GAO
Federal Real Property: Most Public Benefit Conveyances Used as Intended, but Opportunities Exist to Enhance Federal Oversight. GAO-06-511, June 21.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-511
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06511high.pdf
Friday, July 21, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Slough going The battle over the Bitterroot Valley’s Mitchell Slough, and its implications for the state’s Stream Access law, is heading into the next arena. On July 12, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks and the Bitterroot River Protection Association announced they were appealing District Judge Ted Mizner’s May ruling that the slough is not a natural body of water, and thus not open to the public. In his decision, Mizner stated that 130 years ago Mitchell Slough might have been considered a natural body of water under the Montana Stream Access Law, but today “…the channel itself is so changed that it can no longer be considered a natural channel even though some portions of the channel are still in identifiable historic locations.” Bob Lane, lead attorney for FWP, says that’s the point at the heart of the state’s appeal. Russ McElyea, a Bozeman attorney for the Montana Farm Bureau, says farmers, ranchers and landowners are investing a lot of money to improve their land. He says as real estate prices go up, landowners are more inclined to spend money on improving wildlife habitat. “They’re spending money on things like taking a ditch and turning it into a trout fishery that didn’t previously exist as a trout fishery,” he says. “They want to protect their investment. They’re not making the investment for public benefit, they’re making it for their benefit.”....
In Northwest water clash, a push to talk A variation on that tune might be the anthem of the Klamath River Basin in Oregon and California, as farmers and fishermen work out their relationship in an era of troubled community economics and limited natural resources in parts of the American West. Except in this case, they really do have growing concern for each other's livelihood as the region sorts through its longstanding problem of allocating contested water supplies. Farmers who rely on irrigation at the headwaters of the Klamath, and downstream commercial fishermen who gather their catch in the area where the river empties into the Pacific, are being urged to change their work and way of life to benefit endangered fisheries. Some of this involves the work of the Nature Conservancy and other means of purchasing development rights - irrigation allotments in the case of farmers, fishing permits and even boats in the case of fishermen. But it's a complicated business also involving sovereign Indian tribes with treaty rights including water: those who traditionally harvest what have become greatly diminished suckerfish populations in Klamath Lake in Oregon, and Pacific Coast tribes in California that fish for dwindling salmon stocks. Now, the US departments of Interior, Commerce, and Agriculture, plus the White House Council on Environmental Quality, are being asked to hold a regional "summit" out here to address longstanding water issues in the Klamath Basin. Rep. Greg Walden (R) of Oregon - through whose sprawling, mostly rural district the Klamath flows - is organizing the effort....
Agency providing more aid for livestock water supplies North Dakota is offering more aid to help parched ranchers provide water for their livestock, though officials say its usefulness is limited unless more water well drillers begin working in the drought-ravaged southwest. The state Water Commission voted Thursday to double the amount of aid in a drought disaster livestock watering program from $200,000 to $400,000. Individual ranchers may qualify for up to $10,500 in aid, up from $3,500. Dale Frink, the commission's chief engineer, said the initial $200,000 allocation is already spoken for, and dozens of calls are coming in daily with inquiries. The commission also decided Thursday to allow program grants to be spent on electric pumps and hookups, abolish a requirement for a written estimate of the cost of a water supply project, and allow 180 days, instead of 60, to complete it....
3 PLEAD GUILTY TO ECOTERRORISM FIREBOMBINGS Three people pleaded guilty Thursday to charges they were part of an ecoterrorism cell calling itself ''The Family'' that firebombed a ranger station, lumber mills, wild horse corrals and two meat packing plants. As part of the plea agreement, the three agreed to cooperate in the continuing investigation of 10 others who are scheduled to go on trial Oct. 31 in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore., for a series of firebombings around the Northwest from 1996 to 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. ''This is a substantial step in resolution of this case and successful prosecution of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front in these crimes,'' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Peifer from Eugene. The two shadowy groups claimed responsibility for the attacks at the time. In pleading guilty, the three admitted they tried to intimidate and coerce federal agencies, private businesses and the public through sabotage and mass destruction, the Justice Department said in a statement....
Green Scare Target Zach Jenson Pleads Guilty, Snitches on Friend In January, three people in their twenties were arrested in California for allegedly planning to sabotage a power station, cell-phone tower, and a US Forest Service facility. A press release from U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott states Zachary Jenson, 20, of Monroe, WA, pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of conspiracy and agreed to testify against his friend and alleged co-conspirator, Eric McDavid, age 28. Jenson will be sentenced October 3rd, and may be freed on bail Friday. Lauren Weiner, 23, made the same deal in May. She is now free pending her sentencing hearing August 8. The FBI accused the three of planning the sabotage in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, an underground network that targets developers, logging companies, and government agencies that destroy wilderness and wildlife habitat. enson and Weiner have named McDavid as the supposed ringleader. McDavid remains in custody at the Sacramento County jail, where he has resorted to hunger strikes in order to receive vegan meals. His supporters say he has been held in a Total Separation Unit, meaning that he spends almost all his time alone in a solitary cell. Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network, an advocacy group “supporting all who do not compromise in defense of Mother Earth,” lists both McDavid and Jenson on its website, but its policy states “we DO NOT support people that provide information to law enforcement or snitch on allies or co-defendants.” Prisoners who testify against others are dropped from the support list. A paid FBI infiltrator known as “Anna” is responsible for the bulk of the evidence against Jenson, Weiner and McDavid. She provided the funds to rent a house for the group near Auburn, California, which was wired to record the conversations inside....
Lightning hits house, leaves hole in ceiling Lois Barber was house-sitting at her son's Antelope Valley residence on Edelweiss Lane this week when a most unwelcome intruder barged in. A bolt of lightning apparently traveled down the pipe of a wood-burning stove, startling the 75-year-old woman and the Topaz Lake Volunteer Fire Department crew outside on structure protection in the Jackass Flat fire. "I just got done talking to my son," Barber said. "I hadn't even put the phone down when I heard a sound so loud, I thought the house had exploded. "The first thing I saw was all this spackle stuff was everywhere. Then I noticed the hole in the ceiling. I didn't know exactly what was going on, but I was afraid maybe the house was going to catch fire."....
Thriving cheatgrass poses high wildfire danger to region Cheatgrass is flourishing in some areas scorched two years ago by the Waterfall Fire and presents a high fire danger this summer, a U.S. Forest Service official warned recently. Grasses planted at higher elevations within a year after the Waterfall Fire have taken root and cheatgrass is not flourishing there, Pemberton said, but that could change. The watershed seems to be recovering from the Waterfall Fire as water used for drinking in Carson City needs less treatment, city officials said. And the battle against noxious weeds continues as 100 goats were brought in from Fallon to eat Russian knapweed in Kings Canyon Meadow. The Linehan Complex fire was largely cheatgrass-driven and a situation exists for a similar fire in the lower areas west of Carson City, Pemberton said....
Vibrating trucks to help locate gas Seismic testing in the Clark area next month will include the use of two 17-ton "thumper trucks" in up to 200 spots where explosive charges cannot be placed. Bruce Fulker, vice president of permit services for Quantum Geophysical, told about 15 members of the Clark Resource Council this week of plans to use the vehicles. Also known as vibroseis trucks, the vehicles are equipped with pads that send energy into the ground, allowing the mapping of underground features to a depth of about 2,000 feet. Quantum Geophysical is conducting the study for Oklahoma-based Windsor Energy to locate gas deposits across a 47-square-mile area including U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and private lands. Project guidelines require a buffer of at least a quarter-mile between small, buried explosive charges and any "hazard spots," including structures, wells, springs or pipelines. Fulker said a hazard survey showed several areas where no charges could be set....
Some in GOP fighting Western energy drilling Western Republicans are starting to buck against oil and gas drilling on federal lands prized for their wildlife and recreational opportunities. Amid a Western energy boom promoted by the Bush administration, Republican officeholders from Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico and California recently have called for bans on drilling and other development on large blocs of national forest lands in their states. Critics of drilling say their objections reflect growing opposition among traditionally conservative voters. "You are seeing more and more opposition from people who are concerned about hunting, about fishing, about drinking water supplies, about a state's way of life," says Chris Wood, vice president for conservation of Trout Unlimited, a national fish conservation group. Mark Rey, the Bush administration's undersecretary of Agriculture who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, says the recent objections do not represent a Western revolt against drilling, but rather a general concern that "development is done sensitively and well."....
HD drilling upsets Bayfield board Bayfield Town Board members have expressed their dismay over a U.S. Forest Service decision to allow gas drilling in roadless areas of the HD Mountains. "Your pretty pictures, simply put, are nothing but window dressing on the fact that you're not going to honor our request," said Niel Hieb, a Town Board member. The towns of Bayfield and Ignacio, the city of Durango and counties of La Plata and Archuleta all passed resolutions asking the Forest Service to bar gas drilling in roadless areas and in a 1.5-mile buffer zone near the outcrop. The resolutions were passed during a public comment period for the Forest Service's environmental impact statement. But Forest Service officials said they have no legal rationale to refuse to honor leases that were signed with the intent of gas development. The HDs hold an estimated 2.5 trillion cubic feet of gas, with the potential to produce $15 billion in gross revenue for gas companies....
Boom Times in Wyoming, and Worrying Times as Well Wyoming knows a boom when it sees one because it has seen them before. And, to its credit, the state is trying to find a way to feed some of its revenue into programs that will help even out the shock when the boom busts — or simply tapers off. It is putting large sums into its Permanent Mineral Trust Fund, which collects a portion of the severance tax paid for Wyoming minerals, and it is adding to what it calls its Legislative Stabilization Reserve, a temporary savings account. The state has at last created a wildlife trust fund first proposed in 1982 but regularly defeated in the State Legislature, and it has endowed scholarship programs and the building of new schools. It’s hard to argue with prosperity, but a lot of people in Wyoming are worrying about its ultimate costs. Over the past few years, for instance, the rush to develop coal-bed methane, a process that involves extracting methane from water pumped out of coal seams, has done enormous harm to the landscape of the Powder River Basin in north-central Wyoming and to the reputation of the petroleum industry. In the western part of the basin, near Sheridan, many of the companies that rushed in to dig coal-bed wells have gone belly up, leaving the state, or no one, to pay the costs of mitigating the damage. But the problem is bigger than that. Since George Bush took office, the federal government has turned the American West into a gas and oil open house. In nearly every Western state, the Bureau of Land Management’s main function seems to be auctioning off petroleum leases....
USFS offers deal to miner The U.S. Forest Service has offered one of Pitkin County's last miners a plea bargain to settle a dispute that erupted in December. Under terms of the proposal, Robert Congdon would plead guilty to interfering with a law enforcement officer and damaging natural features, according to Aspen District Ranger Bill Westbrook. Charges of illegal off-road vehicle use and destruction of historic resources would be dropped, Westbrook said. He stressed that a federal judge still hasn't approved the plea bargain. The deal would hinge on Congdon's reclamation of roads he created for access to the Maree Love Mine on a lower flank of Mount Sopris. He also would have to dismantle a structure he built from an old cabin on the site and newer lumber. "It looks like a large treehouse on stilts," Westbrook said. Congdon was livid when told this week that Westbrook had discussed terms of the plea bargain during a meeting with the Pitkin County commissioners. He said he had no comment on the proposed deal....
Baucus backs removal of Mike Horse Dam Sen. Max Baucus said Thursday that he supports removing the Blackfoot River's Mike Horse Dam, which consists of waste from historic mining, and wants to hear more about ways to deal with pollution at the site. The river immortalized in the Norman McLean novel "A River Runs Through It" is "part of our recreational heritage as Montanans," Baucus wrote Gail Kimbell, the U.S. Forest Service's regional director in Missoula. "Unfortunately, the Mike Horse Dam on the Blackfoot River threatens this gem of the Treasure State." In 1975, toxic releases from the earthen dam flowed downstream and killed thousands of fish. The Montana Democrat said removing the dam, east of Lincoln in an area managed by the Forest Service, appears best for the upper Blackfoot. Baucus requested the Forest Service extend by 30 days its Aug. 16 deadline for public comment on options for dealing with the Mike Horse site. "It is important that the Forest Service work with the local community to get the cleanup right the first time," Baucus wrote....
Peak 8 to get more powder? Several early season “wind events” at Breckenridge last winter have led resort officials to propose the installation of about 1,200 feet of wind fence along the top of Peak 8, to protect and enhance the snow cover in the terrain served by the new Imperial Express chair, said Breckenridge spokeswoman Niki DeFord. The final placement and length of the new fence hasn’t been determined yet, but the White River National Forest recently listed the project in its quarterly update of public-land projects slated for environmental review. The idea is to optimize the skiing experience on the Peak 8 terrain, Forest Service officials said. “We’re doing some internal scoping,” said Joe Foreman, winter sports expert for the Dillon District, explaining that the evaluation for the controversial Peak 8 lift did not include a look at snow fencing. If everything “looks benign,” he said, the Forest Service would follow an approval process that doesn’t include public comment or extensive environmental review. In other projects, when snow fencing is proposed above treeline, the Forest Service has looked at a variety of issues, including how the added accumulation of snow might affect the high-alpine tundra and the hydrology of the area. A fence might also provide a perch for raptors in an area where there was none before, with potential impacts to small mammal populations....
Salazar, others accuse feds of flailing on fires Sen. Ken Salazar complained Wednesday that lack of money has stymied most of the projects to treat bark beetle-damaged forests in Colorado to reduce wildfire risk. Salazar's criticism came as senators from Western states scolded Bush administration officials for what they said was the slow pace of efforts to decrease the risk of catastrophic fires. "You've got big chunks of the West that are on fire," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said at the hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "We cannot afford foot dragging." Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., warned Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officials that "there will be hell to pay" if any New Mexico towns burn because federal agencies lagged in preparing for forest fires....
Fire prevention efforts too slow, senators say With wildfires raging in the West, senators of both parties slammed the Interior Department and Forest Service on Wednesday for carrying out wildfire prevention work on less than half of 1 percent of land set for treatment under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003. With only about 77,000 acres treated out of the 20 million acres identified by the legislation, senators said it would take the administration more than 200 years to carry out the law at the current rate. No acreage in Montana and Wyoming has been treated under the act, witnesses said. "The implementation of this is light years away from the U.S. Senate vision of what was to be done," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "I just consider that unacceptable. We have big chunks of the West on fire. We just cannot afford foot-dragging." Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., said at the Senate Energy Committee hearing that there haven't been any projects in Wyoming to this point despite the potential for wildfires in the forests there. Thomas later called the Forest Service's inaction unacceptable and said it "could compromise people's safety and make firefighting efforts that much harder."....
Parker refutes Forest Service position Roy Parker said Wednesday that Ski Apache officials were told they needed no permit for wells drilled at the elevation selected for two designed to supplement four existing wells on U.S. Forest Service land. The former manager of the ski resort owned by the Mescalero Apache Tribe was reacting to a Lincoln County Commission session Tuesday about an application filed by Forest Service officials for a supplemental wells permit from the State Engineer's Office. Buck Sanchez, who heads the Smokey Bear Ranger District of the Lincoln National Forest, said the agency was not aware of the two new wells until they were discovered by Juan Hernandez with the Roswell SEO field office. The resort is situated on tribal and Forest Service land under a special use permit. "The Forest Service knew and we were told at that altitude, no permits were necessary. That's just the way it was. I don't care what the county commissioners say," Parker said. "We had a licensed well driller do it and we checked along the way. Now after the fact, they are saying that a permit was necessary."....
State lacks funds to check if fish are safe to eat New Mexico's 314,000 anglers each spend an average of 11 days a year in pursuit of trout, bass, catfish and other species in lakes and rivers around the state. But are the fish they catch safe to eat? The New Mexico Environment Department cannot answer that question with any certainty for most waters in the state. However, the agency's lone fisheries biologist, Gary Schiffmiller, has been able to scrape together some grant money from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other sources over the past few years to begin testing fish from a handful of the state's waters. Schiffmiller's most recent work has been funded by a $150,000 federal grant, which was enough to collect and test about 50 composite samples of fish at $3,000 per study. As the results have come in from each study, it's been more and more bad news almost everywhere he's looked. This year, channel catfish in Abiquiú Lake, carp in Cochiti Lake and catfish and carp in stretches of the Rio Grande near Los Alamos, were found to be unsafe to eat because they are contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a group of industrial chemicals suspected of causing cancer and other serious health problems....
Search-and-devour mission At a lake outside Yosemite, my pals Jane and Steve went to bed knowing they had protected their food with a perfect "bear hang." Yet, for hours they listened to a black bear smack its lips as it finished off a week's worth of food - and urinated on anything it didn't eat. Unless you want a very short backcountry trip, you must protect your food from critters, especially Ursus americanus. And I hate to break it to you, but Yogi has one up on us: We aren't smarter than the average bear. The Yosemite ranger guffawed two years ago when I told him that, although I had a bear canister, I was considering hanging some of my backpacking food. Indeed, national parks now cite campers who leave food unattended or in view in their car; my friend Dan got a warning for leaving a coffee cup on his picnic table in Yellowstone....
When art and farming collide (in a good way) In Goldendale, art and agriculture have cross-pollinated into an exhibit titled "Sustaining Change on the American Farm: An Artist-Farmer Exchange." The art/educational exhibition is a partnership between the Maryhill Museum of Art and the American Farmland Trust. In 2003, the two organizations began searching out 12 Northwest artists to pair with 12 farmers and ranchers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho who have proven to be good conservation stewards of the land. (Each year, the American Farmland Trust's conservation districts give awards to agriculturally based businesses and individuals for practicing environmentally sound farming methods. The artists then spent nearly a year observing, experiencing and learning about the challenges farmers face. The resulting exhibition of their work looks at what the farmers do to conserve natural resources and heritage while making allowances for the needs of a growing population....
Cowboys Get Their Day A resolution recently passed by the state legislature names Saturday as "National Day of the American Cowboy." The resolution, which was authored by District 12 state Senator Jeff Denham (R-Merced), who represents San Benito County, passed both houses of the legislature late last month. "The cowboy embodies honesty, integrity, courage, compassion, respect, patriotism, a strong work ethic and continues to play a significant role in America's culture and economy," Denham said. "The cowboy loves, lives off of and depends on the land and its creatures." Local cowboy and rancher John Hodges said he appreciated the recognition. "I think that's an excellent idea," he said. Hodges added, however, that its becoming tougher and tougher for ranchers to make it in California because of encroaching development and an ever-increasing cost of doing business. "These days, if you really want to be a cowboy you have to go to Wyoming or Nebraska," he said. There are about 800,000 ranchers in the United States, according to the resolution, and rodeo is the sixth most popular sport....
National Cowboy Day suited for Agoura Hills The steadfast lives of cowboys and cowgirls have been glorified in television, film and books for decades, but an act of Congress has transformed the rough and ready cowboy into an American icon that should be admired, celebrated and acknowledged. Agoura Hills Mayor Denis Weber read a congressional resolution at last week's city council meeting that proclaimed July 22 as the National Day of the American Cowboy. Dave Thornbury, Buck Wicall and Sharon Brumnett accepted the proclamation on behalf of all of the cowboys and cowgirls that reside in the city. The proclamation captured the many facets of the cowboy spirit. It stated that "pioneering men and women, recognized as cowboys, helped establish the American West," and the cowboy spirit exemplifies "sound family values and good common sense." The decree also noted that cowboys embody honesty, integrity, courage, compassion, respect, a strong work ethic and patriotism....
Slough going The battle over the Bitterroot Valley’s Mitchell Slough, and its implications for the state’s Stream Access law, is heading into the next arena. On July 12, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks and the Bitterroot River Protection Association announced they were appealing District Judge Ted Mizner’s May ruling that the slough is not a natural body of water, and thus not open to the public. In his decision, Mizner stated that 130 years ago Mitchell Slough might have been considered a natural body of water under the Montana Stream Access Law, but today “…the channel itself is so changed that it can no longer be considered a natural channel even though some portions of the channel are still in identifiable historic locations.” Bob Lane, lead attorney for FWP, says that’s the point at the heart of the state’s appeal. Russ McElyea, a Bozeman attorney for the Montana Farm Bureau, says farmers, ranchers and landowners are investing a lot of money to improve their land. He says as real estate prices go up, landowners are more inclined to spend money on improving wildlife habitat. “They’re spending money on things like taking a ditch and turning it into a trout fishery that didn’t previously exist as a trout fishery,” he says. “They want to protect their investment. They’re not making the investment for public benefit, they’re making it for their benefit.”....
In Northwest water clash, a push to talk A variation on that tune might be the anthem of the Klamath River Basin in Oregon and California, as farmers and fishermen work out their relationship in an era of troubled community economics and limited natural resources in parts of the American West. Except in this case, they really do have growing concern for each other's livelihood as the region sorts through its longstanding problem of allocating contested water supplies. Farmers who rely on irrigation at the headwaters of the Klamath, and downstream commercial fishermen who gather their catch in the area where the river empties into the Pacific, are being urged to change their work and way of life to benefit endangered fisheries. Some of this involves the work of the Nature Conservancy and other means of purchasing development rights - irrigation allotments in the case of farmers, fishing permits and even boats in the case of fishermen. But it's a complicated business also involving sovereign Indian tribes with treaty rights including water: those who traditionally harvest what have become greatly diminished suckerfish populations in Klamath Lake in Oregon, and Pacific Coast tribes in California that fish for dwindling salmon stocks. Now, the US departments of Interior, Commerce, and Agriculture, plus the White House Council on Environmental Quality, are being asked to hold a regional "summit" out here to address longstanding water issues in the Klamath Basin. Rep. Greg Walden (R) of Oregon - through whose sprawling, mostly rural district the Klamath flows - is organizing the effort....
Agency providing more aid for livestock water supplies North Dakota is offering more aid to help parched ranchers provide water for their livestock, though officials say its usefulness is limited unless more water well drillers begin working in the drought-ravaged southwest. The state Water Commission voted Thursday to double the amount of aid in a drought disaster livestock watering program from $200,000 to $400,000. Individual ranchers may qualify for up to $10,500 in aid, up from $3,500. Dale Frink, the commission's chief engineer, said the initial $200,000 allocation is already spoken for, and dozens of calls are coming in daily with inquiries. The commission also decided Thursday to allow program grants to be spent on electric pumps and hookups, abolish a requirement for a written estimate of the cost of a water supply project, and allow 180 days, instead of 60, to complete it....
3 PLEAD GUILTY TO ECOTERRORISM FIREBOMBINGS Three people pleaded guilty Thursday to charges they were part of an ecoterrorism cell calling itself ''The Family'' that firebombed a ranger station, lumber mills, wild horse corrals and two meat packing plants. As part of the plea agreement, the three agreed to cooperate in the continuing investigation of 10 others who are scheduled to go on trial Oct. 31 in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore., for a series of firebombings around the Northwest from 1996 to 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. ''This is a substantial step in resolution of this case and successful prosecution of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front in these crimes,'' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Peifer from Eugene. The two shadowy groups claimed responsibility for the attacks at the time. In pleading guilty, the three admitted they tried to intimidate and coerce federal agencies, private businesses and the public through sabotage and mass destruction, the Justice Department said in a statement....
Green Scare Target Zach Jenson Pleads Guilty, Snitches on Friend In January, three people in their twenties were arrested in California for allegedly planning to sabotage a power station, cell-phone tower, and a US Forest Service facility. A press release from U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott states Zachary Jenson, 20, of Monroe, WA, pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of conspiracy and agreed to testify against his friend and alleged co-conspirator, Eric McDavid, age 28. Jenson will be sentenced October 3rd, and may be freed on bail Friday. Lauren Weiner, 23, made the same deal in May. She is now free pending her sentencing hearing August 8. The FBI accused the three of planning the sabotage in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, an underground network that targets developers, logging companies, and government agencies that destroy wilderness and wildlife habitat. enson and Weiner have named McDavid as the supposed ringleader. McDavid remains in custody at the Sacramento County jail, where he has resorted to hunger strikes in order to receive vegan meals. His supporters say he has been held in a Total Separation Unit, meaning that he spends almost all his time alone in a solitary cell. Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network, an advocacy group “supporting all who do not compromise in defense of Mother Earth,” lists both McDavid and Jenson on its website, but its policy states “we DO NOT support people that provide information to law enforcement or snitch on allies or co-defendants.” Prisoners who testify against others are dropped from the support list. A paid FBI infiltrator known as “Anna” is responsible for the bulk of the evidence against Jenson, Weiner and McDavid. She provided the funds to rent a house for the group near Auburn, California, which was wired to record the conversations inside....
Lightning hits house, leaves hole in ceiling Lois Barber was house-sitting at her son's Antelope Valley residence on Edelweiss Lane this week when a most unwelcome intruder barged in. A bolt of lightning apparently traveled down the pipe of a wood-burning stove, startling the 75-year-old woman and the Topaz Lake Volunteer Fire Department crew outside on structure protection in the Jackass Flat fire. "I just got done talking to my son," Barber said. "I hadn't even put the phone down when I heard a sound so loud, I thought the house had exploded. "The first thing I saw was all this spackle stuff was everywhere. Then I noticed the hole in the ceiling. I didn't know exactly what was going on, but I was afraid maybe the house was going to catch fire."....
Thriving cheatgrass poses high wildfire danger to region Cheatgrass is flourishing in some areas scorched two years ago by the Waterfall Fire and presents a high fire danger this summer, a U.S. Forest Service official warned recently. Grasses planted at higher elevations within a year after the Waterfall Fire have taken root and cheatgrass is not flourishing there, Pemberton said, but that could change. The watershed seems to be recovering from the Waterfall Fire as water used for drinking in Carson City needs less treatment, city officials said. And the battle against noxious weeds continues as 100 goats were brought in from Fallon to eat Russian knapweed in Kings Canyon Meadow. The Linehan Complex fire was largely cheatgrass-driven and a situation exists for a similar fire in the lower areas west of Carson City, Pemberton said....
Vibrating trucks to help locate gas Seismic testing in the Clark area next month will include the use of two 17-ton "thumper trucks" in up to 200 spots where explosive charges cannot be placed. Bruce Fulker, vice president of permit services for Quantum Geophysical, told about 15 members of the Clark Resource Council this week of plans to use the vehicles. Also known as vibroseis trucks, the vehicles are equipped with pads that send energy into the ground, allowing the mapping of underground features to a depth of about 2,000 feet. Quantum Geophysical is conducting the study for Oklahoma-based Windsor Energy to locate gas deposits across a 47-square-mile area including U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and private lands. Project guidelines require a buffer of at least a quarter-mile between small, buried explosive charges and any "hazard spots," including structures, wells, springs or pipelines. Fulker said a hazard survey showed several areas where no charges could be set....
Some in GOP fighting Western energy drilling Western Republicans are starting to buck against oil and gas drilling on federal lands prized for their wildlife and recreational opportunities. Amid a Western energy boom promoted by the Bush administration, Republican officeholders from Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico and California recently have called for bans on drilling and other development on large blocs of national forest lands in their states. Critics of drilling say their objections reflect growing opposition among traditionally conservative voters. "You are seeing more and more opposition from people who are concerned about hunting, about fishing, about drinking water supplies, about a state's way of life," says Chris Wood, vice president for conservation of Trout Unlimited, a national fish conservation group. Mark Rey, the Bush administration's undersecretary of Agriculture who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, says the recent objections do not represent a Western revolt against drilling, but rather a general concern that "development is done sensitively and well."....
HD drilling upsets Bayfield board Bayfield Town Board members have expressed their dismay over a U.S. Forest Service decision to allow gas drilling in roadless areas of the HD Mountains. "Your pretty pictures, simply put, are nothing but window dressing on the fact that you're not going to honor our request," said Niel Hieb, a Town Board member. The towns of Bayfield and Ignacio, the city of Durango and counties of La Plata and Archuleta all passed resolutions asking the Forest Service to bar gas drilling in roadless areas and in a 1.5-mile buffer zone near the outcrop. The resolutions were passed during a public comment period for the Forest Service's environmental impact statement. But Forest Service officials said they have no legal rationale to refuse to honor leases that were signed with the intent of gas development. The HDs hold an estimated 2.5 trillion cubic feet of gas, with the potential to produce $15 billion in gross revenue for gas companies....
Boom Times in Wyoming, and Worrying Times as Well Wyoming knows a boom when it sees one because it has seen them before. And, to its credit, the state is trying to find a way to feed some of its revenue into programs that will help even out the shock when the boom busts — or simply tapers off. It is putting large sums into its Permanent Mineral Trust Fund, which collects a portion of the severance tax paid for Wyoming minerals, and it is adding to what it calls its Legislative Stabilization Reserve, a temporary savings account. The state has at last created a wildlife trust fund first proposed in 1982 but regularly defeated in the State Legislature, and it has endowed scholarship programs and the building of new schools. It’s hard to argue with prosperity, but a lot of people in Wyoming are worrying about its ultimate costs. Over the past few years, for instance, the rush to develop coal-bed methane, a process that involves extracting methane from water pumped out of coal seams, has done enormous harm to the landscape of the Powder River Basin in north-central Wyoming and to the reputation of the petroleum industry. In the western part of the basin, near Sheridan, many of the companies that rushed in to dig coal-bed wells have gone belly up, leaving the state, or no one, to pay the costs of mitigating the damage. But the problem is bigger than that. Since George Bush took office, the federal government has turned the American West into a gas and oil open house. In nearly every Western state, the Bureau of Land Management’s main function seems to be auctioning off petroleum leases....
USFS offers deal to miner The U.S. Forest Service has offered one of Pitkin County's last miners a plea bargain to settle a dispute that erupted in December. Under terms of the proposal, Robert Congdon would plead guilty to interfering with a law enforcement officer and damaging natural features, according to Aspen District Ranger Bill Westbrook. Charges of illegal off-road vehicle use and destruction of historic resources would be dropped, Westbrook said. He stressed that a federal judge still hasn't approved the plea bargain. The deal would hinge on Congdon's reclamation of roads he created for access to the Maree Love Mine on a lower flank of Mount Sopris. He also would have to dismantle a structure he built from an old cabin on the site and newer lumber. "It looks like a large treehouse on stilts," Westbrook said. Congdon was livid when told this week that Westbrook had discussed terms of the plea bargain during a meeting with the Pitkin County commissioners. He said he had no comment on the proposed deal....
Baucus backs removal of Mike Horse Dam Sen. Max Baucus said Thursday that he supports removing the Blackfoot River's Mike Horse Dam, which consists of waste from historic mining, and wants to hear more about ways to deal with pollution at the site. The river immortalized in the Norman McLean novel "A River Runs Through It" is "part of our recreational heritage as Montanans," Baucus wrote Gail Kimbell, the U.S. Forest Service's regional director in Missoula. "Unfortunately, the Mike Horse Dam on the Blackfoot River threatens this gem of the Treasure State." In 1975, toxic releases from the earthen dam flowed downstream and killed thousands of fish. The Montana Democrat said removing the dam, east of Lincoln in an area managed by the Forest Service, appears best for the upper Blackfoot. Baucus requested the Forest Service extend by 30 days its Aug. 16 deadline for public comment on options for dealing with the Mike Horse site. "It is important that the Forest Service work with the local community to get the cleanup right the first time," Baucus wrote....
Peak 8 to get more powder? Several early season “wind events” at Breckenridge last winter have led resort officials to propose the installation of about 1,200 feet of wind fence along the top of Peak 8, to protect and enhance the snow cover in the terrain served by the new Imperial Express chair, said Breckenridge spokeswoman Niki DeFord. The final placement and length of the new fence hasn’t been determined yet, but the White River National Forest recently listed the project in its quarterly update of public-land projects slated for environmental review. The idea is to optimize the skiing experience on the Peak 8 terrain, Forest Service officials said. “We’re doing some internal scoping,” said Joe Foreman, winter sports expert for the Dillon District, explaining that the evaluation for the controversial Peak 8 lift did not include a look at snow fencing. If everything “looks benign,” he said, the Forest Service would follow an approval process that doesn’t include public comment or extensive environmental review. In other projects, when snow fencing is proposed above treeline, the Forest Service has looked at a variety of issues, including how the added accumulation of snow might affect the high-alpine tundra and the hydrology of the area. A fence might also provide a perch for raptors in an area where there was none before, with potential impacts to small mammal populations....
Salazar, others accuse feds of flailing on fires Sen. Ken Salazar complained Wednesday that lack of money has stymied most of the projects to treat bark beetle-damaged forests in Colorado to reduce wildfire risk. Salazar's criticism came as senators from Western states scolded Bush administration officials for what they said was the slow pace of efforts to decrease the risk of catastrophic fires. "You've got big chunks of the West that are on fire," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said at the hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "We cannot afford foot dragging." Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., warned Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officials that "there will be hell to pay" if any New Mexico towns burn because federal agencies lagged in preparing for forest fires....
Fire prevention efforts too slow, senators say With wildfires raging in the West, senators of both parties slammed the Interior Department and Forest Service on Wednesday for carrying out wildfire prevention work on less than half of 1 percent of land set for treatment under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003. With only about 77,000 acres treated out of the 20 million acres identified by the legislation, senators said it would take the administration more than 200 years to carry out the law at the current rate. No acreage in Montana and Wyoming has been treated under the act, witnesses said. "The implementation of this is light years away from the U.S. Senate vision of what was to be done," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "I just consider that unacceptable. We have big chunks of the West on fire. We just cannot afford foot-dragging." Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., said at the Senate Energy Committee hearing that there haven't been any projects in Wyoming to this point despite the potential for wildfires in the forests there. Thomas later called the Forest Service's inaction unacceptable and said it "could compromise people's safety and make firefighting efforts that much harder."....
Parker refutes Forest Service position Roy Parker said Wednesday that Ski Apache officials were told they needed no permit for wells drilled at the elevation selected for two designed to supplement four existing wells on U.S. Forest Service land. The former manager of the ski resort owned by the Mescalero Apache Tribe was reacting to a Lincoln County Commission session Tuesday about an application filed by Forest Service officials for a supplemental wells permit from the State Engineer's Office. Buck Sanchez, who heads the Smokey Bear Ranger District of the Lincoln National Forest, said the agency was not aware of the two new wells until they were discovered by Juan Hernandez with the Roswell SEO field office. The resort is situated on tribal and Forest Service land under a special use permit. "The Forest Service knew and we were told at that altitude, no permits were necessary. That's just the way it was. I don't care what the county commissioners say," Parker said. "We had a licensed well driller do it and we checked along the way. Now after the fact, they are saying that a permit was necessary."....
State lacks funds to check if fish are safe to eat New Mexico's 314,000 anglers each spend an average of 11 days a year in pursuit of trout, bass, catfish and other species in lakes and rivers around the state. But are the fish they catch safe to eat? The New Mexico Environment Department cannot answer that question with any certainty for most waters in the state. However, the agency's lone fisheries biologist, Gary Schiffmiller, has been able to scrape together some grant money from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other sources over the past few years to begin testing fish from a handful of the state's waters. Schiffmiller's most recent work has been funded by a $150,000 federal grant, which was enough to collect and test about 50 composite samples of fish at $3,000 per study. As the results have come in from each study, it's been more and more bad news almost everywhere he's looked. This year, channel catfish in Abiquiú Lake, carp in Cochiti Lake and catfish and carp in stretches of the Rio Grande near Los Alamos, were found to be unsafe to eat because they are contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a group of industrial chemicals suspected of causing cancer and other serious health problems....
Search-and-devour mission At a lake outside Yosemite, my pals Jane and Steve went to bed knowing they had protected their food with a perfect "bear hang." Yet, for hours they listened to a black bear smack its lips as it finished off a week's worth of food - and urinated on anything it didn't eat. Unless you want a very short backcountry trip, you must protect your food from critters, especially Ursus americanus. And I hate to break it to you, but Yogi has one up on us: We aren't smarter than the average bear. The Yosemite ranger guffawed two years ago when I told him that, although I had a bear canister, I was considering hanging some of my backpacking food. Indeed, national parks now cite campers who leave food unattended or in view in their car; my friend Dan got a warning for leaving a coffee cup on his picnic table in Yellowstone....
When art and farming collide (in a good way) In Goldendale, art and agriculture have cross-pollinated into an exhibit titled "Sustaining Change on the American Farm: An Artist-Farmer Exchange." The art/educational exhibition is a partnership between the Maryhill Museum of Art and the American Farmland Trust. In 2003, the two organizations began searching out 12 Northwest artists to pair with 12 farmers and ranchers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho who have proven to be good conservation stewards of the land. (Each year, the American Farmland Trust's conservation districts give awards to agriculturally based businesses and individuals for practicing environmentally sound farming methods. The artists then spent nearly a year observing, experiencing and learning about the challenges farmers face. The resulting exhibition of their work looks at what the farmers do to conserve natural resources and heritage while making allowances for the needs of a growing population....
Cowboys Get Their Day A resolution recently passed by the state legislature names Saturday as "National Day of the American Cowboy." The resolution, which was authored by District 12 state Senator Jeff Denham (R-Merced), who represents San Benito County, passed both houses of the legislature late last month. "The cowboy embodies honesty, integrity, courage, compassion, respect, patriotism, a strong work ethic and continues to play a significant role in America's culture and economy," Denham said. "The cowboy loves, lives off of and depends on the land and its creatures." Local cowboy and rancher John Hodges said he appreciated the recognition. "I think that's an excellent idea," he said. Hodges added, however, that its becoming tougher and tougher for ranchers to make it in California because of encroaching development and an ever-increasing cost of doing business. "These days, if you really want to be a cowboy you have to go to Wyoming or Nebraska," he said. There are about 800,000 ranchers in the United States, according to the resolution, and rodeo is the sixth most popular sport....
National Cowboy Day suited for Agoura Hills The steadfast lives of cowboys and cowgirls have been glorified in television, film and books for decades, but an act of Congress has transformed the rough and ready cowboy into an American icon that should be admired, celebrated and acknowledged. Agoura Hills Mayor Denis Weber read a congressional resolution at last week's city council meeting that proclaimed July 22 as the National Day of the American Cowboy. Dave Thornbury, Buck Wicall and Sharon Brumnett accepted the proclamation on behalf of all of the cowboys and cowgirls that reside in the city. The proclamation captured the many facets of the cowboy spirit. It stated that "pioneering men and women, recognized as cowboys, helped establish the American West," and the cowboy spirit exemplifies "sound family values and good common sense." The decree also noted that cowboys embody honesty, integrity, courage, compassion, respect, a strong work ethic and patriotism....
Thursday, July 20, 2006
MAD COW DISEASE
USDA ANNOUNCES NEW BSE SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced today that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will soon begin transitioning to an ongoing Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) surveillance program that corresponds to the extremely low prevalence of the disease in the U.S. "It's time that our surveillance efforts reflect what we now know is a very, very low level of BSE in the United States," said Johanns. "This ongoing surveillance program will maintain our ability to detect BSE, provide assurance that our interlocking safeguards are successfully preventing BSE, while continuing to exceed science-based international guidelines." The ongoing BSE surveillance program will sample approximately 40,000 animals each year. Under the program, USDA will continue to collect samples from a variety of sites and from the cattle populations where the disease is most likely to be detected, similar to the enhanced surveillance program procedures. The new program will not only comply with the science-based international guidelines set forth by the World Animal Health organization (OIE), it will provide testing at a level ten times higher than the OIE recommended level. USDA has an obligation to provide 30 days notice of the change to contractors who are performing the sampling and testing, so the earliest the new surveillance program would begin is late August. Once the ongoing surveillance program begins, USDA will periodically analyze the surveillance strategy to ensure the program provides the foundation for market confidence in the safety of U.S. cattle. In April, USDA released an analysis of 7 years of BSE surveillance data. This included data from an enhanced surveillance program, which began in June 2004, as a one-time effort to determine the prevalence of BSE in the United States. The analysis concluded that the prevalence of BSE in the United States is less than 1 case per million adult cattle. The analysis further revealed that the most likely number of cases is between 4 and 7 infected animals out of 42 million adult cattle. The analysis was submitted to a peer review process and a panel of outside experts affirmed the conclusions....
U.S. to Reduce Mad-Cow Testing After Few Cases
The U.S. will slash its mad-cow testing program by almost 90 percent after data collected over two years showed a ``very low level'' of the disease in the domestic herd, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said. The decision to reduce testing to about 40,000 animals a year was made after experts reviewed an analysis of data on about 700,000 screenings since June 2004, when an enhanced testing program was implemented, Johanns said today at a news conference in Washington. The new program may begin as early as next month after a mandatory 30-day notice period. Johanns said he has talked with Japan and other nations about the changes and doesn't expect they'll affect efforts to reopen markets to U.S. beef. Japan, once the biggest buyer of the meat, last month promised to resume imports after reaching an agreement on beef inspections. The decision came six months after Japan re-imposed a ban implemented when the U.S. found its first case of mad-cow disease in December 2003. Dan Vaught, a cattle analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St. Louis, said the USDA's decision ``is not too surprising since they've found so few cases.'' Representative Rosa DeLauro, the ranking member of the House Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture, said mad-cow disease remains a concern and the USDA's decision to scale back testing ``defies logic'' and puts consumers at risk. ``We are all relieved that the enhanced surveillance program found few incidents of domestic cases of BSE, but these findings have not diminished the threat of this deadly disease,'' the Connecticut Democrat said today in a statement. Reducing screening will also save the government millions of dollars, Johannes said. The USDA spent $1 million a week to test about 1,000 animals per day during the enhanced screening period, he said. The total cost of the program since June 2004 was $157.8 million, while the new screening regimen will cost about $17 million annually, the USDA said....
Consumer Groups Criticize USDA Plan To Cut Mad-Cow Tests
The U.S. Agriculture Department's plan to reduce its tests for mad-cow disease by about 90% drew protests Thursday from consumer groups. Critics say now is not the time to scale back the testing, which has cost the government an estimated $1 million per week. "It surely will not encourage consumers in the U.S. or Japan to rush to the store to buy more beef," said Carol Tucker-Foreman, food policy director for Consumer Federation. "If you do testing of 100% of your animals, any ones that test positive never go into the food chain," said Michael Hansen of Consumers Union. "That's in part why they do it in Europe because they've seen animals that look perfectly fine and they catch them just before they go to slaughter." Johanns said testing has nothing to do with the safety of U.S. beef for consumers in the U.S. and abroad. From a food safety standpoint, the real key is removing at slaughter those cattle parts known to carry mad-cow disease, Johanns said. "Those who are trying to convince their consumers that universal testing or 100% testing somehow solves the problem really are misleading you," he said. "Consumers should feel better than ever about the meat that they are buying," Johanns said....
Scientific Criteria Used by USDA Support Claims Canada’s BSE Problem Underestimated
In order to convince the U.S. District Court District of Montana (Court) to rule against R-CALF USA’s lawsuit that seeks to strike down the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Final Rule in 2005, the agency enlisted a team of renowned scientific experts to submit to the Court written declarations, in which these scientists provided the criteria they used to conclude that the Final Rule was supported by sound science. USDA’s Final Rule is titled “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE): Minimal Risk Regions and Imports of Commodities,” which relaxed U.S. import standards for Canadian cattle and beef. “However, by applying today’s circumstances to the criteria USDA and its experts used to reach their decisions, it is clear the agency had insufficient facts with which to accurately assess the risk of BSE in Canada,” said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard. “R-CALF argued to no avail that USDA needed to obtain more testing data from Canada so it could conduct a proper risk assessment before drawing premature conclusions about the scope of Canada’s BSE epidemic. Now that trade has been resumed without first gathering this additional information, the unfolding evidence shows USDA underestimated Canada’s BSE problem, and that the key assumptions supporting the Final Rule were not valid.” USDA and its experts asserted to the Court that they had sufficient evidence to conclude that Canada’s BSE problem was waning. USDA experts stated that: “If Canadian animals were exposed later in life to a dose sufficient to cause disease, it would imply that the Canadian feed ban was ineffective and in-feed infectivity amplified greatly after 1997. In that case, however younger animals, born in 1999 and 2000, would have been exposed to the larger dose and also would have been detected with BSE. This has not happened and indicates the Canadian feed ban is adequately protecting animal health even though it was not absolute precisely at the time of implementation.” “This has now happened and today’s facts show even more clearly than when R-CALF USA first filed its lawsuit that this conclusion lacked sound scientific support,” Bullard explained....
USDA ANNOUNCES NEW BSE SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced today that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will soon begin transitioning to an ongoing Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) surveillance program that corresponds to the extremely low prevalence of the disease in the U.S. "It's time that our surveillance efforts reflect what we now know is a very, very low level of BSE in the United States," said Johanns. "This ongoing surveillance program will maintain our ability to detect BSE, provide assurance that our interlocking safeguards are successfully preventing BSE, while continuing to exceed science-based international guidelines." The ongoing BSE surveillance program will sample approximately 40,000 animals each year. Under the program, USDA will continue to collect samples from a variety of sites and from the cattle populations where the disease is most likely to be detected, similar to the enhanced surveillance program procedures. The new program will not only comply with the science-based international guidelines set forth by the World Animal Health organization (OIE), it will provide testing at a level ten times higher than the OIE recommended level. USDA has an obligation to provide 30 days notice of the change to contractors who are performing the sampling and testing, so the earliest the new surveillance program would begin is late August. Once the ongoing surveillance program begins, USDA will periodically analyze the surveillance strategy to ensure the program provides the foundation for market confidence in the safety of U.S. cattle. In April, USDA released an analysis of 7 years of BSE surveillance data. This included data from an enhanced surveillance program, which began in June 2004, as a one-time effort to determine the prevalence of BSE in the United States. The analysis concluded that the prevalence of BSE in the United States is less than 1 case per million adult cattle. The analysis further revealed that the most likely number of cases is between 4 and 7 infected animals out of 42 million adult cattle. The analysis was submitted to a peer review process and a panel of outside experts affirmed the conclusions....
U.S. to Reduce Mad-Cow Testing After Few Cases
The U.S. will slash its mad-cow testing program by almost 90 percent after data collected over two years showed a ``very low level'' of the disease in the domestic herd, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said. The decision to reduce testing to about 40,000 animals a year was made after experts reviewed an analysis of data on about 700,000 screenings since June 2004, when an enhanced testing program was implemented, Johanns said today at a news conference in Washington. The new program may begin as early as next month after a mandatory 30-day notice period. Johanns said he has talked with Japan and other nations about the changes and doesn't expect they'll affect efforts to reopen markets to U.S. beef. Japan, once the biggest buyer of the meat, last month promised to resume imports after reaching an agreement on beef inspections. The decision came six months after Japan re-imposed a ban implemented when the U.S. found its first case of mad-cow disease in December 2003. Dan Vaught, a cattle analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St. Louis, said the USDA's decision ``is not too surprising since they've found so few cases.'' Representative Rosa DeLauro, the ranking member of the House Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture, said mad-cow disease remains a concern and the USDA's decision to scale back testing ``defies logic'' and puts consumers at risk. ``We are all relieved that the enhanced surveillance program found few incidents of domestic cases of BSE, but these findings have not diminished the threat of this deadly disease,'' the Connecticut Democrat said today in a statement. Reducing screening will also save the government millions of dollars, Johannes said. The USDA spent $1 million a week to test about 1,000 animals per day during the enhanced screening period, he said. The total cost of the program since June 2004 was $157.8 million, while the new screening regimen will cost about $17 million annually, the USDA said....
Consumer Groups Criticize USDA Plan To Cut Mad-Cow Tests
The U.S. Agriculture Department's plan to reduce its tests for mad-cow disease by about 90% drew protests Thursday from consumer groups. Critics say now is not the time to scale back the testing, which has cost the government an estimated $1 million per week. "It surely will not encourage consumers in the U.S. or Japan to rush to the store to buy more beef," said Carol Tucker-Foreman, food policy director for Consumer Federation. "If you do testing of 100% of your animals, any ones that test positive never go into the food chain," said Michael Hansen of Consumers Union. "That's in part why they do it in Europe because they've seen animals that look perfectly fine and they catch them just before they go to slaughter." Johanns said testing has nothing to do with the safety of U.S. beef for consumers in the U.S. and abroad. From a food safety standpoint, the real key is removing at slaughter those cattle parts known to carry mad-cow disease, Johanns said. "Those who are trying to convince their consumers that universal testing or 100% testing somehow solves the problem really are misleading you," he said. "Consumers should feel better than ever about the meat that they are buying," Johanns said....
Scientific Criteria Used by USDA Support Claims Canada’s BSE Problem Underestimated
In order to convince the U.S. District Court District of Montana (Court) to rule against R-CALF USA’s lawsuit that seeks to strike down the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Final Rule in 2005, the agency enlisted a team of renowned scientific experts to submit to the Court written declarations, in which these scientists provided the criteria they used to conclude that the Final Rule was supported by sound science. USDA’s Final Rule is titled “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE): Minimal Risk Regions and Imports of Commodities,” which relaxed U.S. import standards for Canadian cattle and beef. “However, by applying today’s circumstances to the criteria USDA and its experts used to reach their decisions, it is clear the agency had insufficient facts with which to accurately assess the risk of BSE in Canada,” said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard. “R-CALF argued to no avail that USDA needed to obtain more testing data from Canada so it could conduct a proper risk assessment before drawing premature conclusions about the scope of Canada’s BSE epidemic. Now that trade has been resumed without first gathering this additional information, the unfolding evidence shows USDA underestimated Canada’s BSE problem, and that the key assumptions supporting the Final Rule were not valid.” USDA and its experts asserted to the Court that they had sufficient evidence to conclude that Canada’s BSE problem was waning. USDA experts stated that: “If Canadian animals were exposed later in life to a dose sufficient to cause disease, it would imply that the Canadian feed ban was ineffective and in-feed infectivity amplified greatly after 1997. In that case, however younger animals, born in 1999 and 2000, would have been exposed to the larger dose and also would have been detected with BSE. This has not happened and indicates the Canadian feed ban is adequately protecting animal health even though it was not absolute precisely at the time of implementation.” “This has now happened and today’s facts show even more clearly than when R-CALF USA first filed its lawsuit that this conclusion lacked sound scientific support,” Bullard explained....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Landowners pleased with BP settlement Checks totaling about $120 million have been mailed to about 4,500 landowners in southwestern Colorado, under a settlement struck with BP America over a natural gas royalty payments dispute. The checks ranged from a couple of pennies to nearly $2 million. "It felt pretty good after 12 years," Richard Parry, an Ignacio rancher, said of receiving a check he described as not "one of the largest ones." Parry launched the suit against the former Amoco Production Co. a dozen years ago. BP later bought Amoco. Parry's suit became a class-action lawsuit involving landowners from La Plata and Archuleta counties. The case centered on the underpayment of royalties for natural gas production in the two counties. It was filed in May 1994. In October 2003, a Colorado district judge ruled against BP in the case. He said BP and predecessor Amoco - when calculating royalty payments - couldn't deduct costs tied to getting the gas ready for market....
House panel OK's Idaho wilderness proposal The U.S. House Resources Committee Wednesday approved a bill designating 492 square miles of federal land in central Idaho as protected wilderness while conveying other public land to the state and local governments. The measure now will be scheduled for a final vote on the House floor and then must make it through the U.S. Senate before the end of the year when this session of Congress concludes. "I'm pretty confident it will pass the floor of the House," sponsor Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho said. "After that, it depends on how quickly the Senate moves it." If the measure passes the House, it will go before a Senate subcommittee chaired by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho. Craig has not taken a position on Simpson's bill, but Simpson said he planned to meet with Craig shortly to brief him on the final version passed by the committee....
Mount Hood bill over a hump A key congressional committee gave unanimous backing Wednesday to a bill setting aside about 77,500 acres of the Mount Hood National Forest as protected wilderness off-limits to logging, roads and motor vehicles. The bill sponsored by Reps. Greg Walden, a Republican from Hood River, and Earl Blumenauer, a Portland Democrat, would secure the rugged Roaring River and towering, 1,000-year-old trees within Mount Hood's first new wilderness in more than 20 years. It also directs the U.S. Forest Service to develop a strategy for crowded and aging forests at high risk of wildfires and redirects funding to pay for trails and other facilities in what has become a prized playground for Portland. President Bush would sign the bill if it gets to the White House, Walden said Wednesday. But that will depend on whether the Senate also backs new wilderness on Oregon's iconic mountain....
Guilty plea in eco-terrorist plot A 20-year-old man entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy in connection with an apparent eco-terrorist plot to blow up commercial and government buildings in the Sacramento region, including the U.S. Forest Service Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville. The eco-terrorist group, and Zachary Jenson of Seattle, allegedly planned to take credit for their actions on behalf of the Earth Liberation Forum, said U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott. Numerous law-enforcement agencies -- including the FBI, state and local police -- investigated the case. Under the plea agreement, Jenson acknowledges that the federal terrorism enhancement applies to his crime, which increases the penalties. He also has agreed to cooperate with the federal government's case, including to testify against co-defendant Eric McDavid. A third co-conspirator, Lauren Weiner, pled guilty on May 30....
Missoula County favors alternative forest plan Missoula County and six other county commissions have sent letters to the Forest Service encouraging the agency to consider an alternative management plan for the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest proposed by an unusual coalition of conservation groups and timber industry interests. But the two counties in the heart of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Forest say reopening the process to update the forest's land use plan is just plain “a lousy idea.” Last April, a coalition of conservation groups and timber industry officials proposed the plan that includes setting aside portions of the 3.3-million-acre forest for wilderness and as suitable timber base. The proposal also called for using stewardship contracting on most timber sales, which allows that money raised by logging to stay on the forest to pay for activities like weed control, trail maintenance and improving fish habitat. So far, the proposal has received a lukewarm reception from the Forest Service....
Groups Appeal Bush Administration’s Plans for Southern California’s National Forests A coalition of conservation organizations today appealed the Bush administration’s revised Land Management Plans for Southern California’s four national forests, outlining a litany of flaws that would result in more environmental damage on these popular, biologically rich forests. The 250-page administrative appeal cites numerous problems with the management plans, including an inadequate and illegal analysis on related impacts to roadless and wilderness areas, plants and forests, and native wildlife species. The organizations charge that the plans focus too much on expanding roads, motorized recreation and commercial, extractive uses such as logging and oil drilling rather than protecting the natural values and low-impact recreational uses that so many citizens enjoy. The Los Padres, Angeles, San Bernardino and Cleveland national forests are within a of couple hours’ drive of 20 million people, and boast some of the country’s most popular places to hike, camp, picnic, fish and hunt, bird watch, rock-climb, mountain bike, horseback ride, stargaze, and indulge in a host of other nature-based activities. These 3.5 million acres of public forests also are part of the California Floristic Province, which is recognized as a global biological “hotspot” – defined as an area that harbors an incredible diversity of life but is also undergoing rapid habitat loss. As such, the forest plans are tremendously important for both people and the native plants and animals of southern California....
Senators Question Wildfire Prevention Program Additional money is needed to treat land in the West that is vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires, members of the Senate subcommittee on public lands and forests concluded Wednesday. This comes despite the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, signed into law in December 2003, which helps remove timber, wood pulp and other flammable materials from lands susceptible to fires. It also pays for forest projects to prevent wildfires that could damage residential areas. Out of 1.6 million acres treated across the country this year, slightly more than 44,000 acres were in Colorado. Dale Bosworth, chief of the U.S. Forest Service, attributed the small acreage to the high cost of land treatment. He pointed out that acreage in the Southeast U.S. costs less to treat than land in the West. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said that there were at least 240,000 acres of hazardous lands that needed to be handled by the forest service. He called the low number of treated acres a "lack of responsibility" by the government. "This is similar to Katrina," Salazar said. "It's the Katrina of the west. You can see it coming up from the coast, yet the government didn't do enough. Now we're paying billions and billions, and that can happen again." As of Wednesday, the Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, reported more than 63,000 fires so far this year that burned more than 4 million acres. That's above the 10-year seasonal average of 47,000 fires and 2.5 million acres....
Task force crafts roadless plan After months of listening to the public, government experts and each other, members of a task force started crafting recommendations Wednesday on how 4.4 million acres of remote national forest land in Colorado should be managed. The 13-member panel formed by the Legislature and Gov. Bill Owens plans to submit a proposal by mid-September recommending whether the land declared off-limits to development under the Clinton administration should still be protected. "It's hard, it's slow," said Russell George, head of the state Department of Natural Resources. "But the group has held together very well." George, the task force chairman, said the group intends to give the public a chance to comment on its suggestions before a final version is sent to the governor....
New wolf pack at Sevilleta will soon be released A pack of four Mexican gray wolves will be placed in a temporary holding pen, located near Middle Mountain in the Apache National Forest, in preparation for the endangered animals' release in Arizona. Arizona Game and Fish Department officials say the wolves will be moved to the pen site this month in order to meet ongoing wolf reintroduction objectives. The pack is currently at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in northern Socorro County. The Meridian pack consists of an alpha male and female and two pups. Maggie Dwire, for the New Mexico Wolf Project, said that the male came from a research facility in St. Louis while the female is from a Minneapolis zoo. Kim King-Wrenn, outdoor recreation planner with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Sevilleta, explained how the two wolves got together. She said that representatives from all of the 40-plus zoos and research centers get together once a year. One person is in charge of the studbook. At that time, the agencies see who has wolves that can be bred as well as who has the facilities and financial resources necessary to establish a pack with pups....
Public input sought on land bill Jim Crisp, manager of the Bureau of Land Management's St. George Field Office, spoke during the St. George Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Holiday Inn about the Washington County Growth and Conservation Act of 2006. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, introduced the bill in the U.S. Senate on July 11 and Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, introduced it in the U.S. House of Representatives the next day. "The bill has significant ramifications for the county," Crisp said. "It affects every person here, whether directly or indirectly." Crisp focused many of his comments on the minimum of 20,000 acres of BLM land that is expected to be sold into private ownership, according to language in the bill. He said the first 1,000 acres or so will come from about 15 isolated parcels in and around the urban corridor. The local outreach initiative associated with the bill, Vision Dixie, will be an opportunity for the public to help plan the coming growth, Crisp said. Some public workshops are already planned for this fall. Crisp said the BLM is seeking input from residents on which eligible land parcels should be chosen to sell. He said if the public does not help, the decisions will end up being made by "very small groups of people doing the best they can."....
Buckeye's boom Buckeye is a place where the best breakfast in town is right on Main Street, where a man still feels comfortable leaving his car running as he jets inside a corner store. It's a place where you tell someone to meet you at "the Sonic" because there's only one. Signs, though, hint things soon will be sharply different for a town that could someday be as large as Phoenix. The acres of empty land are filling up with plats for homes that will make up more than 30 master-planned communities like Verrado. Town Council meetings provide standing room only and are filled with developers holding poster boards with more plans for Buckeye's future. The numbers say the town could have 1 million people by 2025, up from about 25,000 now. The most current manifestation of the town's growth is happening now as Buckeye prepares to annex 108 square miles, which would increase the town's size by a third. It would be one of the largest municipal annexations in Arizona's history. But the vast land is not planned for bricks and mortar of retail development. Instead, town leaders want to set it aside for parks and recreation, filled with trails where horses can roam and families can hike. The Federal Bureau of Land Management owns most of the property, which includes the town's entire southeastern planning area....
BLM reopens comment period on Vegas water plan The Bureau of Land Management is reopening the public comment period on plans by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to pump millions of gallons of water from rural areas to Las Vegas. The agency said substantial changes have been made to the plan since the initial scoping period last year, requiring public further comment in advance of a draft environmental impact statement. Changes include conveyance of about 3,600 acre-feet of water per year to the Lincoln County Water District, the cancellation of proposed groundwater development in the Tikaboo Valley North Basin, and shifts in alignment and location of well fields and facilities. The agency wants to pump up to 180,000 acre-feet of water a year from Lincoln and White Pine counties and rural areas of Clark County to meet the demands of growing Las Vegas....
Senators push for fossil monument Two U.S. senators have introduced legislation that would create a new, 5,367-acre national monument west of Las Cruces to protect ancient fossilized footprints. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., entered a bill into a Senate committee June 29 that would create a monument in the Robledo Mountains. It was co-sponsored by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. A local group pushing for the preservation of 290-million-year-old tracks says it's pleased with the move, though the bill has upset some area off-road vehicle enthusiasts, who say the proposed boundaries are too large. Las Crucen Greg Smith, a Doña Ana County resident who lives near the trackways site, is a member of the Paleozoic Trackways Foundation, a group formed earlier this year to push for the legislation. "We're very pleased," he said. "Obviously this isn't the end thing, but it's a big first step." Doña Ana County resident Fred Huff, an off-road vehicle enthusiast, said his organization, the Las Cruces Four-Wheel Drive Club, was surprised to see how large the boundaries are for the proposed monument. The bill's language includes a provision that would allow the Chile Challenge, a yearly off-roading event, to continue, but Huff said he doesn't think the wording is strong enough. Huff said in addition, fossils aren't visible at many of the several sites proposed for protection....
Big cabin in Big Prairie poses big questions for Glacier Big Prairie in Glacier National Park is home to many things. Herds of elk and deer. The occasional grizzly. Wolves. It does, in many ways, embody the concept of the North American Serengeti. Now it has a big new cabin as well. Landowner Bill Smith of Georgia has put the cabin on his property after receiving a variance from the county for a septic system. The future of the parcel has been a point of contention for years - the previous landowner, Gerald Penovich, a Chicago attorney went back and forth with Glacier Park officials for years. The lot, which is .22 acres, went idle after the cabin on it burned down in the Red Bench Fire of 1988. Penovich, in turn, wanted to rebuild on the site, which started a battle of documents between him and Glacier. Glacier did a study that determined the site was in the floodplain....
Congressional Earmark to Pad Park Service Payroll Entering a new dimension of micromanagement, Congress is now seeking to specify the pay grades and civil service rankings for individual park managers, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The earmark for one National Park superintendent in Mississippi marks the first time that Congress would inject itself into specifying the grade ranking for individual civil servants and may open the floodgates to similar moves designed to boost federal payrolls in particular districts or states. At the behest of Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Thad Cochran (R-MS), the funding bill for the National Park Service stipulates that "The position of Superintendent of the Natchez Trace Parkway [in Mississippi] shall be classified in the Senior Executive Service," the top federal civil service grade, ranking just below a political appointee, with a salary range of between $109,000 and $165,000 per year. Sen. Cochran would consolidate four small park units in his state (the Natchez Trace Parkway, Natchez National Historical Park, Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site, and Tupelo National Battlefield) and place them under the supervision of one Senior Executive Service (SES) slot. These combined units, however, employ only 110 workers, out of the entire187-person Park Service workforce in Mississippi, according to Office of Personnel Management figures....
Enviro groups petition feds to protect plant habitat Three environmental and citizens’ groups have called on the federal government to increase the critical habitat for an endangered plant that’s known to exist only in and along the adobe hills of Delta and Montrose counties. The Center for Native Ecosystems, the Colorado Native Plant Society and Montrose’s Uncompahgre Valley Association filed a petition on Monday with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the hopes of protecting clay-loving wild buckwheat from growing threats such as suburban sprawl, a proposed beltway around Montrose, and the use of off-road vehicles on public lands. “This really could be a relatively straightforward action for the Fish and Wildlife Service to take that would have a concrete consequence for the species,” said Josh Pollock, executive director for the Center for Native Ecosystems. Pollard said adding to the designated habitat would increase the consideration federal agencies must give to the species in their management decisions....
Alaska Brown Bears Gain Global Internet Audience Armchair travelers, take note. Now all you need to watch brown bears fishing at the famed McNeil River Falls is an Internet connection. Thanks to a collaborative effort among the Pratt Museum, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the National Park Service, the National Geographic Society, RealNetworks, SeeMore Wildlife Systems and others, images from remote camera aimed at bears inside the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary can now be viewed live on the Internet. Simply click on the Pratt Museum's website to link to National Geographic's WildCam Grizzlies Web page, where the live video is hosted. Right now the cameras are active from 5 a.m. until 11 p.m. Alaska time. From 1 to 5 p.m. daily, the camera is controlled by an interpreter at Homer's Pratt Museum who pans the McNeil Falls and zooms in on bears catching salmon or competing with each other over prime fishing spots. At other times, the camera cycles through a series of preset positions to provide a variety of views. The remote video system is shut off at night to conserve solar power....
Fans fly to bald eagle blog Atop a great white pine, Big is venturing out on limbs now, spreading his or her wings in preparation for flight. Little, four days younger, also is branching out and should take to the sky soon. The two bald eagles and their parents are the surprise superstars of a round-the-clock Internet reality show featuring love and adventure, flight and feeding -- and fatal sibling rivalry. The full-time eagle blog and video-stream was designed by a group of Maine scientists who wanted to help people connect with nature from their computers. Other video monitoring stations have been set up to observe bald eagles, but have not reached the public in the same way. Tens of thousands of Internet viewers watched (www.briloon.org/ed/eagle/index.htm) as the first eaglet -- known as Big -- hatched April 10. Within days, two more chicks followed. Goodale and state and federal scientists were thrilled too -- eagle triplets are rare in Maine, and this was a chance to observe them closely.
Life in the eagle family was idyllic at first....
Aquifer's drop triggers water limits for region Sixteen months of drought finally caught up with the Edwards Aquifer on Wednesday, draining it to the trigger point for restrictions on water usage — and forcing homeowners and anyone else with landscaping to adopt a once-a-week lawn-sprinkling schedule. The aquifer hit 649.5 feet above sea level in San Antonio, leading the Edwards Aquifer Authority to order its customers — mainly water utilities, cities and large commercial operations — to slash usage by 5 percent or face penalties. The drop below 650 feet also triggered municipal drought plans in the region, affecting homeowners. "We've been on the cusp of getting below 650 for a while," said Robert Potts, the authority's general manager. "Fortunately, because of people using less water and some well-timed rains, we've been able to put restrictions off until now. The longer we can delay the better off this region is, because there are a lot of folks who depend on this water for their businesses and their livelihoods." Although most restrictions announced Wednesday apply to Edwards Aquifer users, some who rely on other sources in the San Antonio area were placed under the same restrictions....
Americans Spend Less Than 10 percent of Disposable Income on Food The U.S. consumer is spending a bit more of their disposable income to purchase food than the previous year, but they still enjoy the cheapest, most abundant food supply in the world, according to new statistics released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "It's no secret that Americans continue to get a bargain with their food dollar," says Katy Coba, director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture. "We should all thank our productive and efficient farmers and ranchers for making that bargain possible." USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) has recently released food expenditure statistics for 2005. They show that Americans are spending, on average, 9.9 percent of their disposable income on food. That's up slightly from 9.7 percent in 2004 but very consistent with figures over the past five years. The percentage dropped to single digits for the first time in recorded U.S. history in 2000. Twenty years ago, American consumers spent 11.7 percent of their disposable income on food. Thirty years ago, that figure was 15.1 percent. Going back in history, Americans spent about 20 percent of their income on food about the time today's baby boomers were born. In 1933, the figure was more than 25 percent....
Basque sheep rancher clings to tradition Any way you look at it, Pete Camino is an unusual man. He is one of a dwindling number of people in the U.S. who still speak Basque, the language of the fiercely independent people of mysterious origin who inhabit the western Pyrenees of France and Spain. He is also a Wyoming sheep rancher at a time when they are becoming as rare as Basque speakers. And he is something of a movie star. A showing of "The Last Link," which chronicles Camino's journey back to the land of his parents, will be a highlight of the Sheep Wagon Festival in Buffalo this weekend. The Bighorn Basque Club will host the event, which is the annual convention and festival of the North American Basque Organization. There will be dances, concerts, a bike race, a sheep-wagon parade, Basque athletic competitions and lots of Basque food....
2 Wilson reprints retell history of Hi-Line “Last evening George Francis was declared guilty of horse stealing by a jury of twelve citizens of Hill County ... . “Francis is one of the most widely known men in Northern Montana. He is a pleasant, likeable fellow with many friends and admirers ... . He is a product of a certain class of early day ranchers who did not believe or consider it unethical to brand everything found unbranded to ‘keep even.’ “Yesterday the death knell of such practices and distorted moral principles was sounded ... . In reality Francis deserves sympathy. He is the victim of betrayed friendships. But even their position can be appreciated. It is hard for some people to realize that the old Montana is gone and a new Montana has arrived. “... The jig is up.” That editorial excerpt from a Havre Plaindealer of 1919 sums up some of the cultural conflicts that were waged along the Hi-Line for decades and are chronicled in re-issues of two Gary A. Wilson books: “‘Long George’ Francis: Gentleman Outlaw of Montana” and “Honky-Tonk Town: Havre’s Lawless Era.” Both of these $12.95 paperbacks from Globe Pequot Press of Connecticut originally were published by other independent publishers in Montana....
Landowners pleased with BP settlement Checks totaling about $120 million have been mailed to about 4,500 landowners in southwestern Colorado, under a settlement struck with BP America over a natural gas royalty payments dispute. The checks ranged from a couple of pennies to nearly $2 million. "It felt pretty good after 12 years," Richard Parry, an Ignacio rancher, said of receiving a check he described as not "one of the largest ones." Parry launched the suit against the former Amoco Production Co. a dozen years ago. BP later bought Amoco. Parry's suit became a class-action lawsuit involving landowners from La Plata and Archuleta counties. The case centered on the underpayment of royalties for natural gas production in the two counties. It was filed in May 1994. In October 2003, a Colorado district judge ruled against BP in the case. He said BP and predecessor Amoco - when calculating royalty payments - couldn't deduct costs tied to getting the gas ready for market....
House panel OK's Idaho wilderness proposal The U.S. House Resources Committee Wednesday approved a bill designating 492 square miles of federal land in central Idaho as protected wilderness while conveying other public land to the state and local governments. The measure now will be scheduled for a final vote on the House floor and then must make it through the U.S. Senate before the end of the year when this session of Congress concludes. "I'm pretty confident it will pass the floor of the House," sponsor Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho said. "After that, it depends on how quickly the Senate moves it." If the measure passes the House, it will go before a Senate subcommittee chaired by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho. Craig has not taken a position on Simpson's bill, but Simpson said he planned to meet with Craig shortly to brief him on the final version passed by the committee....
Mount Hood bill over a hump A key congressional committee gave unanimous backing Wednesday to a bill setting aside about 77,500 acres of the Mount Hood National Forest as protected wilderness off-limits to logging, roads and motor vehicles. The bill sponsored by Reps. Greg Walden, a Republican from Hood River, and Earl Blumenauer, a Portland Democrat, would secure the rugged Roaring River and towering, 1,000-year-old trees within Mount Hood's first new wilderness in more than 20 years. It also directs the U.S. Forest Service to develop a strategy for crowded and aging forests at high risk of wildfires and redirects funding to pay for trails and other facilities in what has become a prized playground for Portland. President Bush would sign the bill if it gets to the White House, Walden said Wednesday. But that will depend on whether the Senate also backs new wilderness on Oregon's iconic mountain....
Guilty plea in eco-terrorist plot A 20-year-old man entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy in connection with an apparent eco-terrorist plot to blow up commercial and government buildings in the Sacramento region, including the U.S. Forest Service Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville. The eco-terrorist group, and Zachary Jenson of Seattle, allegedly planned to take credit for their actions on behalf of the Earth Liberation Forum, said U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott. Numerous law-enforcement agencies -- including the FBI, state and local police -- investigated the case. Under the plea agreement, Jenson acknowledges that the federal terrorism enhancement applies to his crime, which increases the penalties. He also has agreed to cooperate with the federal government's case, including to testify against co-defendant Eric McDavid. A third co-conspirator, Lauren Weiner, pled guilty on May 30....
Missoula County favors alternative forest plan Missoula County and six other county commissions have sent letters to the Forest Service encouraging the agency to consider an alternative management plan for the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest proposed by an unusual coalition of conservation groups and timber industry interests. But the two counties in the heart of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Forest say reopening the process to update the forest's land use plan is just plain “a lousy idea.” Last April, a coalition of conservation groups and timber industry officials proposed the plan that includes setting aside portions of the 3.3-million-acre forest for wilderness and as suitable timber base. The proposal also called for using stewardship contracting on most timber sales, which allows that money raised by logging to stay on the forest to pay for activities like weed control, trail maintenance and improving fish habitat. So far, the proposal has received a lukewarm reception from the Forest Service....
Groups Appeal Bush Administration’s Plans for Southern California’s National Forests A coalition of conservation organizations today appealed the Bush administration’s revised Land Management Plans for Southern California’s four national forests, outlining a litany of flaws that would result in more environmental damage on these popular, biologically rich forests. The 250-page administrative appeal cites numerous problems with the management plans, including an inadequate and illegal analysis on related impacts to roadless and wilderness areas, plants and forests, and native wildlife species. The organizations charge that the plans focus too much on expanding roads, motorized recreation and commercial, extractive uses such as logging and oil drilling rather than protecting the natural values and low-impact recreational uses that so many citizens enjoy. The Los Padres, Angeles, San Bernardino and Cleveland national forests are within a of couple hours’ drive of 20 million people, and boast some of the country’s most popular places to hike, camp, picnic, fish and hunt, bird watch, rock-climb, mountain bike, horseback ride, stargaze, and indulge in a host of other nature-based activities. These 3.5 million acres of public forests also are part of the California Floristic Province, which is recognized as a global biological “hotspot” – defined as an area that harbors an incredible diversity of life but is also undergoing rapid habitat loss. As such, the forest plans are tremendously important for both people and the native plants and animals of southern California....
Senators Question Wildfire Prevention Program Additional money is needed to treat land in the West that is vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires, members of the Senate subcommittee on public lands and forests concluded Wednesday. This comes despite the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, signed into law in December 2003, which helps remove timber, wood pulp and other flammable materials from lands susceptible to fires. It also pays for forest projects to prevent wildfires that could damage residential areas. Out of 1.6 million acres treated across the country this year, slightly more than 44,000 acres were in Colorado. Dale Bosworth, chief of the U.S. Forest Service, attributed the small acreage to the high cost of land treatment. He pointed out that acreage in the Southeast U.S. costs less to treat than land in the West. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said that there were at least 240,000 acres of hazardous lands that needed to be handled by the forest service. He called the low number of treated acres a "lack of responsibility" by the government. "This is similar to Katrina," Salazar said. "It's the Katrina of the west. You can see it coming up from the coast, yet the government didn't do enough. Now we're paying billions and billions, and that can happen again." As of Wednesday, the Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, reported more than 63,000 fires so far this year that burned more than 4 million acres. That's above the 10-year seasonal average of 47,000 fires and 2.5 million acres....
Task force crafts roadless plan After months of listening to the public, government experts and each other, members of a task force started crafting recommendations Wednesday on how 4.4 million acres of remote national forest land in Colorado should be managed. The 13-member panel formed by the Legislature and Gov. Bill Owens plans to submit a proposal by mid-September recommending whether the land declared off-limits to development under the Clinton administration should still be protected. "It's hard, it's slow," said Russell George, head of the state Department of Natural Resources. "But the group has held together very well." George, the task force chairman, said the group intends to give the public a chance to comment on its suggestions before a final version is sent to the governor....
New wolf pack at Sevilleta will soon be released A pack of four Mexican gray wolves will be placed in a temporary holding pen, located near Middle Mountain in the Apache National Forest, in preparation for the endangered animals' release in Arizona. Arizona Game and Fish Department officials say the wolves will be moved to the pen site this month in order to meet ongoing wolf reintroduction objectives. The pack is currently at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in northern Socorro County. The Meridian pack consists of an alpha male and female and two pups. Maggie Dwire, for the New Mexico Wolf Project, said that the male came from a research facility in St. Louis while the female is from a Minneapolis zoo. Kim King-Wrenn, outdoor recreation planner with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Sevilleta, explained how the two wolves got together. She said that representatives from all of the 40-plus zoos and research centers get together once a year. One person is in charge of the studbook. At that time, the agencies see who has wolves that can be bred as well as who has the facilities and financial resources necessary to establish a pack with pups....
Public input sought on land bill Jim Crisp, manager of the Bureau of Land Management's St. George Field Office, spoke during the St. George Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Holiday Inn about the Washington County Growth and Conservation Act of 2006. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, introduced the bill in the U.S. Senate on July 11 and Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, introduced it in the U.S. House of Representatives the next day. "The bill has significant ramifications for the county," Crisp said. "It affects every person here, whether directly or indirectly." Crisp focused many of his comments on the minimum of 20,000 acres of BLM land that is expected to be sold into private ownership, according to language in the bill. He said the first 1,000 acres or so will come from about 15 isolated parcels in and around the urban corridor. The local outreach initiative associated with the bill, Vision Dixie, will be an opportunity for the public to help plan the coming growth, Crisp said. Some public workshops are already planned for this fall. Crisp said the BLM is seeking input from residents on which eligible land parcels should be chosen to sell. He said if the public does not help, the decisions will end up being made by "very small groups of people doing the best they can."....
Buckeye's boom Buckeye is a place where the best breakfast in town is right on Main Street, where a man still feels comfortable leaving his car running as he jets inside a corner store. It's a place where you tell someone to meet you at "the Sonic" because there's only one. Signs, though, hint things soon will be sharply different for a town that could someday be as large as Phoenix. The acres of empty land are filling up with plats for homes that will make up more than 30 master-planned communities like Verrado. Town Council meetings provide standing room only and are filled with developers holding poster boards with more plans for Buckeye's future. The numbers say the town could have 1 million people by 2025, up from about 25,000 now. The most current manifestation of the town's growth is happening now as Buckeye prepares to annex 108 square miles, which would increase the town's size by a third. It would be one of the largest municipal annexations in Arizona's history. But the vast land is not planned for bricks and mortar of retail development. Instead, town leaders want to set it aside for parks and recreation, filled with trails where horses can roam and families can hike. The Federal Bureau of Land Management owns most of the property, which includes the town's entire southeastern planning area....
BLM reopens comment period on Vegas water plan The Bureau of Land Management is reopening the public comment period on plans by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to pump millions of gallons of water from rural areas to Las Vegas. The agency said substantial changes have been made to the plan since the initial scoping period last year, requiring public further comment in advance of a draft environmental impact statement. Changes include conveyance of about 3,600 acre-feet of water per year to the Lincoln County Water District, the cancellation of proposed groundwater development in the Tikaboo Valley North Basin, and shifts in alignment and location of well fields and facilities. The agency wants to pump up to 180,000 acre-feet of water a year from Lincoln and White Pine counties and rural areas of Clark County to meet the demands of growing Las Vegas....
Senators push for fossil monument Two U.S. senators have introduced legislation that would create a new, 5,367-acre national monument west of Las Cruces to protect ancient fossilized footprints. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., entered a bill into a Senate committee June 29 that would create a monument in the Robledo Mountains. It was co-sponsored by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. A local group pushing for the preservation of 290-million-year-old tracks says it's pleased with the move, though the bill has upset some area off-road vehicle enthusiasts, who say the proposed boundaries are too large. Las Crucen Greg Smith, a Doña Ana County resident who lives near the trackways site, is a member of the Paleozoic Trackways Foundation, a group formed earlier this year to push for the legislation. "We're very pleased," he said. "Obviously this isn't the end thing, but it's a big first step." Doña Ana County resident Fred Huff, an off-road vehicle enthusiast, said his organization, the Las Cruces Four-Wheel Drive Club, was surprised to see how large the boundaries are for the proposed monument. The bill's language includes a provision that would allow the Chile Challenge, a yearly off-roading event, to continue, but Huff said he doesn't think the wording is strong enough. Huff said in addition, fossils aren't visible at many of the several sites proposed for protection....
Big cabin in Big Prairie poses big questions for Glacier Big Prairie in Glacier National Park is home to many things. Herds of elk and deer. The occasional grizzly. Wolves. It does, in many ways, embody the concept of the North American Serengeti. Now it has a big new cabin as well. Landowner Bill Smith of Georgia has put the cabin on his property after receiving a variance from the county for a septic system. The future of the parcel has been a point of contention for years - the previous landowner, Gerald Penovich, a Chicago attorney went back and forth with Glacier Park officials for years. The lot, which is .22 acres, went idle after the cabin on it burned down in the Red Bench Fire of 1988. Penovich, in turn, wanted to rebuild on the site, which started a battle of documents between him and Glacier. Glacier did a study that determined the site was in the floodplain....
Congressional Earmark to Pad Park Service Payroll Entering a new dimension of micromanagement, Congress is now seeking to specify the pay grades and civil service rankings for individual park managers, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The earmark for one National Park superintendent in Mississippi marks the first time that Congress would inject itself into specifying the grade ranking for individual civil servants and may open the floodgates to similar moves designed to boost federal payrolls in particular districts or states. At the behest of Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Thad Cochran (R-MS), the funding bill for the National Park Service stipulates that "The position of Superintendent of the Natchez Trace Parkway [in Mississippi] shall be classified in the Senior Executive Service," the top federal civil service grade, ranking just below a political appointee, with a salary range of between $109,000 and $165,000 per year. Sen. Cochran would consolidate four small park units in his state (the Natchez Trace Parkway, Natchez National Historical Park, Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site, and Tupelo National Battlefield) and place them under the supervision of one Senior Executive Service (SES) slot. These combined units, however, employ only 110 workers, out of the entire187-person Park Service workforce in Mississippi, according to Office of Personnel Management figures....
Enviro groups petition feds to protect plant habitat Three environmental and citizens’ groups have called on the federal government to increase the critical habitat for an endangered plant that’s known to exist only in and along the adobe hills of Delta and Montrose counties. The Center for Native Ecosystems, the Colorado Native Plant Society and Montrose’s Uncompahgre Valley Association filed a petition on Monday with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the hopes of protecting clay-loving wild buckwheat from growing threats such as suburban sprawl, a proposed beltway around Montrose, and the use of off-road vehicles on public lands. “This really could be a relatively straightforward action for the Fish and Wildlife Service to take that would have a concrete consequence for the species,” said Josh Pollock, executive director for the Center for Native Ecosystems. Pollard said adding to the designated habitat would increase the consideration federal agencies must give to the species in their management decisions....
Alaska Brown Bears Gain Global Internet Audience Armchair travelers, take note. Now all you need to watch brown bears fishing at the famed McNeil River Falls is an Internet connection. Thanks to a collaborative effort among the Pratt Museum, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the National Park Service, the National Geographic Society, RealNetworks, SeeMore Wildlife Systems and others, images from remote camera aimed at bears inside the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary can now be viewed live on the Internet. Simply click on the Pratt Museum's website to link to National Geographic's WildCam Grizzlies Web page, where the live video is hosted. Right now the cameras are active from 5 a.m. until 11 p.m. Alaska time. From 1 to 5 p.m. daily, the camera is controlled by an interpreter at Homer's Pratt Museum who pans the McNeil Falls and zooms in on bears catching salmon or competing with each other over prime fishing spots. At other times, the camera cycles through a series of preset positions to provide a variety of views. The remote video system is shut off at night to conserve solar power....
Fans fly to bald eagle blog Atop a great white pine, Big is venturing out on limbs now, spreading his or her wings in preparation for flight. Little, four days younger, also is branching out and should take to the sky soon. The two bald eagles and their parents are the surprise superstars of a round-the-clock Internet reality show featuring love and adventure, flight and feeding -- and fatal sibling rivalry. The full-time eagle blog and video-stream was designed by a group of Maine scientists who wanted to help people connect with nature from their computers. Other video monitoring stations have been set up to observe bald eagles, but have not reached the public in the same way. Tens of thousands of Internet viewers watched (www.briloon.org/ed/eagle/index.htm) as the first eaglet -- known as Big -- hatched April 10. Within days, two more chicks followed. Goodale and state and federal scientists were thrilled too -- eagle triplets are rare in Maine, and this was a chance to observe them closely.
Life in the eagle family was idyllic at first....
Aquifer's drop triggers water limits for region Sixteen months of drought finally caught up with the Edwards Aquifer on Wednesday, draining it to the trigger point for restrictions on water usage — and forcing homeowners and anyone else with landscaping to adopt a once-a-week lawn-sprinkling schedule. The aquifer hit 649.5 feet above sea level in San Antonio, leading the Edwards Aquifer Authority to order its customers — mainly water utilities, cities and large commercial operations — to slash usage by 5 percent or face penalties. The drop below 650 feet also triggered municipal drought plans in the region, affecting homeowners. "We've been on the cusp of getting below 650 for a while," said Robert Potts, the authority's general manager. "Fortunately, because of people using less water and some well-timed rains, we've been able to put restrictions off until now. The longer we can delay the better off this region is, because there are a lot of folks who depend on this water for their businesses and their livelihoods." Although most restrictions announced Wednesday apply to Edwards Aquifer users, some who rely on other sources in the San Antonio area were placed under the same restrictions....
Americans Spend Less Than 10 percent of Disposable Income on Food The U.S. consumer is spending a bit more of their disposable income to purchase food than the previous year, but they still enjoy the cheapest, most abundant food supply in the world, according to new statistics released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "It's no secret that Americans continue to get a bargain with their food dollar," says Katy Coba, director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture. "We should all thank our productive and efficient farmers and ranchers for making that bargain possible." USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) has recently released food expenditure statistics for 2005. They show that Americans are spending, on average, 9.9 percent of their disposable income on food. That's up slightly from 9.7 percent in 2004 but very consistent with figures over the past five years. The percentage dropped to single digits for the first time in recorded U.S. history in 2000. Twenty years ago, American consumers spent 11.7 percent of their disposable income on food. Thirty years ago, that figure was 15.1 percent. Going back in history, Americans spent about 20 percent of their income on food about the time today's baby boomers were born. In 1933, the figure was more than 25 percent....
Basque sheep rancher clings to tradition Any way you look at it, Pete Camino is an unusual man. He is one of a dwindling number of people in the U.S. who still speak Basque, the language of the fiercely independent people of mysterious origin who inhabit the western Pyrenees of France and Spain. He is also a Wyoming sheep rancher at a time when they are becoming as rare as Basque speakers. And he is something of a movie star. A showing of "The Last Link," which chronicles Camino's journey back to the land of his parents, will be a highlight of the Sheep Wagon Festival in Buffalo this weekend. The Bighorn Basque Club will host the event, which is the annual convention and festival of the North American Basque Organization. There will be dances, concerts, a bike race, a sheep-wagon parade, Basque athletic competitions and lots of Basque food....
2 Wilson reprints retell history of Hi-Line “Last evening George Francis was declared guilty of horse stealing by a jury of twelve citizens of Hill County ... . “Francis is one of the most widely known men in Northern Montana. He is a pleasant, likeable fellow with many friends and admirers ... . He is a product of a certain class of early day ranchers who did not believe or consider it unethical to brand everything found unbranded to ‘keep even.’ “Yesterday the death knell of such practices and distorted moral principles was sounded ... . In reality Francis deserves sympathy. He is the victim of betrayed friendships. But even their position can be appreciated. It is hard for some people to realize that the old Montana is gone and a new Montana has arrived. “... The jig is up.” That editorial excerpt from a Havre Plaindealer of 1919 sums up some of the cultural conflicts that were waged along the Hi-Line for decades and are chronicled in re-issues of two Gary A. Wilson books: “‘Long George’ Francis: Gentleman Outlaw of Montana” and “Honky-Tonk Town: Havre’s Lawless Era.” Both of these $12.95 paperbacks from Globe Pequot Press of Connecticut originally were published by other independent publishers in Montana....
FLE
U.S. Forest Service steps up enforcement On June 15 Joshua P. Geffre, age 19, and his girlfriend, age 17, of Lead were sentenced in Federal Court on charges of possession of alcohol and resisting or interfering with a Forest Service law enforcement officer. Geffre was also sentenced for operating a vehicle in a careless and reckless manner - an ATV -as well as failing to stop his vehicle when directed to do so by a Forest Service law enforcement officer. The court ordered Geffre to pay fines totaling $1,090 and sentenced him to 30 days in jail with 30 days suspended on the condition that Geffre not enter the Black Hills National Forest for a period of three years. Geffre was also ordered to not operate an ATV for a period of three years....and Kit Laney does time in the Federal pen. Thank you, David Iglesias.
Bush Blocked Eavesdropping Program Probe President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the anti-terror eavesdropping program that intercepts Americans' international calls and e-mails, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday. Bush refused to grant security clearances for department investigators who were looking into the role Justice lawyers played in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency listens in on telephone calls and reads e-mail without court approval, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee. Without access to the sensitive program, the department's Office of Professional Responsibility closed its investigation in April. "It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?" Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the committee chairman, asked Gonzales. "The president of the United States makes the decision," Gonzales replied. Later, at the White House, spokesman Tony Snow said the eavesdropping program is reviewed every 45 days by senior officials, including Gonzales. The president did not consider the Justice unit that functions as a legal ethics watchdog to be the "proper venue," Snow said....
U.S. Patriot Act OKs Business Wiretaps It has been found that when amending the Patriot Act this past March, the U.S. government added a clause permitting wiretaps and bugs for investigation of suspected antitrust law violations, such as price fixing. The revised law may cause significant damage to major Korean companies, the bulk of whose exports go to the U.S., as they could come under investigation on breaking antitrust laws by just making contact with competing firms. The Dong-A Ilbo confirmed the legislation data disclosed by the U.S. administration which shows that Section 113 of the Patriot Act amendments, passed by the U.S. Congress on March 7, now includes illegal monopolizing in trade and commerce, as stipulated in Sherman Anti-trust Act, in the list of crimes that fall under the Patriot Act. The amendments took effect two days later on March 9 with the signature by U.S. President George W. Bush. The revision, however, has not been advertised much in either the U.S. or Korea, so large Korean corporations have been unable to equip themselves for the change....
The Problem With Presidential Signing Statements Recently, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, held a hearing about "presidential signing statements." Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in the Guantanamo Bay detainee case, Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, defining the balance of powers among this country's three branches of government. These may strike some as obscure legal niceties of little importance to Americans' daily lives. There is nothing new about a president adding a "statement on signing" to legislation he has approved. Since the country was founded, presidents have used these statements for relatively innocuous purposes: to thank supporters, explain their support for the bill or express satisfaction--or dissatisfaction--with legislation passed by Congress. What is new and troubling is the extraordinary frequency with which President Bush has used these statements, and the unorthodox way he uses them. The recent spate of presidential signing statements constitutes a threat to our country's system of checks and balances as surely as the Bush administration actions that the Hamdan ruling struck down did. Since he took office, Bush has used this device to object to more than 500 provisions in more than 100 pieces of legislation--nearly as many as the 575 signing statements issued by all of his predecessors combined. In these statements, the president often has claimed that the new laws violate the Constitution and signaled his intention not to enforce certain provisions, despite having signed them into law....
Judicial Supremacists Strike Again Who could have guessed that Osama bin Laden's driver/bodyguard would be one of the privileged few to be granted a hearing by the high and mighty U.S. Supreme Court justices! After refusing to hear appeals from thousands of Americans during the past year, the Court's liberals jumped at a chance to rule that President Bush was wrong. It wasn't compassion for Gitmo prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan. It was that Hamdan v. Rumsfeld offered an opportunity to proclaim judicial supremacy over both the other two branches of government and to slap the Bush Administration in the process. The Supreme Court had no business taking the Hamdan case. Congress had passed the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 withdrawing jurisdiction over Guantanamo prisoners' habeas corpus petitions from every "court, justice, or judge" except the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court did not, and could not, dispute Congress's power to do exactly that. The U.S. Constitution clearly grants this power to Congress. But the Court held that pending cases were exempt from this particular withdrawal of jurisdiction even though the law did not say that. Justice John Paul Stevens' majority decision ignored what Justice Scalia's dissent called a "plain directive," and (in the words of a primary sponsor of the Detainee Act, Senator Lindsey Graham) "made legal contortions to get the result the Court wanted."....
Retaliation Case Of Arab Specialist At FBI Advances The Justice Department has concluded there is "reasonable cause" to believe that senior FBI officials retaliated against the bureau's highest-ranking Arabic speaker for complaining that he was cut out of terrorism cases despite his expertise. An internal investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility found "sufficient circumstantial evidence" that Special Agent Bassem Youssef was blocked from a counterterrorism assignment in 2002 after he and U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) met with FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to discuss Youssef's complaints. Mueller had approved a transfer for Youssef just days before the meeting, but it never occurred and Youssef was never informed of Mueller's decision, according to the report. Investigators also said the FBI "has provided no rationale" for its failure to promote Youssef, although one former senior FBI manager said Mueller was "appalled" that Youssef had complained to a congressman about his treatment. "We found both the awareness of senior management and the timing of the failure to implement the placement to be circumstantial evidence of retaliation," the report said. The 12-page report, dated last month and provided to The Washington Post yesterday by the office of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), represents a rare endorsement of a whistle-blower's allegations by the Justice Department's internal review office. It also represents another setback for the FBI as it struggles to attract Arabic speakers and informants in its fight against Islamic extremists. "Because of this retaliation, we lost four years of expertise for the war on terror from a highly qualified Arab-American agent," Grassley said in a statement....
Homeland Security Department Is Accused of Credit Card Misuse Flat-bottomed rescue boats at double the retail price, $68,500 worth of unused dog booties, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of computers that somehow disappeared and a $227 beer brewing kit. These are just a few of the questionable purchases that Congressional auditors have found by digging through half a year of credit card records from the Homeland Security Department, including records for the months immediately after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year. The audit, by the Government Accountability Office, which is due to be released Wednesday, concluded that the credit card misuse could probably have been avoided had the department completed a long-planned rulebook for its more than 9,000 employees who spent $420 million last year using government-issued credit cards. Instead, “due to a lack of leadership” at the department, the draft manual has never been finished, creating accounting weaknesses that “leave D.H.S. highly vulnerable to fraudulent, improper and abusive activity,” the audit says. The result is that in the five months examined, the investigators found that 45 percent of purchases did not have appropriate preauthorization by supervisors and that 63 percent did not include documentation stating whether the goods or services had been received. Congressional leaders, who requested the investigation, said they were once again disappointed at the lack of oversight of taxpayer dollars at the Homeland Security Department, which has already been blamed for up to $2 billion of waste and fraud related to the hurricanes last year....
To Agency Insiders, Cyber Thefts And Slow Response Are No Surprise Every day, an electronic wall guarding the Agriculture Department's servers is probed for holes 2,000 times by potential hackers and data thieves. The probes usually can't get through that wall. But on the first weekend in June, a hacker made it deep into one server, prompting an announcement late last month that personal information on 26,000 Washington area employees, contractors and retirees may have been compromised. To government officials responsible for information security and to outside experts, the intrusion -- and several recent security incidents at other agencies -- was no surprise. For the past five years, the department had received failing grades on a congressional report card for its information-security practices. The overall grade for federal agencies in 2005 was D-plus. In the past few weeks, the Agriculture incident was joined by cases of potentially compromised data at Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, the Federal Trade Commission, the Government Accountability Office, Housing and Urban Development, the Navy, and the Energy Department. The State Department also suffered a series of hacking attacks. The VA incident, with a loss of data on 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, drew the sharpest public attention. The data were later recovered. But officials and experts say that the frequency of the recent security incidents is not unusual, and that much more work needs to be done in the federal government to implement effective cybersecurity policies....See, there really is no problem with the Feds gathering and storing more and more date on each one of us. Really, no problem at all.
A Specter Is Haunting America The "findings" that precede Arlen Specter's National Security Surveillance Act are full of tough-sounding rhetoric about the limits of executive power, including former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's observation that "a state of war is not a blank check for the President." Unfortunately, the National Security Surveillance Act is. Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, portrays his legislation as a way of reasserting the roles of Congress and the courts in an area where President Bush has claimed unilateral authority. But if enacted, the bill would give a statutory blessing to warrantless surveillance and encourage the president's habit of doing whatever he considers appropriate to fight terrorism, regardless of what the other two branches say. No wonder the bill has been endorsed by the White House. The National Security Surveillance Act ostensibly would subject the monitoring of telephone calls and e-mail messages in terrorism investigations to judicial review. But instead of seeking approval for eavesdropping on particular suspects, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (a law the president has been ignoring), the administration could ask the secret court established by that statute to authorize entire "electronic surveillance programs," which might involve thousands of unnamed targets. Unlike the administration's description of the warrantless surveillance the National Security Agency already is conducting, the communications monitored by these programs need not involve anyone outside the U.S.; they could be entirely domestic. And they need not involve suspected agents of terrorist organizations; a person "reasonably believed to have communication with or be associated with" a suspected agent of a terrorist organization would do. Hence anyone who talks to or spends time with a suspected terrorist, even unknowingly, would thereby become a legitimate target, and any communication between that person and anyone else could be monitored without a warrant. You could never safely assume your phone calls or e-mail messages were private, since either you or the person on the other end might have had inadvertent contact with a suspected terrorist. In case this understanding of permissible surveillance is not broad enough for the government's eavesdropping to pass judicial muster, Specter's bill also says the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court "may dismiss a challenge to the legality of an electronic surveillance program for any reason" (emphasis added). So even if there were valid statutory or constitutional arguments against a program, the court could dismiss them because it did not like the tie worn by the lawyer presenting them. Could the reason really be that frivolous? Since this court does not produce public opinions, we might never know. And did I mention that the bill allows the attorney general to move all lawsuits challenging the government's surveillance programs to the one court that can secretly dismiss them on a whim?....
U.S. Forest Service steps up enforcement On June 15 Joshua P. Geffre, age 19, and his girlfriend, age 17, of Lead were sentenced in Federal Court on charges of possession of alcohol and resisting or interfering with a Forest Service law enforcement officer. Geffre was also sentenced for operating a vehicle in a careless and reckless manner - an ATV -as well as failing to stop his vehicle when directed to do so by a Forest Service law enforcement officer. The court ordered Geffre to pay fines totaling $1,090 and sentenced him to 30 days in jail with 30 days suspended on the condition that Geffre not enter the Black Hills National Forest for a period of three years. Geffre was also ordered to not operate an ATV for a period of three years....and Kit Laney does time in the Federal pen. Thank you, David Iglesias.
Bush Blocked Eavesdropping Program Probe President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the anti-terror eavesdropping program that intercepts Americans' international calls and e-mails, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday. Bush refused to grant security clearances for department investigators who were looking into the role Justice lawyers played in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency listens in on telephone calls and reads e-mail without court approval, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee. Without access to the sensitive program, the department's Office of Professional Responsibility closed its investigation in April. "It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?" Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the committee chairman, asked Gonzales. "The president of the United States makes the decision," Gonzales replied. Later, at the White House, spokesman Tony Snow said the eavesdropping program is reviewed every 45 days by senior officials, including Gonzales. The president did not consider the Justice unit that functions as a legal ethics watchdog to be the "proper venue," Snow said....
U.S. Patriot Act OKs Business Wiretaps It has been found that when amending the Patriot Act this past March, the U.S. government added a clause permitting wiretaps and bugs for investigation of suspected antitrust law violations, such as price fixing. The revised law may cause significant damage to major Korean companies, the bulk of whose exports go to the U.S., as they could come under investigation on breaking antitrust laws by just making contact with competing firms. The Dong-A Ilbo confirmed the legislation data disclosed by the U.S. administration which shows that Section 113 of the Patriot Act amendments, passed by the U.S. Congress on March 7, now includes illegal monopolizing in trade and commerce, as stipulated in Sherman Anti-trust Act, in the list of crimes that fall under the Patriot Act. The amendments took effect two days later on March 9 with the signature by U.S. President George W. Bush. The revision, however, has not been advertised much in either the U.S. or Korea, so large Korean corporations have been unable to equip themselves for the change....
The Problem With Presidential Signing Statements Recently, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, held a hearing about "presidential signing statements." Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in the Guantanamo Bay detainee case, Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, defining the balance of powers among this country's three branches of government. These may strike some as obscure legal niceties of little importance to Americans' daily lives. There is nothing new about a president adding a "statement on signing" to legislation he has approved. Since the country was founded, presidents have used these statements for relatively innocuous purposes: to thank supporters, explain their support for the bill or express satisfaction--or dissatisfaction--with legislation passed by Congress. What is new and troubling is the extraordinary frequency with which President Bush has used these statements, and the unorthodox way he uses them. The recent spate of presidential signing statements constitutes a threat to our country's system of checks and balances as surely as the Bush administration actions that the Hamdan ruling struck down did. Since he took office, Bush has used this device to object to more than 500 provisions in more than 100 pieces of legislation--nearly as many as the 575 signing statements issued by all of his predecessors combined. In these statements, the president often has claimed that the new laws violate the Constitution and signaled his intention not to enforce certain provisions, despite having signed them into law....
Judicial Supremacists Strike Again Who could have guessed that Osama bin Laden's driver/bodyguard would be one of the privileged few to be granted a hearing by the high and mighty U.S. Supreme Court justices! After refusing to hear appeals from thousands of Americans during the past year, the Court's liberals jumped at a chance to rule that President Bush was wrong. It wasn't compassion for Gitmo prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan. It was that Hamdan v. Rumsfeld offered an opportunity to proclaim judicial supremacy over both the other two branches of government and to slap the Bush Administration in the process. The Supreme Court had no business taking the Hamdan case. Congress had passed the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 withdrawing jurisdiction over Guantanamo prisoners' habeas corpus petitions from every "court, justice, or judge" except the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court did not, and could not, dispute Congress's power to do exactly that. The U.S. Constitution clearly grants this power to Congress. But the Court held that pending cases were exempt from this particular withdrawal of jurisdiction even though the law did not say that. Justice John Paul Stevens' majority decision ignored what Justice Scalia's dissent called a "plain directive," and (in the words of a primary sponsor of the Detainee Act, Senator Lindsey Graham) "made legal contortions to get the result the Court wanted."....
Retaliation Case Of Arab Specialist At FBI Advances The Justice Department has concluded there is "reasonable cause" to believe that senior FBI officials retaliated against the bureau's highest-ranking Arabic speaker for complaining that he was cut out of terrorism cases despite his expertise. An internal investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility found "sufficient circumstantial evidence" that Special Agent Bassem Youssef was blocked from a counterterrorism assignment in 2002 after he and U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) met with FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to discuss Youssef's complaints. Mueller had approved a transfer for Youssef just days before the meeting, but it never occurred and Youssef was never informed of Mueller's decision, according to the report. Investigators also said the FBI "has provided no rationale" for its failure to promote Youssef, although one former senior FBI manager said Mueller was "appalled" that Youssef had complained to a congressman about his treatment. "We found both the awareness of senior management and the timing of the failure to implement the placement to be circumstantial evidence of retaliation," the report said. The 12-page report, dated last month and provided to The Washington Post yesterday by the office of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), represents a rare endorsement of a whistle-blower's allegations by the Justice Department's internal review office. It also represents another setback for the FBI as it struggles to attract Arabic speakers and informants in its fight against Islamic extremists. "Because of this retaliation, we lost four years of expertise for the war on terror from a highly qualified Arab-American agent," Grassley said in a statement....
Homeland Security Department Is Accused of Credit Card Misuse Flat-bottomed rescue boats at double the retail price, $68,500 worth of unused dog booties, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of computers that somehow disappeared and a $227 beer brewing kit. These are just a few of the questionable purchases that Congressional auditors have found by digging through half a year of credit card records from the Homeland Security Department, including records for the months immediately after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year. The audit, by the Government Accountability Office, which is due to be released Wednesday, concluded that the credit card misuse could probably have been avoided had the department completed a long-planned rulebook for its more than 9,000 employees who spent $420 million last year using government-issued credit cards. Instead, “due to a lack of leadership” at the department, the draft manual has never been finished, creating accounting weaknesses that “leave D.H.S. highly vulnerable to fraudulent, improper and abusive activity,” the audit says. The result is that in the five months examined, the investigators found that 45 percent of purchases did not have appropriate preauthorization by supervisors and that 63 percent did not include documentation stating whether the goods or services had been received. Congressional leaders, who requested the investigation, said they were once again disappointed at the lack of oversight of taxpayer dollars at the Homeland Security Department, which has already been blamed for up to $2 billion of waste and fraud related to the hurricanes last year....
To Agency Insiders, Cyber Thefts And Slow Response Are No Surprise Every day, an electronic wall guarding the Agriculture Department's servers is probed for holes 2,000 times by potential hackers and data thieves. The probes usually can't get through that wall. But on the first weekend in June, a hacker made it deep into one server, prompting an announcement late last month that personal information on 26,000 Washington area employees, contractors and retirees may have been compromised. To government officials responsible for information security and to outside experts, the intrusion -- and several recent security incidents at other agencies -- was no surprise. For the past five years, the department had received failing grades on a congressional report card for its information-security practices. The overall grade for federal agencies in 2005 was D-plus. In the past few weeks, the Agriculture incident was joined by cases of potentially compromised data at Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, the Federal Trade Commission, the Government Accountability Office, Housing and Urban Development, the Navy, and the Energy Department. The State Department also suffered a series of hacking attacks. The VA incident, with a loss of data on 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, drew the sharpest public attention. The data were later recovered. But officials and experts say that the frequency of the recent security incidents is not unusual, and that much more work needs to be done in the federal government to implement effective cybersecurity policies....See, there really is no problem with the Feds gathering and storing more and more date on each one of us. Really, no problem at all.
A Specter Is Haunting America The "findings" that precede Arlen Specter's National Security Surveillance Act are full of tough-sounding rhetoric about the limits of executive power, including former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's observation that "a state of war is not a blank check for the President." Unfortunately, the National Security Surveillance Act is. Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, portrays his legislation as a way of reasserting the roles of Congress and the courts in an area where President Bush has claimed unilateral authority. But if enacted, the bill would give a statutory blessing to warrantless surveillance and encourage the president's habit of doing whatever he considers appropriate to fight terrorism, regardless of what the other two branches say. No wonder the bill has been endorsed by the White House. The National Security Surveillance Act ostensibly would subject the monitoring of telephone calls and e-mail messages in terrorism investigations to judicial review. But instead of seeking approval for eavesdropping on particular suspects, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (a law the president has been ignoring), the administration could ask the secret court established by that statute to authorize entire "electronic surveillance programs," which might involve thousands of unnamed targets. Unlike the administration's description of the warrantless surveillance the National Security Agency already is conducting, the communications monitored by these programs need not involve anyone outside the U.S.; they could be entirely domestic. And they need not involve suspected agents of terrorist organizations; a person "reasonably believed to have communication with or be associated with" a suspected agent of a terrorist organization would do. Hence anyone who talks to or spends time with a suspected terrorist, even unknowingly, would thereby become a legitimate target, and any communication between that person and anyone else could be monitored without a warrant. You could never safely assume your phone calls or e-mail messages were private, since either you or the person on the other end might have had inadvertent contact with a suspected terrorist. In case this understanding of permissible surveillance is not broad enough for the government's eavesdropping to pass judicial muster, Specter's bill also says the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court "may dismiss a challenge to the legality of an electronic surveillance program for any reason" (emphasis added). So even if there were valid statutory or constitutional arguments against a program, the court could dismiss them because it did not like the tie worn by the lawyer presenting them. Could the reason really be that frivolous? Since this court does not produce public opinions, we might never know. And did I mention that the bill allows the attorney general to move all lawsuits challenging the government's surveillance programs to the one court that can secretly dismiss them on a whim?....
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
MAD COW DISEASE
US to scale back mad cow surveillance program
The United States Agriculture Department will announce on Thursday plans to scale back its mad cow surveillance program, a source briefed by the department told Reuters. The USDA is "lowering it to reflect the low level of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in the United States," the source said. "It is lower, but keep in mind it will still be testing at a level 10 times higher than" international recommended standards. The enhanced program, which was to run for 12 to 18 months, has tested more than 759,000 animals -- far more than initially planned -- and was responsible for finding two of the three cases of the brain-wasting cattle ailment in the United States. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in April that mad cow disease hits fewer than one in 1 million U.S. adult cattle, giving the United States a low occurrence of the disease which is likely to decline. But U.S. consumer groups have urged the government to continue its enhanced testing program for mad cow disease, saying any move to end or dramatically curb the program would send the wrong message to Americans and U.S. beef importers....
US Still Expected To Accept Over 30 Months Canadian Cattle
A Canadian cattle official said the recent demands of a U.S. cattle producing group should not affect changes to a proposed U.S. rule on whether to accept Canadian cattle over 30 months of age. He also noted that the rule is now out of the hands of the USDA. R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America responded to news of Canada's latest bovine spongifrom encephalopathy (BSE) case by stating that the USDA should indefinitely postpone plans to revise its ban on older Canadian cattle. "Their only venue is through the courts and so far they've been defeated at every court challenge that they've been involved in," said Rob McNabb, assistant general manager of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA). He said R-CALF previously lost two court appeals in relation to the first revisions to the ban in 2004. "The court system has recognized the USDA has both the authority and the competency to deal with this." He said the USDA has yet to make an official statement on revising the rule, as it is currently in the hands of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. McNabb said the latest the CCA heard from the USDA was when it announced in a release July 13 that a USDA expert will be sent to Canada to participate in the investigation of the case. "We welcome the fact that they're going to send someone up to participate and see things first hand," he said....
Australian Cattle Traceback Helps In Japan
A mandatory cattle traceback system will help underpin demand for Australian beef in Japan when it lifts import bans on U.S. product, Malcolm Foster, President of the Australian Lotfeeders' Association, said Tuesday. Foster said he looks forward to the return of U.S. beef to Japan as it will moderate market volatility, increase supply of beef, reduce prices and in due course help expand the market. Australia's National livestock Identification System has "set the benchmark" in Japan, its biggest beef export market, and other things being equal is a significant factor in supporting purchases overseas of Australian beef, he said. "We're an exporting nation, we've got to keep our systems going, keep ahead of the game and keep coming up with new ideas and reasons why our product is superior," Foster said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires. "It's the greatest thing we ever did," he said of traceback, which was introduced across Australia in July 2005, and enables individual animals to be tracked from property of birth to slaughter for food safety, product integrity and market access purposes....
US to scale back mad cow surveillance program
The United States Agriculture Department will announce on Thursday plans to scale back its mad cow surveillance program, a source briefed by the department told Reuters. The USDA is "lowering it to reflect the low level of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in the United States," the source said. "It is lower, but keep in mind it will still be testing at a level 10 times higher than" international recommended standards. The enhanced program, which was to run for 12 to 18 months, has tested more than 759,000 animals -- far more than initially planned -- and was responsible for finding two of the three cases of the brain-wasting cattle ailment in the United States. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in April that mad cow disease hits fewer than one in 1 million U.S. adult cattle, giving the United States a low occurrence of the disease which is likely to decline. But U.S. consumer groups have urged the government to continue its enhanced testing program for mad cow disease, saying any move to end or dramatically curb the program would send the wrong message to Americans and U.S. beef importers....
US Still Expected To Accept Over 30 Months Canadian Cattle
A Canadian cattle official said the recent demands of a U.S. cattle producing group should not affect changes to a proposed U.S. rule on whether to accept Canadian cattle over 30 months of age. He also noted that the rule is now out of the hands of the USDA. R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America responded to news of Canada's latest bovine spongifrom encephalopathy (BSE) case by stating that the USDA should indefinitely postpone plans to revise its ban on older Canadian cattle. "Their only venue is through the courts and so far they've been defeated at every court challenge that they've been involved in," said Rob McNabb, assistant general manager of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA). He said R-CALF previously lost two court appeals in relation to the first revisions to the ban in 2004. "The court system has recognized the USDA has both the authority and the competency to deal with this." He said the USDA has yet to make an official statement on revising the rule, as it is currently in the hands of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. McNabb said the latest the CCA heard from the USDA was when it announced in a release July 13 that a USDA expert will be sent to Canada to participate in the investigation of the case. "We welcome the fact that they're going to send someone up to participate and see things first hand," he said....
Australian Cattle Traceback Helps In Japan
A mandatory cattle traceback system will help underpin demand for Australian beef in Japan when it lifts import bans on U.S. product, Malcolm Foster, President of the Australian Lotfeeders' Association, said Tuesday. Foster said he looks forward to the return of U.S. beef to Japan as it will moderate market volatility, increase supply of beef, reduce prices and in due course help expand the market. Australia's National livestock Identification System has "set the benchmark" in Japan, its biggest beef export market, and other things being equal is a significant factor in supporting purchases overseas of Australian beef, he said. "We're an exporting nation, we've got to keep our systems going, keep ahead of the game and keep coming up with new ideas and reasons why our product is superior," Foster said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires. "It's the greatest thing we ever did," he said of traceback, which was introduced across Australia in July 2005, and enables individual animals to be tracked from property of birth to slaughter for food safety, product integrity and market access purposes....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Aid to Ranchers Was Diverted For Big Profits When a drought left pastures in a handful of Plains states parched in 2003, ranchers turned to the federal government for help. Officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture quickly responded with what they considered an innovative plan. They decided to dip into massive stockpiles of powdered milk that the agency had stored in warehouses nationwide as part of its milk price-support program. Livestock owners could get the protein-rich commodity free and feed it to their cattle and calves. The milk would help ranchers weather the drought while the government reduced its growing stockpile. But within months, the program spawned a lucrative secondary market in which ranchers, feed dealers and brokers began trading the powdered milk in a daisy chain of transactions, generating millions of dollars in profits. Tens of millions of pounds of powdered milk intended solely for livestock owners in drought-stricken states went to states with no drought or were sold to middlemen in Mexico and other countries, a Washington Post investigation found. Taxpayers paid at least $400 million for the emergency milk program, one of an array of costly relief plans crafted by Congress and the USDA to insulate farmers and ranchers from risk. In some cases, ownership of the powdered milk changed hands half a dozen times or more in a matter of days, with the price increasing each time. A commodity that started out being sold for almost nothing was soon trading for hundreds of dollars a ton....
Group Wants To Save Utah's Open Lands And Waters Gov. Jon Huntsman on Tuesday helped launch a campaign by The Nature Conservancy to raise $43 million over four years for land and water conservation projects in Utah. A report released by the Oquirrh Institute found that Utah was losing 15,000 acres of ranch and farm land and open space every year. At that rate of development, Utah's populated Wasatch Front corridor will sprawl over 308 square miles – the size of New York City – by 2030, the report said. The Nature Conservancy said the report highlighted the need to act quickly to preserve some of Utah's unspoiled lands. It said it had reached agreement to buy a conservation easement on a Cache County ranch for $3.7 million. For the 6,700-acre Selman Ranch in the Little Bear River drainage, the conservancy still has to raise $2.3 million of the easement price. ``We are excited about working with the conservancy on this easement because we feel like somewhere, sometime, someone needs to save a place for Utah's wildlife,'' rancher Bret Selman said Tuesday in a statement....
Horned weed eaters attack noxious plant To most creatures, a noxious weed called leafy spurge is the part of the meal that gets pushed off to the side and ignored. For a herd of goats in eastern Idaho, the noxious weed is like eating dessert first. "They look like kids after you give them ice cream and they play in the dirt," Stan Jensen told the Standard Journal. Jensen and his wife, Bonnie, own about 1,000 goats that they hire out to eat noxious weeds in California and Idaho. Leafy spurge is a problem in places of eastern Idaho, where it grows with a 25-foot-long tap root. It chokes out grasses and is inedible to cattle and horses because of a milky secretion the plant produces that can cause blistering, as well as blindness. But goats find the plant with 28 percent protein irresistible. The sticky secretion doesn't seem to bother them and they finish the day with dirt stuck around their mouths....
Industry must tighten CBM water rules, state says A proposal to tighten rules on coal-bed methane water management will continue because it is an issue that persists under the state's current regulatory oversight, according to the Wyoming Environmental Quality Council. In a near unanimous vote, the council on Monday denied a motion by coal-bed methane producers to dismiss a proposed rule by the Powder River Basin Resource Council and several other petitioners who seek to avoid damages from issues surrounding coal-bed methane water. Council members Monday said a lack of coal-bed methane water management is a problem that will persist unless changes are made. "We're pleased. We've said all along that this is a problem that needs to be addressed, and we're glad to see a big majority of the council agree with us," said John Vanvig, organizer for the resource group. The petition for rulemaking was filed late last year, noting that a majority of the industry's daily 1.5 million barrels of coal-bed methane water production isn't put to a specific beneficial use. For years, the state and industry has said that by-product water not put to a specific agricultural use, such as irrigation, is available for wildlife. So far, the preferred management method has been to dump coal-bed methane water on the surface to run down draws that are otherwise dry most of the year. Many ranchers complain that yearly flows of high-salinity water cause more harm than good to their ranching operations....
Price tag for Mike Horse Dam removal nearly $30 million The costs of totally removing the Mike Horse Tailings Dam and cleaning up nearby mine wastes would approach nearly $30 million, according to a draft economic analysis released this week by the U.S. Forest Service. Those costs could be cut by more than half by removing only a portion of the troublesome dam - an approach the Forest Service appears to favor. The Clark Fork Coalition and Trout Unlimited support full removal of the 500-foot-long, 60-foot-high structure. The draft Engineering Evaluation and Cost Analysis evaluates five reclamation options for the dam and impounded tailings, as well as the estimated costs and effectiveness of removing environmental and public health risks. The Forest Service hasn't selected a preferred alternative, but a cover letter said Regional Forester Gail Kimbell has expressed interest in the two options that would remove only a portion of the tailings dam....
Jumbo jet among advances firefighters using against SoCal blazes The DC-10 swoops in just above the trees, its belly opens and disgorges onto flaming terrain 12,000 gallons of pink retardant - up to 10 times more than what a traditional firefighting plane can release. With airborne firefighting getting more sophisticated, a cluster of wildfires in the desert east of Los Angeles has become a laboratory of sorts. For the first time, a jetliner outfitted to carry retardant instead of passengers was used on an active wildfire. The first person to spot one of the fires was piloting a military-style helicopter with infrared sensors that peer through plumes of smoke and pinpoint hotspots. And there is more in the wings. The U.S. Forest Service plans to send up unmanned drones to watch for fires across the West, with test flights scheduled for next month. Jumbo jets with payloads twice as large as the DC-10 have been tested....
Satellites watch wildfires burn A joint effort by a handful of agencies and a university has made it possible to track the progress of wildfires in the United States with maps updated several times a day and posted online for the public. MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) imaging devices mounted on two NASA satellites monitor the earth and can pinpoint a fire within a 500-meter distance. NASA, the U.S. Forest Service, the University of Maryland and the National Interagency Fire Center all participate in the program....
Forest Service plans to poison 10,000 prairie dogs Some 10,000 prairie dogs will be killed with poison this fall on the Little Missouri National Grasslands around Watford City. The U.S. Forest Service is taking comments on its plan to poison the burrowing animals scattered throughout 11 colonies on 310 acres in western North Dakota. The colonies are not the only prairie dog sites on that part of the grasslands, but they are all encroaching on private and state-owned land. The Forest Service says it will only kill the prairie dogs in areas where the adjoining landowner does the same. So far, it appears nearly all private parties are interested in a cooperative project, said Gary Petik, Forest Service range specialist....
'No thanks' to uranium waste plans An environmental group doesn't want nearly 32,000 tons of what it calls radioactive waste from Oklahoma to travel down the main streets of Moab, Monticello and Blanding on its way to a disposal facility on White Mesa in San Juan County. The Glen Canyon Group of the Sierra Club's nuclear-waste committee recently filed a petition with the Utah Division of Radiation Control to stop the waste coming from FMRI Inc., in Muskogee, Okla., into Utah. The waste would be shipped to the International Uranium Corp.'s mill on White Mesa, a sparsely populated plateau in southeastern Utah. Earlier this month, the DRC granted an amendment request by the mill's owners to accept the new waste, which the DRC calls "alternate feed material." "I know there are people on White Mesa who are concerned about various health problems," said Sarah Fields, chairwoman of the Glen Canyon Group's nuclear-waste committee. One of the fears about the waste from FMRI Inc. is over thorium, found naturally in the earth's crust and contained in the waste from Oklahoma. As thorium decays, it produces the radioactive gas radon. The concern about radon is that it could cause lung cancer in humans. In a hearing last January in front of the DRC, Thelma Whiskers, a Ute Indian, asked the DRC to move the mill to protect Utes living nearby from getting sick. She says activity at the mill, which has been in operation for more than 20 years, is making people ill....
Ranch Purchase to Aid Truckee River Restoration The federal government has acquired part of an historic ranch east of Sparks in a deal that conservationists say will aid restoration work on the lower Truckee River. The Bureau of Land Management has purchased 128 acres of the 102 Ranch in a 500,000 deal funded through the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act. Michael Cameron with The Nature Conservancy says the acquisition is a key component to river restoration efforts. Cameron says work along a 2 mile stretch of river will begin by the end of the decade. The 12 (m) million dollar project will include returning the river to a natural, meandering state and replacing vegetation....
The Greater Yellowstone Area: Conserving a Beacon of Hope and a Western Icon, Together Read most any newspaper in the Inter-Mountain West on the subject of natural resources and you probably come away feeling depressed. There is no shortage of negative articles on water conservation, environment, natural resources, and public lands. Whether focusing on the Forest Service selling off public land, budget cuts for federal resource management agencies, the continued expansion of resort communities gobbling up pristine habitat, various lawsuits for and against the Fish and Wildlife Service regarding species listings and de-listings, the common themes are negativity and government-bashing. The reasons for the negativity are many; controversy and negativity sell copy, people don’t like government, the government has a long history of ineptitude, and public lands issues are polarizing. But a small, dedicated group of natural resource professionals want to change this negativity and connect local people with their local resources. To appreciate these efforts, it is important to understand the complexity of our various environmental issues and how our government is taking a new tact to address this complexity....
Walden urges summit to kick-start Klamath water talks Faced with an alarming crash in West Coast salmon fishing, U.S. Rep. Greg Walden is asking three cabinet secretaries and a White House official to lead a summit this fall to kick-start government efforts to help Klamath Basin fish and farms. A stalwart defender of farmers during the 2001 shutoff of federal irrigation water to 1,000 farms to protect endangered fish, the Oregon Republican said Monday that efforts need to get back on track to restore certainty for Indian tribes and fishermen who depend on salmon as well as farmers who depend on irrigation water. "I think we are at a key tipping point," Walden said from Washington, D.C. "A huge majority of people are saying 'Let's sit down and try to figure out how to work this out -- find a solution that will give us certainty whether you are a tribal family, a coastal fishing family or an inland farming family. But we need the government to say: Here is a list of things you need to do."' The region became a flashpoint in 2001, when drought triggered the shutoff under the Endangered Species Act of federal irrigation water to the Klamath Reclamation Project. Farmers and anti-government protesters faced off with federal marshals for months over headgates that kept the water for endangered suckers in Upper Klamath Lake and threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River....
Wildlife service downlists endangered Gila trout Though they dream of one day fishing for a lovely Gila trout, some avid anglers adamantly oppose a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to ease protections on the endangered species. The agency, which says the species in Southern New Mexico and east-central Arizona has made a comeback, published a rule Tuesday that will allow limited recreational fishing for Gila trout for the first time since 1966. An advocacy group, however, says it might go to court in an effort to stop the government from downlisting the trout's status from endangered to threatened. "When people fish for a species, they get accustomed to catching it, and they care for the fish," Elizabeth Slown, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman, said. "It's been so long since anyone fished for Gila trout, no one remembers them."....
Building dispute blooms Did someone in this wine-country town illegally plant an endangered flower to sabotage a proposed housing development? That is the question at the center of a quarrel that folks here have dubbed "Foamgate." Bob Evans, a 72-year-old retired elementary school principal, said he was walking with his dog last year when he came upon the tiny white flowers of Sebastopol meadowfoam poking from shallow pools of water in a grassy field. The former bean farm happens to be the site chosen for the 20-acre Laguna Vista housing development. Mr. Evans and other opponents seized on the discovery of the federally protected species in hopes that it would force the developer to scale back plans for 145 houses and apartments. "It was the bad luck of the developer that it popped up," Mr. Evans said. But state wildlife officials investigated and concluded that the meadowfoam had been transplanted there. They ordered it dug up. This year, the flowers returned, and with them the controversy. The dispute has held up final approval of the building project....
Falcons get glimpse of new Texas habitat Chirping like hungry seagulls, the birds flapped their narrow wings and fluttered around the boxes lined with straw and the remains of Japanese quail, the snack their handlers fed them during the 1,360-mile ride from Boise, Idaho, in the back of a minivan. Groups of the birds were lifted into small wooden boxes that will be home until they get their first shot at flight in about a week. Part of the nearly two-decade-old Peregrine Fund plan to return the birds to their natural habitat, 126 aplomado falcons are to be released in about 10 West Texas locations this year. The fund started as an effort to replenish peregrine falcons, which has succeeded. The aplomado falcons - 12 inches to 16 inches long with a wingspan from 2 1/2 feet to 3 feet - disappeared from Texas, New Mexico and Arizona about 50 years ago, and raptor biologist Bill Heinrich said it's unclear why. Now Heinrich hopes there are enough survivors to mate and revitalize a species listed as endangered since 1986, but he only expects half of those released this year to make it. When they reach 40 weeks and leave the "hack box," a white plywood structure protecting them from roaming cattle and other prey by a narrow strip of electrified tape, the aplomado falcons will have to learn to fly and hunt....
Federal agency tells Kurt Busch wedding plans have some bugs Something else has been bugging NASCAR's Kurt Busch beyond the fact he's stalled outside of the Chase for the Nextel Cup in 14th place. The tiger beetle! "Those are the insects I guess that have their natural habitat on the Chesapeake Bay in the area we were looking to get married," Busch said in a conference call Tuesday. "Their mating season is the months of June and July. With this being July, the environmentalists said, 'Whoa. Whoa. We can't have a bunch of guys out there building a pier and dock for this wedding because it's going to disrupt the environment.' " Actually, it was the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "In terms of being environmentalist, we are part of the federal government and charged with protecting the public's natural resources, including endangered species," said Karen Mayne, field supervisor for the agency's office in Gloucester, Va. Mayne said the temporary pier Busch wanted constructed on land owned by developer Dan Hoffler on Virginia's Eastern Shore could have harmed the tiger beetles, which are listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act....
Endangered cress grows at Tahoe A unique and endangered yellow mustard plant has found places to grow despite high Lake Tahoe levels this year. Tahoe yellow cress grows only on beaches at Lake Tahoe, which have shrunk this year because the water level is higher than it's been in five years, at 6,229 feet above sea level. "With the high lake elevation, the yellow cress has moved into very discrete locations along the beaches that are not flooded," said Rick Robinson, who manages watershed restoration for the California Tahoe Conservancy. "The real concern is that the plant is sharing the same sandy beach as the public, and with there being so little beach available for both, it makes the plant more subject to being trampled," he said....
100 acres of springs to be designated critical habitat The federal government has agreed to name more than 100 acres of springs in Comal and Hays counties as critical habitat for two species of beetles and a shrimp-like crustacean. The Peck's cave amphipod, the Comal Springs riffle beetle and the Comal Springs dryopid beetle are found in only a few places in Central Texas. The move came nearly three years after the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the designation. Critical habitats are supposed to offer extra protection for endangered species and make it harder to pollute the springs or withdraw large quantities of water when a federal permit is needed or federal money is used. But the Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the program, said the designation is near-worthless and that it usually doesn't consider creating critical habitat unless ordered by a court. "In 30 years of implementing the ESA (Endangered Species Act), the service has found that designation of critical habitat provides little additional protection for most listed species," an agency news release said Monday....
Senate Bill: Superfund Does Not Apply to Livestock Legislation introduced in the Senate today would clarify that the severe regulatory provisions of the Superfund law, also known as CERCLA, should not apply to manure produced on livestock farms and ranches, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. According to AFBF President Bob Stallman, the Farm Bureau-supported bill would amend the Superfund law passed in 1980, reaffirming that it was never intended to apply to agriculture. The bipartisan measure, with lead sponsors Sens. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), currently has 23 co-sponsors. “Superfund regulations were enacted more than a quarter-century ago to rein in industrial polluters and clean up toxic waste sites, not to be imposed on America’s farmers and ranchers,” said Stallman. “We’re pleased that the Senate is serious about clarifying the intent of the Superfund law.”....
R-CALF Calls On Congress To Reform Beef Import Regulations Ranchers-Cattlemen's Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, has sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and five congressional leaders asking that USDA and Congress address issues such as country-of-origin labeling and segregation of Canadian and U.S. cattle at feedlots and at slaughter. Specifically, R-CALF USA is asking USDA to shelve the idea of allowing Canadian cattle over 30 months of age and beef from cattle over 30 months of age into the United States. The letter also asks USDA to rescind a rule allowing cattle and beef from cattle under 30 months into the country. Failing that, R-CALF is requesting that Canadian cattle be prevented from commingling with native-born cattle. R-CALF Chief Executive Bill Bullard, told Meatingplace.com that with new OIE standards in place, he believes Canada is arguably in the "undetermined" category for incidence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. OIE has shifted from a five-tier system that assessed risk by the number of BSE cases detected per million head of cattle to a more general three-tier system: "negligible," meaning no cases have been detected in the past 11 years; "controlled," meaning effective measures such as animal feed bans and specified risk material removal have been put in place to mitigate risk; and "undetermined," which means none of the above. "We would argue that Canada belongs in that last category," Bullard said, contending that the recent discovery of BSE in a Canadian dairy cow born four and a half years after Canada's feed ban was implemented indicates that the ban is either ineffective or inadequately enforced....
U.S. assists Canada in mad cow probe The USA is joining Canada's investigation into its most recent occurrence of mad cow disease, a case troubling to officials in both countries because of the youth of the infected animal. The age of the animal is crucial because all of the infected cattle until now had been more than 6 years old, and the assumption was made that they had been infected by contaminated feed. But the cow was born years after Canada and the USA imposed bans in 1997 on the use of ground-up animals in feed, the primary means by which the infection is transmitted from an infected cow. Now a group of U.S. cattle raisers wants the border closed again. To protect the U.S. herd, the USDA "must immediately" close the Canadian border to all beef and cattle, says Chuck Kiker, president of Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America in Billings, Mont. "Because of (the disease's) long incubation period, the U.S. needs to wait for perhaps several years before resuming trade in live Canadian cattle," he says....
Jackalope promoter makes final leap Bob Petley had a lot to answer for, not least the creation of a massive population of people who think there is an animal called a jackalope. The jackalope allegedly is found in the Arizona desert, a unique creature that looks suspiciously like a jack rabbit with antlers. If you see one, check your medication immediately. Peltey was 93 when he died. His funeral was held last week in Scottsdale. Years ago we knew a cowboy who claimed to have roped one in Wickenburg. Unfortunately, he could not prove the claim because when he tried to dally the creature to his saddle, it ripped off the horn and disappeared down Sol's Wash, such was the strength of the Arizona jackalope. The accompanying text, written by someone with a droll sense of humor and plenty of time, says, "The Jackalope (Lepus temperamentalus) is one of the rarest animals in the world. A cross between a now extinct pygmy-deer and a species of killer-rabbit, they are extremely shy unless approached. None have ever been captured alive and this rare photo (often criticized as fake) shows a mighty buck about to strike."....
Aid to Ranchers Was Diverted For Big Profits When a drought left pastures in a handful of Plains states parched in 2003, ranchers turned to the federal government for help. Officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture quickly responded with what they considered an innovative plan. They decided to dip into massive stockpiles of powdered milk that the agency had stored in warehouses nationwide as part of its milk price-support program. Livestock owners could get the protein-rich commodity free and feed it to their cattle and calves. The milk would help ranchers weather the drought while the government reduced its growing stockpile. But within months, the program spawned a lucrative secondary market in which ranchers, feed dealers and brokers began trading the powdered milk in a daisy chain of transactions, generating millions of dollars in profits. Tens of millions of pounds of powdered milk intended solely for livestock owners in drought-stricken states went to states with no drought or were sold to middlemen in Mexico and other countries, a Washington Post investigation found. Taxpayers paid at least $400 million for the emergency milk program, one of an array of costly relief plans crafted by Congress and the USDA to insulate farmers and ranchers from risk. In some cases, ownership of the powdered milk changed hands half a dozen times or more in a matter of days, with the price increasing each time. A commodity that started out being sold for almost nothing was soon trading for hundreds of dollars a ton....
Group Wants To Save Utah's Open Lands And Waters Gov. Jon Huntsman on Tuesday helped launch a campaign by The Nature Conservancy to raise $43 million over four years for land and water conservation projects in Utah. A report released by the Oquirrh Institute found that Utah was losing 15,000 acres of ranch and farm land and open space every year. At that rate of development, Utah's populated Wasatch Front corridor will sprawl over 308 square miles – the size of New York City – by 2030, the report said. The Nature Conservancy said the report highlighted the need to act quickly to preserve some of Utah's unspoiled lands. It said it had reached agreement to buy a conservation easement on a Cache County ranch for $3.7 million. For the 6,700-acre Selman Ranch in the Little Bear River drainage, the conservancy still has to raise $2.3 million of the easement price. ``We are excited about working with the conservancy on this easement because we feel like somewhere, sometime, someone needs to save a place for Utah's wildlife,'' rancher Bret Selman said Tuesday in a statement....
Horned weed eaters attack noxious plant To most creatures, a noxious weed called leafy spurge is the part of the meal that gets pushed off to the side and ignored. For a herd of goats in eastern Idaho, the noxious weed is like eating dessert first. "They look like kids after you give them ice cream and they play in the dirt," Stan Jensen told the Standard Journal. Jensen and his wife, Bonnie, own about 1,000 goats that they hire out to eat noxious weeds in California and Idaho. Leafy spurge is a problem in places of eastern Idaho, where it grows with a 25-foot-long tap root. It chokes out grasses and is inedible to cattle and horses because of a milky secretion the plant produces that can cause blistering, as well as blindness. But goats find the plant with 28 percent protein irresistible. The sticky secretion doesn't seem to bother them and they finish the day with dirt stuck around their mouths....
Industry must tighten CBM water rules, state says A proposal to tighten rules on coal-bed methane water management will continue because it is an issue that persists under the state's current regulatory oversight, according to the Wyoming Environmental Quality Council. In a near unanimous vote, the council on Monday denied a motion by coal-bed methane producers to dismiss a proposed rule by the Powder River Basin Resource Council and several other petitioners who seek to avoid damages from issues surrounding coal-bed methane water. Council members Monday said a lack of coal-bed methane water management is a problem that will persist unless changes are made. "We're pleased. We've said all along that this is a problem that needs to be addressed, and we're glad to see a big majority of the council agree with us," said John Vanvig, organizer for the resource group. The petition for rulemaking was filed late last year, noting that a majority of the industry's daily 1.5 million barrels of coal-bed methane water production isn't put to a specific beneficial use. For years, the state and industry has said that by-product water not put to a specific agricultural use, such as irrigation, is available for wildlife. So far, the preferred management method has been to dump coal-bed methane water on the surface to run down draws that are otherwise dry most of the year. Many ranchers complain that yearly flows of high-salinity water cause more harm than good to their ranching operations....
Price tag for Mike Horse Dam removal nearly $30 million The costs of totally removing the Mike Horse Tailings Dam and cleaning up nearby mine wastes would approach nearly $30 million, according to a draft economic analysis released this week by the U.S. Forest Service. Those costs could be cut by more than half by removing only a portion of the troublesome dam - an approach the Forest Service appears to favor. The Clark Fork Coalition and Trout Unlimited support full removal of the 500-foot-long, 60-foot-high structure. The draft Engineering Evaluation and Cost Analysis evaluates five reclamation options for the dam and impounded tailings, as well as the estimated costs and effectiveness of removing environmental and public health risks. The Forest Service hasn't selected a preferred alternative, but a cover letter said Regional Forester Gail Kimbell has expressed interest in the two options that would remove only a portion of the tailings dam....
Jumbo jet among advances firefighters using against SoCal blazes The DC-10 swoops in just above the trees, its belly opens and disgorges onto flaming terrain 12,000 gallons of pink retardant - up to 10 times more than what a traditional firefighting plane can release. With airborne firefighting getting more sophisticated, a cluster of wildfires in the desert east of Los Angeles has become a laboratory of sorts. For the first time, a jetliner outfitted to carry retardant instead of passengers was used on an active wildfire. The first person to spot one of the fires was piloting a military-style helicopter with infrared sensors that peer through plumes of smoke and pinpoint hotspots. And there is more in the wings. The U.S. Forest Service plans to send up unmanned drones to watch for fires across the West, with test flights scheduled for next month. Jumbo jets with payloads twice as large as the DC-10 have been tested....
Satellites watch wildfires burn A joint effort by a handful of agencies and a university has made it possible to track the progress of wildfires in the United States with maps updated several times a day and posted online for the public. MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) imaging devices mounted on two NASA satellites monitor the earth and can pinpoint a fire within a 500-meter distance. NASA, the U.S. Forest Service, the University of Maryland and the National Interagency Fire Center all participate in the program....
Forest Service plans to poison 10,000 prairie dogs Some 10,000 prairie dogs will be killed with poison this fall on the Little Missouri National Grasslands around Watford City. The U.S. Forest Service is taking comments on its plan to poison the burrowing animals scattered throughout 11 colonies on 310 acres in western North Dakota. The colonies are not the only prairie dog sites on that part of the grasslands, but they are all encroaching on private and state-owned land. The Forest Service says it will only kill the prairie dogs in areas where the adjoining landowner does the same. So far, it appears nearly all private parties are interested in a cooperative project, said Gary Petik, Forest Service range specialist....
'No thanks' to uranium waste plans An environmental group doesn't want nearly 32,000 tons of what it calls radioactive waste from Oklahoma to travel down the main streets of Moab, Monticello and Blanding on its way to a disposal facility on White Mesa in San Juan County. The Glen Canyon Group of the Sierra Club's nuclear-waste committee recently filed a petition with the Utah Division of Radiation Control to stop the waste coming from FMRI Inc., in Muskogee, Okla., into Utah. The waste would be shipped to the International Uranium Corp.'s mill on White Mesa, a sparsely populated plateau in southeastern Utah. Earlier this month, the DRC granted an amendment request by the mill's owners to accept the new waste, which the DRC calls "alternate feed material." "I know there are people on White Mesa who are concerned about various health problems," said Sarah Fields, chairwoman of the Glen Canyon Group's nuclear-waste committee. One of the fears about the waste from FMRI Inc. is over thorium, found naturally in the earth's crust and contained in the waste from Oklahoma. As thorium decays, it produces the radioactive gas radon. The concern about radon is that it could cause lung cancer in humans. In a hearing last January in front of the DRC, Thelma Whiskers, a Ute Indian, asked the DRC to move the mill to protect Utes living nearby from getting sick. She says activity at the mill, which has been in operation for more than 20 years, is making people ill....
Ranch Purchase to Aid Truckee River Restoration The federal government has acquired part of an historic ranch east of Sparks in a deal that conservationists say will aid restoration work on the lower Truckee River. The Bureau of Land Management has purchased 128 acres of the 102 Ranch in a 500,000 deal funded through the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act. Michael Cameron with The Nature Conservancy says the acquisition is a key component to river restoration efforts. Cameron says work along a 2 mile stretch of river will begin by the end of the decade. The 12 (m) million dollar project will include returning the river to a natural, meandering state and replacing vegetation....
The Greater Yellowstone Area: Conserving a Beacon of Hope and a Western Icon, Together Read most any newspaper in the Inter-Mountain West on the subject of natural resources and you probably come away feeling depressed. There is no shortage of negative articles on water conservation, environment, natural resources, and public lands. Whether focusing on the Forest Service selling off public land, budget cuts for federal resource management agencies, the continued expansion of resort communities gobbling up pristine habitat, various lawsuits for and against the Fish and Wildlife Service regarding species listings and de-listings, the common themes are negativity and government-bashing. The reasons for the negativity are many; controversy and negativity sell copy, people don’t like government, the government has a long history of ineptitude, and public lands issues are polarizing. But a small, dedicated group of natural resource professionals want to change this negativity and connect local people with their local resources. To appreciate these efforts, it is important to understand the complexity of our various environmental issues and how our government is taking a new tact to address this complexity....
Walden urges summit to kick-start Klamath water talks Faced with an alarming crash in West Coast salmon fishing, U.S. Rep. Greg Walden is asking three cabinet secretaries and a White House official to lead a summit this fall to kick-start government efforts to help Klamath Basin fish and farms. A stalwart defender of farmers during the 2001 shutoff of federal irrigation water to 1,000 farms to protect endangered fish, the Oregon Republican said Monday that efforts need to get back on track to restore certainty for Indian tribes and fishermen who depend on salmon as well as farmers who depend on irrigation water. "I think we are at a key tipping point," Walden said from Washington, D.C. "A huge majority of people are saying 'Let's sit down and try to figure out how to work this out -- find a solution that will give us certainty whether you are a tribal family, a coastal fishing family or an inland farming family. But we need the government to say: Here is a list of things you need to do."' The region became a flashpoint in 2001, when drought triggered the shutoff under the Endangered Species Act of federal irrigation water to the Klamath Reclamation Project. Farmers and anti-government protesters faced off with federal marshals for months over headgates that kept the water for endangered suckers in Upper Klamath Lake and threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River....
Wildlife service downlists endangered Gila trout Though they dream of one day fishing for a lovely Gila trout, some avid anglers adamantly oppose a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to ease protections on the endangered species. The agency, which says the species in Southern New Mexico and east-central Arizona has made a comeback, published a rule Tuesday that will allow limited recreational fishing for Gila trout for the first time since 1966. An advocacy group, however, says it might go to court in an effort to stop the government from downlisting the trout's status from endangered to threatened. "When people fish for a species, they get accustomed to catching it, and they care for the fish," Elizabeth Slown, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman, said. "It's been so long since anyone fished for Gila trout, no one remembers them."....
Building dispute blooms Did someone in this wine-country town illegally plant an endangered flower to sabotage a proposed housing development? That is the question at the center of a quarrel that folks here have dubbed "Foamgate." Bob Evans, a 72-year-old retired elementary school principal, said he was walking with his dog last year when he came upon the tiny white flowers of Sebastopol meadowfoam poking from shallow pools of water in a grassy field. The former bean farm happens to be the site chosen for the 20-acre Laguna Vista housing development. Mr. Evans and other opponents seized on the discovery of the federally protected species in hopes that it would force the developer to scale back plans for 145 houses and apartments. "It was the bad luck of the developer that it popped up," Mr. Evans said. But state wildlife officials investigated and concluded that the meadowfoam had been transplanted there. They ordered it dug up. This year, the flowers returned, and with them the controversy. The dispute has held up final approval of the building project....
Falcons get glimpse of new Texas habitat Chirping like hungry seagulls, the birds flapped their narrow wings and fluttered around the boxes lined with straw and the remains of Japanese quail, the snack their handlers fed them during the 1,360-mile ride from Boise, Idaho, in the back of a minivan. Groups of the birds were lifted into small wooden boxes that will be home until they get their first shot at flight in about a week. Part of the nearly two-decade-old Peregrine Fund plan to return the birds to their natural habitat, 126 aplomado falcons are to be released in about 10 West Texas locations this year. The fund started as an effort to replenish peregrine falcons, which has succeeded. The aplomado falcons - 12 inches to 16 inches long with a wingspan from 2 1/2 feet to 3 feet - disappeared from Texas, New Mexico and Arizona about 50 years ago, and raptor biologist Bill Heinrich said it's unclear why. Now Heinrich hopes there are enough survivors to mate and revitalize a species listed as endangered since 1986, but he only expects half of those released this year to make it. When they reach 40 weeks and leave the "hack box," a white plywood structure protecting them from roaming cattle and other prey by a narrow strip of electrified tape, the aplomado falcons will have to learn to fly and hunt....
Federal agency tells Kurt Busch wedding plans have some bugs Something else has been bugging NASCAR's Kurt Busch beyond the fact he's stalled outside of the Chase for the Nextel Cup in 14th place. The tiger beetle! "Those are the insects I guess that have their natural habitat on the Chesapeake Bay in the area we were looking to get married," Busch said in a conference call Tuesday. "Their mating season is the months of June and July. With this being July, the environmentalists said, 'Whoa. Whoa. We can't have a bunch of guys out there building a pier and dock for this wedding because it's going to disrupt the environment.' " Actually, it was the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "In terms of being environmentalist, we are part of the federal government and charged with protecting the public's natural resources, including endangered species," said Karen Mayne, field supervisor for the agency's office in Gloucester, Va. Mayne said the temporary pier Busch wanted constructed on land owned by developer Dan Hoffler on Virginia's Eastern Shore could have harmed the tiger beetles, which are listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act....
Endangered cress grows at Tahoe A unique and endangered yellow mustard plant has found places to grow despite high Lake Tahoe levels this year. Tahoe yellow cress grows only on beaches at Lake Tahoe, which have shrunk this year because the water level is higher than it's been in five years, at 6,229 feet above sea level. "With the high lake elevation, the yellow cress has moved into very discrete locations along the beaches that are not flooded," said Rick Robinson, who manages watershed restoration for the California Tahoe Conservancy. "The real concern is that the plant is sharing the same sandy beach as the public, and with there being so little beach available for both, it makes the plant more subject to being trampled," he said....
100 acres of springs to be designated critical habitat The federal government has agreed to name more than 100 acres of springs in Comal and Hays counties as critical habitat for two species of beetles and a shrimp-like crustacean. The Peck's cave amphipod, the Comal Springs riffle beetle and the Comal Springs dryopid beetle are found in only a few places in Central Texas. The move came nearly three years after the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the designation. Critical habitats are supposed to offer extra protection for endangered species and make it harder to pollute the springs or withdraw large quantities of water when a federal permit is needed or federal money is used. But the Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the program, said the designation is near-worthless and that it usually doesn't consider creating critical habitat unless ordered by a court. "In 30 years of implementing the ESA (Endangered Species Act), the service has found that designation of critical habitat provides little additional protection for most listed species," an agency news release said Monday....
Senate Bill: Superfund Does Not Apply to Livestock Legislation introduced in the Senate today would clarify that the severe regulatory provisions of the Superfund law, also known as CERCLA, should not apply to manure produced on livestock farms and ranches, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. According to AFBF President Bob Stallman, the Farm Bureau-supported bill would amend the Superfund law passed in 1980, reaffirming that it was never intended to apply to agriculture. The bipartisan measure, with lead sponsors Sens. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), currently has 23 co-sponsors. “Superfund regulations were enacted more than a quarter-century ago to rein in industrial polluters and clean up toxic waste sites, not to be imposed on America’s farmers and ranchers,” said Stallman. “We’re pleased that the Senate is serious about clarifying the intent of the Superfund law.”....
R-CALF Calls On Congress To Reform Beef Import Regulations Ranchers-Cattlemen's Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, has sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and five congressional leaders asking that USDA and Congress address issues such as country-of-origin labeling and segregation of Canadian and U.S. cattle at feedlots and at slaughter. Specifically, R-CALF USA is asking USDA to shelve the idea of allowing Canadian cattle over 30 months of age and beef from cattle over 30 months of age into the United States. The letter also asks USDA to rescind a rule allowing cattle and beef from cattle under 30 months into the country. Failing that, R-CALF is requesting that Canadian cattle be prevented from commingling with native-born cattle. R-CALF Chief Executive Bill Bullard, told Meatingplace.com that with new OIE standards in place, he believes Canada is arguably in the "undetermined" category for incidence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. OIE has shifted from a five-tier system that assessed risk by the number of BSE cases detected per million head of cattle to a more general three-tier system: "negligible," meaning no cases have been detected in the past 11 years; "controlled," meaning effective measures such as animal feed bans and specified risk material removal have been put in place to mitigate risk; and "undetermined," which means none of the above. "We would argue that Canada belongs in that last category," Bullard said, contending that the recent discovery of BSE in a Canadian dairy cow born four and a half years after Canada's feed ban was implemented indicates that the ban is either ineffective or inadequately enforced....
U.S. assists Canada in mad cow probe The USA is joining Canada's investigation into its most recent occurrence of mad cow disease, a case troubling to officials in both countries because of the youth of the infected animal. The age of the animal is crucial because all of the infected cattle until now had been more than 6 years old, and the assumption was made that they had been infected by contaminated feed. But the cow was born years after Canada and the USA imposed bans in 1997 on the use of ground-up animals in feed, the primary means by which the infection is transmitted from an infected cow. Now a group of U.S. cattle raisers wants the border closed again. To protect the U.S. herd, the USDA "must immediately" close the Canadian border to all beef and cattle, says Chuck Kiker, president of Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America in Billings, Mont. "Because of (the disease's) long incubation period, the U.S. needs to wait for perhaps several years before resuming trade in live Canadian cattle," he says....
Jackalope promoter makes final leap Bob Petley had a lot to answer for, not least the creation of a massive population of people who think there is an animal called a jackalope. The jackalope allegedly is found in the Arizona desert, a unique creature that looks suspiciously like a jack rabbit with antlers. If you see one, check your medication immediately. Peltey was 93 when he died. His funeral was held last week in Scottsdale. Years ago we knew a cowboy who claimed to have roped one in Wickenburg. Unfortunately, he could not prove the claim because when he tried to dally the creature to his saddle, it ripped off the horn and disappeared down Sol's Wash, such was the strength of the Arizona jackalope. The accompanying text, written by someone with a droll sense of humor and plenty of time, says, "The Jackalope (Lepus temperamentalus) is one of the rarest animals in the world. A cross between a now extinct pygmy-deer and a species of killer-rabbit, they are extremely shy unless approached. None have ever been captured alive and this rare photo (often criticized as fake) shows a mighty buck about to strike."....
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