NEWS ROUNDUP
Indicted commander wants statement tossed The attorney for the former commander of an elite wildfire team accused of setting two forest fires asked a federal judge Thursday to toss his client's confession made to federal investigators. Attorney Grant Woods argued investigators coerced his client into admitting he intentionally started two fires in 2004 at the Coconino National Forest that together burned nearly 22 acres. Investigators questioned Van Bateman in October about the wildfires. Agents say they told Bateman, who did not have an attorney at the interview, that he could leave at any time and could refuse to answer questions. "In my mind, I had no option but to answer the questions put before me," Bateman told U.S. District Judge Paul Rosenblatt in court Thursday. "I felt that if I didn't answer, they would hold it against me." Bateman said he feared he would be fired from his job as fire management officer at the forest's Mogollon Ranger District and would lose the retirement benefits he had accrued in 34 years with the Forest Service....
Column: Border fence an ecological nightmare And thus, by any measure of the Leopoldian Oath, I have to deem the border fence an ecological nightmare. It is fitting that this fence is all about immigration. Immigration, of course, is not just a human activity, but something that every critter on this planet does to one extent or another. The fence will stop human immigration, and will stop most wildlife migration too. The border fence that already exists in parts of Southern California has wreaked ecological havoc; the new triple-decker fence will make matters worse. In San Diego, for example, the U.S. government may have to suspend or completely ignore most of its environmental laws - the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act - to build and accommodate the border fence that will separate San Diego and Tijuana. Over the last few decades, the city of San Diego, the state and federal governments and the Mexican government have spent nearly $600 million to protect the sensitive ecology of the Tijuana River Estuary, where the last portions of the fence would be built. The estuary will be ecologically harmed by the new triple-decker fence. The conflict in Tijuana is a mere ecological fragment of what could happen all along a potentially fenced U.S./Mexican border, which contains a biologically rich swath of parks, forests, wilderness areas, and bi-national wildlife habitat....
Nevada lawmakers urged to rein in water authority Nevada lawmakers have been urged to make sure that this state doesn't duplicate what happened in the Owens Valley in eastern California - whose water was taken to supply the booming Los Angeles area. White Pine County, Nev., rancher Dean Baker and California water attorney Greg James, testifying before the Legislature's interim committee on water resources, both cited the Owens Valley case as one that shouldn't repeat itself in Nevada. The presentations Wednesday came as part of the committee's review of the Southern Nevada Water Authority's plan to tap groundwater in rural Clark, Lincoln and White Pine counties. Over the next decade, the water authority intends to build a $2 billion pipeline network to carry groundwater to Las Vegas from dozens of wells scattered across eastern Nevada. The project is expected to supply the Las Vegas Valley with enough water for as many as 425,000 homes. James and Baker urged the panel of lawmakers to introduce legislation next year that would shape how such large-scale water transfers are done....
Column: Power rangers activated There hasn’t been much reason for joy at the path the Forest Service has taken over the last several years under the direction of the resource-ravaging Bush administration. But this week’s news that the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest intends to put six Forest Rangers on the trail of ATV scofflaws is a move all Montanans should be celebrating. In case you missed it, Forest Service spokesman Jack de Golia announced Monday that his agency would be applying to Montana’s Off-Highway Vehicle and Recreational Trails Program for funding to put the additional rangers in the woods on the 3-million-acre national forest. Currently, only three enforcement officers patrol the forest—“That’s a million acres apiece,” de Golia explained. Given the destruction currently occurring on national forests caused by rampant and often-illegal ATV use, it is well past time for the federal agency that’s supposed to be “stewarding” our forest resources to get on the stick. “Enforcement is a problem,” de Golia admitted. “We just don’t have enough people to cover all the roads and all the ways to get in.” Sure enough, the numbers bear out de Golia’s assessment in grim detail. Of the 291 incident reports of illegal ATV use filed on the forest in the last five years, only 21 tickets were issued for violation of off-road rules. That means nine out of every 10 rogue ATV riders slipped freely away, leaving only eroding ruts and noxious weeds behind to mark their passage....
Feds to fund study of prairie dogs Although people may see families of prairie dogs living on the side of the roads everyday, some environmentalists fear that there is a danger they may become extinct. "The Gunnison's prairie dog has been listed on a petition as a possible endangered species," said Jeff Cole, wildlife manager with the Navajo Fish and Wildlife Program. Because this poses as a possible threat for the ecosystem, the Navajo Nation Fish and Wildlife Department applied for a grant through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and received $150,000 to conduct a study that will determine whether Gunnison's prairie gods really are in danger of becoming extinct. But before anyone buys a "Save the Prairie Dogs" bumper sticker, remember that putting prarie dogs on the extinction list is only being proposed. "We see them everywhere," said Cole. "They're not going extinct." To make that statement official, the program has to complete the study....
Poll: Majority supports oil drilling Floridians support lifting a ban on oil drilling 100 miles or more from the state's Gulf Coast beaches by a 51 to 42 percent majority, and many say rising gasoline prices have influenced their approval, a poll released Thursday showed. Such support stunned environmentalists, who have counted on opposition from Florida and other coastal states to deflect growing sentiment for offshore drilling among inland and oil state politicians. The U.S. House just last week rejected proposals to open more offshore areas to drilling, but those efforts are expected to continue. Most Floridians, however, still oppose drilling closer to shore. They disapprove of a congressional proposal to allow natural gas drilling as close as nine miles from shore by a 55 to 36 percent margin. The poll by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute was taken May 15-22 among 1,086 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent....
Helicopter mapping project moves to Ketchikan coastline Two helicopters will be flying low over the coastline near Ketchikan in the next few weeks, collecting information for detailed maps. The coastal mapping project is being done by Coastal and Ocean Resources Inc., which already has mapped coastlines of Washington state and British Columbia, as well as Cook Inlet, Kodiak Island and Katmai in Alaska. The digital video imagery from the Alaska surveys is available online, where viewers can "Fly the Alaska Coastline." Also collected during the surveys is scientific data such as shoreline type and the location of kelp, eelgrass and shellfish beds. "We've really worked hard at getting the information up and accessible on the Web," said CORI President John Harper....
OMB, Congress spar on competitive sourcing again Congress again is using the appropriations process to undermine the Bush administration's policies for competitive sourcing. Under H.R. 5384, the Fiscal 2007 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, the Agriculture Department can spend no money to study, or enter into a contract with a private party to carry out a study relating to rural development or farm loan programs by using competitive sourcing, unless Congress gives its approval. Like last year, when similar language was included in the fiscal 2006 version of the bill, the Office of Management and Budget opposes such restrictions. “The administration urges the House to eliminate this provision,” OMB said in its policy statement. Competitive sourcing, which is governed by the OMB’s Circular A-76, typically pits a private-sector vendor against a team of federal employees to determine what is referred to as the most efficient organization. OMB has pushed public-private competitions for contracts to get the best deal....
EPA workers blast agency's rulings By pandering to farmers and chemical manufacturers, the Environmental Protection Agency risks gutting a 10-year-old law designed to safeguard children from dangerous pesticides, workers within the agency charge. In a letter sent this week to agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, nine representatives of unions representing about 9,000 EPA scientists, risk managers and other workers said the agency "has lost sight of its regulatory responsibilities in trying to reach consensus with those that it regulates, and the result is that the integrity of the science upon which Agency decisions are based has been compromised."
Since 1996, the Food Quality Protection Act has been under attack from both sides -- pesticide makers and farmers asserting that the law is being applied too stringently, and environmentalists and consumer advocates charging that it is being undermined. The law was intended to protect children from hazardous effects of pesticides in foods and in the environment....
Environmental ‘Father Figure’ Blames Peers For Wrecking the Environment Leading environmental scientist James Lovelock blames fellow environmentalists for damaging the environment with renewable energy solutions, while claiming to save it. Lovelock told StockInterview.com, “Their solutions are basically urban-political solutions. It’s mostly made up of urban people, who know almost nothing about the countryside and still less about the ecosystem.” Lovelock scoffed at their embrace of renewable energy sources, saying, “They are being very foolish. They are living in a dream world.” Instead, the atmospheric scientist and bestselling author actively advocates adding more nuclear energy as a solution to the energy crisis, saying, “There is no sensible alternative to nuclear power if we are to sustain civilization.” Best known for his Gaia Theory, Lovelock’s bylined articles in Reader’s Digest (March 2005) and London’s Independent newspaper strongly urged other environmentalists to follow his lead in endorsing nuclear power. His recent book, The Revenge of Gaia, which discusses the current energy crisis, has caused a stir in the British Isles. Aside from taking swipes at solar power and wind energy, Lovelock fumes when talking about another renewable energy source, “They continue to insist on wanting to run their cars on bio fuels. This is one of the maddest ideas of the lot.”....
Intl Decision On BSE Standards Seen Helping US Trade Case The U.S. will now have a much stronger case to make that there is virtually no mad-cow disease risk here thanks to a decision Wednesday by the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health to relax country standard requirements. Previously, a country had to wait seven years after its discovery of mad-cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, before it could be considered in the "negligible risk" category -- the category for countries with the least BSE risk. That has now been changed and countries must wait until 11 years after birth date of the last native-born cow discovered with the disease. The U.S. reported finding its latest BSE case in March, but U.S. Department of Agriculture officials say the infected cow was more than 10 years old when it died. Under the previous guidelines of the World Organization for Animal Health, known commonly as OIE, the U.S. would have had to wait until 2013 before it could be recognized as a "negligible risk" country. Under the new guidelines, approved Wednesday by unanimous vote, there will be little or no waiting. "For the U.S., this is much better," said Alex Thiermann, an OIE chairman. He also called the new age-based guideline more "realistic."....
Dance returns to dwelling Almost 800 years ago a kiva within the Long House cliff dwelling on Wetherill Mesa served as a dance plaza for the ancestral Puebloan people. Tuesday afternoon, native songs and dance returned with echoes through Rock Canyon in celebration of the park's centennial. A native of the Pueblo of Zia from New Mexico offered a prayer service, and five Ute Mountain Ute tribal members sang, drummed and danced to a long-ago beat during a ceremonial service attended by about 200 people. The honored guest Tuesday was first lady Laura Bush, who spoke about Mesa Verde’s role in America’s cultural heritage. Occupied by Ancient Puebloan people from about 1145 to 1279 A.D., the Long House site features 151 canyon-rock rooms, 21 kivas, a dance floor and storage bins for ceremonial items and foot drums. The mood Tuesday was sunny, yet seemingly solemn, with soothing music from the flute of David Nighteagle. Ravens, swallows and swifts flew the perimeter of the park dwelling prior to and during the ceremony....
Along for the 'Ride' Nine years ago, Fort Worth native Jeff Fraley and Dallas' Harry Lynch made Chasing the Dream, a modest documentary about bull-riding. Most of that film's fans discovered it on video and cable TV, although it did earn some theatrical screenings. Fraley and Lynch kept the film small, in part because it was the first crack they'd ever taken at making a movie. With Ride Around the World, Fraley and Lynch have returned to cowboy culture in a big way -- literally big, as in the oversize IMAX format, but also in the sense of scope. Here, they've gotten out of rodeo arenas and gone around the world to trace the evolution of the cowboy. The cowboy life has changed so little, the filmmakers point out, that the movie doesn't need to journey into the past. From its opening scenes at West Texas' 6666 Ranch (aka "Four Sixes), it jumps to Morocco to film Berber horseman, descendants of the Moorish people who would conquer Spain, which in turn brought the vaquero to New World territories that would become Argentina and Mexico. From there, the vaqueros spread north, bringing their cowboy culture to what would become the western United States....
Friday, May 26, 2006
Thursday, May 25, 2006
FLE
Gonzales's Rationale on Phone Data Disputed Civil liberties lawyers yesterday questioned the legal basis that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales used Tuesday to justify the constitutionality of collecting domestic telephone records as part of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism program. While not confirming a USA Today report May 11 saying the National Security Agency has been collecting phone-call records of millions of Americans, Gonzales said such an activity would not require a court warrant under a 1979 Supreme Court ruling because it involved obtaining "business records." Under the 27-year-old court ruling in Smith v. Maryland , "those kinds of records do not enjoy Fourth Amendment protection," Gonzales said. "There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in those kinds of records," he added. Noting that Congress in 1986 passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in reaction to the Smith v. Maryland ruling to require court orders before turning over call records to the government, G. Jack King Jr. of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said Gonzales is correct in saying "the administration isn't violating the Fourth Amendment" but "he's failing to acknowledge that it is breaking" the 1986 law, which requires a court order "with a few very narrow exceptions." Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said, "The government is bound by the laws Congress passes, and when the attorney general doesn't even mention them, it is symptomatic of the government's profound disrespect for the rule of law." Gonzales, in addition to mentioning the Supreme Court case on Tuesday, said there "is a statutory right of privacy" but "with respect to business records there are a multiple number of ways that the government can have access to that information," including issuing national security letters, a type of administrative subpoena....
The Snooping Goes Beyond Phone Calls Furor and confusion over allegations that major phone companies have surrendered customer calling records to the National Security Agency continue to roil Washington. But if AT&T Inc. (T ) and possibly others have turned over records to the NSA, the phone giants represent only one of many commercial sources of personal data that the government seeks to "mine" for evidence of terrorist plots and other threats. The Departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security spend millions annually to buy commercial databases that track Americans' finances, phone numbers, and biographical information, according to a report last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Often, the agencies and their contractors don't ensure the data's accuracy, the GAO found. Buying commercially collected data allows the government to dodge certain privacy rules. The Privacy Act of 1974 restricts how federal agencies may use such information and requires disclosure of what the government is doing with it. But the law applies only when the government is doing the data collecting. "Grabbing data wholesale from the private sector is the way agencies are getting around the requirements of the Privacy Act and the Fourth Amendment," says Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington and a member of the Homeland Security Dept.'s Data Privacy & Integrity Advisory Committee. The Justice Dept. alone, which includes the FBI, spent $19 million in fiscal 2005 to obtain commercially gathered names, addresses, phone numbers, and other data, according to the GAO. The Justice Dept. obeys the Privacy Act and "protects information that might personally identify an individual," a spokesman says. Despite the GAO's findings, a Homeland Security spokesman denies that his agency purchases consumer records from private companies. The State Dept. didn't respond to requests for comment....
NSA rejected system that sifted phone data legally The National Security Agency developed a pilot program in the late 1990s that would have enabled it to gather and analyze huge amounts of communications data without running afoul of privacy laws. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, it shelved the project -- not because it failed to work but because of bureaucratic infighting and a sudden White House expansion of the agency's surveillance powers, according to several intelligence officials. The agency opted instead to adopt only one component of the program, which produced a far less capable and rigorous program. It remains the backbone of the NSA's warrantless surveillance efforts, tracking domestic and overseas communications from a vast databank of information, and monitoring selected calls. Four intelligence officials knowledgeable about the program agreed to discuss it with The Sun only if granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject. The program the NSA rejected, called ThinThread, was developed to handle greater volumes of information, partly in expectation of threats surrounding the millennium celebrations. Sources say it bundled four cutting-edge surveillance tools. In what intelligence experts describe as rigorous testing of ThinThread in 1998, the project succeeded at each task with high marks. For example, its ability to sort through huge amounts of data to find threat-related communications far surpassed the existing system, sources said. It also was able to rapidly separate and encrypt U.S.-related communications to ensure privacy....
Whistle-Blower's Evidence, Uncut Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class-action lawsuit against the telecommunications company, which alleges that AT&T cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic surveillance program. In a public statement Klein issued last month, he described the NSA's visit to an AT&T office. In an older, less-public statement recently acquired by Wired News, Klein goes into additional details of his discovery of an alleged surveillance operation in an AT&T building in San Francisco. Klein supports his claim by attaching excerpts of three internal company documents: a Dec. 10, 2002, manual titled "Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco," a Jan. 13, 2003, document titled "SIMS, Splitter Cut-In and Test Procedure" and a second "Cut-In and Test Procedure" dated Jan. 24, 2003. Here we present Klein's statement in its entirety, with inline links to all of the document excerpts where he cited them. You can also download the complete file here (pdf). The full AT&T documents are filed under seal in federal court in San Francisco....
LISTENING IN A few days before the start of the confirmation hearings for General Michael Hayden, who has been nominated by President Bush to be the head of the C.I.A., I spoke to an official of the National Security Agency who recently retired. The official joined the N.S.A. in the mid-nineteen-seventies, soon after contentious congressional hearings that redefined the relationship between national security and the public’s right to privacy. The hearings, which revealed that, among other abuses, the N.S.A. had illegally intercepted telegrams to and from the United States, led to the passage of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to protect citizens from unlawful surveillance. “When I first came in, I heard from all my elders that ‘we’ll never be able to collect intelligence again,’” the former official said. “They’d whine, ‘Why do we have to report to oversight committees?’ ” But, over the next few years, he told me, the agency did find a way to operate within the law. “We built a system that protected national security and left people able to go home at night without worrying whether what they did that day was appropriate or legal.” After the attacks of September 11, 2001, it was clear that the intelligence community needed to get more aggressive and improve its performance. The Administration, deciding on a quick fix, returned to the tactic that got intelligence agencies in trouble thirty years ago: intercepting large numbers of electronic communications made by Americans. The N.S.A.’s carefully constructed rules were set aside. Last December, the Times reported that the N.S.A. was listening in on calls between people in the United States and people in other countries, and a few weeks ago USA Today reported that the agency was collecting information on millions of private domestic calls. A security consultant working with a major telecommunications carrier told me that his client set up a top-secret high-speed circuit between its main computer complex and Quantico, Virginia, the site of a government-intelligence computer center. This link provided direct access to the carrier’s network core—the critical area of its system, where all its data are stored. “What the companies are doing is worse than turning over records,” the consultant said. “They’re providing total access to all the data.”....
Gonzales: U.S. could track reporters' phone calls Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security. The nation's top law enforcer also said the government will not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly. "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said, referring to prosecutions. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected." In recent months, journalists have been called into court to testify as part of investigations into leaks, including the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA operative's name as well as the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program. Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said she presumed that Gonzales was referring to the 1917 Espionage Act, which she said has never been interpreted to prosecute journalists who were providing information to the public....
Bush's 'Big Brother' Blunder George W. Bush’s warrantless phone data collection may not only violate the U.S. Constitution but expend so much money and manpower that America is made less safe – by diverting resources away from more practical steps, like inspecting cargo and hiring translators. Yet, because the operation is wrapped in layers and layers of secrecy – based on the dubious argument that al-Qaeda might not realize it’s being spied on – the public doesn’t know how much the project costs, who’s getting contracts and whether it does any good. So far, however, what administration officials and computer experts have been willing to describe shouldn’t give Americans much confidence that their trade-off of Fourth Amendment freedoms for a little extra safety is a particularly good deal. The project’s designers say the National Security Agency’s electronic warehousing of trillions of phone records from calls made by some 200 million Americans is intended to seek out “patterns” from conversations involving alleged terrorists and then to apply the digital outline to the stockpiled records. That search, presumably, then spits out the phone numbers of other callers in the United States who fit into the “patterns.” These computer-generated tips then go to the FBI, which may question the suspects or use other investigative strategies. There are, however, logical flaws to this “Big Brother” computer scheme, especially the idea that the project is likely to discern many usable “patterns” of phone calls that if applied to the population would detect much suspicious activity. The 9/11 hijackers, for instance, made very few substantive calls about their plot, recognizing the risk of electronic surveillance and preferring face-to-face meetings as a way to avoid detection, according to the 9/11 Commission Report....
F.B.I. Missed Many 'Red Flags' on Key Informer, Review Finds A Justice Department review released Wednesday found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation missed numerous "red flags" indicating that one of its own informants might be a longtime Chinese spy. The report urged broader changes at the F.B.I. in its handling of informants to prevent security breaches. As early as 1987, senior officials at the F.B.I. received word that Katrina Leung, a prominent Chinese-American businesswoman in Los Angeles who was also a bureau informant, might have had unauthorized contacts with Chinese officials, according to the review, conducted by the Justice Department inspector general's office. Despite warning signs through the 1990's, the F.B.I. continued using her as one of its most highly paid informants, paying her a total of $1.7 million, the report found. It was not until 2001 that the F.B.I. began actively investigating the possibility that Ms. Leung might be spying for China. That investigation also showed that she and her F.B.I. "handler" in Los Angeles, a veteran agent named James J. Smith, had been having a secret affair for 18 years. Mr. Smith, now retired from the F.B.I., pleaded guilty in 2004 to a charge of lying about their affair, and he received a $10,000 fine and probation. Ms. Leung, meanwhile, originally faced espionage-related charges for the unauthorized possession and copying of classified materials — which prosecutors charged she had taken surreptitiously from Mr. Smith's briefcase during their visits together. But a Los Angeles judge threw out the charges last year because of prosecutorial misconduct, and Ms. Leung ultimately agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges of lying to the government and making a false tax return. Like Mr. Smith, she also received probation and a $10,000 fine....
Hastert tells President Bush FBI raid was unconstitutional House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) told President Bush yesterday that he is concerned the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) raid on Rep. William Jefferson’s (D-La.) congressional office over the weekend was a direct violation of the Constitution. Hastert raised concerns that the FBI’s unannounced seizure of congressional documents during a raid of Jefferson’s Rayburn office Saturday night violated the separation of powers between the two branches of government as they are defined by the Constitution. “The Speaker spoke candidly with the president about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s raid over the weekend,” Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean said yesterday in confirming his boss’s remarks. Hastert told reporters yesterday that he understands the reasons for the investigation but objected to the manner in which the raid was conducted. “My opinion is they took the wrong path,” Hastert said. “They need to back up, and we need to go from there.” Republican objections are independent of any facts in the corruption probe against Jefferson. Their complaints pertain solely to constitutional questions about the raid itself....
Man Killed by Air Marshals Was Shot 11 Times The federal air marshals who killed a mentally ill man at Miami International Airport in December shot him numerous times, according to an autopsy report released a day after state prosecutors declared the shooting "legally justified" and said no criminal charges would be filed. The autopsy, by the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Department, found that the man, Rigoberto Alpizar of Maitland, Fla., had been wounded 11 times — in the chest, abdomen, shoulder, hand, wrist and forearm. It was the first case of an air marshal opening fire since marshals became a common presence on flights after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Alpizar, 44, frantically ran off his American Airlines flight before it was to depart for Orlando on Dec. 7, his backpack strapped to his chest. Law enforcement officials said at the time that the marshals fired on Mr. Alpizar because he claimed to have a bomb, but refused to provide details. In a report released Tuesday, the state attorney's office said both air marshals heard Mr. Alpizar yell that he had a bomb as he ran onto the jetway....
Voice Encryption May Draw U.S. Scrutiny Philip R. Zimmermann wants to protect online privacy. Who could object to that? He has found out once already. Trained as a computer scientist, he developed a program in 1991 called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, for scrambling and unscrambling e-mail messages. It won a following among privacy rights advocates and human rights groups working overseas — and a three-year federal criminal investigation into whether he had violated export restrictions on cryptographic software. The case was dropped in 1996, and Mr. Zimmermann, who lives in Menlo Park, Calif., started PGP Inc. to sell his software commercially. Now he is again inviting government scrutiny. On Sunday, he released a free Windows software program, Zfone, that encrypts a computer-to-computer voice conversation so both parties can be confident that no one is listening in. It became available earlier this year to Macintosh and Linux users of the system known as voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP. What sets Zfone apart from comparable systems is that it does not require a web of computers to hold the keys, or long numbers, used in most encryption schemes. Instead, it performs the key exchange inside the digital voice channel while the call is being set up, so no third party has the keys. Zfone's introduction comes as reports continue to emerge about the government's electronic surveillance efforts. A lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights group, contends that AT&T has given the National Security Agency real-time access to Internet communications. In the wake of 9/11, there were calls for the government to institute new barriers to cryptography, to avoid its use in communications by enemies of the United States. Easily accessible cryptography for Internet calling may intensify that debate....
Air Marshal Says He Faced Retaliation for Bringing Up Security Issues The head of a group of Federal Air Marshals says the service is badly broken. "Right now we cannot protect the public," says Frank Terreri, an active duty air marshal who represents a group of 1,500 air marshals. "And not because we're not proficient, not that we're not capable, it's because federal air marshal management, along with the Department of Homeland Security, won't let us do our jobs." Terreri says air marshals are not able to work undercover because check-in and boarding procedures at airports make it impossible for air marshals to maintain their anonymity: "We're supposed to be undercover. But basically when everybody knows who you are, you're just the guys on the plane with the gun. Either they're gonna avoid you or overcome you, you're at a severe disadvantage." Terreri has spent three years trying to get the air marshals management to address these issues with no response. Instead he says they've retaliated against him, with four separate investigations, including one for misuse of his business card. "The items that he was being accused of were so surreal that they were obviously intending to terrorize the other air marshals into silence," says Tom Devine, an attorney with the Government Accountability Project. The project has petitioned the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to open an investigation into Terreri's allegations....
FBI Agents Rebel Over Mandatory Transfers The FBI's storied workforce is being dismantled and reassembled as Director Robert S. Mueller III tries to overhaul the hidebound agency. The result is a culture war between old and new, and older agents are rebelling. Among the disaffected are hundreds of agents in field offices around the country who are suddenly facing forced transfers to FBI headquarters. Many, including Michael Clark, are leaving. For 23 years, Clark was a loyal FBI man, rising to supervise a squad of agents in Connecticut working corporate fraud and public corruption cases. He helped send a former governor to prison. But then the FBI told him he had to move to Washington, and he found out his loyalty ran only so deep. Now a casualty of an agency that has become a construction zone, Clark is working for Otis Elevator Co. The agents argue that the upheaval is counterproductive. They say they have spent years cultivating contacts and relationships with state and local officials, which are not easily replaced. Middle managers, such as squad leaders and desk supervisors, often form the institutional memory of the bureau's 56 field offices. "Nobody is happy about it," said Clark, who recently left the bureau for the top security and investigative job at Otis. "You are going to lose a ton of experience." FBI agents long have fled for greener pastures, propelled by a pension system that allows them to retire with full benefits at 50 and offers little incentive to stay longer. High corporate demand for their skills since the Sept. 11 attacks has further swelled the ranks of retirees....
Arrest of illegals falls off Clinton pace The U.S. Border Patrol increased at a faster rate and apprehended more illegal aliens per year under President Clinton than under President Bush, according to statistics from a new, unpublished congressional research briefing report. Mr. Bush trails his predecessor on a series of measures of border security, says the briefing from the Congressional Research Service to the House Judiciary Committee, which was based on Department of Homeland Security data. Mr. Clinton increased the number of Border Patrol agents and pilots by 126 percent over his eight-year term, or an average of 642 per year, while Mr. Bush has averaged 411 new agents per year through 2005, for a total increase of 22.3 percent over his tenure. Although Mr. Bush last week said his administration has caught and returned 6 million illegal aliens, that's actually a drop from any five-year period during Mr. Clinton's administration, the briefing says. Meanwhile, the number of alien absconders has grown by more than 200,000 during Mr. Bush's term, reaching 536,644 in fiscal 2005; the number of completed fraud cases has dropped; and, until recently, detention beds hovered at or below the level Mr. Bush inherited from Mr. Clinton in 2001. "The sense of urgency that comes with deploying the National Guard is belied by the administration's consistent opposition to providing the necessary resources that our border security agencies need to do their jobs," said Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee....
Lack of prosecutions demoralizing Border Patrol The vast majority of people caught smuggling immigrants across the border near San Diego are never prosecuted for the offense, demoralizing the Border Patrol agents making the arrests, according to an internal document obtained by The Associated Press. “It is very difficult to keep agents' morale up when the laws they were told to uphold are being watered-down or not prosecuted,” the report says. The report offers a stark assessment of the situation at a Border Patrol station responsible for guarding 13 miles of mountainous border east of the city. Federal officials say it reflects a reality along the entire 2,000-mile border: Judges and federal attorneys are so swamped that only the most egregious smuggling cases are prosecuted. Only 6 percent of 289 suspected immigrant smugglers were prosecuted by the federal government for that offense in the year ending in September 2004, according to the report. Some were instead prosecuted for another crime. Other cases were declined by federal prosecutors, or the suspect was released by the Border Patrol. The report raises doubts about the value of tightening security along the Mexican border. President Bush wants to hire 6,000 more Border Patrol agents and dispatch up to 6,000 National Guardsmen. He did not mention overburdened courts in his Oval Office address Monday on immigration. The report was provided to the AP by the office of Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who has accused the chief federal prosecutor in San Diego of being lax on smuggling cases. Issa's office said it was an internal Border Patrol report written last August. It was unclear who wrote it. The lack of prosecutions is “demoralizing the agents and making a joke out of our system of justice,” said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents agents. “It is certainly a weak link in our immigration-enforcement chain.”....
Virtual Wall Rises in U.S. Desert In the wee hours on April 25, a Predator B drone crashed into the desert floor near Tucson, Arizona, temporarily grounding one of the most expensive high-tech programs yet deployed in a burgeoning "virtual wall" that's taking shape on the U.S.-Mexico border. Since its launch in September 2005, the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, had helped the U.S. Border Patrol capture 1,700 illegal immigrants attempting a crossing in the area, according to the agency, which is eager to replace the $14 million aircraft. It won't have long to wait. On Monday, President Bush vowed to bolster efforts to stem illegal immigration, including calling up some 6,000 National Guardsmen to assist the Border Patrol along the Mexico border. In addition, he signaled increased spending on technological measures aimed at monitoring high-traffic crossings like the one in Tucson. The U.S. Border Patrol already employs a host of devices to spot, track and apprehend potential migrants, human traffickers, drug smugglers and terrorists. They include drones like the one that crashed last month, video-surveillance cameras, motion sensors and X-ray and gamma-imaging equipment. The division utilizes the majority of its resources along the southern border with Mexico, particularly within the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. It covers the desolate stretch of Arizona desert that has become the passage of choice for illegal crossers since the mid-1990s. Proponents of the virtual wall proposal, including Department of Homeland Security, say more investment is needed in all of the above technologies, with the possible addition of military technologies like satellite imaging....
Marine's shooting of youth still haunts border The family of a youth killed nine years ago today as he shepherded goats and a member of the Marine patrol that shot him aren't ready to meet, but agree their lives were forever joined and marred by the volatility that comes with deploying soldiers to help protect the nation's border with Mexico. As the Bush administration prepares to deploy 6,000 National Guardsmen to fight undocumented immigration, a cross on the edge of this rugged West Texas village stands as a reminder of how terribly wrong things can go. Federal officials have been imprecise in saying how the Guardsmen will be used, other than to say they will act in an array of support capacities. However, there's shared concern by those involved in the 1997 incident that if they aren't kept behind desks, lives may be at risk. "It is one shot, one kill," said former Marine Ronald Wieler, who was a member of the four-man surveillance mission. "It was instinct; if you are in the military and you are shot at, you are going to return fire," he said from his home in Michigan. Margarito Hernández tends the grave of his brother Esequiel Hernández Jr. A headstone marks the grave of Esequiel Hernández Jr., who was shot to death on the border near Redford by a U.S. Marine nine years ago. Wieler, 30, said he would prefer the government wait and send in new Border Patrol agents rather than soldiers trained for war. "It is not right," Wieler said of crossing combat training with American communities. "You have to follow civilian regulations, it is a whole new ball game." A white, angle iron cross marks the spot in the Big Bend country where on May 20, 1997, Esequiel Hernández Jr. 18, was killed. "You can't forget, you never forget," said his brother Margarito Hernández, who's now a police officer and has a son he named for Esequiel....
Gonzales's Rationale on Phone Data Disputed Civil liberties lawyers yesterday questioned the legal basis that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales used Tuesday to justify the constitutionality of collecting domestic telephone records as part of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism program. While not confirming a USA Today report May 11 saying the National Security Agency has been collecting phone-call records of millions of Americans, Gonzales said such an activity would not require a court warrant under a 1979 Supreme Court ruling because it involved obtaining "business records." Under the 27-year-old court ruling in Smith v. Maryland , "those kinds of records do not enjoy Fourth Amendment protection," Gonzales said. "There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in those kinds of records," he added. Noting that Congress in 1986 passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in reaction to the Smith v. Maryland ruling to require court orders before turning over call records to the government, G. Jack King Jr. of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said Gonzales is correct in saying "the administration isn't violating the Fourth Amendment" but "he's failing to acknowledge that it is breaking" the 1986 law, which requires a court order "with a few very narrow exceptions." Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said, "The government is bound by the laws Congress passes, and when the attorney general doesn't even mention them, it is symptomatic of the government's profound disrespect for the rule of law." Gonzales, in addition to mentioning the Supreme Court case on Tuesday, said there "is a statutory right of privacy" but "with respect to business records there are a multiple number of ways that the government can have access to that information," including issuing national security letters, a type of administrative subpoena....
The Snooping Goes Beyond Phone Calls Furor and confusion over allegations that major phone companies have surrendered customer calling records to the National Security Agency continue to roil Washington. But if AT&T Inc. (T ) and possibly others have turned over records to the NSA, the phone giants represent only one of many commercial sources of personal data that the government seeks to "mine" for evidence of terrorist plots and other threats. The Departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security spend millions annually to buy commercial databases that track Americans' finances, phone numbers, and biographical information, according to a report last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Often, the agencies and their contractors don't ensure the data's accuracy, the GAO found. Buying commercially collected data allows the government to dodge certain privacy rules. The Privacy Act of 1974 restricts how federal agencies may use such information and requires disclosure of what the government is doing with it. But the law applies only when the government is doing the data collecting. "Grabbing data wholesale from the private sector is the way agencies are getting around the requirements of the Privacy Act and the Fourth Amendment," says Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington and a member of the Homeland Security Dept.'s Data Privacy & Integrity Advisory Committee. The Justice Dept. alone, which includes the FBI, spent $19 million in fiscal 2005 to obtain commercially gathered names, addresses, phone numbers, and other data, according to the GAO. The Justice Dept. obeys the Privacy Act and "protects information that might personally identify an individual," a spokesman says. Despite the GAO's findings, a Homeland Security spokesman denies that his agency purchases consumer records from private companies. The State Dept. didn't respond to requests for comment....
NSA rejected system that sifted phone data legally The National Security Agency developed a pilot program in the late 1990s that would have enabled it to gather and analyze huge amounts of communications data without running afoul of privacy laws. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, it shelved the project -- not because it failed to work but because of bureaucratic infighting and a sudden White House expansion of the agency's surveillance powers, according to several intelligence officials. The agency opted instead to adopt only one component of the program, which produced a far less capable and rigorous program. It remains the backbone of the NSA's warrantless surveillance efforts, tracking domestic and overseas communications from a vast databank of information, and monitoring selected calls. Four intelligence officials knowledgeable about the program agreed to discuss it with The Sun only if granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject. The program the NSA rejected, called ThinThread, was developed to handle greater volumes of information, partly in expectation of threats surrounding the millennium celebrations. Sources say it bundled four cutting-edge surveillance tools. In what intelligence experts describe as rigorous testing of ThinThread in 1998, the project succeeded at each task with high marks. For example, its ability to sort through huge amounts of data to find threat-related communications far surpassed the existing system, sources said. It also was able to rapidly separate and encrypt U.S.-related communications to ensure privacy....
Whistle-Blower's Evidence, Uncut Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class-action lawsuit against the telecommunications company, which alleges that AT&T cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic surveillance program. In a public statement Klein issued last month, he described the NSA's visit to an AT&T office. In an older, less-public statement recently acquired by Wired News, Klein goes into additional details of his discovery of an alleged surveillance operation in an AT&T building in San Francisco. Klein supports his claim by attaching excerpts of three internal company documents: a Dec. 10, 2002, manual titled "Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco," a Jan. 13, 2003, document titled "SIMS, Splitter Cut-In and Test Procedure" and a second "Cut-In and Test Procedure" dated Jan. 24, 2003. Here we present Klein's statement in its entirety, with inline links to all of the document excerpts where he cited them. You can also download the complete file here (pdf). The full AT&T documents are filed under seal in federal court in San Francisco....
LISTENING IN A few days before the start of the confirmation hearings for General Michael Hayden, who has been nominated by President Bush to be the head of the C.I.A., I spoke to an official of the National Security Agency who recently retired. The official joined the N.S.A. in the mid-nineteen-seventies, soon after contentious congressional hearings that redefined the relationship between national security and the public’s right to privacy. The hearings, which revealed that, among other abuses, the N.S.A. had illegally intercepted telegrams to and from the United States, led to the passage of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to protect citizens from unlawful surveillance. “When I first came in, I heard from all my elders that ‘we’ll never be able to collect intelligence again,’” the former official said. “They’d whine, ‘Why do we have to report to oversight committees?’ ” But, over the next few years, he told me, the agency did find a way to operate within the law. “We built a system that protected national security and left people able to go home at night without worrying whether what they did that day was appropriate or legal.” After the attacks of September 11, 2001, it was clear that the intelligence community needed to get more aggressive and improve its performance. The Administration, deciding on a quick fix, returned to the tactic that got intelligence agencies in trouble thirty years ago: intercepting large numbers of electronic communications made by Americans. The N.S.A.’s carefully constructed rules were set aside. Last December, the Times reported that the N.S.A. was listening in on calls between people in the United States and people in other countries, and a few weeks ago USA Today reported that the agency was collecting information on millions of private domestic calls. A security consultant working with a major telecommunications carrier told me that his client set up a top-secret high-speed circuit between its main computer complex and Quantico, Virginia, the site of a government-intelligence computer center. This link provided direct access to the carrier’s network core—the critical area of its system, where all its data are stored. “What the companies are doing is worse than turning over records,” the consultant said. “They’re providing total access to all the data.”....
Gonzales: U.S. could track reporters' phone calls Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security. The nation's top law enforcer also said the government will not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly. "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said, referring to prosecutions. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected." In recent months, journalists have been called into court to testify as part of investigations into leaks, including the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA operative's name as well as the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program. Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said she presumed that Gonzales was referring to the 1917 Espionage Act, which she said has never been interpreted to prosecute journalists who were providing information to the public....
Bush's 'Big Brother' Blunder George W. Bush’s warrantless phone data collection may not only violate the U.S. Constitution but expend so much money and manpower that America is made less safe – by diverting resources away from more practical steps, like inspecting cargo and hiring translators. Yet, because the operation is wrapped in layers and layers of secrecy – based on the dubious argument that al-Qaeda might not realize it’s being spied on – the public doesn’t know how much the project costs, who’s getting contracts and whether it does any good. So far, however, what administration officials and computer experts have been willing to describe shouldn’t give Americans much confidence that their trade-off of Fourth Amendment freedoms for a little extra safety is a particularly good deal. The project’s designers say the National Security Agency’s electronic warehousing of trillions of phone records from calls made by some 200 million Americans is intended to seek out “patterns” from conversations involving alleged terrorists and then to apply the digital outline to the stockpiled records. That search, presumably, then spits out the phone numbers of other callers in the United States who fit into the “patterns.” These computer-generated tips then go to the FBI, which may question the suspects or use other investigative strategies. There are, however, logical flaws to this “Big Brother” computer scheme, especially the idea that the project is likely to discern many usable “patterns” of phone calls that if applied to the population would detect much suspicious activity. The 9/11 hijackers, for instance, made very few substantive calls about their plot, recognizing the risk of electronic surveillance and preferring face-to-face meetings as a way to avoid detection, according to the 9/11 Commission Report....
F.B.I. Missed Many 'Red Flags' on Key Informer, Review Finds A Justice Department review released Wednesday found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation missed numerous "red flags" indicating that one of its own informants might be a longtime Chinese spy. The report urged broader changes at the F.B.I. in its handling of informants to prevent security breaches. As early as 1987, senior officials at the F.B.I. received word that Katrina Leung, a prominent Chinese-American businesswoman in Los Angeles who was also a bureau informant, might have had unauthorized contacts with Chinese officials, according to the review, conducted by the Justice Department inspector general's office. Despite warning signs through the 1990's, the F.B.I. continued using her as one of its most highly paid informants, paying her a total of $1.7 million, the report found. It was not until 2001 that the F.B.I. began actively investigating the possibility that Ms. Leung might be spying for China. That investigation also showed that she and her F.B.I. "handler" in Los Angeles, a veteran agent named James J. Smith, had been having a secret affair for 18 years. Mr. Smith, now retired from the F.B.I., pleaded guilty in 2004 to a charge of lying about their affair, and he received a $10,000 fine and probation. Ms. Leung, meanwhile, originally faced espionage-related charges for the unauthorized possession and copying of classified materials — which prosecutors charged she had taken surreptitiously from Mr. Smith's briefcase during their visits together. But a Los Angeles judge threw out the charges last year because of prosecutorial misconduct, and Ms. Leung ultimately agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges of lying to the government and making a false tax return. Like Mr. Smith, she also received probation and a $10,000 fine....
Hastert tells President Bush FBI raid was unconstitutional House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) told President Bush yesterday that he is concerned the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) raid on Rep. William Jefferson’s (D-La.) congressional office over the weekend was a direct violation of the Constitution. Hastert raised concerns that the FBI’s unannounced seizure of congressional documents during a raid of Jefferson’s Rayburn office Saturday night violated the separation of powers between the two branches of government as they are defined by the Constitution. “The Speaker spoke candidly with the president about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s raid over the weekend,” Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean said yesterday in confirming his boss’s remarks. Hastert told reporters yesterday that he understands the reasons for the investigation but objected to the manner in which the raid was conducted. “My opinion is they took the wrong path,” Hastert said. “They need to back up, and we need to go from there.” Republican objections are independent of any facts in the corruption probe against Jefferson. Their complaints pertain solely to constitutional questions about the raid itself....
Man Killed by Air Marshals Was Shot 11 Times The federal air marshals who killed a mentally ill man at Miami International Airport in December shot him numerous times, according to an autopsy report released a day after state prosecutors declared the shooting "legally justified" and said no criminal charges would be filed. The autopsy, by the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Department, found that the man, Rigoberto Alpizar of Maitland, Fla., had been wounded 11 times — in the chest, abdomen, shoulder, hand, wrist and forearm. It was the first case of an air marshal opening fire since marshals became a common presence on flights after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Alpizar, 44, frantically ran off his American Airlines flight before it was to depart for Orlando on Dec. 7, his backpack strapped to his chest. Law enforcement officials said at the time that the marshals fired on Mr. Alpizar because he claimed to have a bomb, but refused to provide details. In a report released Tuesday, the state attorney's office said both air marshals heard Mr. Alpizar yell that he had a bomb as he ran onto the jetway....
Voice Encryption May Draw U.S. Scrutiny Philip R. Zimmermann wants to protect online privacy. Who could object to that? He has found out once already. Trained as a computer scientist, he developed a program in 1991 called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, for scrambling and unscrambling e-mail messages. It won a following among privacy rights advocates and human rights groups working overseas — and a three-year federal criminal investigation into whether he had violated export restrictions on cryptographic software. The case was dropped in 1996, and Mr. Zimmermann, who lives in Menlo Park, Calif., started PGP Inc. to sell his software commercially. Now he is again inviting government scrutiny. On Sunday, he released a free Windows software program, Zfone, that encrypts a computer-to-computer voice conversation so both parties can be confident that no one is listening in. It became available earlier this year to Macintosh and Linux users of the system known as voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP. What sets Zfone apart from comparable systems is that it does not require a web of computers to hold the keys, or long numbers, used in most encryption schemes. Instead, it performs the key exchange inside the digital voice channel while the call is being set up, so no third party has the keys. Zfone's introduction comes as reports continue to emerge about the government's electronic surveillance efforts. A lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights group, contends that AT&T has given the National Security Agency real-time access to Internet communications. In the wake of 9/11, there were calls for the government to institute new barriers to cryptography, to avoid its use in communications by enemies of the United States. Easily accessible cryptography for Internet calling may intensify that debate....
Air Marshal Says He Faced Retaliation for Bringing Up Security Issues The head of a group of Federal Air Marshals says the service is badly broken. "Right now we cannot protect the public," says Frank Terreri, an active duty air marshal who represents a group of 1,500 air marshals. "And not because we're not proficient, not that we're not capable, it's because federal air marshal management, along with the Department of Homeland Security, won't let us do our jobs." Terreri says air marshals are not able to work undercover because check-in and boarding procedures at airports make it impossible for air marshals to maintain their anonymity: "We're supposed to be undercover. But basically when everybody knows who you are, you're just the guys on the plane with the gun. Either they're gonna avoid you or overcome you, you're at a severe disadvantage." Terreri has spent three years trying to get the air marshals management to address these issues with no response. Instead he says they've retaliated against him, with four separate investigations, including one for misuse of his business card. "The items that he was being accused of were so surreal that they were obviously intending to terrorize the other air marshals into silence," says Tom Devine, an attorney with the Government Accountability Project. The project has petitioned the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to open an investigation into Terreri's allegations....
FBI Agents Rebel Over Mandatory Transfers The FBI's storied workforce is being dismantled and reassembled as Director Robert S. Mueller III tries to overhaul the hidebound agency. The result is a culture war between old and new, and older agents are rebelling. Among the disaffected are hundreds of agents in field offices around the country who are suddenly facing forced transfers to FBI headquarters. Many, including Michael Clark, are leaving. For 23 years, Clark was a loyal FBI man, rising to supervise a squad of agents in Connecticut working corporate fraud and public corruption cases. He helped send a former governor to prison. But then the FBI told him he had to move to Washington, and he found out his loyalty ran only so deep. Now a casualty of an agency that has become a construction zone, Clark is working for Otis Elevator Co. The agents argue that the upheaval is counterproductive. They say they have spent years cultivating contacts and relationships with state and local officials, which are not easily replaced. Middle managers, such as squad leaders and desk supervisors, often form the institutional memory of the bureau's 56 field offices. "Nobody is happy about it," said Clark, who recently left the bureau for the top security and investigative job at Otis. "You are going to lose a ton of experience." FBI agents long have fled for greener pastures, propelled by a pension system that allows them to retire with full benefits at 50 and offers little incentive to stay longer. High corporate demand for their skills since the Sept. 11 attacks has further swelled the ranks of retirees....
Arrest of illegals falls off Clinton pace The U.S. Border Patrol increased at a faster rate and apprehended more illegal aliens per year under President Clinton than under President Bush, according to statistics from a new, unpublished congressional research briefing report. Mr. Bush trails his predecessor on a series of measures of border security, says the briefing from the Congressional Research Service to the House Judiciary Committee, which was based on Department of Homeland Security data. Mr. Clinton increased the number of Border Patrol agents and pilots by 126 percent over his eight-year term, or an average of 642 per year, while Mr. Bush has averaged 411 new agents per year through 2005, for a total increase of 22.3 percent over his tenure. Although Mr. Bush last week said his administration has caught and returned 6 million illegal aliens, that's actually a drop from any five-year period during Mr. Clinton's administration, the briefing says. Meanwhile, the number of alien absconders has grown by more than 200,000 during Mr. Bush's term, reaching 536,644 in fiscal 2005; the number of completed fraud cases has dropped; and, until recently, detention beds hovered at or below the level Mr. Bush inherited from Mr. Clinton in 2001. "The sense of urgency that comes with deploying the National Guard is belied by the administration's consistent opposition to providing the necessary resources that our border security agencies need to do their jobs," said Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee....
Lack of prosecutions demoralizing Border Patrol The vast majority of people caught smuggling immigrants across the border near San Diego are never prosecuted for the offense, demoralizing the Border Patrol agents making the arrests, according to an internal document obtained by The Associated Press. “It is very difficult to keep agents' morale up when the laws they were told to uphold are being watered-down or not prosecuted,” the report says. The report offers a stark assessment of the situation at a Border Patrol station responsible for guarding 13 miles of mountainous border east of the city. Federal officials say it reflects a reality along the entire 2,000-mile border: Judges and federal attorneys are so swamped that only the most egregious smuggling cases are prosecuted. Only 6 percent of 289 suspected immigrant smugglers were prosecuted by the federal government for that offense in the year ending in September 2004, according to the report. Some were instead prosecuted for another crime. Other cases were declined by federal prosecutors, or the suspect was released by the Border Patrol. The report raises doubts about the value of tightening security along the Mexican border. President Bush wants to hire 6,000 more Border Patrol agents and dispatch up to 6,000 National Guardsmen. He did not mention overburdened courts in his Oval Office address Monday on immigration. The report was provided to the AP by the office of Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who has accused the chief federal prosecutor in San Diego of being lax on smuggling cases. Issa's office said it was an internal Border Patrol report written last August. It was unclear who wrote it. The lack of prosecutions is “demoralizing the agents and making a joke out of our system of justice,” said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents agents. “It is certainly a weak link in our immigration-enforcement chain.”....
Virtual Wall Rises in U.S. Desert In the wee hours on April 25, a Predator B drone crashed into the desert floor near Tucson, Arizona, temporarily grounding one of the most expensive high-tech programs yet deployed in a burgeoning "virtual wall" that's taking shape on the U.S.-Mexico border. Since its launch in September 2005, the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, had helped the U.S. Border Patrol capture 1,700 illegal immigrants attempting a crossing in the area, according to the agency, which is eager to replace the $14 million aircraft. It won't have long to wait. On Monday, President Bush vowed to bolster efforts to stem illegal immigration, including calling up some 6,000 National Guardsmen to assist the Border Patrol along the Mexico border. In addition, he signaled increased spending on technological measures aimed at monitoring high-traffic crossings like the one in Tucson. The U.S. Border Patrol already employs a host of devices to spot, track and apprehend potential migrants, human traffickers, drug smugglers and terrorists. They include drones like the one that crashed last month, video-surveillance cameras, motion sensors and X-ray and gamma-imaging equipment. The division utilizes the majority of its resources along the southern border with Mexico, particularly within the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. It covers the desolate stretch of Arizona desert that has become the passage of choice for illegal crossers since the mid-1990s. Proponents of the virtual wall proposal, including Department of Homeland Security, say more investment is needed in all of the above technologies, with the possible addition of military technologies like satellite imaging....
Marine's shooting of youth still haunts border The family of a youth killed nine years ago today as he shepherded goats and a member of the Marine patrol that shot him aren't ready to meet, but agree their lives were forever joined and marred by the volatility that comes with deploying soldiers to help protect the nation's border with Mexico. As the Bush administration prepares to deploy 6,000 National Guardsmen to fight undocumented immigration, a cross on the edge of this rugged West Texas village stands as a reminder of how terribly wrong things can go. Federal officials have been imprecise in saying how the Guardsmen will be used, other than to say they will act in an array of support capacities. However, there's shared concern by those involved in the 1997 incident that if they aren't kept behind desks, lives may be at risk. "It is one shot, one kill," said former Marine Ronald Wieler, who was a member of the four-man surveillance mission. "It was instinct; if you are in the military and you are shot at, you are going to return fire," he said from his home in Michigan. Margarito Hernández tends the grave of his brother Esequiel Hernández Jr. A headstone marks the grave of Esequiel Hernández Jr., who was shot to death on the border near Redford by a U.S. Marine nine years ago. Wieler, 30, said he would prefer the government wait and send in new Border Patrol agents rather than soldiers trained for war. "It is not right," Wieler said of crossing combat training with American communities. "You have to follow civilian regulations, it is a whole new ball game." A white, angle iron cross marks the spot in the Big Bend country where on May 20, 1997, Esequiel Hernández Jr. 18, was killed. "You can't forget, you never forget," said his brother Margarito Hernández, who's now a police officer and has a son he named for Esequiel....
House OKs Oil Drilling in Alaska Refuge
Citing the public outcry over $3-a-gallon gasoline and America's heavy reliance on foreign oil, the House on Thursday voted to open an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, knowing the prospects for Senate approval were slim. Drilling proponents argued that the refuge on Alaska's North Slope would provide 1 million barrels a day of additional domestic oil at peak production and reduce the need for imports. But opponents to developing what environmentalists argue is a pristine area where drilling will harm caribou, polar bears and migratory birds, said Congress should pursue conservation and alternative energy sources that would save more oil than would be tapped from the refuge. The House voted 225-201 to direct the Interior Department to open oil leases on the coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — an area of 1.5 million acres that is thought likely to hold about 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil. But the action may be little more than symbolic. Arctic refuge development, while approved by the House five times, repeatedly has been blocked in the Senate where drilling proponents have been unable to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. "We need to develop energy, here at home. ... We can't say no to everything," declared Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., who pressed for a House vote on opening the refuge that lies east of the declining Prudhoe Bay oil fields 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle....
The House Resources Committee has posted background info on ANWR here.
Citing the public outcry over $3-a-gallon gasoline and America's heavy reliance on foreign oil, the House on Thursday voted to open an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, knowing the prospects for Senate approval were slim. Drilling proponents argued that the refuge on Alaska's North Slope would provide 1 million barrels a day of additional domestic oil at peak production and reduce the need for imports. But opponents to developing what environmentalists argue is a pristine area where drilling will harm caribou, polar bears and migratory birds, said Congress should pursue conservation and alternative energy sources that would save more oil than would be tapped from the refuge. The House voted 225-201 to direct the Interior Department to open oil leases on the coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — an area of 1.5 million acres that is thought likely to hold about 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil. But the action may be little more than symbolic. Arctic refuge development, while approved by the House five times, repeatedly has been blocked in the Senate where drilling proponents have been unable to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. "We need to develop energy, here at home. ... We can't say no to everything," declared Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., who pressed for a House vote on opening the refuge that lies east of the declining Prudhoe Bay oil fields 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle....
The House Resources Committee has posted background info on ANWR here.
GAO
Climate Change: EPA and DOE Should Do More to Encourage Progress under Two Voluntary Programs. GAO-06-97, April 25. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-97
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d0697high.pdf
Climate Change: EPA and DOE Should Do More to Encourage Progress under Two Voluntary Programs. GAO-06-97, April 25. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-97
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d0697high.pdf
Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity file suit against Mother Nature
May 23, 2006
By Chris Vargas avargas714@comcast.net
http://www.warriorssociety.org
Cleveland National Forest, San Diego, California - Cleveland National Forest Service Biologist Mary Thomas informed the public today that Maple Springs Road -- the name for Silverado Canyon Road where it enters the National Forest -- will remain open this year.
Due to a lawsuit filed over seven years ago by the Center for Biological Diversity to protect the Arroyo Toad breeding area from human impact, Maple Springs Road was ordered closed to all access during the Arroyo Toad breeding season, which lasts from April 1 to October 30.
Due to the destruction of the Arroyo Toad's egg laying habitat, caused by last year's record rains, the toads continue to be unable to breed for a second year in a row. Droughts in past consecutive years have also stopped the breeding season.
The Center For Biological Diversity and Sierra Club have filed a lawsuit/restraining order against Mother Nature in the 9th District Court for her actions -- rain -- leading to the destruction of Arroyo Toad habitat. They also accuse Mother Nature of causing multi-year droughts, which have also prevented the toad from breeding.
Because of this lawsuit, Mother Nature was served yesterday with a restraining order signed by Judge U. Harshly. Harshly wants to put an immediate halt to so-called "Acts of God," citing information from a confidential source that Mother Nature is really behind it all, not God.
A spokesman for the Sierra Club stated that Mother Nature refuses to keep nature frozen in a "static" state and is believed in the past to have caused the extinction of 'countless species' (including dinosaurs) by Ice Ages, Warming Periods and massive meteors.
To prove their point that Mother Nature has been negligent, they presented historical evidence in the lawsuit that shows that the higher temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period, from approximately 750 A.D. to 1250 A.D. -- caused by an increase in sunspot activity -- allowed the Vikings to colonize a warmer and greener Greenland.
Historical records also provide evidence that these higher temperatures allowed vineyards and winemaking to be brought northward into the British Isles during the Medieval Warm Period.
The higher temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period were followed by the Little Ice Age, which froze the Viking colonies out of Greenland and created agricultural shortages across Northern Europe.
Scientific reports and historical records indicate that sunspot activity reached a maximum during the warmest temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period, and that the coldest temperatures of the Little Ice Age occurred during the Maunder Sunspot Minimum, the period from 1645-1715 AD in which minimal sunspot activity was observed.
The Sierra Club spokesperson stated, "We wish we could blame past cooling and warming periods on man and his effect on "Global Cooling" and "Global Warming" -- but cars and modern industry did not exist -- so Mother Nature has to accept responsibility."
He continued, "What people forget is that, although these cooling and warming periods brought on by Mother Nature forced humans to adapt or die, the impact on non-human species was just as great -- affecting their habitat, potential habitat, breeding patterns, fish populations and migratory patterns."
When the Sierra Club spokesman was questioned as to whether the past cooling trend experienced between 1940 and 1970, which resulted in the "Global Cooling" crises, and the current warming period since that time could also be blamed on Mother Nature -- since these climate changes coincided with a corresponding decrease and increase in sunspot activity -- he responded by accusing the person asking the question of being in the pocket of 'big oil' -- and stated that the Sierra Club believed Mother Nature to also be in the same pocket.
The restraining order signed by Judge U. Harshly further stated that all future cataclysmic events will henceforth be illegal, and singled out "asteroid impacts with Earth" as having unusually unacceptable consequences. All asteroids having any intention of ever even coming CLOSE to Earth will be treated with the most harsh measures imaginable.
A spokesperson from The "Earth Liberation Front" stated, "Bad, bad, Mother Nature."
At press time, we were unable to get a statement from Mother Nature, who was also reported in the Los Angeles Times to be under investigation by the United Nations for "destroying other critical habitat by her blatant use of volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis."
-----
I wrote this "parody" after the Forest Service notified me that it won't need to close an important road into the Cleveland National Forest this year to comply with a lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity to protect the Arroyo Toad. For the fourth year in a row, Mother Nature -- not man -- has stopped the toad from breeding. The "historical" evidence related to past warming and cooling periods is not made up -- it's true.
May 23, 2006
By Chris Vargas avargas714@comcast.net
http://www.warriorssociety.org
Cleveland National Forest, San Diego, California - Cleveland National Forest Service Biologist Mary Thomas informed the public today that Maple Springs Road -- the name for Silverado Canyon Road where it enters the National Forest -- will remain open this year.
Due to a lawsuit filed over seven years ago by the Center for Biological Diversity to protect the Arroyo Toad breeding area from human impact, Maple Springs Road was ordered closed to all access during the Arroyo Toad breeding season, which lasts from April 1 to October 30.
Due to the destruction of the Arroyo Toad's egg laying habitat, caused by last year's record rains, the toads continue to be unable to breed for a second year in a row. Droughts in past consecutive years have also stopped the breeding season.
The Center For Biological Diversity and Sierra Club have filed a lawsuit/restraining order against Mother Nature in the 9th District Court for her actions -- rain -- leading to the destruction of Arroyo Toad habitat. They also accuse Mother Nature of causing multi-year droughts, which have also prevented the toad from breeding.
Because of this lawsuit, Mother Nature was served yesterday with a restraining order signed by Judge U. Harshly. Harshly wants to put an immediate halt to so-called "Acts of God," citing information from a confidential source that Mother Nature is really behind it all, not God.
A spokesman for the Sierra Club stated that Mother Nature refuses to keep nature frozen in a "static" state and is believed in the past to have caused the extinction of 'countless species' (including dinosaurs) by Ice Ages, Warming Periods and massive meteors.
To prove their point that Mother Nature has been negligent, they presented historical evidence in the lawsuit that shows that the higher temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period, from approximately 750 A.D. to 1250 A.D. -- caused by an increase in sunspot activity -- allowed the Vikings to colonize a warmer and greener Greenland.
Historical records also provide evidence that these higher temperatures allowed vineyards and winemaking to be brought northward into the British Isles during the Medieval Warm Period.
The higher temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period were followed by the Little Ice Age, which froze the Viking colonies out of Greenland and created agricultural shortages across Northern Europe.
Scientific reports and historical records indicate that sunspot activity reached a maximum during the warmest temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period, and that the coldest temperatures of the Little Ice Age occurred during the Maunder Sunspot Minimum, the period from 1645-1715 AD in which minimal sunspot activity was observed.
The Sierra Club spokesperson stated, "We wish we could blame past cooling and warming periods on man and his effect on "Global Cooling" and "Global Warming" -- but cars and modern industry did not exist -- so Mother Nature has to accept responsibility."
He continued, "What people forget is that, although these cooling and warming periods brought on by Mother Nature forced humans to adapt or die, the impact on non-human species was just as great -- affecting their habitat, potential habitat, breeding patterns, fish populations and migratory patterns."
When the Sierra Club spokesman was questioned as to whether the past cooling trend experienced between 1940 and 1970, which resulted in the "Global Cooling" crises, and the current warming period since that time could also be blamed on Mother Nature -- since these climate changes coincided with a corresponding decrease and increase in sunspot activity -- he responded by accusing the person asking the question of being in the pocket of 'big oil' -- and stated that the Sierra Club believed Mother Nature to also be in the same pocket.
The restraining order signed by Judge U. Harshly further stated that all future cataclysmic events will henceforth be illegal, and singled out "asteroid impacts with Earth" as having unusually unacceptable consequences. All asteroids having any intention of ever even coming CLOSE to Earth will be treated with the most harsh measures imaginable.
A spokesperson from The "Earth Liberation Front" stated, "Bad, bad, Mother Nature."
At press time, we were unable to get a statement from Mother Nature, who was also reported in the Los Angeles Times to be under investigation by the United Nations for "destroying other critical habitat by her blatant use of volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis."
-----
I wrote this "parody" after the Forest Service notified me that it won't need to close an important road into the Cleveland National Forest this year to comply with a lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity to protect the Arroyo Toad. For the fourth year in a row, Mother Nature -- not man -- has stopped the toad from breeding. The "historical" evidence related to past warming and cooling periods is not made up -- it's true.
NEWS ROUNDUP
Column: Fire on the Mountain The Imperial Japanese Navy tried to burn down Oregon. It failed. Sixty years later, radical environmentalists almost succeeded. The Los Angeles Times' banner headline read "REPORT OREGON BOMBING. Jap Aircraft Carrier Believed Sunk." It was September 15, 1942. A seaplane had been spotted near Mt. Emily, Oregon, nine miles north of Brookings. A forest fire had been started near the mountain. Harold Gardner, a forest service lookout, rushed to the area and quickly extinguished the flames. Then a forest service patrol found a foot-deep crater. Nearby were forty pounds of spongy pellets and metal fragments, some of which were stamped with Japanese ideograms. A metal nosecone was also found. That same day a Japanese submarine was sited in the Pacific thirty miles off the Oregon coast due west of Mt. Emily. An Army patrol plane bombed the sub, but results of the bombing were unknown. Fast forward sixty years to July 13, 2002. An Oregon Department of Forestry pilot spotted a rising column of black smoke near Chetco Peak, not far from where the Japanese bomb had landed. The pilot immediately reported it to the dispatcher at Grants Pass. This fire would be named Biscuit 1. It burned for the next five and a half months, destroying half a million acres of forest--60 miles north-to-south at its longest, and 35 miles east-to-west--causing $150 million in damage. The fire was not extinguished until New Year's Eve. A hundred years ago, each acre of a ponderosa pine forest contained about 25 mature trees. A horse-drawn wagon could be driven through the forest without the aid of a road. Ponderosa pine is intolerant of shade, and the trees grow aggressively toward the sun, throwing shadows that discourage growth below. Today that same forest might have 1,000 trees per acre. Usually these are Douglas firs, which prosper in shade, and which grow in thick stands, often so dense that a hiker cannot pass between the trunks. As a result of this fuel load (Forest Service terminology), forest fires today are entirely unlike those of a century ago. They are hotter, faster, and more destructive. Today, 190 million acres of public forests are at an elevated risk of fires, and twenty-four million acres are at the highest risk of catastrophic fire....
Senate panel seeks end to hunting on Santa Rosa Island A Senate committee passed a resolution Wednesday to support ending big-game trophy hunts on Southern California's Santa Rosa Island. The resolution effectively opposes legislation by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, that aims to maintain nonnative deer and elk on the public island so members of the military can hunt them. That legislation passed the House earlier this month as part of a larger defense bill. The Senate resolution, authored by California Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, passed the Senate Energy Committee on a voice vote. The National Park Service bought the 53,000-acre Santa Rosa Island, part of Channel Islands National Park, for $30 million in 1986. Under a court-ordered settlement, the ranch family that owned the island must end private trophy hunts it operates there — and remove all the game — by 2011. Hunter's legislation would mandate that the game remain on the island. Hunter contends he wants to create a special place for disabled veterans to go to hunt, but critics say the hunts block public access and the game interferes with native endangered species....
Sale of oil leases worries Utahans The tiny town of Bluff, Utah, is an out-of-the-way place, rich in ancient Native American history and surrounded by the region's distinctive red rock and desert canyons. Though just a speck on the map, Bluff — population 320 — is also a magnet for rafters who enjoy excursions on the San Juan River with side trips to view Anasazi ruins and rock art. That explains why Taylor McKinnon was not happy to learn that the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was selling leasing rights to oil and natural gas adjacent to the San Juan River. The company McKinnon co-owns, Wild Rivers Expeditions, takes thousands of tourists a year down the San Juan and has been in business since 1957. Bluff "depends heavily on river recreation, both commercial and private," McKinnon says. In a letter of protest to the BLM, he worried that oil and gas development could pollute the river, blight the scenery and hurt Bluff's tourist-based economy and his business that employs 12 people. That kind of main-street worry about the energy boom occurring across the West is becoming more common as the Bush administration accelerates the sale of oil and gas leases on the region's vast network of federally-owned land and private property where the government owns mineral rights. Most energy development in the Rocky Mountain region is now natural gas....
Column: Small Potatoes, Fresh Water, and the Facts about Otero Mesa Otero Mesa is the classic example of public lands in New Mexico. It embodies the true uniqueness of the Land of Enchantment—yet, this wild landscape and its fresh-water aquifer has been proposed for full-scale oil and gas drilling. The largest, untapped fresh water aquifer remaining in New Mexico lies directly beneath Otero Mesa. This aquifer, referred to as the Salt Basin, has been the focus of several water studies conducted by private firms and Sandia National Labs. According to Sandia National Laboratories hydrologist, David Chace, their study shows "there is unequivocally lots of water" [Alb. Journal: April 23, 2005, New Study Shows Salt Basin Aquifer Is Larger Than Estimated]. Additionally, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has requested that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) conduct a thorough water study of the area to determine how much and where all of this water lies. Some estimates suggest that there is enough fresh-water in the Salt Basin to supply a city of 1 million people for 100 years! Common sense tells us that in an arid state such as ours, there is no more precious resource than water. Common sense also tells us we should have a thorough understanding of the Salt Basin aquifer before any oil and gas drilling is allowed. In 2001, the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) found that out of 734 cases of soil and groundwater contamination, oil and gas operations were responsible for 444, almost 60 percent. Early this year, the Oil Conservation Division (OCD) published a report, which shows a staggering 1400 additional cases of groundwater contamination due to oil and gas operations. In 2004, John Shomaker & Associates Inc., presented the findings of a study showing that the BLM drilling plan for Otero Mesa would jeopardize the Salt Basin aquifer. That conclusion reflected the fact that the BLM plan "makes no special provisions for protection of ground-water resources" including existing and proposed public water wells....
Bill would transfer cemetery A cemetery near the tiny town of Elkhorn, mistakenly designated as national forest land long ago, would be transferred to Jefferson County at no charge under a bill approved Wednesday by a Senate committee despite objections by the Forest Service. Local residents have continued burying their loved ones on the federal land, which is technically illegal, so all sides agree that it should be made private. But the federal government wants to be paid for the property. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee unanimously approved the bill that would transfer the Elkhorn Cemetery from the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Forest to the ownership of Jefferson County free of charge. The Montana Cemetery Act of 2005, sponsored by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., would require the conveyance of the land no later than 180 days after the bill becomes law....
Forest Service official gets surprising send-off Often at odds with Elko County over public land management over the years, the U.S. Forest Service's top official in Nevada got a bit of a surprise last week from the county commission. Commissioners presented Bob Vaught with a plaque and told him they hate to see him leave for a new job in the agency's regional office in Denver. "We've had some hellish arguments, but we've always walked away friends in the end," Commissioner John Ellison told Vaught. "I hate to see you go. You'll be hard to replace," he said. Vaught, supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest over the past six years, recently accepted an appointment as the Forest Service's director of renewable resources for 17 national forests in the Rocky Mountain Region. As the head of the largest U.S. national forest outside of Alaska, he oversaw numerous controversies in Nevada and California, ranging from livestock grazing disputes to threatened fish protection and jurisdiction of Jarbidge's South Canyon Road. He became supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe in February 2000 after the previous supervisor, Gloria Flora, resigned in protest of what she described as "fed bashing" of the Forest Service by residents and politicians in northeastern Nevada....
Investigation launched into Wolf Creek plan The U.S. Agriculture Department's watchdog office says it has begun evaluating allegations that political influence was used to gain U.S. Forest Service approval for the proposed $1 billion Wolf Creek ski-village development in southwest Colorado. Phyllis Fong, inspector general for the department, which includes the Forest Service, wrote to U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar in response to the Colorado Democrat's request last week for an investigation. The letter, released Wednesday, said Fong's office had received four other inquiries about the situation, including one from Salazar's brother, U.S. Rep. John Salazar, a Manassa Democrat. "Once we have have completed our evaluation of the facts and applicable statutes, regulations and FS policies, we will make a determination whether further inquiry by (Fong's office) or FS is warranted," the letter said. Salazar has said he requested the probe out of concern over the allegations of retired Forest Service manager Ed Ryberg that political influence helped developer B.J. "Red" McCombs get Forest Service approval for the Village at Wolf Creek, a massive project proposed for a mountain site on U.S. 160 between Durango and Alamosa....
Burnt Mountain plan hits hurdle The Aspen Skiing Co.'s plan to expand backcountry skiing on Burnt Mountain has been derailed, at least temporarily. The U.S. Forest Service's regional office in Denver ruled in favor of a Wyoming-based environmental group's claim that a portion of the Skico's plan would adversely affect an inventoried roadless area. The Ark Initiative filed an appeal in April over White River National Forest Supervisor Maribeth Gustafson's approval of the Skico project. The Skico wants to thin trees and expand what it dubs a "semi-backcountry experience" on Burnt Mountain. Currently only the Long Shot run is developed on Burnt Mountain. It's more of a general route through the trees than a distinctive trail. The Skico wants to create more such runs to the east of Long Shot. The Ark Initiative filed a 217-page appeal that raised numerous objections about the Skico's plan and the local Forest Service's approval of the application. Greg Griffith, a deputy regional forester, rejected all the points in the appeal except the roadless concerns. Griffith handed down the decision Monday and Ark Initiative Executive Director Donald Duerr received it Wednesday....
Foresters call for limits on ATV use on public land A group of professional foresters wants all-terrain vehicles banned from public lands except for specific trails that are posted as open to ATV traffic. Members of the Society of American Foresters Minnesota chapter said ATVs cause erosion and damage vegetation on public lands. The group also noted soaring numbers of registered ATVs and more use on county, state and federal forests. "A single ATV on its own is relatively benign with a single pass. However, the cumulative effect of repeated passes does represent a major impact to vegetation and the land," the group's new position statement says. The society represents about 400 professional foresters in Minnesota who work for the Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Forest Service, private landowners, timber companies and other agencies....
Forest plan could be bad news for mills Bernard Gnam enjoys the wilderness. He likes to camp and hunt and fish in it. He also works at F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber here in Columbia Falls and he's worried about the new Forest Service plan. He's worried it might put him out of a job. It's not the wilderness aspect that troubles him. It's the timber aspect and the yield that land managers are projecting for the forest in the next 10 years. This plan, as it's written now, calls for roughly 26 million board feet of timber a year from land deemed “suitable timber base,” and other lands where timber could be cut. “If they're only offering 26 million ... that doesn't even supply our mill,” he noted. “It basically puts us out of business.” Factor in competition from the likes of Plum Creek, Pyramid Lumber and other mills and the picture becomes more bleak. “My concern is the waste of the resource,” Gnam said....
U.S. House passes 'right-to-ride' bill Congress has moved closer to ensuring happy trails for Illinois horsemen and the Southern Illinois economy. More than a year after its introduction, the House last week unanimously approved the Right-to-Ride Livestock on Federal Lands Act, which seeks to “preserve the use and access of pack and saddle stock animals on public lands.” The bill, co-sponsored by Rep. John Shimkus, a Collinsville Republican, affirms “riders’ rights” on national park and national forest lands, including the Shawnee National Forest. The House measure, now headed to the Senate, states that “all trails, routes, and areas used by pack and saddle stock shall remain open and accessible for such use.” Illinois Farm Bureau equine specialist Brenda Matherly said Shawnee-area trail riding is “a huge economic force,” providing “a lot of tourism dollars for Southern Illinois.” According to the U.S. Forest Service, some 40,000 riders annually use Shawnee trails. A Southern Illinois University study estimates the equine industry annually generates more than $16 million in economic activity in the state’s southernmost seven counties. Jenkins said trail riding should pose no environmental threat, but environmental groups have hindered Forest Service efforts to properly maintain Shawnee trails. Trails on Forest Service property thus have deteriorated, though volunteer groups have kept up trails on private land and helped the Forest Service “whenever they allow us to,” he said....
Michigan's cougars? At least eight mountain lions have been documented in Michigan through DNA analysis, a paper in a scientific journal says. Brad Swanson, a geneticist and assistant professor of biology at Central Michigan, and Pat Rusz of the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy published their findings in the American Midland Naturalist, which is produced at Notre Dame. The two PhDs said it was the first peer-reviewed evidence of multiple cougars east of the Mississippi and outside of Florida. Cindy Evans of Battle Creek doesn't need scientific papers to convince her that the big cats roam the state. Earlier this month, a mother cougar and two nearly grown kittens were behind her home every night for a week, trying to get at the tiny muntjac deer she raises in backyard pens, she said. When she called the state Department of Natural Resources for help, "they told me I couldn't have seen cougars because they don't exist," Evans said....
Interior: Swans likely 1st to get bird flu A deadly bird flu virus will likely slip into the United States through a pretty package: either majestic swans flying across the Bering Strait into Alaska or from smuggled exotic wildlife at one of the nation‘s ports. "From my perspective, I would say swans are the starting point because we found the disease already, or Europe has found them, in swans," said H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The first 1,300 tissue samples taken in Alaska from migratory birds that could carry the H5N1 virus are due to arrive later this week at the U.S. Geological Survey U.S. Geological Survey laboratory in Madison, Wis. They come from a subsistence hunt by native Alaskans. "Birds coming up that would fly in that flyway are the ones that would probably most likely mingle with the Australasian birds that have come up and may be carrying" H5N1, Hall said. "We‘re working as if it could show up this year."....
Bill would cancel Cemex lease Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon said Wednesday he will introduce a bill in Congress today to cancel Cemex's lease to mine 56.1 million tons of sand and gravel in Soledad Canyon - a project the city has spent $6 million battling - and limiting any future mining at the site to historic levels of 300,000 tons a year. But McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, acknowledged in a phone interview the measure's chances of passage are slim. Still, it was time to take action, he said. "We held off introducing the bill, trying to work out a solution between the city (of Santa Clarita) and Cemex," McKeon said. "When it appeared Cemex was probably not going to support the legislation, we had to move ahead." McKeon advised Cemex's President Gilberto Perez of the move in the past couple of weeks, but the news failed to yield a compromise from the company, which earlier this month said plans are under way to start mining in the next two years. The Mexico-based Cemex's U.S. holdings include 12 cement plants, 270 ready-mix operations and 40 terminals. U.S. sales of $1.04 billion in 2005 surpassed those in Mexico for the first time, said company spokeswoman Susana Duarte earlier. "It's a gold mine - in aggregate - but it's a gold mine," McKeon said. If the bill is passed, mining leases signed between Cemex and the Bureau of Land Management in 1990 would be canceled and the company would be reimbursed for its "expenses and their troubles," McKeon said....
School trust lands exchange impresses A proposed exchange between the federal government and Utah school trust lands was heralded by officials and environmentalists before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday. The proposal would trade about 40,000 acres of school trust lands along the Colorado River corridor for the same amount of acreage held by the Bureau of Land Management. Exchanging the land will allow school trust land administrators to sell agricultural parcels around Green River and expand the Moab airport to include a lodge, outfitter and other businesses. Sen. Bob Bennett told a Senate subcommittee on Energy and Natural Resources that the legislation he and Sen. Orrin Hatch are co-sponsoring represents a compromise. That environmental groups are on board is, Bennett added, "saying something.” If approved, the proposal would be the first large-scale land exchange since another swap in 2002 fell apart amid allegations that taxpayers were being shortchanged by $117 million. This proposal includes a provision guaranteeing whoever owns the former federal land would pay the government 50 percent of any profits from mineral or oil resources later found....
BLM designates 1.5 million acres in southeastern Wyoming for burn program If conditions are right, fires that naturally break out this summer on about 1.5 million acres of land, mainly in southeastern Wyoming, will not be put out right away, the Bureau of Land Management announced Wednesday. The burns will only be allowed to continue if certain conditions are met, such as high moisture levels for vegetation and cooperative weather patterns, and will be "actively managed" by the bureau, BLM spokesman Steven Hall said. Only lands that could benefit from the burn for ecological purposes have been designated to use the option, called Wildland Fire Use, Hall said. The program has been used by the BLM in Wyoming before, but usually for much smaller areas. This is the first time the BLM has determined such a large area could use the option, Hall said. The decision to allow Wildland Fire Use for the lands came about because of a "natural evolution" of fire management techniques in the West over the past 10-20 years, Hall said....
Farmers seek to influence debate over immigration reform Growers facing a dwindling supply of farmworkers are pressing lawmakers in hopes of influencing the outcome of immigration reform measures before Congress to ensure they have a work force in the future. Among the leaders growers are pressing is Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Bakersfield, whose district includes the inland areas of San Luis Obispo County. Their efforts come as the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a report last week that showed there are 4 percent fewer workers on American farms now than at this time last year. And last year's farm work force in the spring was already 10 percent smaller than the year before. "We're for cracking down on the hiring of illegal immigrants and for homeland security," said Austin Perez, policy director for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest U.S. farm group. "But if it doesn't have a guest worker program, and doesn’t allow farmers to maintain a work force ... we'd be looking at a huge production loss."....
Column: Fire on the Mountain The Imperial Japanese Navy tried to burn down Oregon. It failed. Sixty years later, radical environmentalists almost succeeded. The Los Angeles Times' banner headline read "REPORT OREGON BOMBING. Jap Aircraft Carrier Believed Sunk." It was September 15, 1942. A seaplane had been spotted near Mt. Emily, Oregon, nine miles north of Brookings. A forest fire had been started near the mountain. Harold Gardner, a forest service lookout, rushed to the area and quickly extinguished the flames. Then a forest service patrol found a foot-deep crater. Nearby were forty pounds of spongy pellets and metal fragments, some of which were stamped with Japanese ideograms. A metal nosecone was also found. That same day a Japanese submarine was sited in the Pacific thirty miles off the Oregon coast due west of Mt. Emily. An Army patrol plane bombed the sub, but results of the bombing were unknown. Fast forward sixty years to July 13, 2002. An Oregon Department of Forestry pilot spotted a rising column of black smoke near Chetco Peak, not far from where the Japanese bomb had landed. The pilot immediately reported it to the dispatcher at Grants Pass. This fire would be named Biscuit 1. It burned for the next five and a half months, destroying half a million acres of forest--60 miles north-to-south at its longest, and 35 miles east-to-west--causing $150 million in damage. The fire was not extinguished until New Year's Eve. A hundred years ago, each acre of a ponderosa pine forest contained about 25 mature trees. A horse-drawn wagon could be driven through the forest without the aid of a road. Ponderosa pine is intolerant of shade, and the trees grow aggressively toward the sun, throwing shadows that discourage growth below. Today that same forest might have 1,000 trees per acre. Usually these are Douglas firs, which prosper in shade, and which grow in thick stands, often so dense that a hiker cannot pass between the trunks. As a result of this fuel load (Forest Service terminology), forest fires today are entirely unlike those of a century ago. They are hotter, faster, and more destructive. Today, 190 million acres of public forests are at an elevated risk of fires, and twenty-four million acres are at the highest risk of catastrophic fire....
Senate panel seeks end to hunting on Santa Rosa Island A Senate committee passed a resolution Wednesday to support ending big-game trophy hunts on Southern California's Santa Rosa Island. The resolution effectively opposes legislation by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, that aims to maintain nonnative deer and elk on the public island so members of the military can hunt them. That legislation passed the House earlier this month as part of a larger defense bill. The Senate resolution, authored by California Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, passed the Senate Energy Committee on a voice vote. The National Park Service bought the 53,000-acre Santa Rosa Island, part of Channel Islands National Park, for $30 million in 1986. Under a court-ordered settlement, the ranch family that owned the island must end private trophy hunts it operates there — and remove all the game — by 2011. Hunter's legislation would mandate that the game remain on the island. Hunter contends he wants to create a special place for disabled veterans to go to hunt, but critics say the hunts block public access and the game interferes with native endangered species....
Sale of oil leases worries Utahans The tiny town of Bluff, Utah, is an out-of-the-way place, rich in ancient Native American history and surrounded by the region's distinctive red rock and desert canyons. Though just a speck on the map, Bluff — population 320 — is also a magnet for rafters who enjoy excursions on the San Juan River with side trips to view Anasazi ruins and rock art. That explains why Taylor McKinnon was not happy to learn that the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was selling leasing rights to oil and natural gas adjacent to the San Juan River. The company McKinnon co-owns, Wild Rivers Expeditions, takes thousands of tourists a year down the San Juan and has been in business since 1957. Bluff "depends heavily on river recreation, both commercial and private," McKinnon says. In a letter of protest to the BLM, he worried that oil and gas development could pollute the river, blight the scenery and hurt Bluff's tourist-based economy and his business that employs 12 people. That kind of main-street worry about the energy boom occurring across the West is becoming more common as the Bush administration accelerates the sale of oil and gas leases on the region's vast network of federally-owned land and private property where the government owns mineral rights. Most energy development in the Rocky Mountain region is now natural gas....
Column: Small Potatoes, Fresh Water, and the Facts about Otero Mesa Otero Mesa is the classic example of public lands in New Mexico. It embodies the true uniqueness of the Land of Enchantment—yet, this wild landscape and its fresh-water aquifer has been proposed for full-scale oil and gas drilling. The largest, untapped fresh water aquifer remaining in New Mexico lies directly beneath Otero Mesa. This aquifer, referred to as the Salt Basin, has been the focus of several water studies conducted by private firms and Sandia National Labs. According to Sandia National Laboratories hydrologist, David Chace, their study shows "there is unequivocally lots of water" [Alb. Journal: April 23, 2005, New Study Shows Salt Basin Aquifer Is Larger Than Estimated]. Additionally, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has requested that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) conduct a thorough water study of the area to determine how much and where all of this water lies. Some estimates suggest that there is enough fresh-water in the Salt Basin to supply a city of 1 million people for 100 years! Common sense tells us that in an arid state such as ours, there is no more precious resource than water. Common sense also tells us we should have a thorough understanding of the Salt Basin aquifer before any oil and gas drilling is allowed. In 2001, the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) found that out of 734 cases of soil and groundwater contamination, oil and gas operations were responsible for 444, almost 60 percent. Early this year, the Oil Conservation Division (OCD) published a report, which shows a staggering 1400 additional cases of groundwater contamination due to oil and gas operations. In 2004, John Shomaker & Associates Inc., presented the findings of a study showing that the BLM drilling plan for Otero Mesa would jeopardize the Salt Basin aquifer. That conclusion reflected the fact that the BLM plan "makes no special provisions for protection of ground-water resources" including existing and proposed public water wells....
Bill would transfer cemetery A cemetery near the tiny town of Elkhorn, mistakenly designated as national forest land long ago, would be transferred to Jefferson County at no charge under a bill approved Wednesday by a Senate committee despite objections by the Forest Service. Local residents have continued burying their loved ones on the federal land, which is technically illegal, so all sides agree that it should be made private. But the federal government wants to be paid for the property. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee unanimously approved the bill that would transfer the Elkhorn Cemetery from the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Forest to the ownership of Jefferson County free of charge. The Montana Cemetery Act of 2005, sponsored by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., would require the conveyance of the land no later than 180 days after the bill becomes law....
Forest Service official gets surprising send-off Often at odds with Elko County over public land management over the years, the U.S. Forest Service's top official in Nevada got a bit of a surprise last week from the county commission. Commissioners presented Bob Vaught with a plaque and told him they hate to see him leave for a new job in the agency's regional office in Denver. "We've had some hellish arguments, but we've always walked away friends in the end," Commissioner John Ellison told Vaught. "I hate to see you go. You'll be hard to replace," he said. Vaught, supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest over the past six years, recently accepted an appointment as the Forest Service's director of renewable resources for 17 national forests in the Rocky Mountain Region. As the head of the largest U.S. national forest outside of Alaska, he oversaw numerous controversies in Nevada and California, ranging from livestock grazing disputes to threatened fish protection and jurisdiction of Jarbidge's South Canyon Road. He became supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe in February 2000 after the previous supervisor, Gloria Flora, resigned in protest of what she described as "fed bashing" of the Forest Service by residents and politicians in northeastern Nevada....
Investigation launched into Wolf Creek plan The U.S. Agriculture Department's watchdog office says it has begun evaluating allegations that political influence was used to gain U.S. Forest Service approval for the proposed $1 billion Wolf Creek ski-village development in southwest Colorado. Phyllis Fong, inspector general for the department, which includes the Forest Service, wrote to U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar in response to the Colorado Democrat's request last week for an investigation. The letter, released Wednesday, said Fong's office had received four other inquiries about the situation, including one from Salazar's brother, U.S. Rep. John Salazar, a Manassa Democrat. "Once we have have completed our evaluation of the facts and applicable statutes, regulations and FS policies, we will make a determination whether further inquiry by (Fong's office) or FS is warranted," the letter said. Salazar has said he requested the probe out of concern over the allegations of retired Forest Service manager Ed Ryberg that political influence helped developer B.J. "Red" McCombs get Forest Service approval for the Village at Wolf Creek, a massive project proposed for a mountain site on U.S. 160 between Durango and Alamosa....
Burnt Mountain plan hits hurdle The Aspen Skiing Co.'s plan to expand backcountry skiing on Burnt Mountain has been derailed, at least temporarily. The U.S. Forest Service's regional office in Denver ruled in favor of a Wyoming-based environmental group's claim that a portion of the Skico's plan would adversely affect an inventoried roadless area. The Ark Initiative filed an appeal in April over White River National Forest Supervisor Maribeth Gustafson's approval of the Skico project. The Skico wants to thin trees and expand what it dubs a "semi-backcountry experience" on Burnt Mountain. Currently only the Long Shot run is developed on Burnt Mountain. It's more of a general route through the trees than a distinctive trail. The Skico wants to create more such runs to the east of Long Shot. The Ark Initiative filed a 217-page appeal that raised numerous objections about the Skico's plan and the local Forest Service's approval of the application. Greg Griffith, a deputy regional forester, rejected all the points in the appeal except the roadless concerns. Griffith handed down the decision Monday and Ark Initiative Executive Director Donald Duerr received it Wednesday....
Foresters call for limits on ATV use on public land A group of professional foresters wants all-terrain vehicles banned from public lands except for specific trails that are posted as open to ATV traffic. Members of the Society of American Foresters Minnesota chapter said ATVs cause erosion and damage vegetation on public lands. The group also noted soaring numbers of registered ATVs and more use on county, state and federal forests. "A single ATV on its own is relatively benign with a single pass. However, the cumulative effect of repeated passes does represent a major impact to vegetation and the land," the group's new position statement says. The society represents about 400 professional foresters in Minnesota who work for the Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Forest Service, private landowners, timber companies and other agencies....
Forest plan could be bad news for mills Bernard Gnam enjoys the wilderness. He likes to camp and hunt and fish in it. He also works at F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber here in Columbia Falls and he's worried about the new Forest Service plan. He's worried it might put him out of a job. It's not the wilderness aspect that troubles him. It's the timber aspect and the yield that land managers are projecting for the forest in the next 10 years. This plan, as it's written now, calls for roughly 26 million board feet of timber a year from land deemed “suitable timber base,” and other lands where timber could be cut. “If they're only offering 26 million ... that doesn't even supply our mill,” he noted. “It basically puts us out of business.” Factor in competition from the likes of Plum Creek, Pyramid Lumber and other mills and the picture becomes more bleak. “My concern is the waste of the resource,” Gnam said....
U.S. House passes 'right-to-ride' bill Congress has moved closer to ensuring happy trails for Illinois horsemen and the Southern Illinois economy. More than a year after its introduction, the House last week unanimously approved the Right-to-Ride Livestock on Federal Lands Act, which seeks to “preserve the use and access of pack and saddle stock animals on public lands.” The bill, co-sponsored by Rep. John Shimkus, a Collinsville Republican, affirms “riders’ rights” on national park and national forest lands, including the Shawnee National Forest. The House measure, now headed to the Senate, states that “all trails, routes, and areas used by pack and saddle stock shall remain open and accessible for such use.” Illinois Farm Bureau equine specialist Brenda Matherly said Shawnee-area trail riding is “a huge economic force,” providing “a lot of tourism dollars for Southern Illinois.” According to the U.S. Forest Service, some 40,000 riders annually use Shawnee trails. A Southern Illinois University study estimates the equine industry annually generates more than $16 million in economic activity in the state’s southernmost seven counties. Jenkins said trail riding should pose no environmental threat, but environmental groups have hindered Forest Service efforts to properly maintain Shawnee trails. Trails on Forest Service property thus have deteriorated, though volunteer groups have kept up trails on private land and helped the Forest Service “whenever they allow us to,” he said....
Michigan's cougars? At least eight mountain lions have been documented in Michigan through DNA analysis, a paper in a scientific journal says. Brad Swanson, a geneticist and assistant professor of biology at Central Michigan, and Pat Rusz of the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy published their findings in the American Midland Naturalist, which is produced at Notre Dame. The two PhDs said it was the first peer-reviewed evidence of multiple cougars east of the Mississippi and outside of Florida. Cindy Evans of Battle Creek doesn't need scientific papers to convince her that the big cats roam the state. Earlier this month, a mother cougar and two nearly grown kittens were behind her home every night for a week, trying to get at the tiny muntjac deer she raises in backyard pens, she said. When she called the state Department of Natural Resources for help, "they told me I couldn't have seen cougars because they don't exist," Evans said....
Interior: Swans likely 1st to get bird flu A deadly bird flu virus will likely slip into the United States through a pretty package: either majestic swans flying across the Bering Strait into Alaska or from smuggled exotic wildlife at one of the nation‘s ports. "From my perspective, I would say swans are the starting point because we found the disease already, or Europe has found them, in swans," said H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The first 1,300 tissue samples taken in Alaska from migratory birds that could carry the H5N1 virus are due to arrive later this week at the U.S. Geological Survey U.S. Geological Survey laboratory in Madison, Wis. They come from a subsistence hunt by native Alaskans. "Birds coming up that would fly in that flyway are the ones that would probably most likely mingle with the Australasian birds that have come up and may be carrying" H5N1, Hall said. "We‘re working as if it could show up this year."....
Bill would cancel Cemex lease Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon said Wednesday he will introduce a bill in Congress today to cancel Cemex's lease to mine 56.1 million tons of sand and gravel in Soledad Canyon - a project the city has spent $6 million battling - and limiting any future mining at the site to historic levels of 300,000 tons a year. But McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, acknowledged in a phone interview the measure's chances of passage are slim. Still, it was time to take action, he said. "We held off introducing the bill, trying to work out a solution between the city (of Santa Clarita) and Cemex," McKeon said. "When it appeared Cemex was probably not going to support the legislation, we had to move ahead." McKeon advised Cemex's President Gilberto Perez of the move in the past couple of weeks, but the news failed to yield a compromise from the company, which earlier this month said plans are under way to start mining in the next two years. The Mexico-based Cemex's U.S. holdings include 12 cement plants, 270 ready-mix operations and 40 terminals. U.S. sales of $1.04 billion in 2005 surpassed those in Mexico for the first time, said company spokeswoman Susana Duarte earlier. "It's a gold mine - in aggregate - but it's a gold mine," McKeon said. If the bill is passed, mining leases signed between Cemex and the Bureau of Land Management in 1990 would be canceled and the company would be reimbursed for its "expenses and their troubles," McKeon said....
School trust lands exchange impresses A proposed exchange between the federal government and Utah school trust lands was heralded by officials and environmentalists before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday. The proposal would trade about 40,000 acres of school trust lands along the Colorado River corridor for the same amount of acreage held by the Bureau of Land Management. Exchanging the land will allow school trust land administrators to sell agricultural parcels around Green River and expand the Moab airport to include a lodge, outfitter and other businesses. Sen. Bob Bennett told a Senate subcommittee on Energy and Natural Resources that the legislation he and Sen. Orrin Hatch are co-sponsoring represents a compromise. That environmental groups are on board is, Bennett added, "saying something.” If approved, the proposal would be the first large-scale land exchange since another swap in 2002 fell apart amid allegations that taxpayers were being shortchanged by $117 million. This proposal includes a provision guaranteeing whoever owns the former federal land would pay the government 50 percent of any profits from mineral or oil resources later found....
BLM designates 1.5 million acres in southeastern Wyoming for burn program If conditions are right, fires that naturally break out this summer on about 1.5 million acres of land, mainly in southeastern Wyoming, will not be put out right away, the Bureau of Land Management announced Wednesday. The burns will only be allowed to continue if certain conditions are met, such as high moisture levels for vegetation and cooperative weather patterns, and will be "actively managed" by the bureau, BLM spokesman Steven Hall said. Only lands that could benefit from the burn for ecological purposes have been designated to use the option, called Wildland Fire Use, Hall said. The program has been used by the BLM in Wyoming before, but usually for much smaller areas. This is the first time the BLM has determined such a large area could use the option, Hall said. The decision to allow Wildland Fire Use for the lands came about because of a "natural evolution" of fire management techniques in the West over the past 10-20 years, Hall said....
Farmers seek to influence debate over immigration reform Growers facing a dwindling supply of farmworkers are pressing lawmakers in hopes of influencing the outcome of immigration reform measures before Congress to ensure they have a work force in the future. Among the leaders growers are pressing is Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Bakersfield, whose district includes the inland areas of San Luis Obispo County. Their efforts come as the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a report last week that showed there are 4 percent fewer workers on American farms now than at this time last year. And last year's farm work force in the spring was already 10 percent smaller than the year before. "We're for cracking down on the hiring of illegal immigrants and for homeland security," said Austin Perez, policy director for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest U.S. farm group. "But if it doesn't have a guest worker program, and doesn’t allow farmers to maintain a work force ... we'd be looking at a huge production loss."....
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Rocky Mountain National Park says elk thinning to cost $18M A 20-year plan to thin the burgeoning elk herd in Rocky Mountain National Park could cost $18 million to kill some animals and disperse others, park officials said. An estimated 2,200 to 3,000 elk live in the park, overgrazing vegetation that is also important to other wildlife including songbirds, beavers and butterflies, biologists say. Elk numbers have escalated because the animals have few predators and no hunting is allowed in the park. The park's goal is a herd of 1,200 to 1,700 elk. Park officials outlined the proposed program and its estimated costs during a public meeting Monday. The park's favored plan would involve killing up to 700 elk annually for four years. After that, an additional 25 to 150 elk would be culled annually for 16 years. The costs would come from hiring extra staff or a contractor to shoot elk, building fences to protect vegetation, transporting carcasses, testing them for disease and processing the meat....
Feds reject petition to list spotted owl The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday rejected a petition to list the California spotted owl under the Endangered Species Act, saying the population is stable and programs that prevent forest wildfires will allow it to thrive. The decision rankled the environmental groups that had requested protection of the speckled, football-sized owl. This was their second effort to list the bird in three years. The petition's denial was based in part on the recommendation of scientists commissioned to study the owl, said Steve Thompson, manager of the agency's California-Nevada operations office. They found that fires that creep through excessive brush and eventually consume the old-growth forests the owls prefer are their main threat, Thompson said, adding that U.S. Forest Service tree thinning programs will prevent the spread of flames and ensure the owls remain off the endangered list. But environmentalists protested, saying the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan, amended in 2004 to allow cutting trees of up to 30 inches in diameter, is logging in disguise and destroys owl habitat....
Study: Oregon Power Plant Spreads Haze A new federal study shows that a coal-burning power plant in Eastern Oregon causes pollution in 10 protected parks and wilderness areas in three states. Haze from the Portland General Electric plant near Boardman clouds views from Hells Canyon on the Idaho border, at Mount Rainier in Washington and Mount Jefferson in Central Oregon, according to the study. Air in wilderness areas is supposed to be protected as the cleanest in the nation. The U.S. Forest Service commissioned the analysis and provided a copy to PGE, the state's largest electric utility, but so far the federal agency has taken no action on it. The Oregonian newspaper obtained it through the Freedom of Information Act. The findings raise the possibility that PGE will have to install millions of dollars worth of pollution controls at the Boardman plant, which was authorized in 1975 _ just in time to avoid overhauled provisions of the federal Clean Air Act. Federal authorities later acknowledged in a court case that the early authorization was a mistake. Boardman is now one of only two major coal plants in the West without modern pollution controls and no immediate commitment to add them, said Patrick Cummins, air quality program manager for the Western Governors Association....
Johanns announces 43% decline in cropland erosion Cropland erosion is on the decline, according to an announcement yesterday from Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. He said that according to USDA's National Resources Inventory (NRI), total soil erosion on cultivated and non-cultivated cropland in the U.S. decreased 43% between 1982 and 2003, sheet and rill erosion decreased 42%, and wind erosion decreased 44%. "This remarkable decrease in soil erosion can be attributed to the extraordinary efforts by America's private landowners to conserve and protect agricultural lands," said Johanns. "This report underscores the value of cooperative conservation through partnerships with our farmers and ranchers, who are among the best stewards of the land." Nationwide, sheet and rill erosion -- which is the removal of layers of soil by rainfall and runoff -- on cropland dropped from 4 tons per acre per year in 1982 to 2.6 tons per acre per year in 2003. Wind erosion rates also dropped from 3.3 to 2.1 tons per acre per year. The data also shows that 72% of the nation's cropland was eroding below soil loss tolerance rates, compared to 60% in 1982. Highly Erodible Land (HEL) being cropped is down to about 100 million acres, compared to 124 million acres in 1982. HEL and non-HEL cropland acreage eroding above soil loss tolerance rates declined 35% and 45%, respectively....
Off-road riders are damaging meadows Deep in the tangle of dirt roads that connects Boca, Prosser and Stampede reservoirs, Susanne Jensen inspects an iridescent green meadow deeply scarred by off-road vehicle tracks. "When people go in and muck up our meadows, it just sets us back," said Jensen, the off-highway vehicle specialist for the Truckee Ranger District of the Tahoe National Forest. Fortunately, as three quad runners ripped their tracks back and forth across the narrow green wetland earlier this spring, a passing motorist noticed the unlawful off-roading and reported the incident. The Forest Service found the off-roaders and gave them a decision: Either restore the meadow or face federal charges for the damage. Today the meadow is slowly healing, but only after the off-roaders filled in their tracks and placed boulders next to the meadow to block entry to the sensitive area....
Event devoted to bird monitoring An evening devoted to discovering birds in the Black Hills will be Thursday at the Mystic District Ranger office at 803 Soo San Drive in Rapid City. The free program, beginning at 6 p.m., celebrates International Migratory Bird Day, according to a U.S. Forest Service news release. International Migratory Bird Day is celebrated nationally to support migratory bird conservation throughout North America by various bird conservation groups such as the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Forest Service, National Audubon Society and Ducks Unlimited. This year, International Migratory Bird Day will focus on "The Boreal Forest: Bird Nursery of the North," which focuses on the North American Boreal Forest. The Boreal Forest is a mosaic of interconnected habitats that includes forests, lakes, rivers, grasslands and tundra. The Black Hills is an island in a sea of prairie and contains plant communities from the Rocky Mountains, northern coniferous forests, eastern hardwood forests, and the surrounding Great Plains, according to the news release....
Former wolf advocates change their minds A central Idaho couple who favored wolf reintroduction in the 1990s now say they have changed their minds after their dogs were bitten by wolves near their home. "I love animals, I always have," said Jennifer Swigert during a wolf management meeting last week with officials from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. "But this is insane. People are at a total risk of getting fanged up." Idaho officials took over day-to-day management of wolves south of Interstate 90 from the federal government in January. Wolves north of I-90 in the Idaho Panhandle are considered to be there naturally. They remain classified as an endangered species and are under the control of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In most instances, Fish and Wildlife Service officials must approve the killing of any wolf in the region. The wolves south of the freeway were reintroduced in central Idaho in 1995 as an "experimental, nonessential population" under the Endangered Species Act. Wolves there can legally be killed under a greater range of circumstances and without first getting permission from the Fish and Wildlife Service. There are an estimated 500 to 600 wolves in Idaho. "There are six times the number of animals required in Idaho for delisting purposes," said Nadeau. "Our goal over the next few years is to delist wolves and manage them as a big game animal while maintaining a minimum of 15 packs of wolves in Idaho forever."....
Platte River plans seeks balance among users The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Tuesday released a plan to balance demands among Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming over the Platte River - the drinking water supply for more than 3 million people. The plan calls for increased flows on the Platte and more land set aside for wildlife in Nebraska. It also attempts to deal with needs of the growing cities along the river, agricultural irrigation, and four threatened or endangered species. "Built into this plan is an insurance policy for Colorado water users - these endangered species at Grand Isle, Nebraska have now been taken care of," said Colorado Agriculture Commissioner Don Ament, who helped negotiate the plan. The Platte River is a major migration stop for whooping cranes in central Nebraska and is home to the piping plover, least tern and pallid sturgeon. The final environmental impact statement - which took nine years to complete - recommends acquiring at least 10,000 acres in central Nebraska for wildlife habitat and increasing flows in the Platte at key times by 130,000 acre-feet to 150,000 acre-feet....
Judge tells government to start over on upper Snake River plan The federal government needs to start over on its plan for making the operations of federal irrigation projects in southern Idaho safe for salmon, a federal judge decided. U.S. District Judge James Redden ruled Tuesday that NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation must consider the effects a dozen irrigation projects on the upper Snake River have on salmon in conjunction with the operations of hydroelectric dams on the lower Snake and Columbia rivers - not separately. "Rebuilding salmon to healthy, harvestable levels will come in large part from addressing the impacts of the down-river dam operations that do the most harm to salmon," Redden wrote. "Even so, the water of the upper Snake projects and its uses must be an integral part of the analysis." Members of Idaho's congressional delegation issued a joint statement criticizing the ruling, saying Redden's decision threatened a huge water rights agreement between the state, federal government and the Nez Perce Tribe over water in the Snake River Basin....
Wildlife conservation near Provo River will be preserved A wildlife haven has been saved -- and endowed with a quarter-million dollars. A conservation easement on five miles of the Provo River bottom rife with deer, birds, beaver, wildflowers and an endangered species of frog was given to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources on Tuesday for preservation in perpetuity. Bob Larsen, owner of the land, was overcome with emotion as he made the announcement, weeping so hard he could not speak. "It's an emotional thing for me to be able to say that nothing, nothing will ever be built on this river," he said. "I think this agreement is a model for generations to come and I think this will help Utah immensely. I'm just proud to be able to do this." Larsen's gift totals 600 acres of river bottom in Wasatch and Summit counties extending contiguously upstream from where the Provo River empties into Jordanelle Reservoir. Because only the conservation rights to the property, not the property itself, was gifted to the state, the land will remain private, without public access. The property is part of 2,600 acres that will be preserved within a 5,600-acre upscale development of 749 homes called Victory Ranch, near Francis. Larsen has yet to decide what portion, if any, of the remaining 2,000 acres will be deeded to the state as part of the easement....
Eagle Chick Makes Webcam Debut Through the magic of the Internet and the hard work of the National Park Service and the Ventura Office of Education, a web cam has been installed on Santa Cruz Island to monitor live, streaming images of the first chick to hatch unaided by humans on the Channel Islands in more than 50 years. Eagles have been rare on the Channel Islands because high levels of DDT have worked its way into the food chain and weakened eggshells. The nest was confirmed on Feb. 23 and a video camera was installed. The chick was born March 13. The park service had received many requests to see the chick, but there were complications caused by the need not to disturb the birds, which are an endangered species, though there have been proposals to take them off the list. Schoolchildren have been especially eager to see the bird, she said. Technology came up with a solution, but it still took human sweat to implement it....
Labor protests oil, gas lease Green River resident Mike Burd labors in the soda ash plants west of Green River, but on his days off, he spends most of his time hunting and fishing in the Wyoming Range in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Burd remembers shooting his first elk three decades ago in the Wyoming Range. And he captured the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's coveted "cutt-slam" award a while back by catching four native cutthroat trout species in the range's Piney, LaBarge, North Cottonwood and South Cottonwood creeks. Burd believes that legacy is threatened, however, by another planned oil and gas lease sale next month on public lands in the Wyoming Range. Drilling in the range will put intense pressure on hunting and angling resources, he said Tuesday. Floyd said for the first time in Wyoming State AFL-CIO history, the union has sent a formal protest to the Bureau of Land Management concerning oil and gas leasing. He said the union is asking the BLM to suspend a planned June 6 oil and gas lease sale on about 12,000 acres within the Wyoming Range. The BLM oversees oil and gas lease sales on Forest Service lands. The protested leases are located in the North Cottonwood and South Cottonwood Creek areas of Sublette County and are considered a "valuable resource" to the roughly 6,000 union members who live in southwest Wyoming, Floyd said. Floyd and other union members said it was time for labor to become more vocal on oil and gas leasing issues, particularly in areas such as the Wyoming Range, where they feel their recreation areas are under threat from possible oil and gas development....
Editorial: Protect Mesa Verde's future Colorado is home to a world-class archaeological wonder, the first national park to preserve the works of human beings. But as Mesa Verde National Park celebrates its centennial, it's important that we ask ourselves what people 100 years from now will think of our 21st century efforts to protect the wondrous relics of ancient peoples who inhabited our region from about A.D. 600 to 1300. Sadly, our ancestors may look at us with disdain for our wrong-headed priorities. First Lady Laura Bush, honorary chair for the White House's Preserve America initiative, visited Mesa Verde on Tuesday and praised protection efforts. But in truth, many ancient sites at Mesa Verde and surrounding areas are at risk. President Theodore Roosevelt's generation got it right. The same year he made Mesa Verde a national park, Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act, which to this day makes it a federal crime to vandalize or remove historic artifacts on public lands. Because of such foresight, we can enjoy cliff dwellings and other visible reminders of the Ancestral Pueblo Indians, forbears of 24 tribes that still live in the Southwest....go here for the text of the First Lady's Remarks
Center deteriorating at Dinosaur monument With no money yet to replace it, the National Park Service can only watch as a visitor center that was built over a dinosaur bone quarry slowly splits apart, making do with patchwork repairs as the building slowly crumbles. It's been a problem at the center at Dinosaur National Monument since it was built in 1957, but officials say the pace of the disintegration is picking up. Gummy, clay soil under the building swells when wet and the concrete basement floor has warped into something like ocean rollers. When the bentonite clay soil dries, it crackles like popcorn and shifts parts of the building again. "It's like a fun house," said Dan Chure, chief paleontologist at the monument. "There's some everyday work that needs to be done to make sure the doors close." The Quarry Visitor Center, about 20 miles east of Vernal, is considered safe — for now. Officials keep it open with stopgap repairs, and keep track of a spider web of cracks on exterior walls....
Editorial: It's time to break the cycle, solve bison problem Rivers dry up or flood; hurricanes pummel coasts; fires scorch forests and grasslands; tornadoes pound the Midwest; politicians pontificate; and bison wander from Yellowstone National Park, often fatally and controversially. With a predictability that rivals any cyclical news event, the continuing dispute over how to deal with Yellowstone's overpopulation of bison spans three decades, and by some measures the issue sometimes seems to get no closer to resolution. The latest cycle of the running story made a bigger blip on the news radar because the number of bison shipped to slaughter this past winter totaled 899. For the bison, that's the deadliest winter since 1,084 were killed nine years ago. We don't have a problem with that. In fact, we'd suggest that if previous range managers' estimates of the optimal herd size are correct, then the number shipped to slaughter should have been closer to 2,500. That's because the park's bison population going into winter was estimated at 4,900, roughly double the size of herd that managers say the range in the park can comfortably support. In any case, Gov. Brian Schweitzer is right to want to convene a meeting of the many state and federal agencies with a stake in the fate of the bison....
Ranchers bullish on beef to Japan Importers, retailers and distributors from Japan and Taiwan visited the Masters family cattle ranch near Cape Girardeau on Monday, the first stop on a "Beef Tour" through Missouri, in anticipation of what state officials hope will be a reopening of the Japanese market to U.S. beef. The tour also will include stops this week in Audrain, Miller and Camden counties. U.S. beef exports to Japan were reopened in December after a two-year hiatus because of concerns about mad cow disease. They were suspended again a month later when a shipment from a Brooklyn company showed up with bone material that Japan considered at risk for the disease. In October, Missouri became the first state to develop and implement a voluntary program that guarantees the source and age of its feeder cattle. The claims by participating Missouri producers are verified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the program known as Quality Systems Assessment (QSA). That was crucial to the Japanese, who would not buy beef from an animal older than 20 months because of their concerns that age increases the potential for mad cow disease....
Homing in on the Range After growing up on a cattle ranch, John Hassell became an electrical engineer specializing in wireless technology. So he feels doubly qualified to offer this warning about the system taking shape to track cattle across America: It won't work. To be sure, he doesn't quibble with the logic of the system. It stems from the Bush administration's plan to give agriculture inspectors the ability to pinpoint the origins of mad cow and other diseases within 48 hours. Livestock facilities and individual animals will get identifying numbers, which owners will use to document the beasts' movements in industry databases. The system isn't expected to be fully online until 2009, but already it's clear that in the sprawling U.S. beef and dairy industries -- home to 100 million cattle -- many producers will automate data gathering with radio-frequency chips attached to cattle ears. And that's what has Hassell worried. He contends most of the radio-frequency chips making their way onto cattle ears are a terrible fit. Those chips -- based on the same radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology being integrated for inventory control by large retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- are known as ''passive'' tags that broadcast identifying numbers for only a short range, generally just a few feet. While cattle may be considered docile creatures, they are a lot more mobile and skittish than cases and pallets in Wal-Mart warehouses. Hassell believes only ''active'' tags, which broadcast identification data for up to 300 feet, will consistently work for the multiple owners and many environments that cattle pass through, from pastures to stockyards, feed lots and slaughterhouses. Hassell is so convinced that he's launched his own company, ZigBeef Inc., to sell long-range tags. The name is a play on the ''ZigBee'' wireless standard employed by his tags....
Niman Ranch Cuts Risk From Marketing Beef Online LSF Network, the global integrated lead generation group, today announced that it has signed an exclusive contract with gourmet meat purveyors Niman Ranch to deliver new customers over the web on a pay-for-performance basis. The deal means that Niman Ranch pays only when its online marketing agency delivers new customers who use their credit card to purchase steak, pork or lamb online -- not for web visitors who browse but don't buy. Marketers today are demanding higher ROI for their budgets, and few direct marketing methods provide the targeting, returns and accountability of the Internet. The Niman Ranch-LSF Network deal marks a departure from traditional online lead generating campaigns where marketers pay for each new prospect regardless of whether they convert to paying customers or not. "LSF Network's pay-for-performance model means we reduce both the risk and cost of acquiring new customers on the web because we only pay when we get a sale. There's no risk to us at all -- not even for cash flow management. Frankly, it doesn't get any better than that," said John Wright, Director of Marketing at Niman Ranch. Niman Ranch has been selling direct to its target consumer -- meat lovers who demand the freshest, highest quality meat products -- over the web since 2002....
Underwood, Brooks & Dunn Clean Up at ACM Awards Brooks & Dunn, the most honored artists in the history of the Academy of Country Music's awards show, picked up a record 20th and 21st trophies Tuesday night as country music's elite gathered to perform and compete for honors. Newcomer Carrie Underwood, last year's "American Idol" winner, was also a double winner, taking top new female vocalist and single of the year awards. The latter was for "Jesus Take the Wheel," a song she performed on the show. "I wouldn't be here if God hadn't opened all the doors for me," she told the audience. Kenny Chesney captured the entertainer of the year award....
The world's first equine clone will challenge naturally bred runners next month in Nevada Idaho Gem is a mule created three years ago by cloning DNA taken from a foetus produced by the parents of a champion racer. It will race against another mule clone and a full field of non-clones. The two clones have been separated for two years, so their performances could offer insight into the role of the environment in development. The University of Idaho scientists who cloned Idaho Gem also produced two other cloned mules in 2002 from the same DNA. One of those two, Idaho Star, will compete against Idaho Gem along with naturally-bred mules in Winnemucca, Nevada, and on the California racing circuit this summer. Analysing how the clones perform against each other will give scientists information on how variables like diet and training regimes affect developing racing mules. Those behind the race say that just because they carry the DNA of past champions, there is no guarantee the clones will be successful....
Rocky Mountain National Park says elk thinning to cost $18M A 20-year plan to thin the burgeoning elk herd in Rocky Mountain National Park could cost $18 million to kill some animals and disperse others, park officials said. An estimated 2,200 to 3,000 elk live in the park, overgrazing vegetation that is also important to other wildlife including songbirds, beavers and butterflies, biologists say. Elk numbers have escalated because the animals have few predators and no hunting is allowed in the park. The park's goal is a herd of 1,200 to 1,700 elk. Park officials outlined the proposed program and its estimated costs during a public meeting Monday. The park's favored plan would involve killing up to 700 elk annually for four years. After that, an additional 25 to 150 elk would be culled annually for 16 years. The costs would come from hiring extra staff or a contractor to shoot elk, building fences to protect vegetation, transporting carcasses, testing them for disease and processing the meat....
Feds reject petition to list spotted owl The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday rejected a petition to list the California spotted owl under the Endangered Species Act, saying the population is stable and programs that prevent forest wildfires will allow it to thrive. The decision rankled the environmental groups that had requested protection of the speckled, football-sized owl. This was their second effort to list the bird in three years. The petition's denial was based in part on the recommendation of scientists commissioned to study the owl, said Steve Thompson, manager of the agency's California-Nevada operations office. They found that fires that creep through excessive brush and eventually consume the old-growth forests the owls prefer are their main threat, Thompson said, adding that U.S. Forest Service tree thinning programs will prevent the spread of flames and ensure the owls remain off the endangered list. But environmentalists protested, saying the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan, amended in 2004 to allow cutting trees of up to 30 inches in diameter, is logging in disguise and destroys owl habitat....
Study: Oregon Power Plant Spreads Haze A new federal study shows that a coal-burning power plant in Eastern Oregon causes pollution in 10 protected parks and wilderness areas in three states. Haze from the Portland General Electric plant near Boardman clouds views from Hells Canyon on the Idaho border, at Mount Rainier in Washington and Mount Jefferson in Central Oregon, according to the study. Air in wilderness areas is supposed to be protected as the cleanest in the nation. The U.S. Forest Service commissioned the analysis and provided a copy to PGE, the state's largest electric utility, but so far the federal agency has taken no action on it. The Oregonian newspaper obtained it through the Freedom of Information Act. The findings raise the possibility that PGE will have to install millions of dollars worth of pollution controls at the Boardman plant, which was authorized in 1975 _ just in time to avoid overhauled provisions of the federal Clean Air Act. Federal authorities later acknowledged in a court case that the early authorization was a mistake. Boardman is now one of only two major coal plants in the West without modern pollution controls and no immediate commitment to add them, said Patrick Cummins, air quality program manager for the Western Governors Association....
Johanns announces 43% decline in cropland erosion Cropland erosion is on the decline, according to an announcement yesterday from Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. He said that according to USDA's National Resources Inventory (NRI), total soil erosion on cultivated and non-cultivated cropland in the U.S. decreased 43% between 1982 and 2003, sheet and rill erosion decreased 42%, and wind erosion decreased 44%. "This remarkable decrease in soil erosion can be attributed to the extraordinary efforts by America's private landowners to conserve and protect agricultural lands," said Johanns. "This report underscores the value of cooperative conservation through partnerships with our farmers and ranchers, who are among the best stewards of the land." Nationwide, sheet and rill erosion -- which is the removal of layers of soil by rainfall and runoff -- on cropland dropped from 4 tons per acre per year in 1982 to 2.6 tons per acre per year in 2003. Wind erosion rates also dropped from 3.3 to 2.1 tons per acre per year. The data also shows that 72% of the nation's cropland was eroding below soil loss tolerance rates, compared to 60% in 1982. Highly Erodible Land (HEL) being cropped is down to about 100 million acres, compared to 124 million acres in 1982. HEL and non-HEL cropland acreage eroding above soil loss tolerance rates declined 35% and 45%, respectively....
Off-road riders are damaging meadows Deep in the tangle of dirt roads that connects Boca, Prosser and Stampede reservoirs, Susanne Jensen inspects an iridescent green meadow deeply scarred by off-road vehicle tracks. "When people go in and muck up our meadows, it just sets us back," said Jensen, the off-highway vehicle specialist for the Truckee Ranger District of the Tahoe National Forest. Fortunately, as three quad runners ripped their tracks back and forth across the narrow green wetland earlier this spring, a passing motorist noticed the unlawful off-roading and reported the incident. The Forest Service found the off-roaders and gave them a decision: Either restore the meadow or face federal charges for the damage. Today the meadow is slowly healing, but only after the off-roaders filled in their tracks and placed boulders next to the meadow to block entry to the sensitive area....
Event devoted to bird monitoring An evening devoted to discovering birds in the Black Hills will be Thursday at the Mystic District Ranger office at 803 Soo San Drive in Rapid City. The free program, beginning at 6 p.m., celebrates International Migratory Bird Day, according to a U.S. Forest Service news release. International Migratory Bird Day is celebrated nationally to support migratory bird conservation throughout North America by various bird conservation groups such as the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Forest Service, National Audubon Society and Ducks Unlimited. This year, International Migratory Bird Day will focus on "The Boreal Forest: Bird Nursery of the North," which focuses on the North American Boreal Forest. The Boreal Forest is a mosaic of interconnected habitats that includes forests, lakes, rivers, grasslands and tundra. The Black Hills is an island in a sea of prairie and contains plant communities from the Rocky Mountains, northern coniferous forests, eastern hardwood forests, and the surrounding Great Plains, according to the news release....
Former wolf advocates change their minds A central Idaho couple who favored wolf reintroduction in the 1990s now say they have changed their minds after their dogs were bitten by wolves near their home. "I love animals, I always have," said Jennifer Swigert during a wolf management meeting last week with officials from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. "But this is insane. People are at a total risk of getting fanged up." Idaho officials took over day-to-day management of wolves south of Interstate 90 from the federal government in January. Wolves north of I-90 in the Idaho Panhandle are considered to be there naturally. They remain classified as an endangered species and are under the control of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In most instances, Fish and Wildlife Service officials must approve the killing of any wolf in the region. The wolves south of the freeway were reintroduced in central Idaho in 1995 as an "experimental, nonessential population" under the Endangered Species Act. Wolves there can legally be killed under a greater range of circumstances and without first getting permission from the Fish and Wildlife Service. There are an estimated 500 to 600 wolves in Idaho. "There are six times the number of animals required in Idaho for delisting purposes," said Nadeau. "Our goal over the next few years is to delist wolves and manage them as a big game animal while maintaining a minimum of 15 packs of wolves in Idaho forever."....
Platte River plans seeks balance among users The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Tuesday released a plan to balance demands among Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming over the Platte River - the drinking water supply for more than 3 million people. The plan calls for increased flows on the Platte and more land set aside for wildlife in Nebraska. It also attempts to deal with needs of the growing cities along the river, agricultural irrigation, and four threatened or endangered species. "Built into this plan is an insurance policy for Colorado water users - these endangered species at Grand Isle, Nebraska have now been taken care of," said Colorado Agriculture Commissioner Don Ament, who helped negotiate the plan. The Platte River is a major migration stop for whooping cranes in central Nebraska and is home to the piping plover, least tern and pallid sturgeon. The final environmental impact statement - which took nine years to complete - recommends acquiring at least 10,000 acres in central Nebraska for wildlife habitat and increasing flows in the Platte at key times by 130,000 acre-feet to 150,000 acre-feet....
Judge tells government to start over on upper Snake River plan The federal government needs to start over on its plan for making the operations of federal irrigation projects in southern Idaho safe for salmon, a federal judge decided. U.S. District Judge James Redden ruled Tuesday that NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation must consider the effects a dozen irrigation projects on the upper Snake River have on salmon in conjunction with the operations of hydroelectric dams on the lower Snake and Columbia rivers - not separately. "Rebuilding salmon to healthy, harvestable levels will come in large part from addressing the impacts of the down-river dam operations that do the most harm to salmon," Redden wrote. "Even so, the water of the upper Snake projects and its uses must be an integral part of the analysis." Members of Idaho's congressional delegation issued a joint statement criticizing the ruling, saying Redden's decision threatened a huge water rights agreement between the state, federal government and the Nez Perce Tribe over water in the Snake River Basin....
Wildlife conservation near Provo River will be preserved A wildlife haven has been saved -- and endowed with a quarter-million dollars. A conservation easement on five miles of the Provo River bottom rife with deer, birds, beaver, wildflowers and an endangered species of frog was given to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources on Tuesday for preservation in perpetuity. Bob Larsen, owner of the land, was overcome with emotion as he made the announcement, weeping so hard he could not speak. "It's an emotional thing for me to be able to say that nothing, nothing will ever be built on this river," he said. "I think this agreement is a model for generations to come and I think this will help Utah immensely. I'm just proud to be able to do this." Larsen's gift totals 600 acres of river bottom in Wasatch and Summit counties extending contiguously upstream from where the Provo River empties into Jordanelle Reservoir. Because only the conservation rights to the property, not the property itself, was gifted to the state, the land will remain private, without public access. The property is part of 2,600 acres that will be preserved within a 5,600-acre upscale development of 749 homes called Victory Ranch, near Francis. Larsen has yet to decide what portion, if any, of the remaining 2,000 acres will be deeded to the state as part of the easement....
Eagle Chick Makes Webcam Debut Through the magic of the Internet and the hard work of the National Park Service and the Ventura Office of Education, a web cam has been installed on Santa Cruz Island to monitor live, streaming images of the first chick to hatch unaided by humans on the Channel Islands in more than 50 years. Eagles have been rare on the Channel Islands because high levels of DDT have worked its way into the food chain and weakened eggshells. The nest was confirmed on Feb. 23 and a video camera was installed. The chick was born March 13. The park service had received many requests to see the chick, but there were complications caused by the need not to disturb the birds, which are an endangered species, though there have been proposals to take them off the list. Schoolchildren have been especially eager to see the bird, she said. Technology came up with a solution, but it still took human sweat to implement it....
Labor protests oil, gas lease Green River resident Mike Burd labors in the soda ash plants west of Green River, but on his days off, he spends most of his time hunting and fishing in the Wyoming Range in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Burd remembers shooting his first elk three decades ago in the Wyoming Range. And he captured the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's coveted "cutt-slam" award a while back by catching four native cutthroat trout species in the range's Piney, LaBarge, North Cottonwood and South Cottonwood creeks. Burd believes that legacy is threatened, however, by another planned oil and gas lease sale next month on public lands in the Wyoming Range. Drilling in the range will put intense pressure on hunting and angling resources, he said Tuesday. Floyd said for the first time in Wyoming State AFL-CIO history, the union has sent a formal protest to the Bureau of Land Management concerning oil and gas leasing. He said the union is asking the BLM to suspend a planned June 6 oil and gas lease sale on about 12,000 acres within the Wyoming Range. The BLM oversees oil and gas lease sales on Forest Service lands. The protested leases are located in the North Cottonwood and South Cottonwood Creek areas of Sublette County and are considered a "valuable resource" to the roughly 6,000 union members who live in southwest Wyoming, Floyd said. Floyd and other union members said it was time for labor to become more vocal on oil and gas leasing issues, particularly in areas such as the Wyoming Range, where they feel their recreation areas are under threat from possible oil and gas development....
Editorial: Protect Mesa Verde's future Colorado is home to a world-class archaeological wonder, the first national park to preserve the works of human beings. But as Mesa Verde National Park celebrates its centennial, it's important that we ask ourselves what people 100 years from now will think of our 21st century efforts to protect the wondrous relics of ancient peoples who inhabited our region from about A.D. 600 to 1300. Sadly, our ancestors may look at us with disdain for our wrong-headed priorities. First Lady Laura Bush, honorary chair for the White House's Preserve America initiative, visited Mesa Verde on Tuesday and praised protection efforts. But in truth, many ancient sites at Mesa Verde and surrounding areas are at risk. President Theodore Roosevelt's generation got it right. The same year he made Mesa Verde a national park, Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act, which to this day makes it a federal crime to vandalize or remove historic artifacts on public lands. Because of such foresight, we can enjoy cliff dwellings and other visible reminders of the Ancestral Pueblo Indians, forbears of 24 tribes that still live in the Southwest....go here for the text of the First Lady's Remarks
Center deteriorating at Dinosaur monument With no money yet to replace it, the National Park Service can only watch as a visitor center that was built over a dinosaur bone quarry slowly splits apart, making do with patchwork repairs as the building slowly crumbles. It's been a problem at the center at Dinosaur National Monument since it was built in 1957, but officials say the pace of the disintegration is picking up. Gummy, clay soil under the building swells when wet and the concrete basement floor has warped into something like ocean rollers. When the bentonite clay soil dries, it crackles like popcorn and shifts parts of the building again. "It's like a fun house," said Dan Chure, chief paleontologist at the monument. "There's some everyday work that needs to be done to make sure the doors close." The Quarry Visitor Center, about 20 miles east of Vernal, is considered safe — for now. Officials keep it open with stopgap repairs, and keep track of a spider web of cracks on exterior walls....
Editorial: It's time to break the cycle, solve bison problem Rivers dry up or flood; hurricanes pummel coasts; fires scorch forests and grasslands; tornadoes pound the Midwest; politicians pontificate; and bison wander from Yellowstone National Park, often fatally and controversially. With a predictability that rivals any cyclical news event, the continuing dispute over how to deal with Yellowstone's overpopulation of bison spans three decades, and by some measures the issue sometimes seems to get no closer to resolution. The latest cycle of the running story made a bigger blip on the news radar because the number of bison shipped to slaughter this past winter totaled 899. For the bison, that's the deadliest winter since 1,084 were killed nine years ago. We don't have a problem with that. In fact, we'd suggest that if previous range managers' estimates of the optimal herd size are correct, then the number shipped to slaughter should have been closer to 2,500. That's because the park's bison population going into winter was estimated at 4,900, roughly double the size of herd that managers say the range in the park can comfortably support. In any case, Gov. Brian Schweitzer is right to want to convene a meeting of the many state and federal agencies with a stake in the fate of the bison....
Ranchers bullish on beef to Japan Importers, retailers and distributors from Japan and Taiwan visited the Masters family cattle ranch near Cape Girardeau on Monday, the first stop on a "Beef Tour" through Missouri, in anticipation of what state officials hope will be a reopening of the Japanese market to U.S. beef. The tour also will include stops this week in Audrain, Miller and Camden counties. U.S. beef exports to Japan were reopened in December after a two-year hiatus because of concerns about mad cow disease. They were suspended again a month later when a shipment from a Brooklyn company showed up with bone material that Japan considered at risk for the disease. In October, Missouri became the first state to develop and implement a voluntary program that guarantees the source and age of its feeder cattle. The claims by participating Missouri producers are verified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the program known as Quality Systems Assessment (QSA). That was crucial to the Japanese, who would not buy beef from an animal older than 20 months because of their concerns that age increases the potential for mad cow disease....
Homing in on the Range After growing up on a cattle ranch, John Hassell became an electrical engineer specializing in wireless technology. So he feels doubly qualified to offer this warning about the system taking shape to track cattle across America: It won't work. To be sure, he doesn't quibble with the logic of the system. It stems from the Bush administration's plan to give agriculture inspectors the ability to pinpoint the origins of mad cow and other diseases within 48 hours. Livestock facilities and individual animals will get identifying numbers, which owners will use to document the beasts' movements in industry databases. The system isn't expected to be fully online until 2009, but already it's clear that in the sprawling U.S. beef and dairy industries -- home to 100 million cattle -- many producers will automate data gathering with radio-frequency chips attached to cattle ears. And that's what has Hassell worried. He contends most of the radio-frequency chips making their way onto cattle ears are a terrible fit. Those chips -- based on the same radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology being integrated for inventory control by large retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- are known as ''passive'' tags that broadcast identifying numbers for only a short range, generally just a few feet. While cattle may be considered docile creatures, they are a lot more mobile and skittish than cases and pallets in Wal-Mart warehouses. Hassell believes only ''active'' tags, which broadcast identification data for up to 300 feet, will consistently work for the multiple owners and many environments that cattle pass through, from pastures to stockyards, feed lots and slaughterhouses. Hassell is so convinced that he's launched his own company, ZigBeef Inc., to sell long-range tags. The name is a play on the ''ZigBee'' wireless standard employed by his tags....
Niman Ranch Cuts Risk From Marketing Beef Online LSF Network, the global integrated lead generation group, today announced that it has signed an exclusive contract with gourmet meat purveyors Niman Ranch to deliver new customers over the web on a pay-for-performance basis. The deal means that Niman Ranch pays only when its online marketing agency delivers new customers who use their credit card to purchase steak, pork or lamb online -- not for web visitors who browse but don't buy. Marketers today are demanding higher ROI for their budgets, and few direct marketing methods provide the targeting, returns and accountability of the Internet. The Niman Ranch-LSF Network deal marks a departure from traditional online lead generating campaigns where marketers pay for each new prospect regardless of whether they convert to paying customers or not. "LSF Network's pay-for-performance model means we reduce both the risk and cost of acquiring new customers on the web because we only pay when we get a sale. There's no risk to us at all -- not even for cash flow management. Frankly, it doesn't get any better than that," said John Wright, Director of Marketing at Niman Ranch. Niman Ranch has been selling direct to its target consumer -- meat lovers who demand the freshest, highest quality meat products -- over the web since 2002....
Underwood, Brooks & Dunn Clean Up at ACM Awards Brooks & Dunn, the most honored artists in the history of the Academy of Country Music's awards show, picked up a record 20th and 21st trophies Tuesday night as country music's elite gathered to perform and compete for honors. Newcomer Carrie Underwood, last year's "American Idol" winner, was also a double winner, taking top new female vocalist and single of the year awards. The latter was for "Jesus Take the Wheel," a song she performed on the show. "I wouldn't be here if God hadn't opened all the doors for me," she told the audience. Kenny Chesney captured the entertainer of the year award....
The world's first equine clone will challenge naturally bred runners next month in Nevada Idaho Gem is a mule created three years ago by cloning DNA taken from a foetus produced by the parents of a champion racer. It will race against another mule clone and a full field of non-clones. The two clones have been separated for two years, so their performances could offer insight into the role of the environment in development. The University of Idaho scientists who cloned Idaho Gem also produced two other cloned mules in 2002 from the same DNA. One of those two, Idaho Star, will compete against Idaho Gem along with naturally-bred mules in Winnemucca, Nevada, and on the California racing circuit this summer. Analysing how the clones perform against each other will give scientists information on how variables like diet and training regimes affect developing racing mules. Those behind the race say that just because they carry the DNA of past champions, there is no guarantee the clones will be successful....
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