cut off water to the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project....
Forest Service fee levied on ski resort diners Skiers grabbing a bite at many of Vail Resorts Inc.'s mountainside eateries now get more than just fries with their burgers. At the resort operator's five ski areas, those dining at restaurants built on public land now encounter a 5 percent fee at the bottom of their checks. The U.S. Forest Service has long levied the fee on ski areas, which often pass it along to customers in the form of higher prices. Vail just recently decided to list it as a separate charge along with taxes. "It allowed us not to raise our pricing on our menu items," said Bill Jensen, chief operating officer at Vail Mountain....
Column: Branching Out North American forests are treasures of enormous natural bounty. Yet the United States is squandering this inheritance. Lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service regularly suffer catastrophic wildfire, insect infestation and invasion by alien species. And taxpayers lose money on them, while even Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth admits his organization suffers from "analysis paralysis." To find a better way, I began investigating forestry outside of the United States last year and found strikingly different approaches just north of the border. Canada has managed to create the right incentives to both profitably manage timber stands as well as protect the environment. In particular, Canadian "community-based forestry" is worth a closer look. In the United States 59% of the forestland is privately owned, while in Canada 70% of the forestland is managed by provincial governments. But this doesn't tell the whole story. Canadian government run forests are legacies from the British colonial rule and were passed along to the Canadian governments. Today, provincial forests are still commonly called "Crown" lands. Timber harvests on these Crown lands are managed primarily through long-term leases and licenses, also called tenures. Unlike timber sales in the United States, which give a private company the right to log a specified forest stand, Canadian timber tenures transfer major responsibilities to private companies or organizations for long periods of time....
New forest signs aren't appetizing Porcupines, deer, bears and other denizens of New Mexico forests may be the only ones unhappy with a burgeoning Mountainair company. Its new plastic-wood material could replace the wooden signs on national forest lands, taking away a tasty snack for all those critters. "I've seen lots and lots of chewed-up signs," said Jerry Payne, biomass utilization specialist for the southwestern region of the U.S. Forest Service. "I've never seen it with the plastic-wood sign." The plastic-wood material - called Altree - is made of melted plastic and wood scraps left over from the Forest Service's thinning of forests. Phil Archuletta, co-owner of P&M Plastics in Mountainair, began working on the material in 1993 after the Forest Service approached him about finding ways to use scrap wood from forest thinning projects....
Burns: Public lands sale "dead in water" Senator Conrad Burns says a Bush administration plan to sell off national forest land is -- quote "dead in the water." Burns is chairman of a key subcommittee that would have to approve such a move -- and he says he's not going to let that happen. The administration announced earlier this month plans to sell as much as 300-thousand acres of federal land around the nation, including about 14-thousand acres of Forest Service land in Montana. Money from the sales would go to a program that helps pay for rural schools. The land sale idea drew immediate criticism from environmental and sportsmen groups....
Ideological splits plague group that governs off-roading When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Daphne Greene to manage the state's troubled off-road vehicle program, the first question she faced was whether she would be the new sheriff or the executioner. Amid a dramatic surge in popularity, the sport's future has been clouded by a festering ideological feud. The state governing body that oversees grants and policies important to off-roading has split along lines loyal to either riders or environmentalists. Lingering distrust has poisoned potential compromises that could benefit off-roaders, protect the environment and appease communities being invaded by the noise and pollution of the sport, say some of those involved....
Report a boost for Pombo's ESA goals Two critical concepts in Tracy Rep. Richard Pombo's proposed overhaul of the federal Endangered Species Act should guide the U.S. Senate's attempts to reform the 23-year-old law, according to the initial findings of a group senators commissioned to help them prepare their legislation. But the group failed to find a path through the debate's thorniest thicket: How to reform the ESA's "critical habitat" provision, an often unwieldy tool intended to give threatened critters a place to live and multiply. Congress is closer to wholesale reform of the Endangered Species Act than it has been in years, and Pombo has been the driving force from the House of Representatives. He wrestled a bill through the House last year with the help of Rep. Dennis Cardoza, a Merced County Democrat whose district includes Stockton. The legislation now awaits action in the Senate. Debate stalled, however, because many senators wanted to hear what an eclectic group of environmentalists, industry officials, legal experts and scholars called the Keystone Group had to say about reform. Late last week the group sent a letter to six key senators endorsing Pombo's emphasis on providing incentives for the owners of private land - where 80 percent of endangered species live - to stop shooting, spraying, shoveling over and shutting up about the critters on their property....go here to read the report...
Rising wolf population ups residents' concerns The gray wolf is on a roll. Its population is booming. Lone wolves have turned up in every corner of the state. And increasingly, residents are reporting a growing number of close encounters with this elusive predator. "Nobody is alive in Wisconsin who has experienced this kind of wolf population," said Adrian Wydeven, the top wolf expert with the state Department of Natural Resources. "There has been nothing like this since the 1800s." Wolves have been aided by government protection, a more charitable public image and a teeming deer population that has offered an abundant food supply. But the wolf remains a polarizing force, resurrecting old hostilities when it preys on livestock and meanders into residential areas. Ronda Dural called it a "lifetime experience" when she locked eyes with a wolf 20 feet away from her on a sunny summer day in 2003. But during the 2004 Christmas break, a pair of wolves, and then a third, followed her for several miles on a desolate road close to home near Butternut in Ashland County, Wis. — even though she yelled and clapped her hands to scare them off....
Florida Panthers could return to Arkansas The Bush administration has drafted a plan recommending Arkansas be considered as a new home for the Florida panther. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan released last month sets out the goal of establishing three self-sustaining panther populations in the southeastern United States. The plan states that two areas in Arkansas would be optimal for the panthers. They are the 1.2 million acre Ozark National Forest and the 65,000-acre Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge near Crossett in southeast Arkansas. Fish and Wildlife Service projections have determined that the panthers could survive by themselves when three self-sustaining populations of at least 240 panthers can live for 14 years in long-term habitat. Panther proponents say the government will have many hoops to jump through before the animals are reintroduced outside of south Florida, an agency official said....
Valley City rancher seeing triple after cow gives birth Steve Opatz has to look three times to see one set of calves delivered on his farm earlier this month. Opatz, who has been in the cattle business about 20 years, is used to multiple births from his herd of Charolais-Gelbvieh cross cows, with six sets of twins born so far this year. But one of his heifers managed to surprise him with a healthy set of triplets on Feb. 8. "The odds are about 1 in 105,000," said Greg Lardy, a beef cattle specialist at North Dakota State University Extension Service. "It varies a little bit by breed - Simmentals and Holsteins are better known for multiple births - but it's pretty rare." Opatz took it in stride as just another day, just another cow to help with her delivery. He said he knew the cow was expecting twins for sure. "Even after delivering the first one, she was too big to fit in the chute," said his wife, Tara. She and her husband wanted the heifer in a stanchion so they could help her with her delivery. They managed to get the cow's head in the stanchion and Steve helped deliver the second calf. He thought that was the last one. "But she was still acting funny," he said. "Next thing I knew, she just laid down and had another."...
'One Good Horse' a gallop Author Tom Groneberg never believed his life would be perfect. Groneberg had a few physical bumps and ego bruises in his lifetime, but nothing prepared him for the summer that his family changed. In his new book "One Good Horse", he writes about that year and the winter afterward, when he purchased a challenge on four legs. Groneberg always knew that he wanted to work on a ranch. His favorite jobs were physical tasks - culling cattle, moving them, rounding them up and caring for them. While he rode ranch horses when he needed to get a job done, he thought often of getting his own horse. That would have to wait, though. The ranch owner for which Groneberg had been working sold his cattle and Groneberg was out of a job. This was an especially big problem, since Groneberg and his wife, Jennifer, had a young son and were expecting twins. When the babies were born, both boys, Groneberg says he had been hoping for a boy and a girl, so that the children could be as different as possible. Instead, much to their grief and bewilderment, the Gronebergs learned that one of the twins, Avery, had Down Syndrome. Ever hear of a cowboy poet? Here's a book by one. Groneberg's writing is almost song-like and his descriptions are lovingly crafted. There's something else about this book, though, which makes it worth reading: it's roughly divided into thirds. There is Groneberg's lyrical narrative. There is the story from the point of view of his horse, believe it or not. And there is Groneberg's lengthy summary of a book written about the true life and times of Teddy Blue, a man who eschewed the farming life, became a wild cow puncher and range rider in the late 1800s, only to become a farmer later in life....
RANCH RIDER BUCKS THE TREND WITH THE NEW 'SPA RANCHING' EXPERIENCE The word spa is now synonymous with ranching and that’s not a bad thing according to Ranch Rider as this might be the holistic approach we have all been searching for. While bucking the trend where most traditional ranches are concerned, the exhilarating exercise of riding on the range combined with the best that pampering has to offer would certainly seem to be a more effective option than the mainstream spa experience. Ranch spas are the ultimate blend of rugged adventure and healing spa therapies, working together to rejuvenate mind and body like never before. Offering the same majestic views and more luxury than the hardier working ranches, the wide-open spaces where they are located also add to this unique sense of well-being. Set in the tranquil wilderness of Western Canada, the Echo Valley Resort Ranch is perched atop a picturesque plateau in British Columbia’s Cariboo country. The perfect combination of the adventurous west and the peaceful wisdom of the East, the ranch, features it’s own Baan Thai spa designed by Dr. Pinyo Suwenkiri, architect to the Thai Royal family. One of only 20, guests can experience a tailored cowhand lifestyle combined with gourmet cooking (with a chef known to cook for many an ambassador) and perhaps even Thai yoga massage, where visitors find out just how it feels when someone else does the workout. Inspiring views come as standard with ensuite accommodation based in log lodge rooms and secluded cabins, complete with living areas and ‘must have’ balconies. Based in Sasabe on the American-Mexican border and claiming to be one of the last great Spanish Haciendas, the Rancho De La Osa extols pure style, culture and history. Dating back to 1700, the building was once home to the American Indians and Spanish Conquistadors. Having played host to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and John Wayne himself the Rancho De La Osa is now a premier guest ranch with gourmet cooking, its own winery, a string of quarter horses for small group riding, and a heated spa, fitness and therapy suite offering thermastone massages with heated river stones or oriental foot massages. However, if looking for something more invigorating guests can always join a yoga workout, poolside. The ranch has a restful and intimate appeal taking only 19 guests, and the atmosphere is one of a salubrious private party with original artwork and Mexican antiques adorning each uniquely furnished room; perfectly capturing the colourful spirit of the Sonoran desert....
Thursday, February 23, 2006
FLE
A Harriet Miers moment
Since a column raising an alarm about CFIUS' decision appeared in this space last week, three new factors have come to light that compound the strategic folly of the UAE deal: * First, in addition to the six affected ports mentioned above, two others would also have part of their operations managed by DP World — on behalf of none other than the U.S. Army. Under a newly extended contract, the owner of P and O will manage the movement of heavy armor, helicopters and other military materiel through the Texas seaports of Beaumont and Corpus Christie. How much would our enemies like to be able to sabotage such shipments? * Second, while advocates of the stealthy CFIUS decision-making process point to the involvement of the Defense Department in its DP World decision, it is unclear at what level this bizarre proposition was reviewed in the Pentagon. Many top jobs remain unfilled by presidential appointees. Past experience suggests the job may have fallen to lower-level career bureaucrats who give priority to maintaining good relations with their foreign "clients," like the UAE. * Then, there is the matter of financing the DP World takeover of Peninsula and Oriental. The UAE evidently intends to raise nearly all of the $6.8 billion price for P and O on international capital markets. It must be asked: Who will the foreign investors be, and might they have malign intentions towards the U.S.?....Also see
Bush Shrugs Off Objections to Port Deal,
Frist Calls for Halt to U.S. Ports Deal ,
Port security pits Bush against conservatives,
Congress rises up against UAE deal,
White House: Bush not initially aware of port deal,
Shipping industry sees little threat to national security in port deal and
Ports Debate Reawakens Foreign-Investment Jitters.
Bush, Fox join forces to cut violence on border
President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox agreed yesterday to try to reduce violence on the U.S.-Mexico border and pledged to have their countries' domestic security departments work together on the issue. In a telephone conversation, Mr. Bush designated Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to be the top U.S. contact on border violence, and Mr. Fox tapped Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal Carranza as his point man. "The two leaders talked about the importance of working together to improve our border security and stop the violence," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. Concern over border violence is growing as violent encounters in Mexico increase, spreading rapidly throughout northern Mexico from the lawless confines of Nuevo Laredo, which lies across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas. Last week, two police chiefs were killed within hours of each other in what U.S. and Mexican law-enforcement authorities have described as an escalating war among drug cartels for control of key smuggling routes into the United States. Hector Ayala, chief in San Pedro Garza Garcia, outside Monterrey, was killed Feb. 13 when a car passed his vehicle and opened fire. Four hours earlier, Sabinas Hidalgo Police Chief Javier Garcia was abducted by armed men, bound and shot in the back of the head. The violence has not been confined to Mexico. Since Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year, there have been more than 200 assaults on U.S. agents in the Tucson sector alone, and the Border Patrol has warned agents in Arizona of incursions by men dressed in Mexican military uniforms....
Congress Told of ATF Seizures, Threats to Gun Buyers
Agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), allegedly acting without warrants or legislative authority to do so, seized firearms from at least 50 gun show patrons in Virginia according to congressional testimony and an agency document made public Wednesday. Witnesses also testified that African-American and female gun buyers in Richmond, Va., and Pittsburgh, Pa., were profiled based on their race or sex and some in Pittsburgh were threatened with arrest by ATF agents for alleged actions that are not violations of law. Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, which has jurisdiction over ATF. While he supports the agency's mission, Coble questions some of its tactics. "ATF reports that 206 [gun show] participants were stopped and interviewed while it confiscated firearms from another 50 participants," Coble said, referring to gun shows in Richmond, Va. "Although most of the firearms were ultimately returned, the purchasers were notified via official letter from ATF that [they] were ordered to appear at the local ATF office to discuss their transactions. In addition, the letter explained that failure to appear could result in an arrest warrant being issued for the alleged charges." Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) said the ATF letter and the reported interrogation of lawful gun buyers raise "serious questions." "There's a way to have a sting operation that's legal. This dragnet, apparent dragnet, however, is not the way it ought to be done," Scott said. "You have to show probable cause and it can be done. But you ought not just stop people without probable cause and without any indication of guilt." John White, a former law enforcement officer who is now an FFL operating under the business name "The Gunsmith," said female customers who approached his sales area at the Richmond shows were immediately targeted by the "undercover" officers. "If a woman showed up at my table, she was surrounded by law enforcement," White recalled....
Threats have rallied Hudspeth residents
Big-city worries invaded Jose Franco's once tranquil turf. The Fort Hancock school superintendent now has a police radio in his office with access to law enforcement. Uniformed officers now guard the two public schools in this farming town of about 1,800 because officials say suspected drug smugglers recently threatened Hudspeth County sheriff's deputies and their families in Fort Hancock. "I don't think we're in the panic stage," Franco said. "The staff is doing an excellent job reassuring children that they're safe." Franco, a Fort Hancock native, is responsible for almost 600 students. Hudspeth County sheriff's officials and the 1,700-square-mile school district elevated security after three men in an older-model Ford Bronco approached a deputy sheriff's wife and warned her to tell her husband to stop patrolling the Rio Grande. Almost a month ago, sheriff's deputies and other law enforcement officials said they chased three SUVs loaded with marijuana back to the river and were confronted by Mexicans dressed in military uniforms and armed with large-caliber weapons. The standoff at a remote border spot between Fort Hancock and Sierra Blanca has sparked investigations. Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West said he wants to meet this week with local, state and federal law enforcement officials throughout the region to discuss a team approach to fighting drug smugglers. The Apostolic Church in Sierra Blanca, about 88 miles southeast of El Paso on Interstate 10, planned a prayer service today for all law enforcement officers in Hudspeth County as a show of support....
Man wasn't hit in back, lawyer for agent says
The alleged drug dealer who was shot in the buttocks by Border Patrol agents last year was not shot in the back, but was shot as he turned around toward the agents, defense lawyers said during the trial's opening statements Tuesday. Mary Stillinger, the lawyer for agent Ignacio Ramos, said medical records will show that the bullet entered the victim's buttock at an angle, suggesting he was partly turned around. It was Ramos' single bullet that hit the victim, Osvaldo Aldrete Davila. Another agent, Jose Alonso Compean, also shot at him more than 10 times, reloading once, on Feb. 17 near Fabens. Stillinger contends that the shooting was justified because Ramos was trying to help his colleague, Compean. Compean's lawyer, Maria Ramirez, said Compean started shooting because he feared for his life. Aldrete was running back to Mexico after abandoning a van filled with marijuana. The court hearing Tuesday afternoon also showed that nine other Border Patrol agents were at the scene and saw at least parts of the incident but did not report it....
Shoes Designed to Help Border Crossers
Now here’s something that’s sure to create a little bit of controversy. They’re called Brincos, and they’re shoes designed to help illegal immigrants cross the U.S.-Mexican border. Designed by Argentinean artist Judi Werthein, these shoes feature an array of items designed to make the dangerous trip across the border a little less so. There’s a built-in compass, a pouch inside the tongue used to store aspirin and a map of popular routes going from Tijuana to San Diego on the insole. An Aztec eagle adorns the heel, while the shoes’ red, white, and green colors remind you that, yes, the shoes were designed with Mexican nationals in mind. The Brincos (the name derives from the Spanish verb brincar, “to jump,” as in, to jump the border) were handed out for free to migrants, while so-called hip stores in San Diego were spotted selling them for $215.
Surveillance Cameras To Monitor Santa Monica Promenade, Pier
Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade is the latest public place that will soon apparently be under the watchful eye of police surveillance cameras. Tuesday night the Santa Monica City Council has given the green light for a new video surveillance system at the 3rd Street Promenade and the Santa Monica Pier. The video cameras will monitor areas visited by thousands of people. City officials say they decided on the plan after suspicious people took pictures of some of the facilities there. "Some men were videotaping in a manner that was inconsistent with tourist photography. They were photographing access roads and security structures," said Chief James Butts with the Santa Monica Police Department. The system will go online as soon as the cameras and recording system are installed.
Houston eyes cameras at apartment complexes
Houston's police chief on Wednesday proposed placing surveillance cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets, shopping malls and even private homes to fight crime during a shortage of police officers. "I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?" Chief Harold Hurtt told reporters Wednesday at a regular briefing. Houston is facing a severe police shortage because of too many retirements and too few recruits, and the city has absorbed 150,000 hurricane evacuees who are filling apartment complexes in crime-ridden neighborhoods. The City Council is considering a public safety tax to pay for more officers. Building permits should require malls and large apartment complexes to install surveillance cameras, Hurtt said. And if a homeowner requires repeated police response, it is reasonable to require camera surveillance of the property, he said....
Daley wants security cameras at bars
Surveillance cameras — aimed at government buildings, train platforms and intersections here — might soon be required at corner taverns and swanky nightclubs. Mayor Richard Daley wants to require bars open until 4 a.m. to install security cameras that can identify people entering and leaving the building. Other businesses open longer than 12 hours a day, including convenience stores, eventually would have to do the same. Daley's proposed city ordinance adds a dimension to security measures installed after the Sept. 11 attacks. The proliferation of security cameras — especially if the government requires them in private businesses — troubles some civil liberties advocates....
A Harriet Miers moment
Since a column raising an alarm about CFIUS' decision appeared in this space last week, three new factors have come to light that compound the strategic folly of the UAE deal: * First, in addition to the six affected ports mentioned above, two others would also have part of their operations managed by DP World — on behalf of none other than the U.S. Army. Under a newly extended contract, the owner of P and O will manage the movement of heavy armor, helicopters and other military materiel through the Texas seaports of Beaumont and Corpus Christie. How much would our enemies like to be able to sabotage such shipments? * Second, while advocates of the stealthy CFIUS decision-making process point to the involvement of the Defense Department in its DP World decision, it is unclear at what level this bizarre proposition was reviewed in the Pentagon. Many top jobs remain unfilled by presidential appointees. Past experience suggests the job may have fallen to lower-level career bureaucrats who give priority to maintaining good relations with their foreign "clients," like the UAE. * Then, there is the matter of financing the DP World takeover of Peninsula and Oriental. The UAE evidently intends to raise nearly all of the $6.8 billion price for P and O on international capital markets. It must be asked: Who will the foreign investors be, and might they have malign intentions towards the U.S.?....Also see
Bush Shrugs Off Objections to Port Deal,
Frist Calls for Halt to U.S. Ports Deal ,
Port security pits Bush against conservatives,
Congress rises up against UAE deal,
White House: Bush not initially aware of port deal,
Shipping industry sees little threat to national security in port deal and
Ports Debate Reawakens Foreign-Investment Jitters.
Bush, Fox join forces to cut violence on border
President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox agreed yesterday to try to reduce violence on the U.S.-Mexico border and pledged to have their countries' domestic security departments work together on the issue. In a telephone conversation, Mr. Bush designated Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to be the top U.S. contact on border violence, and Mr. Fox tapped Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal Carranza as his point man. "The two leaders talked about the importance of working together to improve our border security and stop the violence," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. Concern over border violence is growing as violent encounters in Mexico increase, spreading rapidly throughout northern Mexico from the lawless confines of Nuevo Laredo, which lies across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas. Last week, two police chiefs were killed within hours of each other in what U.S. and Mexican law-enforcement authorities have described as an escalating war among drug cartels for control of key smuggling routes into the United States. Hector Ayala, chief in San Pedro Garza Garcia, outside Monterrey, was killed Feb. 13 when a car passed his vehicle and opened fire. Four hours earlier, Sabinas Hidalgo Police Chief Javier Garcia was abducted by armed men, bound and shot in the back of the head. The violence has not been confined to Mexico. Since Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year, there have been more than 200 assaults on U.S. agents in the Tucson sector alone, and the Border Patrol has warned agents in Arizona of incursions by men dressed in Mexican military uniforms....
Congress Told of ATF Seizures, Threats to Gun Buyers
Agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), allegedly acting without warrants or legislative authority to do so, seized firearms from at least 50 gun show patrons in Virginia according to congressional testimony and an agency document made public Wednesday. Witnesses also testified that African-American and female gun buyers in Richmond, Va., and Pittsburgh, Pa., were profiled based on their race or sex and some in Pittsburgh were threatened with arrest by ATF agents for alleged actions that are not violations of law. Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, which has jurisdiction over ATF. While he supports the agency's mission, Coble questions some of its tactics. "ATF reports that 206 [gun show] participants were stopped and interviewed while it confiscated firearms from another 50 participants," Coble said, referring to gun shows in Richmond, Va. "Although most of the firearms were ultimately returned, the purchasers were notified via official letter from ATF that [they] were ordered to appear at the local ATF office to discuss their transactions. In addition, the letter explained that failure to appear could result in an arrest warrant being issued for the alleged charges." Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) said the ATF letter and the reported interrogation of lawful gun buyers raise "serious questions." "There's a way to have a sting operation that's legal. This dragnet, apparent dragnet, however, is not the way it ought to be done," Scott said. "You have to show probable cause and it can be done. But you ought not just stop people without probable cause and without any indication of guilt." John White, a former law enforcement officer who is now an FFL operating under the business name "The Gunsmith," said female customers who approached his sales area at the Richmond shows were immediately targeted by the "undercover" officers. "If a woman showed up at my table, she was surrounded by law enforcement," White recalled....
Threats have rallied Hudspeth residents
Big-city worries invaded Jose Franco's once tranquil turf. The Fort Hancock school superintendent now has a police radio in his office with access to law enforcement. Uniformed officers now guard the two public schools in this farming town of about 1,800 because officials say suspected drug smugglers recently threatened Hudspeth County sheriff's deputies and their families in Fort Hancock. "I don't think we're in the panic stage," Franco said. "The staff is doing an excellent job reassuring children that they're safe." Franco, a Fort Hancock native, is responsible for almost 600 students. Hudspeth County sheriff's officials and the 1,700-square-mile school district elevated security after three men in an older-model Ford Bronco approached a deputy sheriff's wife and warned her to tell her husband to stop patrolling the Rio Grande. Almost a month ago, sheriff's deputies and other law enforcement officials said they chased three SUVs loaded with marijuana back to the river and were confronted by Mexicans dressed in military uniforms and armed with large-caliber weapons. The standoff at a remote border spot between Fort Hancock and Sierra Blanca has sparked investigations. Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West said he wants to meet this week with local, state and federal law enforcement officials throughout the region to discuss a team approach to fighting drug smugglers. The Apostolic Church in Sierra Blanca, about 88 miles southeast of El Paso on Interstate 10, planned a prayer service today for all law enforcement officers in Hudspeth County as a show of support....
Man wasn't hit in back, lawyer for agent says
The alleged drug dealer who was shot in the buttocks by Border Patrol agents last year was not shot in the back, but was shot as he turned around toward the agents, defense lawyers said during the trial's opening statements Tuesday. Mary Stillinger, the lawyer for agent Ignacio Ramos, said medical records will show that the bullet entered the victim's buttock at an angle, suggesting he was partly turned around. It was Ramos' single bullet that hit the victim, Osvaldo Aldrete Davila. Another agent, Jose Alonso Compean, also shot at him more than 10 times, reloading once, on Feb. 17 near Fabens. Stillinger contends that the shooting was justified because Ramos was trying to help his colleague, Compean. Compean's lawyer, Maria Ramirez, said Compean started shooting because he feared for his life. Aldrete was running back to Mexico after abandoning a van filled with marijuana. The court hearing Tuesday afternoon also showed that nine other Border Patrol agents were at the scene and saw at least parts of the incident but did not report it....
Shoes Designed to Help Border Crossers
Now here’s something that’s sure to create a little bit of controversy. They’re called Brincos, and they’re shoes designed to help illegal immigrants cross the U.S.-Mexican border. Designed by Argentinean artist Judi Werthein, these shoes feature an array of items designed to make the dangerous trip across the border a little less so. There’s a built-in compass, a pouch inside the tongue used to store aspirin and a map of popular routes going from Tijuana to San Diego on the insole. An Aztec eagle adorns the heel, while the shoes’ red, white, and green colors remind you that, yes, the shoes were designed with Mexican nationals in mind. The Brincos (the name derives from the Spanish verb brincar, “to jump,” as in, to jump the border) were handed out for free to migrants, while so-called hip stores in San Diego were spotted selling them for $215.
Surveillance Cameras To Monitor Santa Monica Promenade, Pier
Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade is the latest public place that will soon apparently be under the watchful eye of police surveillance cameras. Tuesday night the Santa Monica City Council has given the green light for a new video surveillance system at the 3rd Street Promenade and the Santa Monica Pier. The video cameras will monitor areas visited by thousands of people. City officials say they decided on the plan after suspicious people took pictures of some of the facilities there. "Some men were videotaping in a manner that was inconsistent with tourist photography. They were photographing access roads and security structures," said Chief James Butts with the Santa Monica Police Department. The system will go online as soon as the cameras and recording system are installed.
Houston eyes cameras at apartment complexes
Houston's police chief on Wednesday proposed placing surveillance cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets, shopping malls and even private homes to fight crime during a shortage of police officers. "I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?" Chief Harold Hurtt told reporters Wednesday at a regular briefing. Houston is facing a severe police shortage because of too many retirements and too few recruits, and the city has absorbed 150,000 hurricane evacuees who are filling apartment complexes in crime-ridden neighborhoods. The City Council is considering a public safety tax to pay for more officers. Building permits should require malls and large apartment complexes to install surveillance cameras, Hurtt said. And if a homeowner requires repeated police response, it is reasonable to require camera surveillance of the property, he said....
Daley wants security cameras at bars
Surveillance cameras — aimed at government buildings, train platforms and intersections here — might soon be required at corner taverns and swanky nightclubs. Mayor Richard Daley wants to require bars open until 4 a.m. to install security cameras that can identify people entering and leaving the building. Other businesses open longer than 12 hours a day, including convenience stores, eventually would have to do the same. Daley's proposed city ordinance adds a dimension to security measures installed after the Sept. 11 attacks. The proliferation of security cameras — especially if the government requires them in private businesses — troubles some civil liberties advocates....
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Federal Wildlife Monitors Oversee a Boom in Drilling
The Bureau of Land Management, caretaker of more land and wildlife than any federal agency, routinely restricts the ability of its own biologists to monitor wildlife damage caused by surging energy drilling on federal land, according to BLM officials and bureau documents. The officials and documents say that by keeping many wildlife biologists out of the field doing paperwork on new drilling permits and that by diverting agency money intended for wildlife conservation to energy programs, the BLM has compromised its ability to deal with the environmental consequences of the drilling boom it is encouraging on public lands. Here on the high sage plains of western Wyoming, often called the Serengeti of the West because of large migratory herds of deer and antelope, the Pinedale region has become one of the most productive and profitable natural gas fields on federal land in the Rockies. With the aggressive backing of the Bush administration, many members of Congress and the energy industry, at least a sixfold expansion in drilling is likely here in the coming decade. Recent studies of mule deer and sage grouse, however, show steep declines in their numbers since the gas boom began here about five years ago: a 46 percent decline for mule deer and a 51 percent decline for breeding male sage grouse. Early results from a study of pronghorn antelope show that they, too, avoid the gas fields. Yet as these findings have come in, the wildlife biologists in the Pinedale office of the BLM have rarely gone into the field to monitor harm to wildlife. "The BLM is pushing the biologists to be what I call 'biostitutes,' rather than allow them to be experts in the wildlife they are supposed to be managing," said Steve Belinda, 37, who last week quit his job as one of three wildlife biologists in the BLM's Pinedale office because he said he was required to spend nearly all his time working on drilling requests. "They are telling us that if it is not energy-related, you are not working on it."....
The Bureau of Land Management, caretaker of more land and wildlife than any federal agency, routinely restricts the ability of its own biologists to monitor wildlife damage caused by surging energy drilling on federal land, according to BLM officials and bureau documents. The officials and documents say that by keeping many wildlife biologists out of the field doing paperwork on new drilling permits and that by diverting agency money intended for wildlife conservation to energy programs, the BLM has compromised its ability to deal with the environmental consequences of the drilling boom it is encouraging on public lands. Here on the high sage plains of western Wyoming, often called the Serengeti of the West because of large migratory herds of deer and antelope, the Pinedale region has become one of the most productive and profitable natural gas fields on federal land in the Rockies. With the aggressive backing of the Bush administration, many members of Congress and the energy industry, at least a sixfold expansion in drilling is likely here in the coming decade. Recent studies of mule deer and sage grouse, however, show steep declines in their numbers since the gas boom began here about five years ago: a 46 percent decline for mule deer and a 51 percent decline for breeding male sage grouse. Early results from a study of pronghorn antelope show that they, too, avoid the gas fields. Yet as these findings have come in, the wildlife biologists in the Pinedale office of the BLM have rarely gone into the field to monitor harm to wildlife. "The BLM is pushing the biologists to be what I call 'biostitutes,' rather than allow them to be experts in the wildlife they are supposed to be managing," said Steve Belinda, 37, who last week quit his job as one of three wildlife biologists in the BLM's Pinedale office because he said he was required to spend nearly all his time working on drilling requests. "They are telling us that if it is not energy-related, you are not working on it."....
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
States Curbing Right to Seize Private Homes
In a rare display of unanimity that cuts across partisan and geographic lines, lawmakers in virtually every statehouse across the country are advancing bills and constitutional amendments to limit use of the government's power of eminent domain to seize private property for economic development purposes. The measures are in direct response to the United States Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision last June in a landmark property rights case from Connecticut, upholding the authority of the City of New London to condemn homes in an aging neighborhood to make way for a private development of offices, condominiums and a hotel. It was a decision that one justice, who had written for the majority, later all but apologized for. The reaction from the states was swift and heated. Within weeks of the court's decision, Texas, Alabama and Delaware passed bills by overwhelming bipartisan margins limiting the right of local governments to seize property and turn it over to private developers. Since then, lawmakers in three dozen other states have proposed similar restrictions and more are on the way, according to experts who track the issue. The National League of Cities, which supports the use of eminent domain as what it calls a necessary tool of urban development, has identified the issue as the most crucial facing local governments this year. The league has called upon mayors and other local officials to lobby Congress and state legislators to try to stop the avalanche of bills to limit the power of government to take private property for presumed public good. The issue is not whether governments can condemn private property to build a public amenity like a road, a school or a sewage treatment plant. That power is explicit in the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, provided that "just compensation" is paid. The conflict arises over government actions to seize private homes or businesses as part of a redevelopment project that at least partly benefits a private party like a retail store, an apartment complex or a football stadium. "It's open season on eminent domain," said Larry Morandi, a land-use specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "Bills are being pushed by Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and they're passing by huge margins."....
In a rare display of unanimity that cuts across partisan and geographic lines, lawmakers in virtually every statehouse across the country are advancing bills and constitutional amendments to limit use of the government's power of eminent domain to seize private property for economic development purposes. The measures are in direct response to the United States Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision last June in a landmark property rights case from Connecticut, upholding the authority of the City of New London to condemn homes in an aging neighborhood to make way for a private development of offices, condominiums and a hotel. It was a decision that one justice, who had written for the majority, later all but apologized for. The reaction from the states was swift and heated. Within weeks of the court's decision, Texas, Alabama and Delaware passed bills by overwhelming bipartisan margins limiting the right of local governments to seize property and turn it over to private developers. Since then, lawmakers in three dozen other states have proposed similar restrictions and more are on the way, according to experts who track the issue. The National League of Cities, which supports the use of eminent domain as what it calls a necessary tool of urban development, has identified the issue as the most crucial facing local governments this year. The league has called upon mayors and other local officials to lobby Congress and state legislators to try to stop the avalanche of bills to limit the power of government to take private property for presumed public good. The issue is not whether governments can condemn private property to build a public amenity like a road, a school or a sewage treatment plant. That power is explicit in the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, provided that "just compensation" is paid. The conflict arises over government actions to seize private homes or businesses as part of a redevelopment project that at least partly benefits a private party like a retail store, an apartment complex or a football stadium. "It's open season on eminent domain," said Larry Morandi, a land-use specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "Bills are being pushed by Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and they're passing by huge margins."....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Reach of Clean Water Act Is at Issue in 2 Supreme Court Cases More than half of the nation's streams and wetlands could be removed from the protections of the federal Clean Water Act if two legal challenges started more than a decade ago by two Michigan developers are supported by a majority of the newly remade Supreme Court. One case involves a developer who wanted to sell a wetland for a shopping center and in preparation filled it with sand without applying for a permit, in defiance of the authorities. The second was brought by a would-be condominium developer who applied to the Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to fill a wetland and was denied. Oral arguments in the cases — the first before the newest justice, Samuel A. Alito Jr. — are scheduled for Tuesday morning. They will pit developers and a phalanx of their industrial, agricultural and ideological allies against both the solicitor general and a who's who of environmental lawyers in an argument over the scope of one of the country's fundamental environmental laws. The central question is where federal authority ends along the network of rivers, streams, canals and ditches. Does it reach all the veins and arterioles of the nation's waters, and all the wetlands that drain into them? Does it end with the waterways that are actually navigable and the wetlands abutting them? Or is it some place in between? Also at issue are who draws those lines — and how — and who decides what the Clean Water Act means by "navigable waters" and "the waters of the United States."....
City kids, ranchers try wolf detente This is Grant County -- a wide open "Dances with Wolves" kind of place. But the sentimental movie treatment isn't what 20 young pro-wolf activists from Portland are getting this week as they visit ranches in Eastern Oregon. The idea for their trek hatched last year after some students from the K-8 Sunnyside Environmental School annoyed anti-wolf ranchers at a public hearing by reciting poetry and singing a rap song while testifying in favor of legal protections for wolves. But instead of nursing a grudge, the ranchers invited them to Grant County for a visit. The students arrived Saturday and are staying in pairs with families scattered around this rugged county. They'll head home Wednesday. Levi Zalman, 13, and Dustin Ables, 12, rose before dawn and braved sub-zero temperatures over the weekend to help ranchers Rusty and David Clark feed 200 cattle on their horse-drawn wagon near Long Creek, population 220. "This definitely is an experience," said Dustin, a sixth-grader, jumping down from the wagon after helping scatter 1,300 pounds of hay....
Tracking Melanie the wolverine The U.S. Forest Service has trapped the first wolverine ever captured and fitted with a radio collar in the Pacific Northwest. Biologists hope to learn more about the habits and range of the elusive creatures known for their ferocious nature. "No one's ever studied them in the Pacific states before," said Keith Aubry, who's heading the pilot study through the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station. Biologists caught their first wolverine just over a week ago in a subalpine forest. It was a 19-pound female, measuring nearly 3 feet from her nose to the tip of her 7- inch tail. She looked much like a small bear cub, only with long ivory-colored claws. While she was tranquilized, biologists weighed Melanie and punched in an ear tag, keeping part of the skin for a DNA sample. They fitted her with a radio collar that will emit a signal so she can be tracked through July 2007. They'll find out how far she travels and what elevation she covers....
Those who bother elk face fines On a starvation diet and approaching her third trimester, this mother is not having a happy pregnancy. And to make matters worse, every once in a while, someone will sneak up on her and chase her around, which stresses her out and wastes the precious energy she's working to preserve. Such is the plight of almost all cow elk this year, said Bill Andree, a district wildlife manager with the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The heavy snows have pushed elk down the mountain to where people recreate, and the clash of wildlife and humans is creating a dangerous situation for everyone involved. The elk are forced to burn calories to get away from humans and people run the risk of getting gored by the critters, said David Van Norman with the U.S. Forest Service....
Panel to put off jumping mouse decision The government said Friday it will put off a decision on whether to strip endangered species protection for the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, citing contradictory evidence on whether the rodent is unique enough to warrant special consideration. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will take public comment until April 18. Listed by the government as a threatened species since 1998, the Preble's meadow mouse has been blamed by some developers for getting in the way. Its habitat stretches from Colorado Springs north through Denver and Fort Collins to Laramie, Wyo. A year ago, Interior Secretary Gale Norton proposed removing the mouse from the endangered species list. She cited work done by biologist Rob Roy Ramey of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, who said the mouse is not distinct from the more common Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse. After the work was questioned, a recent U.S. Geological Survey study commissioned by the Interior Department concluded the Preble's meadow jumping mouse is in fact a unique creature with "distinct evolutionary lineages that merit separate management consideration."....
Nevada mine cleanup languished as regulators bickered, documents show Disagreements and distrust among regulators charged with directing the cleanup of a polluted Nevada copper mine hampered the government agencies' efforts and likely stalled removal of contamination, a process now expected to take at least a decade, records obtained by The Associated Press show. Internal documents the Interior Department mistakenly turned over to a whistleblower suing one of its agencies reveal a turf battle spanning five years between federal and state environmental regulators at one of the most contaminated abandoned mines in the West. In one, an Interior Department lawyer said the cleanup order the state wanted Atlantic Richfield Co. to adopt in 2002 at the former Anaconda copper mine was so weak the Justice Department would forbid federal regulators from accepting it. In another, the head of the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection complained that the cleanup approach his agency advocated was "a polar opposite" of one backed by Interior's Bureau of Land Management, which he accused of acting out of its own "self-serving interest" to avoid liability....
Wild horses rounded up in southern Nevada's Red Rock Canyon Bureau of Land Management officials pulled 37 wild horses off the range this week as part of an "emergency gather" in and near Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area outside Las Vegas. Officials said 16 of those horses were scheduled to be returned to the wild on Saturday. The rest are destined for a wild horse facility in Ridgecrest, Calif., where some will be put up for adoption and those over 10 years old will go to a long-term holding facility where they could be put up for sale. BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon said the round up was necessary because last year's Goodsprings wildfire had wiped out almost 40 percent of the habitat where the herd roamed. She said the BLM has asked U.S. slaughterhouses not to accept freeze-branded wild horses, although such has been the fate of some in the past. Foreign buyers are allowed to purchase horses under the sale authority for long-term holding facilities....
Spaced Out in New Mexico The spaceport, as of this writing, still does not have its required Environmental Impact Statement, as required by the federal government before it can operate on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an arm of the US Department of the Interior. It has been worked on for a number of years, and passed its latest deadline in fall 2005. The ranchers who live on most of the private land needed for the launch site in Sierra County, N.M., have indicated willingness to sell the land, but as yet have not been offered anything. The Cain and Wallin families, among others, have ranched in the area for more than 50 years. It must be an odd and interesting meeting for the Cain family when these people who have lived off the land all of their lives talk with people who want to use that same land to leave the Earth, albeit briefly. And it is a bit ironic that the Cains did not even have phone service until the 1980’s. And now because of the favorable features of the land around them (elevation, desolation and such) they are soon to be part of one of the newest games to be played by the wealthy....
Texas copes with drought Jim Selman normally runs about 300 head of cattle on his ranch near Gonzales, Texas. But in the past month, with continued warm temperatures and no rainfall, he's sold 175 for slaughter and is down to three bales of hay to feed the remaining cows. "If it stays much drier, the rest of them will be gone as well," says the lifelong rancher. "It's a pretty tough situation" - and starting to rival the drought of the 1950s, he adds, when he had to sell his entire herd and leave the business. Forecasters are equally pessimistic. After seeing rainfall decline by 20 inches last year, making 2005 the 12th driest year on record in Texas, they say this year is shaping up to be the driest since 1956. The result has been raging wildfires, skyrocketing hay costs, and billions of dollars in agricultural losses. For the moment, consumers are insulated from the impact because Texas cattlemen are sending more cows to the market in an effort to reduce their herds. But in two to three years, economists warn, a nosedive in cattle numbers in the nation's largest cattle-producing state would be likely to cause the opposite effect: higher beef prices....
It's All Trew: Daily chores were priority during childhood Among the many forgotten words, terms and traditions of the past, chores, chore time and the orders of “better go do your chores before dark,” stand out in my mind. Few below 50 years of age are familiar with these age-old terms. From the time we arose in the mornings, which was always long before daylight, until we quit work that evening, our daily chores had priority. No day work was started until the morning chores were finished. Whether you had an easy day or were so tired you could drop, the evening chores had to be done before going to the house. The most important chore was tending to the milk cows. They don’t wait and must have relief or they will suffer. All other livestock and poultry could wait an hour or so, but not the milk cows. During hot days or during a blowing blizzard, the cows were milked and fed. On our ranches, another chore almost as important as milking cows, or so my dad thought anyway, the horses had to be “whistled-up” and fed whether we were going to ride that day or not. Checking the remuda every morning for injury or whatever came high with my father....
Reach of Clean Water Act Is at Issue in 2 Supreme Court Cases More than half of the nation's streams and wetlands could be removed from the protections of the federal Clean Water Act if two legal challenges started more than a decade ago by two Michigan developers are supported by a majority of the newly remade Supreme Court. One case involves a developer who wanted to sell a wetland for a shopping center and in preparation filled it with sand without applying for a permit, in defiance of the authorities. The second was brought by a would-be condominium developer who applied to the Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to fill a wetland and was denied. Oral arguments in the cases — the first before the newest justice, Samuel A. Alito Jr. — are scheduled for Tuesday morning. They will pit developers and a phalanx of their industrial, agricultural and ideological allies against both the solicitor general and a who's who of environmental lawyers in an argument over the scope of one of the country's fundamental environmental laws. The central question is where federal authority ends along the network of rivers, streams, canals and ditches. Does it reach all the veins and arterioles of the nation's waters, and all the wetlands that drain into them? Does it end with the waterways that are actually navigable and the wetlands abutting them? Or is it some place in between? Also at issue are who draws those lines — and how — and who decides what the Clean Water Act means by "navigable waters" and "the waters of the United States."....
City kids, ranchers try wolf detente This is Grant County -- a wide open "Dances with Wolves" kind of place. But the sentimental movie treatment isn't what 20 young pro-wolf activists from Portland are getting this week as they visit ranches in Eastern Oregon. The idea for their trek hatched last year after some students from the K-8 Sunnyside Environmental School annoyed anti-wolf ranchers at a public hearing by reciting poetry and singing a rap song while testifying in favor of legal protections for wolves. But instead of nursing a grudge, the ranchers invited them to Grant County for a visit. The students arrived Saturday and are staying in pairs with families scattered around this rugged county. They'll head home Wednesday. Levi Zalman, 13, and Dustin Ables, 12, rose before dawn and braved sub-zero temperatures over the weekend to help ranchers Rusty and David Clark feed 200 cattle on their horse-drawn wagon near Long Creek, population 220. "This definitely is an experience," said Dustin, a sixth-grader, jumping down from the wagon after helping scatter 1,300 pounds of hay....
Tracking Melanie the wolverine The U.S. Forest Service has trapped the first wolverine ever captured and fitted with a radio collar in the Pacific Northwest. Biologists hope to learn more about the habits and range of the elusive creatures known for their ferocious nature. "No one's ever studied them in the Pacific states before," said Keith Aubry, who's heading the pilot study through the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station. Biologists caught their first wolverine just over a week ago in a subalpine forest. It was a 19-pound female, measuring nearly 3 feet from her nose to the tip of her 7- inch tail. She looked much like a small bear cub, only with long ivory-colored claws. While she was tranquilized, biologists weighed Melanie and punched in an ear tag, keeping part of the skin for a DNA sample. They fitted her with a radio collar that will emit a signal so she can be tracked through July 2007. They'll find out how far she travels and what elevation she covers....
Those who bother elk face fines On a starvation diet and approaching her third trimester, this mother is not having a happy pregnancy. And to make matters worse, every once in a while, someone will sneak up on her and chase her around, which stresses her out and wastes the precious energy she's working to preserve. Such is the plight of almost all cow elk this year, said Bill Andree, a district wildlife manager with the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The heavy snows have pushed elk down the mountain to where people recreate, and the clash of wildlife and humans is creating a dangerous situation for everyone involved. The elk are forced to burn calories to get away from humans and people run the risk of getting gored by the critters, said David Van Norman with the U.S. Forest Service....
Panel to put off jumping mouse decision The government said Friday it will put off a decision on whether to strip endangered species protection for the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, citing contradictory evidence on whether the rodent is unique enough to warrant special consideration. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will take public comment until April 18. Listed by the government as a threatened species since 1998, the Preble's meadow mouse has been blamed by some developers for getting in the way. Its habitat stretches from Colorado Springs north through Denver and Fort Collins to Laramie, Wyo. A year ago, Interior Secretary Gale Norton proposed removing the mouse from the endangered species list. She cited work done by biologist Rob Roy Ramey of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, who said the mouse is not distinct from the more common Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse. After the work was questioned, a recent U.S. Geological Survey study commissioned by the Interior Department concluded the Preble's meadow jumping mouse is in fact a unique creature with "distinct evolutionary lineages that merit separate management consideration."....
Nevada mine cleanup languished as regulators bickered, documents show Disagreements and distrust among regulators charged with directing the cleanup of a polluted Nevada copper mine hampered the government agencies' efforts and likely stalled removal of contamination, a process now expected to take at least a decade, records obtained by The Associated Press show. Internal documents the Interior Department mistakenly turned over to a whistleblower suing one of its agencies reveal a turf battle spanning five years between federal and state environmental regulators at one of the most contaminated abandoned mines in the West. In one, an Interior Department lawyer said the cleanup order the state wanted Atlantic Richfield Co. to adopt in 2002 at the former Anaconda copper mine was so weak the Justice Department would forbid federal regulators from accepting it. In another, the head of the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection complained that the cleanup approach his agency advocated was "a polar opposite" of one backed by Interior's Bureau of Land Management, which he accused of acting out of its own "self-serving interest" to avoid liability....
Wild horses rounded up in southern Nevada's Red Rock Canyon Bureau of Land Management officials pulled 37 wild horses off the range this week as part of an "emergency gather" in and near Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area outside Las Vegas. Officials said 16 of those horses were scheduled to be returned to the wild on Saturday. The rest are destined for a wild horse facility in Ridgecrest, Calif., where some will be put up for adoption and those over 10 years old will go to a long-term holding facility where they could be put up for sale. BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon said the round up was necessary because last year's Goodsprings wildfire had wiped out almost 40 percent of the habitat where the herd roamed. She said the BLM has asked U.S. slaughterhouses not to accept freeze-branded wild horses, although such has been the fate of some in the past. Foreign buyers are allowed to purchase horses under the sale authority for long-term holding facilities....
Spaced Out in New Mexico The spaceport, as of this writing, still does not have its required Environmental Impact Statement, as required by the federal government before it can operate on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an arm of the US Department of the Interior. It has been worked on for a number of years, and passed its latest deadline in fall 2005. The ranchers who live on most of the private land needed for the launch site in Sierra County, N.M., have indicated willingness to sell the land, but as yet have not been offered anything. The Cain and Wallin families, among others, have ranched in the area for more than 50 years. It must be an odd and interesting meeting for the Cain family when these people who have lived off the land all of their lives talk with people who want to use that same land to leave the Earth, albeit briefly. And it is a bit ironic that the Cains did not even have phone service until the 1980’s. And now because of the favorable features of the land around them (elevation, desolation and such) they are soon to be part of one of the newest games to be played by the wealthy....
Texas copes with drought Jim Selman normally runs about 300 head of cattle on his ranch near Gonzales, Texas. But in the past month, with continued warm temperatures and no rainfall, he's sold 175 for slaughter and is down to three bales of hay to feed the remaining cows. "If it stays much drier, the rest of them will be gone as well," says the lifelong rancher. "It's a pretty tough situation" - and starting to rival the drought of the 1950s, he adds, when he had to sell his entire herd and leave the business. Forecasters are equally pessimistic. After seeing rainfall decline by 20 inches last year, making 2005 the 12th driest year on record in Texas, they say this year is shaping up to be the driest since 1956. The result has been raging wildfires, skyrocketing hay costs, and billions of dollars in agricultural losses. For the moment, consumers are insulated from the impact because Texas cattlemen are sending more cows to the market in an effort to reduce their herds. But in two to three years, economists warn, a nosedive in cattle numbers in the nation's largest cattle-producing state would be likely to cause the opposite effect: higher beef prices....
It's All Trew: Daily chores were priority during childhood Among the many forgotten words, terms and traditions of the past, chores, chore time and the orders of “better go do your chores before dark,” stand out in my mind. Few below 50 years of age are familiar with these age-old terms. From the time we arose in the mornings, which was always long before daylight, until we quit work that evening, our daily chores had priority. No day work was started until the morning chores were finished. Whether you had an easy day or were so tired you could drop, the evening chores had to be done before going to the house. The most important chore was tending to the milk cows. They don’t wait and must have relief or they will suffer. All other livestock and poultry could wait an hour or so, but not the milk cows. During hot days or during a blowing blizzard, the cows were milked and fed. On our ranches, another chore almost as important as milking cows, or so my dad thought anyway, the horses had to be “whistled-up” and fed whether we were going to ride that day or not. Checking the remuda every morning for injury or whatever came high with my father....
Monday, February 20, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Packing up the range His cows had been roaming the 111,000-acre Jean Lake allotment, 40 miles south of Las Vegas, since he moved the herd there in 1998 from Mount Stirling to satisfy U.S. Forest Service concerns for grazing on environmentally sensitive lands in the Spring Mountains. Once corralled, the cows were destined for their new home at the Windmill Ranch north of Wikieup, Ariz., an operation on "checkerboard" state and private lands. "This is the end of it," Baird said. "This is the last roundup. It's a sign of changing times. "It's happening all over the West," he said. Removing Baird's 250 head of rodeo-stock "corriente" cattle -- a special breed from those brought to Mexico by 16th-century Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez -- in essence marks the end of an era that dates back to the mid-1880s. That's when settlers brought cows to the Las Vegas area, according to Duane Wilson, range specialist for the Bureau of Land Management's state office. The demise of public lands grazing in Southern Nevada parallels the effort to protect habitat for the endangered desert tortoise....
Tolna rancher fights state over tire fences On a hill between the waters of Stump Lake and Devils Lake, Cory Christofferson feels like he's between a rock and a hard place. Or perhaps, the rubber and the road. The wooden sign waving in the wind at the gate to his farm announces, "Tired Out Ranch." Possessed by an unusual idea a decade ago to build good fence cheap out of used tires, the 50-year-old farmer spent years hauling them to his farm here in the hilled prairie wetlands of Benson County. He's got about 350,000 tires, most of them stacked on their sides, four or five high in straight lines, 15 miles worth, making 20-acre paddocks across 200 acres for intensive grazing by livestock. Now, state officials have ordered him to haul the tires off his land. Christofferson is taking them to court....
New split-estate law results in higher bond amount A coal-bed methane producer who wanted to build six new wastewater reservoirs but didn't reach agreement with the landowner will have to pay a higher bond than first proposed. The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission decided this week to bump up the initial $500-per-pit bond amount to $2,000 per pit. Johnson County rancher Steve Adami, who protested the lower bond amount, had asked that Kennedy Oil be required to post bonds for thousands of dollars more. The decision, he said, gives landowners little reason to celebrate Wyoming's new Split Estates Act, which was enacted July 1, 2005. "It was not a real encouraging process from the landowner's point of view," Adami said. "The whole thing was kind of discouraging." The aim of the Split Estates Act was to level negotiations between oil and gas producers and the surface owners who don't hold title to the minerals below their land. If the parties can't agree on a voluntary contract that includes monetary compensation to the landowner, then the parties can seek an administrative decision. In this case, Kennedy Oil opted to "bond-on," which means it asked the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for permission to construct the reservoirs without Adami's approval. The commission gave Kennedy initial approval and set a $500-per-pit bond to cover the loss of agricultural use of the 18 acres the pits would occupy....
Council hears water debate Powder River Basin ranchers pressed hard Thursday for more state regulation of coal-bed methane water, saying that too much of it can be a serious problem. Meanwhile, coal-bed methane producers presented case studies that extolled industrially produced waters as tremendously beneficial to both livestock and wildlife, with nary a mention that there were any problems. Indeed, the producers implied that coal-bed methane water horror stories emerging out of the Powder River Basin were an extreme minority of cases, attributable to poor communication. In testimony before the state’s Environmental Quality Council, the producers essentially argued that the current regulatory system works pretty well. The petitioners argued that the regulatory system is deeply flawed, indeed broken, because of an improper, long-standing assumption made by a state agency. Attorney Kate Fox, representing 19 ranchers from the basin and the Powder River Basin Resource Council, readily acknowledged that there were benefits to coal-bed methane water. But she said there is “a dark side” to the by-product water when there is too much salt content and too much water. DEQ’s assumption of beneficial use has had unintended consequences in the Powder River Basin, as a series of slide photographs showed n drowned cottonwood tree stands, salt-encrusted stream beds, erosion, ruined hay meadows and soils....
Salt water spill still miles from Yellowstone River A salt water plume from an oil field leak in northwestern North Dakota has not yet reached the Yellowstone River, officials say. The first wave of the toxic water was expected to reach the river last week but was slowed by arctic air that moved into the state. The plume in Charbonneau Creek was still about five miles from the Yellowstone, said Kris Roberts, an environmental scientist with the state Health Department. The leak was detected Jan. 4 in a Zenergy Inc. pipeline about six miles west of Alexander, near Charbonneau Creek. It was estimated at more than 900,000 gallons....
Spurred to action For a decade, Republican Richard Pombo was just a cowboy who had made it to Congress with big ideas and little clout. To be sure, the Central Valley rancher's outspoken dislike of federal land-use laws made environmentalists wary. But outside his district, his profile was slim. Throughout the 1990s, Pombo honed his political skills and impressed party leaders. When it came time to elect a new chairman for the House Resources Committee in 2003, Republican elders passed over several more senior colleagues and crowned Pombo the youngest chairman in Congress on his 42nd birthday. Overnight, the property-rights activist became a pivotal figure in U.S. land use. His committee is among the largest on Capitol Hill, and it plays a key role in developing policy for the nation's forests, fisheries, wildlife and Indian affairs. Pombo's mission boils down to a simple concept: “I don't want government in people's lives,” he said one recent evening as the sun set on the rolling green hills of his 500-acre cattle ranch in Tracy....
Some see farm plan as a beastly burden Some farmers and ranchers say the Code of the West no longer applies in Larimer County. The code is used by counties in the West to encourage urban transplants to adapt to the rural way of life and respect the ways of those who have raised crops and livestock for generations. But proposed regulations on Larimer's livestock have some folks wondering if longtime residents' interests are being pushed aside to accommodate the newcomers. "They keep nailing us down with these new rules, and a lot of people will sell out and leave," said Harry Elder, who owns miniature horses north of Fort Collins. The proposal would restrict landowners from two horses per acre to one horse per acre, as well as place limits on bison, mules, ostriches, emus, goats and alpacas. Too often, county officials say, property owners allow horses, pigs and cattle to overgraze small parcels, destroying prime grassland....
Local Involvement in National Lands Management: Can It Work Nationwide? Having a say in how the government manages nearby federal lands makes sense to both local residents and federal officials. But the devil is in the details of how this local input is gathered. Known as adaptive environmental management, the concept is popular in Europe, but has only been officially attempted in one location in the United States. "Adaptive environmental management means there is a commitment to have on-going local community involvement in making and assessing environmental policy," said Daniel Bronstein, professor of community, agriculture, recreation and resource studies at Michigan State University. "It's a hot topic right now, but the question has always been whether the government can implement the monitoring that is needed to make it work." Bronstein moderates a symposium entitled "Adaptive Environmental Management: The Valles Caldera Experience" today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting. The participants are examining the adaptive environmental management strategies in place at the Valles Caldera National Preserve, an 89,000-acre federal property in northern New Mexico, as a case study. This is the only formal attempt by the federal government to implement adaptive environmental management....For those of us in NM, this press release by Michigan State University is hilarious. Looks like another import from Europe we don't need....
Allure of ranching life fading for some celebs A decade or so after big names in entertainment, sports and business turned the rugged ranch into a real estate fashion statement, many of them are packing up the wagon trains and pulling back out. Actor Rick Schroder is offering nearly 15,000 acres of ranch land in Colorado for $29 million. Val Kilmer just listed his 1,800 acres in New Mexico for $18 million. Leon Hirsch, former chairman of U.S. Surgical, is selling his 17,000-acre Montana spread for $21.9 million (cattle included). On the cozier side, singer Carole King's 128-acre Idaho property just went on the market for $19 million. Why the reverse land rush? Many wealthy ranch owners — celebrity and otherwise — are hoping to cash out after years of gains in real estate, said John Frome, a ranch appraiser in Afton, Wyo. Also, for some who've made their second or third homes on the range, ranch life has turned out to be anything but simple. Yearly maintenance costs can run $150,000 and up. The remoteness and the roughing it that once seemed so alluring can get tiresome. There now are indications that ranch properties have been backing up on the market. Schroder's southwestern Colorado ranch has been sitting on the market for 15 months, while Hirsch's Montana ranch has gone unsold for more than a year. Spreads owned by tennis's Martina Navratilova and novelist Warren Adler both found buyers late last year, after more than four years on the market apiece. Real estate agents in these areas say ranch properties that sold in 2005 sat 22 months on average, about double the amount they spent on the market five or six years ago....
From coronation to chemo In the recesses of the Civic Center, near where they keep the rodeo stock, they also keep the cowboys. The men picked up their entry numbers and gathered their things. They waited. The door opened occasionally, and cold would whistle in, and another new cowboy would stomp his boots. He would say something about the weather, and then about his chaps, which he pronounced "shaps,"like the "sh" sound in shoestring, of which there were none. Boots. Only boots. And maybe the prettiest pair belonged to Ashley Andrews. Everyone noticed when she arrived. Hard not to. Andrews has a radiant personality to match her bright smile. That made the cowboys and the other folks getting ready for the rodeo feel even worse about this situation. "How are you doing?" they would ask, over and over. "Great," she would say. "A lot better than yesterday." Ashley Andrews, Miss Rodeo North Dakota, has cancer. She just turned 21....
How West Texas was overrun Oprah Winfrey won't be touting John R. Erickson's memoir any time soon. Unlike James Frey, Erickson, a writer and rancher from the Panhandle, has never claimed that he had root-canal surgery without anesthesia. Nor has he boasted of spending time in a jail; he's never been inside. On the other hand, no one who knows anything about Erickson, or West Texans in general, will doubt that his "Prairie Gothic: The Story of a West Texas Family" (University of North Texas Press, $16.95 paperback; $40 hardcover) is as straight as a tightly strung barbed wire fence. He focuses on his family. But as San Angelo Western novelist Elmer Kelton writes in his introduction, Erickson's book is really about all of our families. "In a sense," Kelton writes, "the story of his ancestors reflects the stories of all our ancestors, for we can see parallels to accounts we have heard about our own. In his mirror we can see our own reflections." Erickson's book also amounts to an informal history of West Texas. His great-great grandparents settled in Parker County, west of Weatherford, in 1858, where, a couple of years later, his great-great grandmother died at the hands of Comanches. The other major branch of his family pioneered the first town on the Llano Estacado, the Quaker community of Estacado. Along the way, Erickson's forebears had dealings with some of the best-known figures in Texas history, including Texas Ranger Sul Ross, pioneer cattleman Charles Goodnight, Cynthia Ann Parker and her famous son, Comanche chief Quanah Parker, and cattleman Jim Loving....
Cowboy gatherings -- One visit and you'll be hooked for life It's hard for Stephanie Davis to talk about. The Montana singer/songwriter — who can cause your heart to skip a beat with her piercing twang, or make you let out a loud whoop after one of her hilarious limericks — just can't explain it. But there's one thing she guarantees: If you go to one cowboy gathering, not only will you love it, you'll be hooked for life. Thousands found that out last year at Ellensburg's inaugural Spirit of the West Cowboy Gathering, which rides back into town next weekend for three days of cowboy poetry, music and art. "It was a huge draw," says Alan Walker, 40, this year's secretary for the all-volunteer Spirit of the West board of directors. Folks from Canada and across the United States turned out for the gathering, where ten-gallon hats, handlebar mustaches and weather-worn faces roamed freely throughout the quaint town with deep cowboy roots....
At home on the range There's a cowboy renaissance happening, in case you city folk didn't know. "When cultures are really hard-pressed, they tend to revert to their roots," Charlie Seemann, executive director of the Western Folklife Center, noted earlier this month at the 22nd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering here. Cowboys are hard-pressed for a number of reasons, such as the buying up of ranch land for housing subdivisions, but they're not totally obsolete yet — and their old, weather-beaten aura, their classic cultural resonance, is stronger than ever. The nice thing about the cowboy renaissance, however, is that you don't have to go that far to be a part of it. You can be a cowboy at heart, without ever roping a steer or even sitting on a horse. There's nobody more cowboy than a singer-songwriter like Curly Musgrave. He was raised in Alberta, and has done his share of range work, but Musgrave is not a cowboy snob. "There are so many people who grew up with the ideas and mores and traditions of the West within their hearts, who never rode a horse or worked on a ranch," he said. "I honour that as much as the guys who do work on a ranch. I think our attitudes count for so much. I meet a lot of people who say they were born in the wrong part of the country, and that this is the life for them, where their heart is."....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Cat's out of the bag for man's dream bride Dr. G is a veterinarian in the cold country. They are a tough breed, those vets and cowmen and outfitters who live where the snowdrifts are over a horse's head and the thermometer has to wear a wool sock in the winter! One of Doc's more remote clients had been through two wives. His thrifty nature and insistence on doing things the hard way was more than they could take. He had grown sour on women, so Doc was surprised one day when Sourdough (we'll call the reclusive hardhead Sourdough) dropped by the clinic just to visit. He hung around, had some coffee and piddled. Doc knew he had something on his mind, so he waited. Finally Sourdough said, "I gave a girl a ring." Dr. G had a momentary vision of Sourdough being swept away by a woman who was able to reinstill his romantic urges and fire his heart to bursting with feelings of true love, mutual adoration and the realization that there is more to life than work. "What's she like?" asked Doc with more than a little compassion for his friend. "She can irrigate," said Sourdough. "What!" said Doc....
Packing up the range His cows had been roaming the 111,000-acre Jean Lake allotment, 40 miles south of Las Vegas, since he moved the herd there in 1998 from Mount Stirling to satisfy U.S. Forest Service concerns for grazing on environmentally sensitive lands in the Spring Mountains. Once corralled, the cows were destined for their new home at the Windmill Ranch north of Wikieup, Ariz., an operation on "checkerboard" state and private lands. "This is the end of it," Baird said. "This is the last roundup. It's a sign of changing times. "It's happening all over the West," he said. Removing Baird's 250 head of rodeo-stock "corriente" cattle -- a special breed from those brought to Mexico by 16th-century Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez -- in essence marks the end of an era that dates back to the mid-1880s. That's when settlers brought cows to the Las Vegas area, according to Duane Wilson, range specialist for the Bureau of Land Management's state office. The demise of public lands grazing in Southern Nevada parallels the effort to protect habitat for the endangered desert tortoise....
Tolna rancher fights state over tire fences On a hill between the waters of Stump Lake and Devils Lake, Cory Christofferson feels like he's between a rock and a hard place. Or perhaps, the rubber and the road. The wooden sign waving in the wind at the gate to his farm announces, "Tired Out Ranch." Possessed by an unusual idea a decade ago to build good fence cheap out of used tires, the 50-year-old farmer spent years hauling them to his farm here in the hilled prairie wetlands of Benson County. He's got about 350,000 tires, most of them stacked on their sides, four or five high in straight lines, 15 miles worth, making 20-acre paddocks across 200 acres for intensive grazing by livestock. Now, state officials have ordered him to haul the tires off his land. Christofferson is taking them to court....
New split-estate law results in higher bond amount A coal-bed methane producer who wanted to build six new wastewater reservoirs but didn't reach agreement with the landowner will have to pay a higher bond than first proposed. The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission decided this week to bump up the initial $500-per-pit bond amount to $2,000 per pit. Johnson County rancher Steve Adami, who protested the lower bond amount, had asked that Kennedy Oil be required to post bonds for thousands of dollars more. The decision, he said, gives landowners little reason to celebrate Wyoming's new Split Estates Act, which was enacted July 1, 2005. "It was not a real encouraging process from the landowner's point of view," Adami said. "The whole thing was kind of discouraging." The aim of the Split Estates Act was to level negotiations between oil and gas producers and the surface owners who don't hold title to the minerals below their land. If the parties can't agree on a voluntary contract that includes monetary compensation to the landowner, then the parties can seek an administrative decision. In this case, Kennedy Oil opted to "bond-on," which means it asked the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for permission to construct the reservoirs without Adami's approval. The commission gave Kennedy initial approval and set a $500-per-pit bond to cover the loss of agricultural use of the 18 acres the pits would occupy....
Council hears water debate Powder River Basin ranchers pressed hard Thursday for more state regulation of coal-bed methane water, saying that too much of it can be a serious problem. Meanwhile, coal-bed methane producers presented case studies that extolled industrially produced waters as tremendously beneficial to both livestock and wildlife, with nary a mention that there were any problems. Indeed, the producers implied that coal-bed methane water horror stories emerging out of the Powder River Basin were an extreme minority of cases, attributable to poor communication. In testimony before the state’s Environmental Quality Council, the producers essentially argued that the current regulatory system works pretty well. The petitioners argued that the regulatory system is deeply flawed, indeed broken, because of an improper, long-standing assumption made by a state agency. Attorney Kate Fox, representing 19 ranchers from the basin and the Powder River Basin Resource Council, readily acknowledged that there were benefits to coal-bed methane water. But she said there is “a dark side” to the by-product water when there is too much salt content and too much water. DEQ’s assumption of beneficial use has had unintended consequences in the Powder River Basin, as a series of slide photographs showed n drowned cottonwood tree stands, salt-encrusted stream beds, erosion, ruined hay meadows and soils....
Salt water spill still miles from Yellowstone River A salt water plume from an oil field leak in northwestern North Dakota has not yet reached the Yellowstone River, officials say. The first wave of the toxic water was expected to reach the river last week but was slowed by arctic air that moved into the state. The plume in Charbonneau Creek was still about five miles from the Yellowstone, said Kris Roberts, an environmental scientist with the state Health Department. The leak was detected Jan. 4 in a Zenergy Inc. pipeline about six miles west of Alexander, near Charbonneau Creek. It was estimated at more than 900,000 gallons....
Spurred to action For a decade, Republican Richard Pombo was just a cowboy who had made it to Congress with big ideas and little clout. To be sure, the Central Valley rancher's outspoken dislike of federal land-use laws made environmentalists wary. But outside his district, his profile was slim. Throughout the 1990s, Pombo honed his political skills and impressed party leaders. When it came time to elect a new chairman for the House Resources Committee in 2003, Republican elders passed over several more senior colleagues and crowned Pombo the youngest chairman in Congress on his 42nd birthday. Overnight, the property-rights activist became a pivotal figure in U.S. land use. His committee is among the largest on Capitol Hill, and it plays a key role in developing policy for the nation's forests, fisheries, wildlife and Indian affairs. Pombo's mission boils down to a simple concept: “I don't want government in people's lives,” he said one recent evening as the sun set on the rolling green hills of his 500-acre cattle ranch in Tracy....
Some see farm plan as a beastly burden Some farmers and ranchers say the Code of the West no longer applies in Larimer County. The code is used by counties in the West to encourage urban transplants to adapt to the rural way of life and respect the ways of those who have raised crops and livestock for generations. But proposed regulations on Larimer's livestock have some folks wondering if longtime residents' interests are being pushed aside to accommodate the newcomers. "They keep nailing us down with these new rules, and a lot of people will sell out and leave," said Harry Elder, who owns miniature horses north of Fort Collins. The proposal would restrict landowners from two horses per acre to one horse per acre, as well as place limits on bison, mules, ostriches, emus, goats and alpacas. Too often, county officials say, property owners allow horses, pigs and cattle to overgraze small parcels, destroying prime grassland....
Local Involvement in National Lands Management: Can It Work Nationwide? Having a say in how the government manages nearby federal lands makes sense to both local residents and federal officials. But the devil is in the details of how this local input is gathered. Known as adaptive environmental management, the concept is popular in Europe, but has only been officially attempted in one location in the United States. "Adaptive environmental management means there is a commitment to have on-going local community involvement in making and assessing environmental policy," said Daniel Bronstein, professor of community, agriculture, recreation and resource studies at Michigan State University. "It's a hot topic right now, but the question has always been whether the government can implement the monitoring that is needed to make it work." Bronstein moderates a symposium entitled "Adaptive Environmental Management: The Valles Caldera Experience" today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting. The participants are examining the adaptive environmental management strategies in place at the Valles Caldera National Preserve, an 89,000-acre federal property in northern New Mexico, as a case study. This is the only formal attempt by the federal government to implement adaptive environmental management....For those of us in NM, this press release by Michigan State University is hilarious. Looks like another import from Europe we don't need....
Allure of ranching life fading for some celebs A decade or so after big names in entertainment, sports and business turned the rugged ranch into a real estate fashion statement, many of them are packing up the wagon trains and pulling back out. Actor Rick Schroder is offering nearly 15,000 acres of ranch land in Colorado for $29 million. Val Kilmer just listed his 1,800 acres in New Mexico for $18 million. Leon Hirsch, former chairman of U.S. Surgical, is selling his 17,000-acre Montana spread for $21.9 million (cattle included). On the cozier side, singer Carole King's 128-acre Idaho property just went on the market for $19 million. Why the reverse land rush? Many wealthy ranch owners — celebrity and otherwise — are hoping to cash out after years of gains in real estate, said John Frome, a ranch appraiser in Afton, Wyo. Also, for some who've made their second or third homes on the range, ranch life has turned out to be anything but simple. Yearly maintenance costs can run $150,000 and up. The remoteness and the roughing it that once seemed so alluring can get tiresome. There now are indications that ranch properties have been backing up on the market. Schroder's southwestern Colorado ranch has been sitting on the market for 15 months, while Hirsch's Montana ranch has gone unsold for more than a year. Spreads owned by tennis's Martina Navratilova and novelist Warren Adler both found buyers late last year, after more than four years on the market apiece. Real estate agents in these areas say ranch properties that sold in 2005 sat 22 months on average, about double the amount they spent on the market five or six years ago....
From coronation to chemo In the recesses of the Civic Center, near where they keep the rodeo stock, they also keep the cowboys. The men picked up their entry numbers and gathered their things. They waited. The door opened occasionally, and cold would whistle in, and another new cowboy would stomp his boots. He would say something about the weather, and then about his chaps, which he pronounced "shaps,"like the "sh" sound in shoestring, of which there were none. Boots. Only boots. And maybe the prettiest pair belonged to Ashley Andrews. Everyone noticed when she arrived. Hard not to. Andrews has a radiant personality to match her bright smile. That made the cowboys and the other folks getting ready for the rodeo feel even worse about this situation. "How are you doing?" they would ask, over and over. "Great," she would say. "A lot better than yesterday." Ashley Andrews, Miss Rodeo North Dakota, has cancer. She just turned 21....
How West Texas was overrun Oprah Winfrey won't be touting John R. Erickson's memoir any time soon. Unlike James Frey, Erickson, a writer and rancher from the Panhandle, has never claimed that he had root-canal surgery without anesthesia. Nor has he boasted of spending time in a jail; he's never been inside. On the other hand, no one who knows anything about Erickson, or West Texans in general, will doubt that his "Prairie Gothic: The Story of a West Texas Family" (University of North Texas Press, $16.95 paperback; $40 hardcover) is as straight as a tightly strung barbed wire fence. He focuses on his family. But as San Angelo Western novelist Elmer Kelton writes in his introduction, Erickson's book is really about all of our families. "In a sense," Kelton writes, "the story of his ancestors reflects the stories of all our ancestors, for we can see parallels to accounts we have heard about our own. In his mirror we can see our own reflections." Erickson's book also amounts to an informal history of West Texas. His great-great grandparents settled in Parker County, west of Weatherford, in 1858, where, a couple of years later, his great-great grandmother died at the hands of Comanches. The other major branch of his family pioneered the first town on the Llano Estacado, the Quaker community of Estacado. Along the way, Erickson's forebears had dealings with some of the best-known figures in Texas history, including Texas Ranger Sul Ross, pioneer cattleman Charles Goodnight, Cynthia Ann Parker and her famous son, Comanche chief Quanah Parker, and cattleman Jim Loving....
Cowboy gatherings -- One visit and you'll be hooked for life It's hard for Stephanie Davis to talk about. The Montana singer/songwriter — who can cause your heart to skip a beat with her piercing twang, or make you let out a loud whoop after one of her hilarious limericks — just can't explain it. But there's one thing she guarantees: If you go to one cowboy gathering, not only will you love it, you'll be hooked for life. Thousands found that out last year at Ellensburg's inaugural Spirit of the West Cowboy Gathering, which rides back into town next weekend for three days of cowboy poetry, music and art. "It was a huge draw," says Alan Walker, 40, this year's secretary for the all-volunteer Spirit of the West board of directors. Folks from Canada and across the United States turned out for the gathering, where ten-gallon hats, handlebar mustaches and weather-worn faces roamed freely throughout the quaint town with deep cowboy roots....
At home on the range There's a cowboy renaissance happening, in case you city folk didn't know. "When cultures are really hard-pressed, they tend to revert to their roots," Charlie Seemann, executive director of the Western Folklife Center, noted earlier this month at the 22nd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering here. Cowboys are hard-pressed for a number of reasons, such as the buying up of ranch land for housing subdivisions, but they're not totally obsolete yet — and their old, weather-beaten aura, their classic cultural resonance, is stronger than ever. The nice thing about the cowboy renaissance, however, is that you don't have to go that far to be a part of it. You can be a cowboy at heart, without ever roping a steer or even sitting on a horse. There's nobody more cowboy than a singer-songwriter like Curly Musgrave. He was raised in Alberta, and has done his share of range work, but Musgrave is not a cowboy snob. "There are so many people who grew up with the ideas and mores and traditions of the West within their hearts, who never rode a horse or worked on a ranch," he said. "I honour that as much as the guys who do work on a ranch. I think our attitudes count for so much. I meet a lot of people who say they were born in the wrong part of the country, and that this is the life for them, where their heart is."....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Cat's out of the bag for man's dream bride Dr. G is a veterinarian in the cold country. They are a tough breed, those vets and cowmen and outfitters who live where the snowdrifts are over a horse's head and the thermometer has to wear a wool sock in the winter! One of Doc's more remote clients had been through two wives. His thrifty nature and insistence on doing things the hard way was more than they could take. He had grown sour on women, so Doc was surprised one day when Sourdough (we'll call the reclusive hardhead Sourdough) dropped by the clinic just to visit. He hung around, had some coffee and piddled. Doc knew he had something on his mind, so he waited. Finally Sourdough said, "I gave a girl a ring." Dr. G had a momentary vision of Sourdough being swept away by a woman who was able to reinstill his romantic urges and fire his heart to bursting with feelings of true love, mutual adoration and the realization that there is more to life than work. "What's she like?" asked Doc with more than a little compassion for his friend. "She can irrigate," said Sourdough. "What!" said Doc....
Sunday, February 19, 2006
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
A kept woman -- matter of perception
By Julie Carter
Two women at one of those mixed social gatherings were having a conversation. The event was a collection of people who don’t walk in the same world on a day to day basis. Those kinds of get togethers usually prove without a doubt that perceptions are not even close to reality.
“What do you do for a living?”
“I work at the ranch.”
“Oh, so you don’t have a job?”
“Yes, I work at the ranch.”
The knowing “I see,” that was spoken came with an unspoken attitude that said “I’m talking to a “kept” woman.”
Oh yah, a kept woman. A ranch wife is indeed a kept woman. The list of her “kept” duties is endless.
She kept going to the corrals every night for three months in sub zero temperatures to check on calving heifers.
She kept hay hauled to the barn and ice on the tanks broken.
She kept the fuel and feed suppliers on call so tanks weren’t empty and the cattle didn’t go hungry.
She kept the horses wormed, the horseshoer scheduled, the saddle house swept and the saddle blankets washed.
She kept the horse in the corral and the dogs out of the corral.
She kept gate open while she waited for him to show up or she kept the gate closed because he didn’t.
She kept the pantry full, hot food on the table, clean clothes in the drawer, and the ever proverbial “home fires burning.”
She kept the grocery list, the spare parts list, and the Christmas card list.
She kept the calendar marked with family dates, weather reports, cattle working dates and new calf tallies.
She kept the socials “social,” his soul prayed for and his Mother’s birthday remembered.
She kept the bills paid, his boots soled, and the sunscreen where he might think to use it.
She kept the coffee ever handy, the iced tea ever available and his grandfather’s recipe for a hot toddy as a remedy for his achy body.
She kept track of where he put his stuff so he could find it.
She kept his butt out of a jamb and the list is too long to say when and why.
She kept the vaccine guns washed and in one place and the vaccine front and center in the refrigerator.
She kept the kids fed, clean and in school and made sure he remembered which one was which and if he needed to say “happy birthday.”
She kept her legs shaved and reminded him his face needed shaved.
She kept the clippers sharp for haircuts for him, the kids, the dog and the horse.
And through it all she kept her sense of humor even on days when humor was as scarce as rain.
Yes indeed, she is a kept woman.
In fact she has a Ph.D. in “kept” and most days it would be way easier to have a real job.
But usually she would not trade this “kept” life for a two-story house in the suburbs with a new SUV in the driveway and hair and nail appointments every Friday followed by lunch at the club.
She is a kept woman because “kept” is who she is and what she does best.
© Julie Carter 2006
A kept woman -- matter of perception
By Julie Carter
Two women at one of those mixed social gatherings were having a conversation. The event was a collection of people who don’t walk in the same world on a day to day basis. Those kinds of get togethers usually prove without a doubt that perceptions are not even close to reality.
“What do you do for a living?”
“I work at the ranch.”
“Oh, so you don’t have a job?”
“Yes, I work at the ranch.”
The knowing “I see,” that was spoken came with an unspoken attitude that said “I’m talking to a “kept” woman.”
Oh yah, a kept woman. A ranch wife is indeed a kept woman. The list of her “kept” duties is endless.
She kept going to the corrals every night for three months in sub zero temperatures to check on calving heifers.
She kept hay hauled to the barn and ice on the tanks broken.
She kept the fuel and feed suppliers on call so tanks weren’t empty and the cattle didn’t go hungry.
She kept the horses wormed, the horseshoer scheduled, the saddle house swept and the saddle blankets washed.
She kept the horse in the corral and the dogs out of the corral.
She kept gate open while she waited for him to show up or she kept the gate closed because he didn’t.
She kept the pantry full, hot food on the table, clean clothes in the drawer, and the ever proverbial “home fires burning.”
She kept the grocery list, the spare parts list, and the Christmas card list.
She kept the calendar marked with family dates, weather reports, cattle working dates and new calf tallies.
She kept the socials “social,” his soul prayed for and his Mother’s birthday remembered.
She kept the bills paid, his boots soled, and the sunscreen where he might think to use it.
She kept the coffee ever handy, the iced tea ever available and his grandfather’s recipe for a hot toddy as a remedy for his achy body.
She kept track of where he put his stuff so he could find it.
She kept his butt out of a jamb and the list is too long to say when and why.
She kept the vaccine guns washed and in one place and the vaccine front and center in the refrigerator.
She kept the kids fed, clean and in school and made sure he remembered which one was which and if he needed to say “happy birthday.”
She kept her legs shaved and reminded him his face needed shaved.
She kept the clippers sharp for haircuts for him, the kids, the dog and the horse.
And through it all she kept her sense of humor even on days when humor was as scarce as rain.
Yes indeed, she is a kept woman.
In fact she has a Ph.D. in “kept” and most days it would be way easier to have a real job.
But usually she would not trade this “kept” life for a two-story house in the suburbs with a new SUV in the driveway and hair and nail appointments every Friday followed by lunch at the club.
She is a kept woman because “kept” is who she is and what she does best.
© Julie Carter 2006
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Negotiating at Gunpoint
Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson wants to dispel "innacuracies and stereotypes" about the use of eminent domain for economic development, a practice the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in last year's notorious Kelo v. New London decision. Last fall Peterson told a Senate subcommittee that when the government threatens to condemn people's property because it thinks someone else can make better use of it, "a majority of the time, most people agree to sell." Interesting. Given the choice between selling and fighting an expensive legal battle they will almost certainly lose, after which they will have to give up their land anyway, probably on less advantageous terms, most people "agree" to sell. "Cities use eminent domain most often as a negotiating tool with property owners," explained Peterson, who was speaking for the National League of Cities. "Just having the tool available makes it possible to negotiate with landowners." Sure it does—in the same way just having a gun available makes it possible for a bank robber to negotiate with a teller. As the February 22 anniversary of the oral arguments in Kelo approaches, state legislatures across the country are considering bills to rein in the use of Peterson's "negotiating tool." They should not fall for the false assurances of local politicians, city planners, and developers—a powerful triumvirate determined to block meaningful eminent domain reform....
A Long Row To Hoe
Proposals for an alcohol-fueled end to dependence on foreign oil do not sit lightly on the American landscape. Can they fit within our borders at all? State Of The Union speeches tend to cross using figures with speaking figuratively, and this hybrid rhetoric can bear strange fruit, like the switchgrass mania spreading up K Street like kudzu. Math has never been the Beltway's strongest suit, and it will take a while for many in DC to realize that biofuel, like the solar and wind energy franchises already on offer, suffers from sheer lack of real estate. Solar ranching translates into paving areas the size of Massachusetts with silicon panels. But farming out the fuel supply means putting multiples of Texas under the plough. Even corn as tall as an elephant's eye yields less than half a gallon of ethanol per acre per day. And biotech might, at best, wring another quart out of fertile farmland. That's just not enough -- it takes hundreds of millions of gallons of gas a day to run America's cars, trucks and tractors. A switch grass combine's mileage makes an Escalade look like a Prius rolling downhill. It would take upwards of a billion extra acres -- a million square miles -- to fuel the nation's transport. A billion mile furrow is a long row to hoe -- decades of Green evangelism have failed to make alternative fuel crops a reality. A Federal subsidy program could command their planting, but the President's SOTU proposal amounts to reducing oil imports by less than 0.7% a year. Before we're taken for a rimde on the switch grass hay wagon, let's reexamine another sort of American biofuel -- the fossil biomass underfoot. It contains millions of times the solar energy agriculture can store in a year, and vastly more hydrogen than the nation's oil and gas reserves, ANWR included. It is called coal, and we can get energy out of it and into our gas tanks....
Bush Should Apply the Ownership Society to Environmental Issues
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, little mention was made concerning environmental issues in President Bush's State of the Union address. Critics will say this is because the President had nothing new to offer on the environment, but they’d be wrong. Indeed, President Bush has touted the "ownership society" as a solution to a variety of policy problems, including health care, education and retirement. He has yet, however, to extend the ownership ideal to environmental issues. This is an oversight in need of correction. Government programs and policies, some begun over a century ago, have created perverse incentives that cause environmental harm. If these distortions were removed, the environment would improve. Take, for example, one of the few environmental issues that the President did mention in his address: Rebuilding New Orleans. Sadly, the Feds seem hell-bent not to learn from their mistakes. The President has promised to rebuild New Orleans "bigger and better" -- bringing all of the people home at the federal government’s expense. This is foolish. Federal policies, including subsidized flood insurance and Army Corp of Engineers flood control efforts, turned what could have been a bad weather event into a catastrophic human tragedy by both encouraging people to build in flood prone areas and by contributing to the demise of thousands of acres of wetlands off the Louisiana coast which would have otherwise reduced the impact of Katrina....
Government Water Agencies Support Michigan Man in U.S. Supreme Court Case
The nation’s largest urban water district and groups representing hundreds of water agencies have joined Pacific Legal Foundation in supporting a Michigan grandfather in his 18-year struggle against federal officials who have sought to control his property using a law intended to protect navigable waterways. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Western Urban Water Coalition, the Association of California Water Agencies, the San Diego County Water Authority, and the Central Arizona Water Conservation District are among those urging the United States Supreme Court to rein in federal officials who have exceeded their authority under the law. At issue is federal officials’ move to control virtually every bit of water in the entire country, contrary to a 1972 law that only gives the federal government authority over navigable waterways and adjacent wetlands. In this case, a Michigan man, John Rapanos, refused to pay the federal government for permission to alter wetlands on his property some 20 miles from any navigable waterway. "This case is about the federal government overstepping its authority, not about whether our water will be clean," said Reed Hopper, a principal attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing Mr. Rapanos. "If the federal government properly followed the law, wetlands would continue to be subject to vigorous protections imposed by states." "The agencies on the front lines of providing clean water for tens of millions of Americans support Mr. Rapanos because they have seen first-hand the abuse of the law by the federal government," Mr. Hopper said....
Playing God And Stealing Land
What could possibly be more arrogant than to think that humans should determine which specie continues and which goes extinct? Or that humans can, in fact, keep a specie from going extinct? A news item in the February 20 edition of U.S. News & World Report noted, “Citing concerns over climate change, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week began reviewing whether polar bears should be declared a threatened species. If they are, federal regulations would be required to considered the impact on the animals before ruling on such matters as industrial emissions or fuel economy standards.” I submit that is such madness and idiocy that the mere stating of the notion polar bears are going extinct or threatened by the alleged melting of the Arctic is too bizarre for rational people to contemplate. That said, the USFW will dispatch people “to collect data on polar bear population, distribution, the effects of climate change, and threats from development, contaminants, and poaching.” Guess who set this nonsense in motion? If you said the Center for Biological Diversity of Tucson, Arizona, you’d be right. Not exactly a hotbed of polar bear activity, the Center asserts that, “Arctic melting could cause polar bears to become extinct by century’s end.” “Could” is the key word here. This is a splendid example of the way the environmental movement is forever cozying up to the federal government to get it to spend your tax dollars on projects of such dubious merit that a school child would dismiss it out of hand. Polar bears going extinct? The whole of the Arctic melting? The last time I checked, the State of Alaska offered the wandering polar bears some 571,951 square miles, surrounded by 91,316 square miles of water in which to frolic. Alaska is the largest of all the U.S. States. Room enough for plenty of polar bears, scads of caribou, all manner of wildlife, and even the occasional oilrig or two with which to extract millions of barrels of oil from ANWR. Could it be all the worrying about polar bears has nothing to do with polar bears and everything to do with thwarting the effort to reduce our dependence on the Middle East for the oil we consume?....
"PUBLIC" LANDS DON’T BELONG TO US
In the wake of the Bush Administration’s reported decision to sell off a pretty large portion of what are misleadingly called “public” lands—including 85,000 acres of national forest land in California—many who speak out in behalf of the special interest groups championing keeping these lands under government control are protesting. The Los Angeles Times reports, for examples, that Professor of environmental history, Char Miller of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, chimed in with the this tidbit in response to the Bush Administration’s initiative: "This is a fire sale of public lands. It is utterly unprecedented." He added that "[i]t signals that the lands and the agency that manages them are in deep trouble. For the American public, it is an awful way to understand that it no longer controls its public land." What is worth special attention in this comment is the unselfconscious way that idea of “public land” is conflated with land that the American public controls. In point of fact, the only land members of the American public control is their own, their private property. The so called public lands are the farthest things from what the American public controls. Here is an example. I live in Silverado Canyon, in Orange County, California, which is adjacent to the Cleveland National Forest—the canyon community consists of a population of about 3000 people who all own their own pieces of land ranging in size from as small as 3500 square feet to several acres and some few larger parcels, including a church and a horse ranch. But next to this oasis of pieces of private property stands the huge national forest and it is controlled not by the American public at all but by some bureaucrats, including rangers, who do with it what they choose. Most often, for example, the forest is shut down—“Gate closed”—so no one may enter either on foot or by vehicle. One reason given recently is that some toad that’s deemed to be endangered might get crushed if people were to amble about there. Anyone who would like to take a walk there is shut out, period. Those who might use the dirt road and climb up to the crest of the Santa Ana Mountain, maybe descend down into Riverside County, are without any control of these “public” lands....
Kyoto's Anniversary: Little Reason to Celebrate
February 16 marks the Kyoto Protocol's first anniversary -- it's been one year since the UN global warming agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions went into effect. But don't plan on uncorking the bubbly any time soon. In spite of claims by the European Union's top brass that the targets for reducing energy use are easily in reach-and their nagging pressure on the United States to sign the treaty-the glaring failure of Europe's nations to meet the treaty's targets has put the partying on hold. The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized countries to cut carbon dioxide emissions by an average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. But 13 of the 15 original members of the European Union have increased their emissions since 1990, not reduced them. New data by the EU's own European Environmental Agency show that by 2010, the 15 nations' emissions collectively will exceed 1990 levels by seven percent.1 And while leaders within the EU are pushing for even more stringent caps beyond 2012, the year the Kyoto Protocol expires, other key players believe Kyoto has no future. The UN climate talks in Montreal last December was telling. There, member countries failed to agree on binding emissions cuts for post-2012, and the climate shifted toward a discussion of clean energy and new technology development as a policy alternative to Kyoto. Handicapping Kyoto's future is the fact that the treaty is economic suicide, and most European nations know it. According to the Brussels economic research organization International Council for Capital Formation (ICCF), the UK's gross domestic product will fall more than 1 percent in 2010 from what it otherwise would be, Italy's by more than 2 percent, and Spain's by more than 3 percent as a result of Kyoto's emissions targets. The UK, Italy, and Germany each would lose at least 200,000 jobs; Spain would lose 800,000.2....
Global Warming Fever Over Glacier Thaw
Greenland’s glaciers are either growing or shrinking, depending on which study you read. The media took global warming off the back burner this week to hype an isolated study showing glaciers in Greenland are melting faster than previously thought. But in reporting the story, they ignored another October 2005 study showing Greenland’s glaciers are increasing in thickness at higher elevations. They also ignored cyclical temperature patterns in the North Atlantic, which may explain increased glacier melting in southern Greenland. Leading off his February 17 front-page story, The Washington Post’s Shankar Vedantam wrote that “Greenland’s glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth’s oceans will rise over the next century.” The previous evening, ABC’s Bill Blakemore raised the specter of the world’s beaches slowly being swallowed. “Greenland’s ice sheet holds enough water to raise the world's sea level by 21 feet, if it were all to melt,” the science reporter gloomily warned, adding that scientists “currently believe that would take centuries, but warn if global warming does not stop, it will happen.” Neither report consulted any expert who didn’t believe global warming was to “blame,” and neither reporter noted that an October 2005 study report in the journal Science found that Greenland’s glaciers were thickening at higher elevations while melting at lower elevations. Myron Ebell, director of global warming and international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the Free Market Project that “predictions for rapid melting ... are based on exploiting the public’s lack of understanding of the time scales involved,” adding, “we’re not talking about a few years but one or two thousand years....
Terry Anderson on Conservative Conservation: Taking the High Road
Can you be a conservative and an environmentalist? How to reconcile the two positions, that some see as conflicted, was the topic of Hoover fellow Terry Anderson's presentation "Conservative Conservation: Taking the High Road" at a Hoover Institution Breakfast Briefing on January 18. Anderson, the John and Jean DeNault Senior Fellow, is executive director of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), a think tank focusing on market solutions to environmental problems, and professor of economics at Montana State University. Anderson challenged stereotypes associated with conservatism that lead people to assume that one cannot be a conservative and an environmentalist. Although conservatives are seen as primarily concerned with human welfare, they are also concerned about the environment, Anderson said. Another stereotype, Anderson said, is that because conservatives are seen as individualistic and opposed to big government, they are seen as believing that people should be able to do whatever they want, regardless of consequences. The last stereotype he dismissed is that of conservatives being sanguine about human ingenuity, which leads them to adopt an attitude of "be happy, don't worry." "How well are we doing as human beings," Anderson asked, "which means how well are treating the environment and other species?" He believes, like the title of his recent book You Have to Admit It's Getting Better (Hoover Institution Press, 2004), that things are getting better. Although there are hotspots that require attention, he said, there is good news. First, he pointed out, we are not overpopulating the planet as once predicted; in some areas, such as Europe, there is negative growth in population. As a result of advances in agricultural productivity, he said, we aren't starving. We aren't fouling our nest, he said, as new information on pollution levels indicates improvements. Finally, he added, we aren't running out of resources thanks to new incentives. All these developments lead Anderson to be optimistic....
Stewardship and Economics: Two Sides of the Same Coin
A group of evangelical leaders made headlines last week when they announced the formation of the Evangelical Climate Initative (ECI), a movement is intended to bring to bear the moral authority of these leaders on the question of global warming and climate change. Indeed, these Christians see their position tied up with a great responsibility: “Climate change is the latest evidence of our failure to exercise proper stewardship, and constitutes a critical opportunity for us to do better.” For many who talk about the biblical concept of stewardship of the earth—or “creation care”— the practice of environmental responsibility is antithetical to the concerns of economics. Eugene Dykema, for example, writing for the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), one of the groups behind the formation of the ECI, talks of a view of creation in which “everything is related to everything else.” He continues, “Everything in relationship, everything in context is familiar to the field of ecology, but quite alien to the field of economics.” Whether or not his characterization of economics is accurate, his contrasting of environmental and economic concerns is clear. But this picture is misleading in a number of ways. Perhaps the most important point to recognize is the common foundation for our respective understandings of stewardship and economics. The two are related linguistically by their common Greek origins, and related theologically by their biblical usage. The English word economics is derived from the Greek word οικονομία, which is a compound term literally meaning “house” (οικο) “order” (νομία), and it refers to the administration of a household. The person who ruled the household was called an οικονόμος, and this is usually rendered in English as “steward” or “manager.”....
Negotiating at Gunpoint
Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson wants to dispel "innacuracies and stereotypes" about the use of eminent domain for economic development, a practice the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in last year's notorious Kelo v. New London decision. Last fall Peterson told a Senate subcommittee that when the government threatens to condemn people's property because it thinks someone else can make better use of it, "a majority of the time, most people agree to sell." Interesting. Given the choice between selling and fighting an expensive legal battle they will almost certainly lose, after which they will have to give up their land anyway, probably on less advantageous terms, most people "agree" to sell. "Cities use eminent domain most often as a negotiating tool with property owners," explained Peterson, who was speaking for the National League of Cities. "Just having the tool available makes it possible to negotiate with landowners." Sure it does—in the same way just having a gun available makes it possible for a bank robber to negotiate with a teller. As the February 22 anniversary of the oral arguments in Kelo approaches, state legislatures across the country are considering bills to rein in the use of Peterson's "negotiating tool." They should not fall for the false assurances of local politicians, city planners, and developers—a powerful triumvirate determined to block meaningful eminent domain reform....
A Long Row To Hoe
Proposals for an alcohol-fueled end to dependence on foreign oil do not sit lightly on the American landscape. Can they fit within our borders at all? State Of The Union speeches tend to cross using figures with speaking figuratively, and this hybrid rhetoric can bear strange fruit, like the switchgrass mania spreading up K Street like kudzu. Math has never been the Beltway's strongest suit, and it will take a while for many in DC to realize that biofuel, like the solar and wind energy franchises already on offer, suffers from sheer lack of real estate. Solar ranching translates into paving areas the size of Massachusetts with silicon panels. But farming out the fuel supply means putting multiples of Texas under the plough. Even corn as tall as an elephant's eye yields less than half a gallon of ethanol per acre per day. And biotech might, at best, wring another quart out of fertile farmland. That's just not enough -- it takes hundreds of millions of gallons of gas a day to run America's cars, trucks and tractors. A switch grass combine's mileage makes an Escalade look like a Prius rolling downhill. It would take upwards of a billion extra acres -- a million square miles -- to fuel the nation's transport. A billion mile furrow is a long row to hoe -- decades of Green evangelism have failed to make alternative fuel crops a reality. A Federal subsidy program could command their planting, but the President's SOTU proposal amounts to reducing oil imports by less than 0.7% a year. Before we're taken for a rimde on the switch grass hay wagon, let's reexamine another sort of American biofuel -- the fossil biomass underfoot. It contains millions of times the solar energy agriculture can store in a year, and vastly more hydrogen than the nation's oil and gas reserves, ANWR included. It is called coal, and we can get energy out of it and into our gas tanks....
Bush Should Apply the Ownership Society to Environmental Issues
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, little mention was made concerning environmental issues in President Bush's State of the Union address. Critics will say this is because the President had nothing new to offer on the environment, but they’d be wrong. Indeed, President Bush has touted the "ownership society" as a solution to a variety of policy problems, including health care, education and retirement. He has yet, however, to extend the ownership ideal to environmental issues. This is an oversight in need of correction. Government programs and policies, some begun over a century ago, have created perverse incentives that cause environmental harm. If these distortions were removed, the environment would improve. Take, for example, one of the few environmental issues that the President did mention in his address: Rebuilding New Orleans. Sadly, the Feds seem hell-bent not to learn from their mistakes. The President has promised to rebuild New Orleans "bigger and better" -- bringing all of the people home at the federal government’s expense. This is foolish. Federal policies, including subsidized flood insurance and Army Corp of Engineers flood control efforts, turned what could have been a bad weather event into a catastrophic human tragedy by both encouraging people to build in flood prone areas and by contributing to the demise of thousands of acres of wetlands off the Louisiana coast which would have otherwise reduced the impact of Katrina....
Government Water Agencies Support Michigan Man in U.S. Supreme Court Case
The nation’s largest urban water district and groups representing hundreds of water agencies have joined Pacific Legal Foundation in supporting a Michigan grandfather in his 18-year struggle against federal officials who have sought to control his property using a law intended to protect navigable waterways. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Western Urban Water Coalition, the Association of California Water Agencies, the San Diego County Water Authority, and the Central Arizona Water Conservation District are among those urging the United States Supreme Court to rein in federal officials who have exceeded their authority under the law. At issue is federal officials’ move to control virtually every bit of water in the entire country, contrary to a 1972 law that only gives the federal government authority over navigable waterways and adjacent wetlands. In this case, a Michigan man, John Rapanos, refused to pay the federal government for permission to alter wetlands on his property some 20 miles from any navigable waterway. "This case is about the federal government overstepping its authority, not about whether our water will be clean," said Reed Hopper, a principal attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing Mr. Rapanos. "If the federal government properly followed the law, wetlands would continue to be subject to vigorous protections imposed by states." "The agencies on the front lines of providing clean water for tens of millions of Americans support Mr. Rapanos because they have seen first-hand the abuse of the law by the federal government," Mr. Hopper said....
Playing God And Stealing Land
What could possibly be more arrogant than to think that humans should determine which specie continues and which goes extinct? Or that humans can, in fact, keep a specie from going extinct? A news item in the February 20 edition of U.S. News & World Report noted, “Citing concerns over climate change, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week began reviewing whether polar bears should be declared a threatened species. If they are, federal regulations would be required to considered the impact on the animals before ruling on such matters as industrial emissions or fuel economy standards.” I submit that is such madness and idiocy that the mere stating of the notion polar bears are going extinct or threatened by the alleged melting of the Arctic is too bizarre for rational people to contemplate. That said, the USFW will dispatch people “to collect data on polar bear population, distribution, the effects of climate change, and threats from development, contaminants, and poaching.” Guess who set this nonsense in motion? If you said the Center for Biological Diversity of Tucson, Arizona, you’d be right. Not exactly a hotbed of polar bear activity, the Center asserts that, “Arctic melting could cause polar bears to become extinct by century’s end.” “Could” is the key word here. This is a splendid example of the way the environmental movement is forever cozying up to the federal government to get it to spend your tax dollars on projects of such dubious merit that a school child would dismiss it out of hand. Polar bears going extinct? The whole of the Arctic melting? The last time I checked, the State of Alaska offered the wandering polar bears some 571,951 square miles, surrounded by 91,316 square miles of water in which to frolic. Alaska is the largest of all the U.S. States. Room enough for plenty of polar bears, scads of caribou, all manner of wildlife, and even the occasional oilrig or two with which to extract millions of barrels of oil from ANWR. Could it be all the worrying about polar bears has nothing to do with polar bears and everything to do with thwarting the effort to reduce our dependence on the Middle East for the oil we consume?....
"PUBLIC" LANDS DON’T BELONG TO US
In the wake of the Bush Administration’s reported decision to sell off a pretty large portion of what are misleadingly called “public” lands—including 85,000 acres of national forest land in California—many who speak out in behalf of the special interest groups championing keeping these lands under government control are protesting. The Los Angeles Times reports, for examples, that Professor of environmental history, Char Miller of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, chimed in with the this tidbit in response to the Bush Administration’s initiative: "This is a fire sale of public lands. It is utterly unprecedented." He added that "[i]t signals that the lands and the agency that manages them are in deep trouble. For the American public, it is an awful way to understand that it no longer controls its public land." What is worth special attention in this comment is the unselfconscious way that idea of “public land” is conflated with land that the American public controls. In point of fact, the only land members of the American public control is their own, their private property. The so called public lands are the farthest things from what the American public controls. Here is an example. I live in Silverado Canyon, in Orange County, California, which is adjacent to the Cleveland National Forest—the canyon community consists of a population of about 3000 people who all own their own pieces of land ranging in size from as small as 3500 square feet to several acres and some few larger parcels, including a church and a horse ranch. But next to this oasis of pieces of private property stands the huge national forest and it is controlled not by the American public at all but by some bureaucrats, including rangers, who do with it what they choose. Most often, for example, the forest is shut down—“Gate closed”—so no one may enter either on foot or by vehicle. One reason given recently is that some toad that’s deemed to be endangered might get crushed if people were to amble about there. Anyone who would like to take a walk there is shut out, period. Those who might use the dirt road and climb up to the crest of the Santa Ana Mountain, maybe descend down into Riverside County, are without any control of these “public” lands....
Kyoto's Anniversary: Little Reason to Celebrate
February 16 marks the Kyoto Protocol's first anniversary -- it's been one year since the UN global warming agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions went into effect. But don't plan on uncorking the bubbly any time soon. In spite of claims by the European Union's top brass that the targets for reducing energy use are easily in reach-and their nagging pressure on the United States to sign the treaty-the glaring failure of Europe's nations to meet the treaty's targets has put the partying on hold. The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized countries to cut carbon dioxide emissions by an average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. But 13 of the 15 original members of the European Union have increased their emissions since 1990, not reduced them. New data by the EU's own European Environmental Agency show that by 2010, the 15 nations' emissions collectively will exceed 1990 levels by seven percent.1 And while leaders within the EU are pushing for even more stringent caps beyond 2012, the year the Kyoto Protocol expires, other key players believe Kyoto has no future. The UN climate talks in Montreal last December was telling. There, member countries failed to agree on binding emissions cuts for post-2012, and the climate shifted toward a discussion of clean energy and new technology development as a policy alternative to Kyoto. Handicapping Kyoto's future is the fact that the treaty is economic suicide, and most European nations know it. According to the Brussels economic research organization International Council for Capital Formation (ICCF), the UK's gross domestic product will fall more than 1 percent in 2010 from what it otherwise would be, Italy's by more than 2 percent, and Spain's by more than 3 percent as a result of Kyoto's emissions targets. The UK, Italy, and Germany each would lose at least 200,000 jobs; Spain would lose 800,000.2....
Global Warming Fever Over Glacier Thaw
Greenland’s glaciers are either growing or shrinking, depending on which study you read. The media took global warming off the back burner this week to hype an isolated study showing glaciers in Greenland are melting faster than previously thought. But in reporting the story, they ignored another October 2005 study showing Greenland’s glaciers are increasing in thickness at higher elevations. They also ignored cyclical temperature patterns in the North Atlantic, which may explain increased glacier melting in southern Greenland. Leading off his February 17 front-page story, The Washington Post’s Shankar Vedantam wrote that “Greenland’s glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth’s oceans will rise over the next century.” The previous evening, ABC’s Bill Blakemore raised the specter of the world’s beaches slowly being swallowed. “Greenland’s ice sheet holds enough water to raise the world's sea level by 21 feet, if it were all to melt,” the science reporter gloomily warned, adding that scientists “currently believe that would take centuries, but warn if global warming does not stop, it will happen.” Neither report consulted any expert who didn’t believe global warming was to “blame,” and neither reporter noted that an October 2005 study report in the journal Science found that Greenland’s glaciers were thickening at higher elevations while melting at lower elevations. Myron Ebell, director of global warming and international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the Free Market Project that “predictions for rapid melting ... are based on exploiting the public’s lack of understanding of the time scales involved,” adding, “we’re not talking about a few years but one or two thousand years....
Terry Anderson on Conservative Conservation: Taking the High Road
Can you be a conservative and an environmentalist? How to reconcile the two positions, that some see as conflicted, was the topic of Hoover fellow Terry Anderson's presentation "Conservative Conservation: Taking the High Road" at a Hoover Institution Breakfast Briefing on January 18. Anderson, the John and Jean DeNault Senior Fellow, is executive director of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), a think tank focusing on market solutions to environmental problems, and professor of economics at Montana State University. Anderson challenged stereotypes associated with conservatism that lead people to assume that one cannot be a conservative and an environmentalist. Although conservatives are seen as primarily concerned with human welfare, they are also concerned about the environment, Anderson said. Another stereotype, Anderson said, is that because conservatives are seen as individualistic and opposed to big government, they are seen as believing that people should be able to do whatever they want, regardless of consequences. The last stereotype he dismissed is that of conservatives being sanguine about human ingenuity, which leads them to adopt an attitude of "be happy, don't worry." "How well are we doing as human beings," Anderson asked, "which means how well are treating the environment and other species?" He believes, like the title of his recent book You Have to Admit It's Getting Better (Hoover Institution Press, 2004), that things are getting better. Although there are hotspots that require attention, he said, there is good news. First, he pointed out, we are not overpopulating the planet as once predicted; in some areas, such as Europe, there is negative growth in population. As a result of advances in agricultural productivity, he said, we aren't starving. We aren't fouling our nest, he said, as new information on pollution levels indicates improvements. Finally, he added, we aren't running out of resources thanks to new incentives. All these developments lead Anderson to be optimistic....
Stewardship and Economics: Two Sides of the Same Coin
A group of evangelical leaders made headlines last week when they announced the formation of the Evangelical Climate Initative (ECI), a movement is intended to bring to bear the moral authority of these leaders on the question of global warming and climate change. Indeed, these Christians see their position tied up with a great responsibility: “Climate change is the latest evidence of our failure to exercise proper stewardship, and constitutes a critical opportunity for us to do better.” For many who talk about the biblical concept of stewardship of the earth—or “creation care”— the practice of environmental responsibility is antithetical to the concerns of economics. Eugene Dykema, for example, writing for the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), one of the groups behind the formation of the ECI, talks of a view of creation in which “everything is related to everything else.” He continues, “Everything in relationship, everything in context is familiar to the field of ecology, but quite alien to the field of economics.” Whether or not his characterization of economics is accurate, his contrasting of environmental and economic concerns is clear. But this picture is misleading in a number of ways. Perhaps the most important point to recognize is the common foundation for our respective understandings of stewardship and economics. The two are related linguistically by their common Greek origins, and related theologically by their biblical usage. The English word economics is derived from the Greek word οικονομία, which is a compound term literally meaning “house” (οικο) “order” (νομία), and it refers to the administration of a household. The person who ruled the household was called an οικονόμος, and this is usually rendered in English as “steward” or “manager.”....
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