NEWS ROUNDUP
Bipartisan effort for Oregon wilderness Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith on Thursday proposed a large increase in the acreage the House approved last month for the first wilderness expansion on Mount Hood and along the Columbia River Gorge in more than 20 years. Wyden, a Democrat, joined his Republican colleague Smith to ask that 125,000 acres be designated wilderness. That would amount to about 195 square miles and represent a 70 percent increase from the areas currently protected as wilderness. In July, the House approved 77,000 acres, or 120 square miles, of new wilderness area. The House bill had similar bipartisan backing from Republican Greg Walden and Democrat Earl Blumenauer. The senators also proposed adding nearly 80 miles of river for wild and scenic rivers protection — more than triple the 25 miles approved by the House....
Editorial - Blaming wolves: Ranchers' claims need further proof Most ranchers and sheepherders don't like wolves. You might even say they are the predators' natural enemies. That, of course, is because wolves occasionally dine on a calf or lamb and sometimes even on an adult animal, and that means a financial loss to the rancher. Advocates for the reintroduction of wolves in the West don't dispute that ranchers can prove some wolf depredation. But their claims that range animals are failing to gain weight because wolves are lurking seem implausible and in need of further study. Ingrained and often overblown animosity toward wolves resulted in their eradication from the West by cattlemen, sheepmen and their hired guns, who trapped the animals, shot them and poisoned them until the last wolf was killed off in the early 20th century. More than a decade ago, wolves were reintroduced to rebalance the ecosystems that were upset when the species at the top of the food chain was eliminated. Conservationists and biologists predicted that wolves would reorder natural, beneficial relationships among plants and animals. Studies have proven them right....
Church wary of Nevada water deal The LDS Church has waded into the battle over a controversial groundwater pumping project in Nevada. The church, which owns a 4,000-acre cattle ranch in eastern Nevada's White Pine County and is a senior water rights holder in the Spring Valley, has through its attorneys asked the state engineer to delay awarding a project permit to the Southern Nevada Water Authority until an ongoing U.S. Geological Survey study of the region's groundwater resources is completed next year. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies water to Las Vegas and Clark County, has proposed taking groundwater out of Spring Valley and surrounding areas - including the Snake Valley, which straddles the Nevada-Utah border - and pumping it to Las Vegas via a 200-mile pipeline network to meet that area's growing water needs. Ranchers on both sides of the state line, and environmental groups, have dug in against the project, fearing it will dry up water tables and destroy the area's ecosystem and ranching industry....
Huge Marijuana Operation Linked to Mexican Mafia The Mexican Mafia in Utah's Garfield County? Authorities say illegal immigrants, working as drug runners grew a huge marijuana garden on federal land in Utah. And two men, both Mexican nationals and in the United States illegally, are in jail without bail tonight. Sheriff's deputies caught them yesterday in Panguitch. Augustine Tesco and Juan Carlos Garcia face federal drug charges. Investigators say both men may have ties to the Mexican Mafia. They say their job was simple, grow the marijuana plants then guard the pot with guns. Authorities seized more than five thousand plants this week near Bryce Canyon. Many people who visit Garfield County in southern Utah do so for the relative peace and quiet. Those same qualities also appeal to those up to go good. We've all heard of marijuana busts before, but very few are as big as this one. Even Keith Millet, with the Iron County/Garfield County drug task force has never seen this much pot all at once. When he was first told about it, he had to see it to believe it....
Squatter numbers drop, Forest Service announces For years, local officials have been grappling with the issue of unauthorized long-term camping on national forest land. Along with the potential fire danger, so-called squatters sometimes cause a disproportionate impact to natural resources, including concentrations of human waste and garbage. A couple of years ago, for example, rangers and volunteers hauled truckloads of trash from favored squatter sites along Montezuma Road, including mattresses and miscellaneous pieces of furniture. But Dillon District Ranger Rick Newton said recently that the Forest Service has been diligently enforcing camping regulations and education public land users to tackle the problem. Those ongoing management efforts have made a difference....
Where there's fire, there's global warming Six years ago, climate scientist Anthony Westerling began obsessively poring over the meticulously detailed invoices that U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service land managers use to itemize firefighting expenses. "These things will have 170-plus fields," says Westerling - including information on when a fire was first reported, when firefighters finally controlled it, and how many acres were burned. Westerling, who works at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (which also studies climate and earth sciences) in La Jolla, Calif., didn't aspire to be an accountant, nor was he searching for fraud in government spending. He was hoping to answer a question that had not been seriously asked before: How do rising global temperatures affect wildfire behavior? Along with fellow researchers in La Jolla and at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Westerling wove the information in the invoices together with data from streamflow gauges, soil moisture measures, and temperature and precipitation records to form a comprehensive picture of the driving forces behind the West's fires. The group will present its findings in the journal Science next month; a preliminary article appeared in the July 6 issue of Science Express. The basic conclusion may not startle: Large forest fires increased beginning in the mid-1980s - particularly in the Northern Rockies, the Sierra Nevada and the southern Cascades - and the changes closely correlated with an increase in spring and summer temperatures during the same time period....
Record energy pace With about four months left in 2006, Colorado's booming energy industry is on track to surpass an earlier estimate and log yet another record year. The state issued 3,022 permits to drill oil and gas wells from Jan. 1 through Aug. 1, according to a Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission report released this week. At that pace, Colorado is projected to issue a record 5,178 permits by year's end, higher than the commission's April estimate of 4,650 permits. The new estimate would be a 19 percent jump from the record 4,363 permits approved in 2005. And last year was nearly 50 percent higher than the 2,917 permits approved in 2004. "That's pretty big," said Ken Wonstolen, a senior vice president for the Colorado Oil & Gas Association. "Even though there has been some moderation in natural gas prices, there has been no reduction in the activity levels."....
BLM sells Utah drilling leases Oil-and-gas players bid up to $475 an acre for drilling rights on public land Tuesday, but some were still angry over a judge's decision two weeks ago that they say robbed them of parcels they'd already won in areas of Utah considered worthy of wilderness protection. At a fast clip, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned 226,471 acres of federal land, much of it in central Utah where a wildcat gusher has intensified interest, for $8 million -- half of which goes to the state. The auction, however, did not include nearly 20,000 acres of land the bureau held back in response to a court ruling that found it had acted illegally in leasing similar wilderness-quality lands three years ago. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball reversed the lease of 16 parcels in an Aug. 2 decision, angering exploration companies like Denver-based Tidewater Oil and Gas Co., which stands to lose drilling rights on a half-dozen of those parcels. Tidewater's leases are in the wild Book Cliffs region of eastern Utah. "We don't want our money back. We want our leases," said Tidewater manager James S. Jones, who was bidding Tuesday for more drilling rights to add to the company's portfolio of about 470,000 acres in Utah....
BLM notices increase in vandalism on public lands An increase in vandalism on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management has led the agency to authorize reward money for information resulting in the identification and prosecution of suspects. “Overall, we're seeing an increase in vandalism and graffiti,” said Mike Marquart, chief area ranger for law enforcement with the BLM. While it is not uncommon for BLM signs and property to be vandalized, the vandalism has recently been spreading beyond signs and buildings to the protected lands themselves. At the Trona Pinnacles, one of the rock formations itself was recently defaced with graffiti. “This particular incident was actually of the national natural landmark itself,” said Marquart. “It's a tragedy to see something like this happen to such a landmark.”....
Prairie Dogs Causing Trouble for Golfers Golfers in Cedar City are facing an unusual hazard on the course, prairie dogs. Instead of manicured lawns, dirt mounds spot the fairways at Cedar Ridge Golf Course. The Utah Prairie Dog is on the endangered species list, so the golf course can't remove the animals. The course managers say the biggest problem is the holes the prairie dogs create. John Evans, Director of Golf, Cedar Ridge Golf Course: "The danger is of people stepping in the holes and the balls getting lost in the holes. I have a hard time running golf tournaments because I have to have so many special rules because of lost balls." Ralph Mortensen, Parawon Resident: "It is a big problem. I like to see the little critters, but they tear up the fairways and things."....
"Ride Around the World": Tracing the trail of the modern cowboy So this is what IMAX was made for: 70mm, six-story-high images of horses and their riders thundering through grassy plains. That iconic American vision is captured in the spectacular documentary "Ride Around the World," a new, supersized IMAX production that celebrates horse culture in the West — not just in the U.S., but also in Canada and all the way down to the southern tip of South America. The full story of the working collaboration between people and horses — herding cattle, roping calves, capturing feisty bulls — begins, the film tells us, 1,200 years ago in Morocco. There, Moorish horsemen rode through deserts on light, fast horses, the same animals that helped them conquer Spain. Hopping to Spain, "Ride" explains how cattle herders crossed Moroccan horses with native breeds and came up with an ideal hybrid for managing livestock. The men who rode these horses became the first cowboys. Conquistadors brought horse culture to the New World; director Harry Lynch captures, with great energy and beauty, the hard work of modern gauchos in Argentina and Mexico, baqueanos riding on the icy slopes of Patagonia and ranchers in Texas and British Columbia....
Friday, August 18, 2006
FLE
Judge Finds NSA Program Unconstitutional
A federal judge decision's to strike down President Bush's warrantless surveillance program was the first ruling over its legality, but surely not the last. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled Thursday that the program violated the rights to free speech and privacy, as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. Taylor was the first judge to rule on the legality of the National Security Agency's program, which the White House says is a key tool for fighting terrorism that has already stopped attacks. "Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion. The administration said it would appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. "We're going to do everything we can do in the courts to allow this program to continue," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a news conference in Washington....go here to read the decision.
Judge refuses New Orleans' request to dismiss lawsuit by gun owners' lobbying groups
A federal lawsuit accusing the city of illegally confiscating firearms during the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina was kept alive by a federal judge Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier denied a motion by the city of New Orleans to dismiss a suit by the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation. The groups sued Mayor Ray Nagin and New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley over the confiscation of guns following Hurricane Katrina. The city asked the judge to dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction, saying "the states, and by extension their political subdivisions, are free to proscribe the possession of firearms." The court rejected the motion, ruling the city did nothing to back up "the brazen assertion" that the second amendment did not apply. "I'm delighted to see that the second amendment still applies in Louisiana," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA. The suit says that during and after the Aug. 29 storm, "Mayor Nagin ordered the New Orleans police and other law enforcement entities under his authority to evict persons from their homes and to confiscate the lawfully possessed firearms."....
Judge Finds NSA Program Unconstitutional
A federal judge decision's to strike down President Bush's warrantless surveillance program was the first ruling over its legality, but surely not the last. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled Thursday that the program violated the rights to free speech and privacy, as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. Taylor was the first judge to rule on the legality of the National Security Agency's program, which the White House says is a key tool for fighting terrorism that has already stopped attacks. "Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion. The administration said it would appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. "We're going to do everything we can do in the courts to allow this program to continue," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a news conference in Washington....go here to read the decision.
Judge refuses New Orleans' request to dismiss lawsuit by gun owners' lobbying groups
A federal lawsuit accusing the city of illegally confiscating firearms during the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina was kept alive by a federal judge Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier denied a motion by the city of New Orleans to dismiss a suit by the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation. The groups sued Mayor Ray Nagin and New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley over the confiscation of guns following Hurricane Katrina. The city asked the judge to dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction, saying "the states, and by extension their political subdivisions, are free to proscribe the possession of firearms." The court rejected the motion, ruling the city did nothing to back up "the brazen assertion" that the second amendment did not apply. "I'm delighted to see that the second amendment still applies in Louisiana," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA. The suit says that during and after the Aug. 29 storm, "Mayor Nagin ordered the New Orleans police and other law enforcement entities under his authority to evict persons from their homes and to confiscate the lawfully possessed firearms."....
Thursday, August 17, 2006
FLE
A new role for the undermanned Border Patrol
National Guard troops deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of President Bush's plan to free U.S. Border Patrol agents have been assigned bodyguards -- some of the same agents the soldiers were sent to relieve. Several veteran Border Patrol agents in Arizona told The Washington Times they were issued standing orders to be within five minutes of National Guard troops along the border and that Border Patrol units were pulled from other regions to protect the Guard units -- leaving their own areas short-handed. The agents, who refer to the assignment as "the nanny patrol," said most of the Guard troops are not allowed to carry loaded weapons, despite a significant increase in border violence directed at Border Patrol agents and other law-enforcement personnel over the past year. The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), which represents all 10,000 of the agency's nonsupervisory agents, said the presence of more than 6,000 Guard troops on the border has allowed a few hundred agents to be reassigned from administrative to field duties, but that "about the same number are now assigned to guard the National Guard troops.". "Other agents are being assigned to supervise the National Guard troops, who are performing different administrative tasks," said NBPC President T.J. Bonner, a 28-year Border Patrol veteran. "Overtime has been authorized for these duties, but was not authorized for patrolling the border prior to the arrival of the National Guard."....
Feds Nab Mexican Drug Kingpin Responsible for Border Tunnels
Mexican drug lord Javier Arellano-Felix has been apprehended after Drug Enforcement Administration officials were tipped off that the kingpin was aboard a boat in international waters near the U.S.-Mexican border. Federal drug agents and the Coast Guard arrested Arellano-Felix, 37, on a private vessel in the Sea of Cortez off La Paz, Mexico, federal officials said Wednesday. Arellano-Felix is a leader of a violent gang responsible for digging elaborate tunnels to smuggle drugs under the U.S. border, a Justice Department official said. Arrellano-Felix is wanted in both the United States and Mexico for his role as a leader in the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix gang, which includes seven brothers and four sisters from the Arellano family....
A new role for the undermanned Border Patrol
National Guard troops deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of President Bush's plan to free U.S. Border Patrol agents have been assigned bodyguards -- some of the same agents the soldiers were sent to relieve. Several veteran Border Patrol agents in Arizona told The Washington Times they were issued standing orders to be within five minutes of National Guard troops along the border and that Border Patrol units were pulled from other regions to protect the Guard units -- leaving their own areas short-handed. The agents, who refer to the assignment as "the nanny patrol," said most of the Guard troops are not allowed to carry loaded weapons, despite a significant increase in border violence directed at Border Patrol agents and other law-enforcement personnel over the past year. The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), which represents all 10,000 of the agency's nonsupervisory agents, said the presence of more than 6,000 Guard troops on the border has allowed a few hundred agents to be reassigned from administrative to field duties, but that "about the same number are now assigned to guard the National Guard troops.". "Other agents are being assigned to supervise the National Guard troops, who are performing different administrative tasks," said NBPC President T.J. Bonner, a 28-year Border Patrol veteran. "Overtime has been authorized for these duties, but was not authorized for patrolling the border prior to the arrival of the National Guard."....
Feds Nab Mexican Drug Kingpin Responsible for Border Tunnels
Mexican drug lord Javier Arellano-Felix has been apprehended after Drug Enforcement Administration officials were tipped off that the kingpin was aboard a boat in international waters near the U.S.-Mexican border. Federal drug agents and the Coast Guard arrested Arellano-Felix, 37, on a private vessel in the Sea of Cortez off La Paz, Mexico, federal officials said Wednesday. Arellano-Felix is a leader of a violent gang responsible for digging elaborate tunnels to smuggle drugs under the U.S. border, a Justice Department official said. Arrellano-Felix is wanted in both the United States and Mexico for his role as a leader in the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix gang, which includes seven brothers and four sisters from the Arellano family....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Rich countries like poor face water crisis Rich countries have to make drastic changes to policies if they are to avoid the water crisis that is facing poorer nations, the WWF environmental organization said on Wednesday. In a survey of the situation across the industrialized world, it said many cities were already losing the battle to maintain water supplies as governments talked about conservation but failed to implement their pledges. "Supporting large-scale industry and growing populations using water at high rates has come close to exhausting the water supplies of some First World cities and is a looming threat for many, if not most, others," the report warned. It suggested that agriculture in the richer countries should have to pay more for water and be held responsible more actively for its efficient use and for managing wastes, like salt, especially in intensive livestock farming. From Seville in Spain to Sacramento in California and Sydney in Australia, the report said, water had become a key political issue at local, regional and national levels as climate change and loss of wetlands dramatically reduce supplies....
Billions face water shortages, crisis looms A third of the world is facing water shortages because of poor management of water resources and soaring water usage, driven mainly by agriculture, the International Water Management Institute said on Wednesday. Water scarcity around the world was increasing faster than expected, with agriculture accounting for 80 percent of global water consumption, the world authority on fresh water management told a development conference in Canberra. Globally, water usage had increased by six times in the past 100 years and would double again by 2050, driven mainly by irrigation and demands by agriculture, said Frank Rijsberman, the institute's director-general. Billions of people in Asia and Africa already faced water shortages because of poor water management, he said....
Las Vegas bids to fuel growth by tapping into farmers' water Nothing in the history of the American West epitomises the unscrupulous greed and ambition of its settlers more than the story of Los Angeles sucking the water supply out from under the farmers of the Owens Valley in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains a century ago. The fertile valley was reduced to a dustbowl so the City of Angels could expand and turn into the sprawling metropolis it is today. Now history is threatening to repeat itself - this time in the neighbouring state of Nevada, where the insatiable growth of Las Vegas and its satellite cities is sparking a new water war with the farmers and ranchers of the remote and beautiful Snake Valley straddling the border of Nevada and Utah. Water officials in Las Vegas are lobbying to build a pipeline to carry more than one billion cubic feet of extra groundwater into their city every year, at an cost of $1bn. The pipeline would be the starting point of a larger project to pump almost eight times that much water into Las Vegas from a large swath of central and eastern Nevada....
Governor looks to tackle water problems in coming session Gov. Bill Richardson has already called the 2007 legislative session the Year of Water, and on Tuesday, he called for ``big ideas'' to take on the state's water problems. ``I don't want little ideas. I want far-reaching ideas to address New Mexico's water issues,'' Richardson told a group of the state's water thinkers and policy-makers gathered Tuesday in Albuquerque for a free-wheeling discussion. Reclaim millions of gallons of wastewater from New Mexico dairies with new technology, offered Annette Morales, a rural-development advocate. Revise state regulations so they don't hamper farmers' efforts to use innovative water-saving technology, suggested Los Lunas dairy farmer Janet Jarrat. ``It's like pulling teeth to get anyone to look at anything innovative,'' she said....
Wolf traps set after death of calf in Gravelly Mountains Federal wildlife officials have set traps in the area where a wolf killed a calf on a grazing allotment in the Gravelly Mountains, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services said. The calf kill in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest was investigated Sunday. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks trapped two wolves in the area in May and fitted them with radio collars. Radio signals were not heard during the investigation Sunday nor during a monitoring flight Monday. The tracks of a single wolf were found near the carcass, and federal wildlife officials believe a single animal without a collar killed the calf....
Car hits, kills grizzly bear A grizzly bear that had recently lost its radio collar was hit and killed by a car last week in Grand Teton National Park. Park officials said the Chevrolet Cavalier was southbound on U.S. 26/89/191 Friday night when it hit the bear south of Moran Junction. The bear, a 4-year-old male, survived the initial impact but died along side the road. None of the three people in the car was injured, but the car sustained extensive damage to the hood and windshield. The park said the grizzly was captured last summer and given a radio collar as part of a research project. The bear dropped the collar this June, but data collected during the 11 months it was collared showed the bear mostly stayed in the park, roaming occasionally into the Teton Wilderness....
On the Mountain: Vanishing species About 20 miles east of Meeker is a tributary of the White River named North Elk Creek, a valley of lush undergrowth and tall pines, steep hillsides and long approaches to the Flat Tops Wilderness Area. And until only a decade ago or so, it was a sanctuary from civilization, peopled by ranchers, visited by a select few fishers and boaters. Like everywhere in Colorado, though, things are changing. Invited by some friends whose family has maintained a small hunting camp on North Elk for half a century, Anne and I trucked our way up from Carbondale through a rainy Friday evening to bed down in a two-room, rustic cabin to one side of the valley. We slept to the sound of North Elk Creek as it babbled a few feet away each night. Other cabins, a decent distance apart, made up the hunting camp, each occupied by a separate part of the larger party. By day, everyone did his or her own thing, hiking out of the valley into the surrounding high country. Anne and I spent most of one day exploring the East Fork of North Elk, passing by a venerable cow camp that seemed still to be at least partially in use. A nearby corral, in good repair, showed that the cowboys still came up to the valley to gather their herds in the fall or scatter them in the spring....
Rancher wants first conservation plan Dean Roberts plans to become the first rancher in Chaffee County to place his ranch in a conservation easement. Chaffee County Commissioners unanimously pledged support for the idea Tuesday during a regular meeting in Buena Vista. They donated $30,000 from the conservation trust fund and agreed to apply for a Great Outdoors Colorado grant on Roberts' behalf. He plans to put 303 acres and several high quality water rights into conservation along the South Arkansas River about a mile west of Poncha Springs. Poncha Springs Trustees offered support for the plan during their meeting Monday. Under the easement, Roberts forfeits his right to develop the property while maintaining ownership and allowing his family to continue agricultural operations. He will be paid approximately $700,000 to finalize the easement, which will be held in perpetuity by the Colorado Cattlemen's Association....
Xcel invests in 'clean' coal Xcel Energy on Tuesday committed $3.5 million through next year to develop Colorado's first "clean" coal power plant, signaling the utility's keen interest in pursuing the multimillion-dollar project. The money will be used to conduct engineering studies and project development activities for the 300- to 350-megawatt power plant, which could supply electricity to about 350,000 households. Xcel wants to build the plant itself rather than open it to competitive bids from independent power producers. The plant could cost between $500 million and $1 billion, depending on the location, size and infrastructure, such as transmission lines, as well as technology. The utility wants to recover that investment from its 1.3 million electric ratepayers in Colorado, if the state Public Utilities Commission approves the project....
Off-road dispute In 1988, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management designated a 19,200-acre swath of ruggedly steep hills between Chimayo and Alcalde as El Palacio Fun Valley, where dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles could zoom around on established trails. Now opponents are gearing up to fight what they predict will be expanded, unmanaged off-roading in the area as the BLM Taos Field Office rewrites its 20-year-old management plan for all the land it manages in Northern New Mexico, including El Palacio Fun Valley. They say off-roaders are already cutting fences along the park's boundary and trespassing on private land, leaving trash, increasing erosion and robbing archaeological sites scattered throughout the area. ``They have no regard for fences or private property, much less archaeological sites,'' said John Chavez, a Truchas native and board member of two land-grant associations....
Aspen tree deaths leave experts stumped Something is killing the quaking aspen trees of the Rocky Mountain West. The slender, white-barked trees that paint the hills gold every autumn are dying, some scientists say, leaving bald patches across the Rockies. Experts are scrambling to figure out what's happening. "As soon as we understand what's going on, then maybe we can do something about it," said Dale Bartos, a Forest Service restoration ecologist based in northern Utah. Bartos thinks a fungus may be to blame, while others suggest everything from hungry caterpillars to drought to man's interference with the natural cycle of forest fires and even resurgent herds of hungry elk nibbling saplings to death. Aspen stands have been hard hit in southwestern Colorado and northern Arizona. A conservative estimate is that about 10 percent of the aspen in Colorado may have died or become afflicted with something in the past five to 10 years, Bartos said....
Conservation groups sue over forest management plan The U.S. Forest Service is being sued by a coalition of conservation groups over a management plan they say threatens the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northeastern Minnesota. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis Tuesday, the coalition contends that a 2004 plan to manage the Superior National Forest would harm the wilderness values of the BWCA. The Forest Service plan would allow clear-cut logging within a quarter of a mile of the lake-dotted wilderness area. The lawsuit also challenges a method the Forest Service is proposing to estimate the logging plan's impact on wildlife....
Governor Murkowski's Road to Nowhere Challenged Conservation and transportation groups filed suit today challenging a proposed road project to nowhere. The road would cut through a large roadless area north of Juneau on the east side of Lynn Canal and end in the wilderness roughly across the canal from Haines. The road project calls for the construction of a new ferry terminal at the end of the road. The entire project is expected to cost the state about $250 million and comes as the governor has instituted a state hiring freeze due to budgetary woes. The organizations filed suit in federal court in Juneau against the Federal Highway Administration and Forest Service. The lawsuit focuses on the Federal Highway Administration and Forest Service's failure to consider alternative methods of improving transportation between Juneau, Haines, and Skagway, and on their failure to fairly assess the effects the road would have on wildlife and other resources in Berners Bay and Lynn Canal. The organizations contend that the Highway Administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act by refusing to consider an alternative in which travel in Lynn Canal is improved by more effectively managing the existing ferry system....
Column: Forest Fires in the Klamath Mountains As several fires burn in the Klamath Backcountry of northern California and southern Oregon and as tens of millions of taxpayer dollars continue to be expended in efforts to "suppress" these fires, the time is opportune to examine the history of fire and fire suppression in the Klamath Mountains in order to determine if there are lessons for today that can be learned from the experiences of the past 25 years of fire suppression in these mountains. For local residents and "newcomers" to the Klamath Mountains our first experience with large fires and large Forest Service fire suppression was the Hog Fire of 1977. The jobs and income that flowed from that suppression effort and the salvage logging that followed were seen by most forest residents as an unexpected boon. But a few of us who had worked in the suppression effort also were alarmed by the size and destructive force of the massive backfires which Forest Service managers ordered lit in a futile attempt to stop the wildfire. This alarm was reinforced by natives and old timers who had lived with fire for many decades without resort to bringing in an army of non-local firefighters and massive amounts of equipment. We did not know it then but what we experienced with the Hog Fire was an early stage in the militarization, industrialization and nationalization of fire fighting....
Company eyes access for mine Agribusiness conglomerate J.R. Simplot Co. may try to get a judge to condemn part of an eastern Idaho couple's 467-acre property so the company can build a road for a proposed expansion of its phosphate mine near here. So far, Peter and Judy Riede have refused to sell rights-of-way to any portion of their land in rural Caribou County to Simplot. They say a haul road for ore from the Smoky Canyon Mine would damage their land, which has two creeks featuring 20-inch Yellowstone cutthroat trout. After the Riedes declined an offer of $2.1 million from Simplot, the company suggested in public documents filed with the U.S. Forest Service that it could simply use 110-year-old provisions in the Idaho Constitution that give mining companies the right to cross private lands to reach their properties. Simplot, which has $3 billion in annual revenue, also broached eminent domain in a June 9 letter to the couple. It asked them to reconsider the offer, and said if they didn't the company would "move forward with pursuing alternatives that allow Simplot to appropriately develop our phosphate mineral leases."....
Federal judge leaves roads dispute unresolved Inside the sprawling Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, signs posted by Kane County allow driving on some roads where the federal government has banned all vehicles. That conflict was left unresolved Wednesday when a federal judge dismissed a 10-year-old lawsuit brought by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance that sought to force the federal government to defend its own turf. U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins ruled that because the Bureau of Land Management was unwilling to get involved, the wilderness group didn't have a case. "It was a lot of work and motion for an eventual dismissal," said Ralph Finlayson, an assistant Utah attorney general....
Despite uproar over Alaska spill, US to open land to drilling The Interior Department is set to open a vast area of environmentally sensitive wetlands in Alaska to oil drilling, but opponents point to corroding pipelines to the east at Prudhoe Bay as a reason to keep the area off-limits. The tens of thousands of acres in and around Lake Teshekpuk on Alaska's North Slope are part of the oil-rich Barrow Arch, which includes the Prudhoe Bay fields that have kept oil flowing for decades. The lease sale, opposed by environmentalists and some members of Congress, is occurring as federal regulators and a House committee investigate inspection and maintenance programs of BP Alaska, where widespread pipeline corrosion forced the partial shutdown of Prudhoe Bay oil production Aug. 6. BP Alaska is a subsidiary of London-based BP PLC. Government geologists contend that at least 2 billion barrels of oil and huge amounts of natural gas lie beneath the coastal lagoons, deltas, and sedge grass meadows -- an area where caribou give birth and thousands of geese migrate each summer. Within days, the Interior Department will open tracts in the area for leasing, with the winning bids to be announced in September....
River Rescue The San Pedro River's meandering journey toward survival enjoyed a welcome twist recently, when a scheme to revive rail cargo along its banks was dropped. Now conservationists want to take that victory to the bank. Literally. They hope to begin a process called rail banking, which would turn the old rail route lining the San Pedro into a bucolic walking trail. And that would pay proper tribute to this last fragment of a complex riparian river system once coursing through the Southwest. The saga began in February, when the San Pedro Railroad Operating Co. received federal permission to abandon its 76.2 mile route through Cochise County. About 40 miles of that line slices through the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, which is administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management....
Gene-Altered Crops Denounced Environmental groups yesterday called for a moratorium on open-air tests of crops genetically engineered to produce medicines and vaccines, citing a federal court's conclusion last week that the Agriculture Department repeatedly broke the law by allowing companies to plant such crops on hundred of acres in Hawaii. In a toughly worded 52-page decision released without fanfare late last week, a U.S. District judge in Hawaii concluded that USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which grants permits for the planting of genetically engineered crops, should have first investigated whether the plants posed a threat to any of that state's hundreds of endangered species. The corn and sugar cane plants, already harvested because the experiments involving them were completed before the case was decided, had been modified to produce human hormones, drugs and ingredients for vaccines against AIDS and hepatitis B....
Grass Created in Lab Is Found in the Wild An unapproved type of genetically engineered grass has been found growing in the wild in what scientists say could be the first instance in the United States in which a biotechnology plant has established itself outside a farm. Ecologists at the Environmental Protection Agency said they had found a small number of the grass plants growing in central Oregon near the site of field tests that took place a few years ago. The E.P.A. scientists and others said the grass would probably not pose an ecological threat. Still, it could provide fodder for critics who say that agricultural biotechnology cannot be adequately controlled. “It is a cautionary tale that you have to think about the possibility of plants escaping into populations where there are wild relatives present,” said Jay Reichman, an agency ecologist who is the lead author of a study to be published in the journal Molecular Ecology....
Another Inconvenient Truth: Meat is a Global Warming Issue There are many human activities that contribute to global warming. Among the biggest contributors are electrical generation, the use of passenger and other vehicles, over-consumption, international shipping, deforestation, smoking and militarism. (The U.S. military, for example, is the world’s biggest consumer of oil and the world’s biggest polluter.) What many people do not know, however, is that the production of meat also significantly increases global warming. Cow farms produce millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane per year, the two major greenhouse gases that together account for more than 90 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions, substantially contributing to “global scorching.” According to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Unit on Climate Change, “There is a strong link between human diet and methane emissions from livestock.” The 2004 State of the World is more specific regarding the link between animals raised for meat and global warming: “Belching, flatulent livestock emit 16 percent of the world’s annual production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.” The July 2005 issue of Physics World states: “The animals we eat emit 21 percent of all the CO2 that can be attributed to human activity.” Eating meat directly contributes to this environmentally irresponsible industry and the dire threat of global warming. ...
Ranchers rewarded for conservation Four Arizona ranchers in Coconino County have cared for our beautiful, fragile land for generations, most tracing their families back to settling the West and European roots. According to them, the longevity of their operations is testament to their commitment to the land. Because of that commitment, the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will pay them $172,030 combined next year and a total of $1,341,322 in the next 10 years through the Conservation Security Program (CSP). CSP is a voluntary conservation program administered by NRCS that rewards private landowners for their ongoing care of natural resources on working lands. Some of the practices that put the Arizona producers on top include using vigorous grazing management strategies along with providing wildlife watering facilities, solar energy generation, recycling used motor oils, reducing dust on dirt roads and providing barrier-free land for antelope habitat....
Mystery of San Antonio tree may be solved SAN ANTONIO Officials may have solved the mystery of a San Antonio tree that's gurgled water from its trunk for months. The site has attracted a stream of pilgrims who consider it holy water. The San Antonio Express-News reports city water system officials shut off service to Lucille Pope's home -- and found that the tree stopped leaking. Her son, Lloyd Pope, says authorities think the roots had gotten into the waterline. Lucille Pope had sought answers from the Texas Forest Service, the Edwards Aquifer Authority and nurseries -- with no results. Meanwhile, visitors have come from as far as Laredo, Dallas and Georgetown to see the red oak that's spouted water in the midst of the drought.
Governor Brad Henry Lifts Some Load Regulations Gov. Brad Henry has issued an executive order waiving load regulations to help drought-weary farmers and ranchers get hay and other supplies. The 90-day order also will make it easier for firefighters to transport equipment to battle wildfires. It waives road and licensing regulations for oversized vehicles that haul agricultural loads and firefighting equipment. ``We're doing everything we can to protect Oklahomans from wildfires and deliver relief to farmers and ranchers who are hurting because of the drought,'' Henry said. ``This executive order is just one small piece of the puzzle, but it will make it easier to deliver help to the areas that need it most.'' Besides expediting agriculture shipments within the state, the governor is working to cut through red tape that may hinder transports from surrounding states. At his direction, officials are working with their counterparts in other states in the region to encourage similar rule waivers on agriculture transports....
Supervisors keep open range idea alive An open range proposal is not dead. With a 3-2 vote, the Tehama County Board of Supervisors voted to continue discussions about a proposed ordinance that would designate almost two-thirds of the county as chiefly devoted to grazing. Tehama County Cattlemen's Association President Matt Pritchard echoed some of his previous comments from past public meetings, saying that the ordinance was less about fencing and zoning and more about liability. "Ranchers need to stay in good standing with insurance companies," he said. If passed, the ordinance would label almost two-thirds of the unincorporated county as chiefly devoted to grazing. It would establish the right of cattlemen to graze livestock, and, the cattlemen argued, it is necessary to help the county's $17 million cattle industry afford insurance and continue business in the county....
Protecting the Truth About Grass-Fed Meats What does the term grass-fed mean to you? To millions of consumers it means pasture-raised, unconfined animals. Now, a few greedy companies have lined up lobbyists to change the meaning --- and, with it, the truth --- in grass-fed labeling. Back in the 1990s, after years of pressure from the emerging organic-food industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture finally offered a proposed definition of the term organic. Unfortunately, industrial-scale food producers saw the potential in a market that they didn't have a piece of, and hijacked the proposed rule before it reached the public. Fortunately for us, the leadership of the organic industry rallied its legion of consumers to wage a pitched battle in the form of letters, e-mail and telephone calls. And won. The USDA received more comments on a proposed rule than ever before or since. The intended meaning of organic survived. We face a similar hijacking again --- but this time the term is "grass fed," and the food is meat, milk and cheese. Factory-system food producers, who seek to profit from the burgeoning market for grass-fed protein, are attempting to steal the meaning and therefore the market. The USDA has proposed a rule that now would allow "grass fed" to include animal confinement and the feeding of corn and other grains in the final stages of an animal's life....
Going for the Gold It’s a hot August day in the South Hills and the pine needles crunch underfoot. It hasn’t rained in weeks and the forest holds the heat close to the ground. There’s little shade to be found, unless you slither into an old mining tunnel where the temperature drops 30 degrees and the air is damp and dewy. It’s not the safest refuge from the sun, nor is it recommended, but for those with a curious heart, the temptation to explore Helena’s historic mines is hard to resist. No one knows for certain how many tunnels, shafts, pits and adits lay scattered across Helena’s South Hills. Some mines date back 140 years. Others were created as late as the 1940s, when mining dwindled in the Helena area. Old-timers still tell stories about the dredges that once skimmed gravel for gold in the valley. Just last summer, rumors of a lingering pocket of quartz stirred cries of gold across Downtown as crews excavated the Jackson Street garage. Of course, they never found any gold....
Adventurers traded ship to build up Oregon herds In the summer of 1840, cattle were almost impossible to come by for Oregon settlers. The Hudson Bay Company was willing to lend cows, but all calves reverted to the company. Ewing Young, a wealthy rancher, and the Methodist Mission each owned cattle, but would not sell them. A small group of ex-trappers hatched an audacious plan. These "mountain men" decided to build an ocean-going ship, sail it to California, trade it for cattle and then drive the cattle back to the Willamette Valley. Now, no American ship had ever been built in Oregon and none of the group had ever sailed, but this did not deter them. Joseph Gale, a mountain man with seagoing experience, promised to join them later if they could show progress. Felix Hathaway, a ship's carpenter from Willamette Falls, agreed to supervise construction....
It’s The Pitts: Lemonade Lessons Like many kids of my generation, I learned about running a business by having my own lemonade stand. It was a single owner proprietorship and I had no employees, fancy stationery or business license. I picked the lemons from our very own tree and my mother helped me make the lemonade using an old family recipe; one part lemon extract, four parts water, one part sugar and 10 parts of pride my mother had in me for my enthusiastic entrepreneurship. I set up a card table by the road out in front of our house, arranged the tools of my trade and started waving my sign at those passing by, offering fresh squeezed lemonade for only ten cents a glass. It was a bit slow at first but then I got the bright idea to throw in a free cookie with every glass and business began to trickle in. A neighbor I’d never met stopped by on his walk and said he was tired and hot and guessed he’d try a glass of my lemonade. He tossed the glass back, smacked his lips and said, “I’ll have another.” I asked him for 20 cents and he gave me a quarter and from then on he was my favorite old man in the neighborhood....
Rich countries like poor face water crisis Rich countries have to make drastic changes to policies if they are to avoid the water crisis that is facing poorer nations, the WWF environmental organization said on Wednesday. In a survey of the situation across the industrialized world, it said many cities were already losing the battle to maintain water supplies as governments talked about conservation but failed to implement their pledges. "Supporting large-scale industry and growing populations using water at high rates has come close to exhausting the water supplies of some First World cities and is a looming threat for many, if not most, others," the report warned. It suggested that agriculture in the richer countries should have to pay more for water and be held responsible more actively for its efficient use and for managing wastes, like salt, especially in intensive livestock farming. From Seville in Spain to Sacramento in California and Sydney in Australia, the report said, water had become a key political issue at local, regional and national levels as climate change and loss of wetlands dramatically reduce supplies....
Billions face water shortages, crisis looms A third of the world is facing water shortages because of poor management of water resources and soaring water usage, driven mainly by agriculture, the International Water Management Institute said on Wednesday. Water scarcity around the world was increasing faster than expected, with agriculture accounting for 80 percent of global water consumption, the world authority on fresh water management told a development conference in Canberra. Globally, water usage had increased by six times in the past 100 years and would double again by 2050, driven mainly by irrigation and demands by agriculture, said Frank Rijsberman, the institute's director-general. Billions of people in Asia and Africa already faced water shortages because of poor water management, he said....
Las Vegas bids to fuel growth by tapping into farmers' water Nothing in the history of the American West epitomises the unscrupulous greed and ambition of its settlers more than the story of Los Angeles sucking the water supply out from under the farmers of the Owens Valley in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains a century ago. The fertile valley was reduced to a dustbowl so the City of Angels could expand and turn into the sprawling metropolis it is today. Now history is threatening to repeat itself - this time in the neighbouring state of Nevada, where the insatiable growth of Las Vegas and its satellite cities is sparking a new water war with the farmers and ranchers of the remote and beautiful Snake Valley straddling the border of Nevada and Utah. Water officials in Las Vegas are lobbying to build a pipeline to carry more than one billion cubic feet of extra groundwater into their city every year, at an cost of $1bn. The pipeline would be the starting point of a larger project to pump almost eight times that much water into Las Vegas from a large swath of central and eastern Nevada....
Governor looks to tackle water problems in coming session Gov. Bill Richardson has already called the 2007 legislative session the Year of Water, and on Tuesday, he called for ``big ideas'' to take on the state's water problems. ``I don't want little ideas. I want far-reaching ideas to address New Mexico's water issues,'' Richardson told a group of the state's water thinkers and policy-makers gathered Tuesday in Albuquerque for a free-wheeling discussion. Reclaim millions of gallons of wastewater from New Mexico dairies with new technology, offered Annette Morales, a rural-development advocate. Revise state regulations so they don't hamper farmers' efforts to use innovative water-saving technology, suggested Los Lunas dairy farmer Janet Jarrat. ``It's like pulling teeth to get anyone to look at anything innovative,'' she said....
Wolf traps set after death of calf in Gravelly Mountains Federal wildlife officials have set traps in the area where a wolf killed a calf on a grazing allotment in the Gravelly Mountains, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services said. The calf kill in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest was investigated Sunday. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks trapped two wolves in the area in May and fitted them with radio collars. Radio signals were not heard during the investigation Sunday nor during a monitoring flight Monday. The tracks of a single wolf were found near the carcass, and federal wildlife officials believe a single animal without a collar killed the calf....
Car hits, kills grizzly bear A grizzly bear that had recently lost its radio collar was hit and killed by a car last week in Grand Teton National Park. Park officials said the Chevrolet Cavalier was southbound on U.S. 26/89/191 Friday night when it hit the bear south of Moran Junction. The bear, a 4-year-old male, survived the initial impact but died along side the road. None of the three people in the car was injured, but the car sustained extensive damage to the hood and windshield. The park said the grizzly was captured last summer and given a radio collar as part of a research project. The bear dropped the collar this June, but data collected during the 11 months it was collared showed the bear mostly stayed in the park, roaming occasionally into the Teton Wilderness....
On the Mountain: Vanishing species About 20 miles east of Meeker is a tributary of the White River named North Elk Creek, a valley of lush undergrowth and tall pines, steep hillsides and long approaches to the Flat Tops Wilderness Area. And until only a decade ago or so, it was a sanctuary from civilization, peopled by ranchers, visited by a select few fishers and boaters. Like everywhere in Colorado, though, things are changing. Invited by some friends whose family has maintained a small hunting camp on North Elk for half a century, Anne and I trucked our way up from Carbondale through a rainy Friday evening to bed down in a two-room, rustic cabin to one side of the valley. We slept to the sound of North Elk Creek as it babbled a few feet away each night. Other cabins, a decent distance apart, made up the hunting camp, each occupied by a separate part of the larger party. By day, everyone did his or her own thing, hiking out of the valley into the surrounding high country. Anne and I spent most of one day exploring the East Fork of North Elk, passing by a venerable cow camp that seemed still to be at least partially in use. A nearby corral, in good repair, showed that the cowboys still came up to the valley to gather their herds in the fall or scatter them in the spring....
Rancher wants first conservation plan Dean Roberts plans to become the first rancher in Chaffee County to place his ranch in a conservation easement. Chaffee County Commissioners unanimously pledged support for the idea Tuesday during a regular meeting in Buena Vista. They donated $30,000 from the conservation trust fund and agreed to apply for a Great Outdoors Colorado grant on Roberts' behalf. He plans to put 303 acres and several high quality water rights into conservation along the South Arkansas River about a mile west of Poncha Springs. Poncha Springs Trustees offered support for the plan during their meeting Monday. Under the easement, Roberts forfeits his right to develop the property while maintaining ownership and allowing his family to continue agricultural operations. He will be paid approximately $700,000 to finalize the easement, which will be held in perpetuity by the Colorado Cattlemen's Association....
Xcel invests in 'clean' coal Xcel Energy on Tuesday committed $3.5 million through next year to develop Colorado's first "clean" coal power plant, signaling the utility's keen interest in pursuing the multimillion-dollar project. The money will be used to conduct engineering studies and project development activities for the 300- to 350-megawatt power plant, which could supply electricity to about 350,000 households. Xcel wants to build the plant itself rather than open it to competitive bids from independent power producers. The plant could cost between $500 million and $1 billion, depending on the location, size and infrastructure, such as transmission lines, as well as technology. The utility wants to recover that investment from its 1.3 million electric ratepayers in Colorado, if the state Public Utilities Commission approves the project....
Off-road dispute In 1988, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management designated a 19,200-acre swath of ruggedly steep hills between Chimayo and Alcalde as El Palacio Fun Valley, where dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles could zoom around on established trails. Now opponents are gearing up to fight what they predict will be expanded, unmanaged off-roading in the area as the BLM Taos Field Office rewrites its 20-year-old management plan for all the land it manages in Northern New Mexico, including El Palacio Fun Valley. They say off-roaders are already cutting fences along the park's boundary and trespassing on private land, leaving trash, increasing erosion and robbing archaeological sites scattered throughout the area. ``They have no regard for fences or private property, much less archaeological sites,'' said John Chavez, a Truchas native and board member of two land-grant associations....
Aspen tree deaths leave experts stumped Something is killing the quaking aspen trees of the Rocky Mountain West. The slender, white-barked trees that paint the hills gold every autumn are dying, some scientists say, leaving bald patches across the Rockies. Experts are scrambling to figure out what's happening. "As soon as we understand what's going on, then maybe we can do something about it," said Dale Bartos, a Forest Service restoration ecologist based in northern Utah. Bartos thinks a fungus may be to blame, while others suggest everything from hungry caterpillars to drought to man's interference with the natural cycle of forest fires and even resurgent herds of hungry elk nibbling saplings to death. Aspen stands have been hard hit in southwestern Colorado and northern Arizona. A conservative estimate is that about 10 percent of the aspen in Colorado may have died or become afflicted with something in the past five to 10 years, Bartos said....
Conservation groups sue over forest management plan The U.S. Forest Service is being sued by a coalition of conservation groups over a management plan they say threatens the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northeastern Minnesota. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis Tuesday, the coalition contends that a 2004 plan to manage the Superior National Forest would harm the wilderness values of the BWCA. The Forest Service plan would allow clear-cut logging within a quarter of a mile of the lake-dotted wilderness area. The lawsuit also challenges a method the Forest Service is proposing to estimate the logging plan's impact on wildlife....
Governor Murkowski's Road to Nowhere Challenged Conservation and transportation groups filed suit today challenging a proposed road project to nowhere. The road would cut through a large roadless area north of Juneau on the east side of Lynn Canal and end in the wilderness roughly across the canal from Haines. The road project calls for the construction of a new ferry terminal at the end of the road. The entire project is expected to cost the state about $250 million and comes as the governor has instituted a state hiring freeze due to budgetary woes. The organizations filed suit in federal court in Juneau against the Federal Highway Administration and Forest Service. The lawsuit focuses on the Federal Highway Administration and Forest Service's failure to consider alternative methods of improving transportation between Juneau, Haines, and Skagway, and on their failure to fairly assess the effects the road would have on wildlife and other resources in Berners Bay and Lynn Canal. The organizations contend that the Highway Administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act by refusing to consider an alternative in which travel in Lynn Canal is improved by more effectively managing the existing ferry system....
Column: Forest Fires in the Klamath Mountains As several fires burn in the Klamath Backcountry of northern California and southern Oregon and as tens of millions of taxpayer dollars continue to be expended in efforts to "suppress" these fires, the time is opportune to examine the history of fire and fire suppression in the Klamath Mountains in order to determine if there are lessons for today that can be learned from the experiences of the past 25 years of fire suppression in these mountains. For local residents and "newcomers" to the Klamath Mountains our first experience with large fires and large Forest Service fire suppression was the Hog Fire of 1977. The jobs and income that flowed from that suppression effort and the salvage logging that followed were seen by most forest residents as an unexpected boon. But a few of us who had worked in the suppression effort also were alarmed by the size and destructive force of the massive backfires which Forest Service managers ordered lit in a futile attempt to stop the wildfire. This alarm was reinforced by natives and old timers who had lived with fire for many decades without resort to bringing in an army of non-local firefighters and massive amounts of equipment. We did not know it then but what we experienced with the Hog Fire was an early stage in the militarization, industrialization and nationalization of fire fighting....
Company eyes access for mine Agribusiness conglomerate J.R. Simplot Co. may try to get a judge to condemn part of an eastern Idaho couple's 467-acre property so the company can build a road for a proposed expansion of its phosphate mine near here. So far, Peter and Judy Riede have refused to sell rights-of-way to any portion of their land in rural Caribou County to Simplot. They say a haul road for ore from the Smoky Canyon Mine would damage their land, which has two creeks featuring 20-inch Yellowstone cutthroat trout. After the Riedes declined an offer of $2.1 million from Simplot, the company suggested in public documents filed with the U.S. Forest Service that it could simply use 110-year-old provisions in the Idaho Constitution that give mining companies the right to cross private lands to reach their properties. Simplot, which has $3 billion in annual revenue, also broached eminent domain in a June 9 letter to the couple. It asked them to reconsider the offer, and said if they didn't the company would "move forward with pursuing alternatives that allow Simplot to appropriately develop our phosphate mineral leases."....
Federal judge leaves roads dispute unresolved Inside the sprawling Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, signs posted by Kane County allow driving on some roads where the federal government has banned all vehicles. That conflict was left unresolved Wednesday when a federal judge dismissed a 10-year-old lawsuit brought by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance that sought to force the federal government to defend its own turf. U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins ruled that because the Bureau of Land Management was unwilling to get involved, the wilderness group didn't have a case. "It was a lot of work and motion for an eventual dismissal," said Ralph Finlayson, an assistant Utah attorney general....
Despite uproar over Alaska spill, US to open land to drilling The Interior Department is set to open a vast area of environmentally sensitive wetlands in Alaska to oil drilling, but opponents point to corroding pipelines to the east at Prudhoe Bay as a reason to keep the area off-limits. The tens of thousands of acres in and around Lake Teshekpuk on Alaska's North Slope are part of the oil-rich Barrow Arch, which includes the Prudhoe Bay fields that have kept oil flowing for decades. The lease sale, opposed by environmentalists and some members of Congress, is occurring as federal regulators and a House committee investigate inspection and maintenance programs of BP Alaska, where widespread pipeline corrosion forced the partial shutdown of Prudhoe Bay oil production Aug. 6. BP Alaska is a subsidiary of London-based BP PLC. Government geologists contend that at least 2 billion barrels of oil and huge amounts of natural gas lie beneath the coastal lagoons, deltas, and sedge grass meadows -- an area where caribou give birth and thousands of geese migrate each summer. Within days, the Interior Department will open tracts in the area for leasing, with the winning bids to be announced in September....
River Rescue The San Pedro River's meandering journey toward survival enjoyed a welcome twist recently, when a scheme to revive rail cargo along its banks was dropped. Now conservationists want to take that victory to the bank. Literally. They hope to begin a process called rail banking, which would turn the old rail route lining the San Pedro into a bucolic walking trail. And that would pay proper tribute to this last fragment of a complex riparian river system once coursing through the Southwest. The saga began in February, when the San Pedro Railroad Operating Co. received federal permission to abandon its 76.2 mile route through Cochise County. About 40 miles of that line slices through the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, which is administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management....
Gene-Altered Crops Denounced Environmental groups yesterday called for a moratorium on open-air tests of crops genetically engineered to produce medicines and vaccines, citing a federal court's conclusion last week that the Agriculture Department repeatedly broke the law by allowing companies to plant such crops on hundred of acres in Hawaii. In a toughly worded 52-page decision released without fanfare late last week, a U.S. District judge in Hawaii concluded that USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which grants permits for the planting of genetically engineered crops, should have first investigated whether the plants posed a threat to any of that state's hundreds of endangered species. The corn and sugar cane plants, already harvested because the experiments involving them were completed before the case was decided, had been modified to produce human hormones, drugs and ingredients for vaccines against AIDS and hepatitis B....
Grass Created in Lab Is Found in the Wild An unapproved type of genetically engineered grass has been found growing in the wild in what scientists say could be the first instance in the United States in which a biotechnology plant has established itself outside a farm. Ecologists at the Environmental Protection Agency said they had found a small number of the grass plants growing in central Oregon near the site of field tests that took place a few years ago. The E.P.A. scientists and others said the grass would probably not pose an ecological threat. Still, it could provide fodder for critics who say that agricultural biotechnology cannot be adequately controlled. “It is a cautionary tale that you have to think about the possibility of plants escaping into populations where there are wild relatives present,” said Jay Reichman, an agency ecologist who is the lead author of a study to be published in the journal Molecular Ecology....
Another Inconvenient Truth: Meat is a Global Warming Issue There are many human activities that contribute to global warming. Among the biggest contributors are electrical generation, the use of passenger and other vehicles, over-consumption, international shipping, deforestation, smoking and militarism. (The U.S. military, for example, is the world’s biggest consumer of oil and the world’s biggest polluter.) What many people do not know, however, is that the production of meat also significantly increases global warming. Cow farms produce millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane per year, the two major greenhouse gases that together account for more than 90 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions, substantially contributing to “global scorching.” According to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Unit on Climate Change, “There is a strong link between human diet and methane emissions from livestock.” The 2004 State of the World is more specific regarding the link between animals raised for meat and global warming: “Belching, flatulent livestock emit 16 percent of the world’s annual production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.” The July 2005 issue of Physics World states: “The animals we eat emit 21 percent of all the CO2 that can be attributed to human activity.” Eating meat directly contributes to this environmentally irresponsible industry and the dire threat of global warming. ...
Ranchers rewarded for conservation Four Arizona ranchers in Coconino County have cared for our beautiful, fragile land for generations, most tracing their families back to settling the West and European roots. According to them, the longevity of their operations is testament to their commitment to the land. Because of that commitment, the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will pay them $172,030 combined next year and a total of $1,341,322 in the next 10 years through the Conservation Security Program (CSP). CSP is a voluntary conservation program administered by NRCS that rewards private landowners for their ongoing care of natural resources on working lands. Some of the practices that put the Arizona producers on top include using vigorous grazing management strategies along with providing wildlife watering facilities, solar energy generation, recycling used motor oils, reducing dust on dirt roads and providing barrier-free land for antelope habitat....
Mystery of San Antonio tree may be solved SAN ANTONIO Officials may have solved the mystery of a San Antonio tree that's gurgled water from its trunk for months. The site has attracted a stream of pilgrims who consider it holy water. The San Antonio Express-News reports city water system officials shut off service to Lucille Pope's home -- and found that the tree stopped leaking. Her son, Lloyd Pope, says authorities think the roots had gotten into the waterline. Lucille Pope had sought answers from the Texas Forest Service, the Edwards Aquifer Authority and nurseries -- with no results. Meanwhile, visitors have come from as far as Laredo, Dallas and Georgetown to see the red oak that's spouted water in the midst of the drought.
Governor Brad Henry Lifts Some Load Regulations Gov. Brad Henry has issued an executive order waiving load regulations to help drought-weary farmers and ranchers get hay and other supplies. The 90-day order also will make it easier for firefighters to transport equipment to battle wildfires. It waives road and licensing regulations for oversized vehicles that haul agricultural loads and firefighting equipment. ``We're doing everything we can to protect Oklahomans from wildfires and deliver relief to farmers and ranchers who are hurting because of the drought,'' Henry said. ``This executive order is just one small piece of the puzzle, but it will make it easier to deliver help to the areas that need it most.'' Besides expediting agriculture shipments within the state, the governor is working to cut through red tape that may hinder transports from surrounding states. At his direction, officials are working with their counterparts in other states in the region to encourage similar rule waivers on agriculture transports....
Supervisors keep open range idea alive An open range proposal is not dead. With a 3-2 vote, the Tehama County Board of Supervisors voted to continue discussions about a proposed ordinance that would designate almost two-thirds of the county as chiefly devoted to grazing. Tehama County Cattlemen's Association President Matt Pritchard echoed some of his previous comments from past public meetings, saying that the ordinance was less about fencing and zoning and more about liability. "Ranchers need to stay in good standing with insurance companies," he said. If passed, the ordinance would label almost two-thirds of the unincorporated county as chiefly devoted to grazing. It would establish the right of cattlemen to graze livestock, and, the cattlemen argued, it is necessary to help the county's $17 million cattle industry afford insurance and continue business in the county....
Protecting the Truth About Grass-Fed Meats What does the term grass-fed mean to you? To millions of consumers it means pasture-raised, unconfined animals. Now, a few greedy companies have lined up lobbyists to change the meaning --- and, with it, the truth --- in grass-fed labeling. Back in the 1990s, after years of pressure from the emerging organic-food industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture finally offered a proposed definition of the term organic. Unfortunately, industrial-scale food producers saw the potential in a market that they didn't have a piece of, and hijacked the proposed rule before it reached the public. Fortunately for us, the leadership of the organic industry rallied its legion of consumers to wage a pitched battle in the form of letters, e-mail and telephone calls. And won. The USDA received more comments on a proposed rule than ever before or since. The intended meaning of organic survived. We face a similar hijacking again --- but this time the term is "grass fed," and the food is meat, milk and cheese. Factory-system food producers, who seek to profit from the burgeoning market for grass-fed protein, are attempting to steal the meaning and therefore the market. The USDA has proposed a rule that now would allow "grass fed" to include animal confinement and the feeding of corn and other grains in the final stages of an animal's life....
Going for the Gold It’s a hot August day in the South Hills and the pine needles crunch underfoot. It hasn’t rained in weeks and the forest holds the heat close to the ground. There’s little shade to be found, unless you slither into an old mining tunnel where the temperature drops 30 degrees and the air is damp and dewy. It’s not the safest refuge from the sun, nor is it recommended, but for those with a curious heart, the temptation to explore Helena’s historic mines is hard to resist. No one knows for certain how many tunnels, shafts, pits and adits lay scattered across Helena’s South Hills. Some mines date back 140 years. Others were created as late as the 1940s, when mining dwindled in the Helena area. Old-timers still tell stories about the dredges that once skimmed gravel for gold in the valley. Just last summer, rumors of a lingering pocket of quartz stirred cries of gold across Downtown as crews excavated the Jackson Street garage. Of course, they never found any gold....
Adventurers traded ship to build up Oregon herds In the summer of 1840, cattle were almost impossible to come by for Oregon settlers. The Hudson Bay Company was willing to lend cows, but all calves reverted to the company. Ewing Young, a wealthy rancher, and the Methodist Mission each owned cattle, but would not sell them. A small group of ex-trappers hatched an audacious plan. These "mountain men" decided to build an ocean-going ship, sail it to California, trade it for cattle and then drive the cattle back to the Willamette Valley. Now, no American ship had ever been built in Oregon and none of the group had ever sailed, but this did not deter them. Joseph Gale, a mountain man with seagoing experience, promised to join them later if they could show progress. Felix Hathaway, a ship's carpenter from Willamette Falls, agreed to supervise construction....
It’s The Pitts: Lemonade Lessons Like many kids of my generation, I learned about running a business by having my own lemonade stand. It was a single owner proprietorship and I had no employees, fancy stationery or business license. I picked the lemons from our very own tree and my mother helped me make the lemonade using an old family recipe; one part lemon extract, four parts water, one part sugar and 10 parts of pride my mother had in me for my enthusiastic entrepreneurship. I set up a card table by the road out in front of our house, arranged the tools of my trade and started waving my sign at those passing by, offering fresh squeezed lemonade for only ten cents a glass. It was a bit slow at first but then I got the bright idea to throw in a free cookie with every glass and business began to trickle in. A neighbor I’d never met stopped by on his walk and said he was tired and hot and guessed he’d try a glass of my lemonade. He tossed the glass back, smacked his lips and said, “I’ll have another.” I asked him for 20 cents and he gave me a quarter and from then on he was my favorite old man in the neighborhood....
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Industry braces for political fallout For years a number of residents of the Line Creek Wilderness subdivision west of Clark in Park County have fought deep-well natural gas development in the area, often expressing concern that gases and chemicals might seep into the local water supply. Then a major leak did happen. While drilling at 8,030 feet on the Crosby Ranch Friday afternoon, a crew working for Windsor Wyoming LLC shut off gas flow through the well bore. Gas and mud began oozing out of a nearby hillside, and the crew didn't have enough heavy mud to pump down the bore and stop the leak. The event led to a voluntary evacuation of 25 residences and a major "I told you so" from some locals who have been opposed to oil and gas activity in the area. "We've been asking for safety plans over and over again," said Deb Thomas, an evacuee who had formed the Clark Resource Council to fight the industry. "Do we have to wait until somebody gets killed? Is our water safe to drink? Who is now responsible?" On Monday, folks in Wyoming's oil and gas industry prepared for public opinion fallout from the event....
New BLM Rules will Provide Long-Term Benefits for Rangeland Health A federal district court judge decided August 11 to move forward with substantial portions of new grazing regulations released last month by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In Western Watersheds Project v. Kraayenbrink, U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction blocking only the part of the grazing rules that deal with public participation in the rulemaking. But Judge Winmill upheld all other aspects of the regulations - a victory for public lands ranchers. "BLM's new regulations strike a balance between resource conservation and sustainable public lands ranching," says Jeff Eisenberg, executive director of the Public Lands Council. "The Western Watersheds Project fails to recognize the progress that can be made on the land by promulgating these new rules. It's unfortunate that they want to waste time with a frivolous lawsuit, but we are pleased that Judge Winmill decided to allow substantial portions of the regulations to be implemented." The PLC, an organization of public lands ranchers throughout the West, has joined BLM in the lawsuit to help defend the final grazing regulations. The PLC represents the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the American Sheep Industry and the Association of National Grasslands....
U.S. Army Wants Your Colorado Ranchland Western states are no longer the remote havens for industries and military exercises they used to be. The nuclear waste repository planned for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is still tied up in protests and litigation. The proposed “Divine Strake” exercise set for June at the Nevada Test Site, which was to test the bunker-busting ability of 700 tons of the same explosive mixture that was used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, was also torpedoed by both public and political opposition. With energy development proceeding great guns, even some political stalwarts who have normally been on the side of such development, have come out against drilling on all public lands, i.e., Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas' opposition to drilling on the Wyoming Range and Montana Sen. Conrad Burns' agreement that no drilling be allowed on that state's Rocky Mountain Front. Two stories today reflect a change in attitude about some areas of the West being used as testing grounds for military firepower and as the nation’s source of domestic energy. In Colorado, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reports that the small towns and ranches in the southeastern corner of the state are definitely not putting out the welcome mat to the U.S. Army’s proposed expansion of its existing Piñon Canyon maneuver site. When the Army built the site in the 1980s, it used eminent domain to condemn the 250,000 acres just south of LaJunta that it needed for the military training grounds. But a lot has changed in the last couple of decades, and the resistance to the expansion plans has already begun to grow, despite the Army’s insistence that such resistance is premature. The Army still needs to secure funding for the expansion and Army officials have promised the public will be allowed to comment on the plan once the Pentagon approves it....
Forest thinning in Western states comes under fire The U.S. Forest Service spends about $1 billion a year fighting wildfires, mostly in the West. But when it comes to thinning forests to help them withstand fire, the Forest Service is all over the map. The Forest Service cleared flammable brush and small trees from more acres in Kentucky last year than it did in Nevada, where 17 times more land was burned by wildfires. It did more thinning in Mississippi than in California and about as much in Arkansas as in Oregon. "The only way you can describe the system, as it's been related to us, is it's bizarre," said U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "Clearly some areas of great need have been shorted." Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth explained his agency distributes thinning dollars based on the individual forests' ability to get the work done, the amount of hazardous vegetation and how close the forestland is to developed areas....
Editorial - A ruinous land rush NEAR THE majestic canyons of Zion National Park in southern Utah is the fifth-fastest-growing county in the United States, a monument to suburban sprawl and strip development. To help Washington County grow even faster, one of Utah's senators, Republican Robert Bennett, is sponsoring a bill that would sell off a parcel of federal land almost as large as the city of Boston to developers. Some of the proceeds would go not for conservation but to such local projects as an off-road-vehicle trail and a water pipeline. The bill has set off alarm bells all over the West for the worrisome example it sets. Because Utah was originally a territory, the federal government owns about two-thirds of it, and the Bureau of Land Management periodically sells off properties. The money from the sale is supposed to be spent on conservation projects in the affected state. Instead, this bill encourages the wasteful use of land. It specifically earmarks money for an off-road-vehicle trail, which would destroy fragile desert habitat, and for a portion of the cost of a $500 million, 120-mile pipeline to draw water from Lake Powell in Arizona. Getting a straw into Lake Powell would spur further growth in Washington County, a center for resorts and retirement homes. A spokesman for Bennett points to a similar federal land sale in Nevada as a precedent for this kind of allocation of land-sale funds. Conservationists say the Utah proposal is worse than the Nevada one because the proceeds would directly benefit local government, giving local officials a strong incentive to push for the sale of lands that would be better left under the protection of the federal government....
Ranch beckons them home Along the back living room wall of the Springsteen home in Browns Valley, Dick Springsteen points to a strip of wood branded with the marks of neighboring ranches. Among the series of squiggles, numbers, letters and lines are the letters “SV,” the brand his grandfather used during his days as a cattle rancher. Springsteen's brand is also on the wall, marked as an “S” laying back. The strip was given to him in honor of his 60th birthday. The brands are more than just marks, however. They are a sign of a close-knit community and a way of life that they've come to know and love. “I don't really know where I'd go to,” said Springsteen, 70, when asked if he ever thought of leaving the hills where he grew up. Dick and his wife, Roberta, have lived in other places, but they were needed to work the ranch with other family members, so they moved back....
Not much out there, plus been having a problem with my browser all night. Will catch up tomorrow night.
Industry braces for political fallout For years a number of residents of the Line Creek Wilderness subdivision west of Clark in Park County have fought deep-well natural gas development in the area, often expressing concern that gases and chemicals might seep into the local water supply. Then a major leak did happen. While drilling at 8,030 feet on the Crosby Ranch Friday afternoon, a crew working for Windsor Wyoming LLC shut off gas flow through the well bore. Gas and mud began oozing out of a nearby hillside, and the crew didn't have enough heavy mud to pump down the bore and stop the leak. The event led to a voluntary evacuation of 25 residences and a major "I told you so" from some locals who have been opposed to oil and gas activity in the area. "We've been asking for safety plans over and over again," said Deb Thomas, an evacuee who had formed the Clark Resource Council to fight the industry. "Do we have to wait until somebody gets killed? Is our water safe to drink? Who is now responsible?" On Monday, folks in Wyoming's oil and gas industry prepared for public opinion fallout from the event....
New BLM Rules will Provide Long-Term Benefits for Rangeland Health A federal district court judge decided August 11 to move forward with substantial portions of new grazing regulations released last month by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In Western Watersheds Project v. Kraayenbrink, U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction blocking only the part of the grazing rules that deal with public participation in the rulemaking. But Judge Winmill upheld all other aspects of the regulations - a victory for public lands ranchers. "BLM's new regulations strike a balance between resource conservation and sustainable public lands ranching," says Jeff Eisenberg, executive director of the Public Lands Council. "The Western Watersheds Project fails to recognize the progress that can be made on the land by promulgating these new rules. It's unfortunate that they want to waste time with a frivolous lawsuit, but we are pleased that Judge Winmill decided to allow substantial portions of the regulations to be implemented." The PLC, an organization of public lands ranchers throughout the West, has joined BLM in the lawsuit to help defend the final grazing regulations. The PLC represents the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the American Sheep Industry and the Association of National Grasslands....
U.S. Army Wants Your Colorado Ranchland Western states are no longer the remote havens for industries and military exercises they used to be. The nuclear waste repository planned for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is still tied up in protests and litigation. The proposed “Divine Strake” exercise set for June at the Nevada Test Site, which was to test the bunker-busting ability of 700 tons of the same explosive mixture that was used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, was also torpedoed by both public and political opposition. With energy development proceeding great guns, even some political stalwarts who have normally been on the side of such development, have come out against drilling on all public lands, i.e., Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas' opposition to drilling on the Wyoming Range and Montana Sen. Conrad Burns' agreement that no drilling be allowed on that state's Rocky Mountain Front. Two stories today reflect a change in attitude about some areas of the West being used as testing grounds for military firepower and as the nation’s source of domestic energy. In Colorado, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reports that the small towns and ranches in the southeastern corner of the state are definitely not putting out the welcome mat to the U.S. Army’s proposed expansion of its existing Piñon Canyon maneuver site. When the Army built the site in the 1980s, it used eminent domain to condemn the 250,000 acres just south of LaJunta that it needed for the military training grounds. But a lot has changed in the last couple of decades, and the resistance to the expansion plans has already begun to grow, despite the Army’s insistence that such resistance is premature. The Army still needs to secure funding for the expansion and Army officials have promised the public will be allowed to comment on the plan once the Pentagon approves it....
Forest thinning in Western states comes under fire The U.S. Forest Service spends about $1 billion a year fighting wildfires, mostly in the West. But when it comes to thinning forests to help them withstand fire, the Forest Service is all over the map. The Forest Service cleared flammable brush and small trees from more acres in Kentucky last year than it did in Nevada, where 17 times more land was burned by wildfires. It did more thinning in Mississippi than in California and about as much in Arkansas as in Oregon. "The only way you can describe the system, as it's been related to us, is it's bizarre," said U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "Clearly some areas of great need have been shorted." Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth explained his agency distributes thinning dollars based on the individual forests' ability to get the work done, the amount of hazardous vegetation and how close the forestland is to developed areas....
Editorial - A ruinous land rush NEAR THE majestic canyons of Zion National Park in southern Utah is the fifth-fastest-growing county in the United States, a monument to suburban sprawl and strip development. To help Washington County grow even faster, one of Utah's senators, Republican Robert Bennett, is sponsoring a bill that would sell off a parcel of federal land almost as large as the city of Boston to developers. Some of the proceeds would go not for conservation but to such local projects as an off-road-vehicle trail and a water pipeline. The bill has set off alarm bells all over the West for the worrisome example it sets. Because Utah was originally a territory, the federal government owns about two-thirds of it, and the Bureau of Land Management periodically sells off properties. The money from the sale is supposed to be spent on conservation projects in the affected state. Instead, this bill encourages the wasteful use of land. It specifically earmarks money for an off-road-vehicle trail, which would destroy fragile desert habitat, and for a portion of the cost of a $500 million, 120-mile pipeline to draw water from Lake Powell in Arizona. Getting a straw into Lake Powell would spur further growth in Washington County, a center for resorts and retirement homes. A spokesman for Bennett points to a similar federal land sale in Nevada as a precedent for this kind of allocation of land-sale funds. Conservationists say the Utah proposal is worse than the Nevada one because the proceeds would directly benefit local government, giving local officials a strong incentive to push for the sale of lands that would be better left under the protection of the federal government....
Ranch beckons them home Along the back living room wall of the Springsteen home in Browns Valley, Dick Springsteen points to a strip of wood branded with the marks of neighboring ranches. Among the series of squiggles, numbers, letters and lines are the letters “SV,” the brand his grandfather used during his days as a cattle rancher. Springsteen's brand is also on the wall, marked as an “S” laying back. The strip was given to him in honor of his 60th birthday. The brands are more than just marks, however. They are a sign of a close-knit community and a way of life that they've come to know and love. “I don't really know where I'd go to,” said Springsteen, 70, when asked if he ever thought of leaving the hills where he grew up. Dick and his wife, Roberta, have lived in other places, but they were needed to work the ranch with other family members, so they moved back....
Not much out there, plus been having a problem with my browser all night. Will catch up tomorrow night.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Report: BLM right to suspend employee The Bureau of Land Management could have done more to ease tension among staff in Bakersfield, but the agency was right to discipline an employee who later killed herself, a federal investigation found. Marlene Braun, former manager of Carrizo Plain National Monument, shot her two dogs and then herself in May 2005. In a suicide note, she blamed her boss, Ron Huntsinger, saying "she could no longer take (his) abuse, humiliation and lies," wrote Earl Devaney, inspector general of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Devaney's office has yet to release a detailed account of Braun's death, but its findings are summarized in a two-page letter sent to members of Congress and others Aug. 8. These are its main points: * BLM was right to suspend Braun for complaining about Huntsinger to the Nature Conservancy and state Department of Fish and Game, BLM's partners in managing the Carrizo Plain. * As a manager, Braun had become "confrontational and one-sided," steamrolling opposition and refusing to attend management training....
Northern Nevadans Don't Want to Gamble With Their Water Las Vegas is a parched desert city in a four-year drought, with new residents pouring in at a rate of at least 5,000 per month. So water officials plan to tap a great system of aquifers that form underground lakes in a swath across Nevada, some of them hundreds of miles away. But the water is not free for the taking. On top of the aquifers are ranches and small towns, where a small, tenacious group of rural residents are fighting hard to keep Las Vegas from sucking them dry. "It's a question of values," said Dean Baker, a rancher with 2,000 head of cattle in White Pine County. "Will society accept drying up this environment to feed Las Vegas's money appetite?" The battle is the latest in a long series of skirmishes between Western cities and rural areas over limited supplies of water and how it should be allocated. Typically, cities win. Coastal California, Phoenix and Salt Lake City all rely on distant groundwater supplies. Such transfers of water from rural to urban areas "have not yet occurred in Nevada," said Hal Rothman, a professor of history at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "But they are beginning here."....
Gypsum settles out of court on water After 15 years of negotiations that culminated with a condemnation lawsuit, the town of Gypsum has settled its water rights fight with Gypsum Creek rancher Ned Goldsmith. The out-of-court settlement specifies that the town will pay Goldsmith and his companies, Agvest LLC and L.E.D.E. Limited Liability, $2 million over a four-year period. In exchange, the town gets water rights and water storage rights out of L.E.D.E. Reservoir, located on Forest Service land about 20 miles up Gypsum Creek. A limited portion of the water rights will remain available to Goldsmith. Paul Noto, the town’s water attorney, described the out-of-court settlement as a “win-win for all involved.” Goldsmith sees the deal differently. “I felt like I was negotiating with a gun held to my head,” he said. The town has been seeking to bolster its water rights on Gypsum Creek for decades. Noto said that during the drought of 2002, town leaders saw a need to find another source of water to ensure residents would be supplied adequately in dry years....
Burns defends right to question fire tactics U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns has defended his right to question how the Bundy Railroad fire was fought near Worden last month and accused his opponents of making “a little political hay” over the issue. Burns, a Republican up for re-election this year, told a picnic of campaign supporters in Billings last Thursday night that he only asked a question to some firefighters at the Billings airport on July 23, contrary to what has been reported previously. Burns and the firefighters were waiting to catch an airplane that was delayed by mechanical problems. The senator also acknowledged at the picnic that he has the ability to say things off the cuff that can hurt him politically. The Burns comments came from a transcript prepared by Montana Democrats, who videotape Burns at every public event. The Burns campaign did not dispute the transcript. “But nonetheless, my first obligation is to the ranching and the farming community of this state,” Burns said. “That's my first obligation. The ranchers down there, some of whom were not allowed to go back, even on their own ranches and fight that fire. And so that's, that's the bottom line. I represent them. And I'll continue to do that. That's just the way I am. So is that all right?”....
Heat kills fish High temperatures and prolonged drought led to a major fish kill at Great Salt Plains Lake in northcentral Oklahoma this week. Biologists with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation estimate 10,000 fish have died due to low dissolved oxygen levels in the lake. “This is a major fish kill and it reflects how this abnormal weather not only affects farmers and ranchers, but it also affects our lakes and our fisheries resources,” said Barry Bolton, assistant chief of fisheries for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. “We are monitoring the situation closely. Unfortunately, there is simply not anything we can do to remedy high heat and lack of rain.” According to Bolton, Great Salt Plains is a relatively shallow reservoir making it particularly susceptible to warm water temperatures....
California's New Experimental Forest The U.S. Forest Service has just dedicated the first new experimental forest in California in 40 years. That means science and research will get priority over all other activities in the area. The Sagehen Forest is in the Lake Tahoe Basin, eight miles outside of Truckee. In this Assignment 7 report we take you there for a look at what it is all about. This is bug boot camp. A right of passage for UC students studying insects. Students spend five weeks, from early in the morning until late at night, collecting and examining bugs in one of the most diverse habitats in the world. Prof. Phil Ward, UC Davis: "There are about 600 families of insects in North America and we have recorded about 340 of them just within the Sagehen Creek Basin, so that's more than half of all the families of insects in North America are found just within this one basin."....
Suit: Plans won't protect tortoise The two huge plans designed to protect the threatened desert tortoise and other rare species in the desert are actually damaging the environment by expanding routes for off-roading enthusiasts, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court Monday. "We want the desert tortoise recovered and that's what the law requires,'' said Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, the Tucson-based group that has filed scores of environmental lawsuits. The suit filed in San Francisco against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeks to have the plans modified or invalidated. Fifteen years in the making, the West Mojave Plan covers 9.3 million acres, or roughly 14,500 square miles, in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Inyo and Kern counties. The Northern and Eastern Colorado Desert Coordinated Management Plan covers about 5.5 million acres of the Sonoran Desert in San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial counties....
NIFC Turns to Military For Help There are 38 blazes burning across the country, most in western states, Michigan and Florida. The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise is busy dispatching resources to those fires. Now, they're relying on at least one Army battalion to help suppress a blaze burning forest land in Washington state. Getting the upper hand on fast moving wildfires is the goal of firefighters across the country, battling 38 blazes right now. There's such a need for resources that the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise has called on an army battalion from Fort Lewis to help. The 500-soldier unit is working on the Tripod Complex Fire burning northeast of Winthrop, Washington. "The National Interagency Fire Center has an agreement with the Department of Defense through U.S. Northern Command to activate soldiers if we need them to fight fire, dig fire line," said Rose Davis with the National Interagency Fire Center. NIFC not only requests help from the military in the form of personnel, but also equipment. Last month, the agency activated Air National Guard Units with the Modular Airborne Firefighting System to serve as airtankers....
Gators vs. people: Who's winning? Wildlife officer Chris Ehrismann says alligators are an inescapable part of Florida's landscape. There are, after all, nearly 1.5 million gators statewide and more than 17 million humans steadily encroaching on their turf, setting up confrontations that in one week in May ended in death for three women. But, since 1973, there have been only 20 fatal attacks, including several in Central Florida. People, Ehrismann said, must use common sense on the front lines of alligator habitat: Don't feed the reptiles, or they will associate humans with food. Don't antagonize them. Don't swim in fresh water during dusk or dawn, when gators are active. Keep small children and dogs away from the water's edge. The wildlife agency receives about 17,000 alligator complaints a year and authorizes the removal of about 7,000 gators annually. This year, perhaps because of the three deaths, complaint calls totaled 14,156, and 6,198 gators have been removed so far. "Be aware that there are alligators in almost any fresh water in Florida," said Allan Woodward, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who has studied gators for 30 years....
Comments old on new listening tour The Bush administration's "cooperative conservation" listening tour may be new, but the complaints coming from industry, environmentalist and farming groups don't appear to have changed much. Managers with the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture said they would take comments from Monday's listening session in Helena, the second of 25 planned around the country, to the White House. Environmentalists bemoaned what they called the Bush administration's attempts to undermine the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws, and inadequate federal funding for conservation. Representatives of the timber industry complained that a bureaucracy ties up timber projects and laws let environmentalists use the courts to delay logging. Farming groups said more money is needed to pay for conservation programs that pay farmers to preserve the land, and said the Endangered Species Act is being misused....
Researchers are cloning endangered plants Researchers at the Cincinnati Zoo are cloning a threatened plant for an Akron park, one of only two locations in Ohio where the northern monkshood has been found. The purple-blue northern monkshood, which can grow 4 feet tall, has been reproduced through cloning by a team led by Valerie Pence of the zoo's Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife. The northern monkshood has been on the federal threatened list since 1978. A threatened species is likely in the foreseeable future to become endangered and at risk of extinction, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The plan is to transplant 25 cloned plants to the Gorge Metro Park in Akron and adjacent Cuyahoga Falls to help boost the population of northern monkshood growing there. Northern monkshood, a relative of the buttercup, is found in only four states: Iowa, New York, Wisconsin and Ohio. In Ohio, it's found only in the Crane Hollow nature preserve in Hocking County southeast of Columbus and Gorge Park....
Experts say border fence would hurt bighorn sheep If a proposed 15-foot-tall triple barrier is built between the United States and Mexico, illegal immigrants may have to take a tip from The Odyssey to get across. That's assuming measures are taken to safeguard the crossing of the endangered peninsular ranges bighorn sheep, whose survival could be threatened by the wall. In Washington earlier this month, a legislative rider attached to the 2007 defense appropriations bill by Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., calls for spending $2 billion to construct the 370-mile-long wall. The bighorns, which inhabit parts of the San Bernardino National Forest and thrive on Mount San Jacinto, migrate across the border to mate with herds in Baja California. It fortifies the gene pool enhancing survival of the breed. "If the California herds are isolated from herds in Mexico, repopulation and genetic flow in both herds will be affected," said Daniel Patterson, desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity....
Fishing advocate says water district retaliating against scientist A biologist who reported the December deaths of hundreds of stranded salmon below a small dam operated by Stockton East Water District was ordered soon after by district officials to turn in the keys that gave him access to the river. Now, a sport fishing advocate says the district was retaliating against the scientist for providing information to authorities. The scientist, Trevor Kennedy of the Fishery Foundation, declined to discuss the matter in detail, saying he did not want to foster poor relations with the water district. Foundation scientists are still under a federal contract to study salmon and steelhead and to help ensure the survival of those species on the Calaveras River. But Kennedy acknowledged that Stockton East Water District ordered him to turn in his keys shortly after he reported the salmon stranding and other problems with the district's management of the river....
Two Michigan swans have avian flu; experts quell concerns The federal government announced today that two swans in Michigan tested positive for both the H5 and N1 avian influenza subtypes, but initial genetic sequencing suggests that it is a low-pathogenic type rather than the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain spreading through birds in Asia, Europe, and Africa and causing deaths in humans. Ron DeHaven, chief veterinary officer for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), said at a media briefing today that the birds appeared healthy and normal and were part of a group of 20 nonmigratory, resident mute swans that were sacrificed and tested on Aug 8 as part of a population reduction plan at a game area on Lake Erie in southeast Michigan. Bill Raub, science advisor to the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said the findings should not cause alarm. "There is no threat to human health, and there is no cause for any special actions," he said. "This is a matter of wildlife biology." On Aug 9 the samples were tested at Michigan State University's Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health, part of the USDA's National Animal Health Laboratory Network, where tests confirmed the presence of an H5 avian influenza virus. The samples were then sent to the USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa, which is the only national reference laboratory that can confirm the H5N1 virus. Confirmatory tests at the NVSL lab showed the presence of an H5 virus along with an N1 subtype; however, experts aren't sure if the birds were infected with two separate avian influenza strains or if the findings represent low-pathogenic H5N1. Testing began at the NVSL on Aug 12 to further characterize the virus, and results are expected in about 2 weeks....
Veterinary students urged to specialize in large-animal care Students should be encouraged to pursue careers in large-animal veterinary medicine to help replenish declining numbers in the field, vets and ranchers said. Participants at a meeting hosted by the Texas Veterinary Medical Association said rural areas need more vets who specialize in treating cattle and horses. Dr. Guy Sheppard, the association's president, said most of the students who graduate from the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine choose to practice small-animal medicine in larger cities. "I think the biggest challenge we have is trying to attract young people to go to vet school and want to do what we do," said Sheppard, of San Angelo. Participants at the meeting said large-animal vets are important to livestock production, food hygiene, controlling animal disease and public health....
The West recognizes 'Cowboy' His full name is William Daven Farr, but for most of his 96 years he's been W.D., or, in his younger years, Cowboy. But more appropriately, for the past 25 year or more, it's been Mr. Farr, a title he more than deserves. He is the only true pioneer left in Greeley and its only true statesman. His amazing career will be recognized once again next spring when he is inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. He will join other illustrious members of the hall: Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill Cody, Gene Autry, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, Zane Grey, and others. It is a Who's Who list of not only Western American history but American history. Just to be considered for such an honor is an honor in itself....
Report: BLM right to suspend employee The Bureau of Land Management could have done more to ease tension among staff in Bakersfield, but the agency was right to discipline an employee who later killed herself, a federal investigation found. Marlene Braun, former manager of Carrizo Plain National Monument, shot her two dogs and then herself in May 2005. In a suicide note, she blamed her boss, Ron Huntsinger, saying "she could no longer take (his) abuse, humiliation and lies," wrote Earl Devaney, inspector general of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Devaney's office has yet to release a detailed account of Braun's death, but its findings are summarized in a two-page letter sent to members of Congress and others Aug. 8. These are its main points: * BLM was right to suspend Braun for complaining about Huntsinger to the Nature Conservancy and state Department of Fish and Game, BLM's partners in managing the Carrizo Plain. * As a manager, Braun had become "confrontational and one-sided," steamrolling opposition and refusing to attend management training....
Northern Nevadans Don't Want to Gamble With Their Water Las Vegas is a parched desert city in a four-year drought, with new residents pouring in at a rate of at least 5,000 per month. So water officials plan to tap a great system of aquifers that form underground lakes in a swath across Nevada, some of them hundreds of miles away. But the water is not free for the taking. On top of the aquifers are ranches and small towns, where a small, tenacious group of rural residents are fighting hard to keep Las Vegas from sucking them dry. "It's a question of values," said Dean Baker, a rancher with 2,000 head of cattle in White Pine County. "Will society accept drying up this environment to feed Las Vegas's money appetite?" The battle is the latest in a long series of skirmishes between Western cities and rural areas over limited supplies of water and how it should be allocated. Typically, cities win. Coastal California, Phoenix and Salt Lake City all rely on distant groundwater supplies. Such transfers of water from rural to urban areas "have not yet occurred in Nevada," said Hal Rothman, a professor of history at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "But they are beginning here."....
Gypsum settles out of court on water After 15 years of negotiations that culminated with a condemnation lawsuit, the town of Gypsum has settled its water rights fight with Gypsum Creek rancher Ned Goldsmith. The out-of-court settlement specifies that the town will pay Goldsmith and his companies, Agvest LLC and L.E.D.E. Limited Liability, $2 million over a four-year period. In exchange, the town gets water rights and water storage rights out of L.E.D.E. Reservoir, located on Forest Service land about 20 miles up Gypsum Creek. A limited portion of the water rights will remain available to Goldsmith. Paul Noto, the town’s water attorney, described the out-of-court settlement as a “win-win for all involved.” Goldsmith sees the deal differently. “I felt like I was negotiating with a gun held to my head,” he said. The town has been seeking to bolster its water rights on Gypsum Creek for decades. Noto said that during the drought of 2002, town leaders saw a need to find another source of water to ensure residents would be supplied adequately in dry years....
Burns defends right to question fire tactics U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns has defended his right to question how the Bundy Railroad fire was fought near Worden last month and accused his opponents of making “a little political hay” over the issue. Burns, a Republican up for re-election this year, told a picnic of campaign supporters in Billings last Thursday night that he only asked a question to some firefighters at the Billings airport on July 23, contrary to what has been reported previously. Burns and the firefighters were waiting to catch an airplane that was delayed by mechanical problems. The senator also acknowledged at the picnic that he has the ability to say things off the cuff that can hurt him politically. The Burns comments came from a transcript prepared by Montana Democrats, who videotape Burns at every public event. The Burns campaign did not dispute the transcript. “But nonetheless, my first obligation is to the ranching and the farming community of this state,” Burns said. “That's my first obligation. The ranchers down there, some of whom were not allowed to go back, even on their own ranches and fight that fire. And so that's, that's the bottom line. I represent them. And I'll continue to do that. That's just the way I am. So is that all right?”....
Heat kills fish High temperatures and prolonged drought led to a major fish kill at Great Salt Plains Lake in northcentral Oklahoma this week. Biologists with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation estimate 10,000 fish have died due to low dissolved oxygen levels in the lake. “This is a major fish kill and it reflects how this abnormal weather not only affects farmers and ranchers, but it also affects our lakes and our fisheries resources,” said Barry Bolton, assistant chief of fisheries for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. “We are monitoring the situation closely. Unfortunately, there is simply not anything we can do to remedy high heat and lack of rain.” According to Bolton, Great Salt Plains is a relatively shallow reservoir making it particularly susceptible to warm water temperatures....
California's New Experimental Forest The U.S. Forest Service has just dedicated the first new experimental forest in California in 40 years. That means science and research will get priority over all other activities in the area. The Sagehen Forest is in the Lake Tahoe Basin, eight miles outside of Truckee. In this Assignment 7 report we take you there for a look at what it is all about. This is bug boot camp. A right of passage for UC students studying insects. Students spend five weeks, from early in the morning until late at night, collecting and examining bugs in one of the most diverse habitats in the world. Prof. Phil Ward, UC Davis: "There are about 600 families of insects in North America and we have recorded about 340 of them just within the Sagehen Creek Basin, so that's more than half of all the families of insects in North America are found just within this one basin."....
Suit: Plans won't protect tortoise The two huge plans designed to protect the threatened desert tortoise and other rare species in the desert are actually damaging the environment by expanding routes for off-roading enthusiasts, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court Monday. "We want the desert tortoise recovered and that's what the law requires,'' said Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, the Tucson-based group that has filed scores of environmental lawsuits. The suit filed in San Francisco against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeks to have the plans modified or invalidated. Fifteen years in the making, the West Mojave Plan covers 9.3 million acres, or roughly 14,500 square miles, in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Inyo and Kern counties. The Northern and Eastern Colorado Desert Coordinated Management Plan covers about 5.5 million acres of the Sonoran Desert in San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial counties....
NIFC Turns to Military For Help There are 38 blazes burning across the country, most in western states, Michigan and Florida. The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise is busy dispatching resources to those fires. Now, they're relying on at least one Army battalion to help suppress a blaze burning forest land in Washington state. Getting the upper hand on fast moving wildfires is the goal of firefighters across the country, battling 38 blazes right now. There's such a need for resources that the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise has called on an army battalion from Fort Lewis to help. The 500-soldier unit is working on the Tripod Complex Fire burning northeast of Winthrop, Washington. "The National Interagency Fire Center has an agreement with the Department of Defense through U.S. Northern Command to activate soldiers if we need them to fight fire, dig fire line," said Rose Davis with the National Interagency Fire Center. NIFC not only requests help from the military in the form of personnel, but also equipment. Last month, the agency activated Air National Guard Units with the Modular Airborne Firefighting System to serve as airtankers....
Gators vs. people: Who's winning? Wildlife officer Chris Ehrismann says alligators are an inescapable part of Florida's landscape. There are, after all, nearly 1.5 million gators statewide and more than 17 million humans steadily encroaching on their turf, setting up confrontations that in one week in May ended in death for three women. But, since 1973, there have been only 20 fatal attacks, including several in Central Florida. People, Ehrismann said, must use common sense on the front lines of alligator habitat: Don't feed the reptiles, or they will associate humans with food. Don't antagonize them. Don't swim in fresh water during dusk or dawn, when gators are active. Keep small children and dogs away from the water's edge. The wildlife agency receives about 17,000 alligator complaints a year and authorizes the removal of about 7,000 gators annually. This year, perhaps because of the three deaths, complaint calls totaled 14,156, and 6,198 gators have been removed so far. "Be aware that there are alligators in almost any fresh water in Florida," said Allan Woodward, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who has studied gators for 30 years....
Comments old on new listening tour The Bush administration's "cooperative conservation" listening tour may be new, but the complaints coming from industry, environmentalist and farming groups don't appear to have changed much. Managers with the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture said they would take comments from Monday's listening session in Helena, the second of 25 planned around the country, to the White House. Environmentalists bemoaned what they called the Bush administration's attempts to undermine the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws, and inadequate federal funding for conservation. Representatives of the timber industry complained that a bureaucracy ties up timber projects and laws let environmentalists use the courts to delay logging. Farming groups said more money is needed to pay for conservation programs that pay farmers to preserve the land, and said the Endangered Species Act is being misused....
Researchers are cloning endangered plants Researchers at the Cincinnati Zoo are cloning a threatened plant for an Akron park, one of only two locations in Ohio where the northern monkshood has been found. The purple-blue northern monkshood, which can grow 4 feet tall, has been reproduced through cloning by a team led by Valerie Pence of the zoo's Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife. The northern monkshood has been on the federal threatened list since 1978. A threatened species is likely in the foreseeable future to become endangered and at risk of extinction, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The plan is to transplant 25 cloned plants to the Gorge Metro Park in Akron and adjacent Cuyahoga Falls to help boost the population of northern monkshood growing there. Northern monkshood, a relative of the buttercup, is found in only four states: Iowa, New York, Wisconsin and Ohio. In Ohio, it's found only in the Crane Hollow nature preserve in Hocking County southeast of Columbus and Gorge Park....
Experts say border fence would hurt bighorn sheep If a proposed 15-foot-tall triple barrier is built between the United States and Mexico, illegal immigrants may have to take a tip from The Odyssey to get across. That's assuming measures are taken to safeguard the crossing of the endangered peninsular ranges bighorn sheep, whose survival could be threatened by the wall. In Washington earlier this month, a legislative rider attached to the 2007 defense appropriations bill by Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., calls for spending $2 billion to construct the 370-mile-long wall. The bighorns, which inhabit parts of the San Bernardino National Forest and thrive on Mount San Jacinto, migrate across the border to mate with herds in Baja California. It fortifies the gene pool enhancing survival of the breed. "If the California herds are isolated from herds in Mexico, repopulation and genetic flow in both herds will be affected," said Daniel Patterson, desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity....
Fishing advocate says water district retaliating against scientist A biologist who reported the December deaths of hundreds of stranded salmon below a small dam operated by Stockton East Water District was ordered soon after by district officials to turn in the keys that gave him access to the river. Now, a sport fishing advocate says the district was retaliating against the scientist for providing information to authorities. The scientist, Trevor Kennedy of the Fishery Foundation, declined to discuss the matter in detail, saying he did not want to foster poor relations with the water district. Foundation scientists are still under a federal contract to study salmon and steelhead and to help ensure the survival of those species on the Calaveras River. But Kennedy acknowledged that Stockton East Water District ordered him to turn in his keys shortly after he reported the salmon stranding and other problems with the district's management of the river....
Two Michigan swans have avian flu; experts quell concerns The federal government announced today that two swans in Michigan tested positive for both the H5 and N1 avian influenza subtypes, but initial genetic sequencing suggests that it is a low-pathogenic type rather than the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain spreading through birds in Asia, Europe, and Africa and causing deaths in humans. Ron DeHaven, chief veterinary officer for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), said at a media briefing today that the birds appeared healthy and normal and were part of a group of 20 nonmigratory, resident mute swans that were sacrificed and tested on Aug 8 as part of a population reduction plan at a game area on Lake Erie in southeast Michigan. Bill Raub, science advisor to the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said the findings should not cause alarm. "There is no threat to human health, and there is no cause for any special actions," he said. "This is a matter of wildlife biology." On Aug 9 the samples were tested at Michigan State University's Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health, part of the USDA's National Animal Health Laboratory Network, where tests confirmed the presence of an H5 avian influenza virus. The samples were then sent to the USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa, which is the only national reference laboratory that can confirm the H5N1 virus. Confirmatory tests at the NVSL lab showed the presence of an H5 virus along with an N1 subtype; however, experts aren't sure if the birds were infected with two separate avian influenza strains or if the findings represent low-pathogenic H5N1. Testing began at the NVSL on Aug 12 to further characterize the virus, and results are expected in about 2 weeks....
Veterinary students urged to specialize in large-animal care Students should be encouraged to pursue careers in large-animal veterinary medicine to help replenish declining numbers in the field, vets and ranchers said. Participants at a meeting hosted by the Texas Veterinary Medical Association said rural areas need more vets who specialize in treating cattle and horses. Dr. Guy Sheppard, the association's president, said most of the students who graduate from the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine choose to practice small-animal medicine in larger cities. "I think the biggest challenge we have is trying to attract young people to go to vet school and want to do what we do," said Sheppard, of San Angelo. Participants at the meeting said large-animal vets are important to livestock production, food hygiene, controlling animal disease and public health....
The West recognizes 'Cowboy' His full name is William Daven Farr, but for most of his 96 years he's been W.D., or, in his younger years, Cowboy. But more appropriately, for the past 25 year or more, it's been Mr. Farr, a title he more than deserves. He is the only true pioneer left in Greeley and its only true statesman. His amazing career will be recognized once again next spring when he is inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. He will join other illustrious members of the hall: Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill Cody, Gene Autry, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, Zane Grey, and others. It is a Who's Who list of not only Western American history but American history. Just to be considered for such an honor is an honor in itself....
PLC COMMENTS ON GRAZING DECISION
Western Watersheds Project v. Kraayenbrink, No. 05-297-E-BLW, Judge Winmill, (D. Id. August 11, 2006) Decision on Motions for Preliminary Injunction.
On July 12, 2006, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued final rules for the administration of grazing. Immediately, the Western Watersheds Project (WWP) and four other environmental groups filed suit in federal district court in Idaho, before Judge Winmill, seeking to enjoin implementation of the regulations because of alleged violations of NEPA, ESA, and FLPMA, among other statutes. WWP’s most important challenges were to BLM’s changes to the amount of public participation, the fundamentals of rangeland health, and to range improvement ownership. The Public Lands Council has intervened in the lawsuit on behalf of the BLM.
The United States and the PLC overwhelmingly succeeded at this very early stage of the litigation. None of the challenged substantive provisions of the regulations were enjoined. These are all in effect. BLM had sought to focus public participation in the new rule to those instances when the participation would have a concrete impact on the resource. WWP cried foul that BLM was seeking to make better use of limited government resources and Judge Winmill responded, saying BLM failed to take a “hard look” under NEPA at the cost rationale for narrowing the amount of participation.
PLC is hopeful that BLM’s public participation provisions in the rule will ultimately be upheld either by Judge Winmill or the Ninth Circuit. Neither WWP nor the court identified a specific legal duty to provide the amount of participation sought by the environmentalists. It is also not clear how searching an inquiry a federal agency must make under NEPA in disclosing the impacts of a non-environmental concern, such as public participation. In the worst case, BLM would have to go back and prepare a further disclosure of the cost rationale for narrowing the amount of public participation in grazing administration.
At this time, the government is digesting the decision and considering its options for the next phase of the litigation. PLC congratulates the United States and our attorney Bill Thomas, for this excellent result.
Western Watersheds Project v. Kraayenbrink, No. 05-297-E-BLW, Judge Winmill, (D. Id. August 11, 2006) Decision on Motions for Preliminary Injunction.
On July 12, 2006, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued final rules for the administration of grazing. Immediately, the Western Watersheds Project (WWP) and four other environmental groups filed suit in federal district court in Idaho, before Judge Winmill, seeking to enjoin implementation of the regulations because of alleged violations of NEPA, ESA, and FLPMA, among other statutes. WWP’s most important challenges were to BLM’s changes to the amount of public participation, the fundamentals of rangeland health, and to range improvement ownership. The Public Lands Council has intervened in the lawsuit on behalf of the BLM.
The United States and the PLC overwhelmingly succeeded at this very early stage of the litigation. None of the challenged substantive provisions of the regulations were enjoined. These are all in effect. BLM had sought to focus public participation in the new rule to those instances when the participation would have a concrete impact on the resource. WWP cried foul that BLM was seeking to make better use of limited government resources and Judge Winmill responded, saying BLM failed to take a “hard look” under NEPA at the cost rationale for narrowing the amount of participation.
PLC is hopeful that BLM’s public participation provisions in the rule will ultimately be upheld either by Judge Winmill or the Ninth Circuit. Neither WWP nor the court identified a specific legal duty to provide the amount of participation sought by the environmentalists. It is also not clear how searching an inquiry a federal agency must make under NEPA in disclosing the impacts of a non-environmental concern, such as public participation. In the worst case, BLM would have to go back and prepare a further disclosure of the cost rationale for narrowing the amount of public participation in grazing administration.
At this time, the government is digesting the decision and considering its options for the next phase of the litigation. PLC congratulates the United States and our attorney Bill Thomas, for this excellent result.
Monday, August 14, 2006
FLE
Convicted border agent tells his story
Border Patrol Agent Ignacio Ramos could hear his heart racing. He could feel the dry, hot dust burning against his skin as he chased a drug trafficker trying to flee back into Mexico. Ramos' fellow agent, Jose Alonso Compean, was lying on the ground behind him, banged up and bloody from a scuffle with the much-bigger smuggler moments earlier. Suddenly the smuggler turned toward the pursuing Ramos, gun in hand. Ramos, his own weapon already drawn, shot at him, though the man was able to flee into the brush and escape the agents. Now, nearly 18 months after that violent encounter, Ramos and Compean are facing 20 years in federal prison for their actions. Why? According to the U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted the agents, the man they were chasing didn't actually have a gun, shooting him in the back violated his civil rights, the agents didn't know for a fact that he was a drug smuggler, and they broke Border Patrol rules about discharging their weapons and preserving a crime scene. Even more broadly, Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof said, Ramos and Compean had no business chasing someone in the first place. "It is a violation of Border Patrol regulations to go after someone who is fleeing," she said. "The Border Patrol pursuit policy prohibits the pursuit of someone." The smuggler was given full immunity to testify against the agents and complete medical care at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, in El Paso....
Convicted border agent tells his story
Border Patrol Agent Ignacio Ramos could hear his heart racing. He could feel the dry, hot dust burning against his skin as he chased a drug trafficker trying to flee back into Mexico. Ramos' fellow agent, Jose Alonso Compean, was lying on the ground behind him, banged up and bloody from a scuffle with the much-bigger smuggler moments earlier. Suddenly the smuggler turned toward the pursuing Ramos, gun in hand. Ramos, his own weapon already drawn, shot at him, though the man was able to flee into the brush and escape the agents. Now, nearly 18 months after that violent encounter, Ramos and Compean are facing 20 years in federal prison for their actions. Why? According to the U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted the agents, the man they were chasing didn't actually have a gun, shooting him in the back violated his civil rights, the agents didn't know for a fact that he was a drug smuggler, and they broke Border Patrol rules about discharging their weapons and preserving a crime scene. Even more broadly, Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof said, Ramos and Compean had no business chasing someone in the first place. "It is a violation of Border Patrol regulations to go after someone who is fleeing," she said. "The Border Patrol pursuit policy prohibits the pursuit of someone." The smuggler was given full immunity to testify against the agents and complete medical care at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, in El Paso....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Judge blocks part of new grazing rules for ranchers using federal land A judge blocked new grazing rules for ranchers using federal land Friday, saying the regulations would exclude public input. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction while environmental groups sue against the federal rules. Environmental groups claim the new rules give ranchers more water rights and control over public lands while cutting the public out of the decision-making process. Federal officials say the regulations, the first overhaul of rules since 1995, will make management of public lands more efficient - in part by limiting public comment on day-to-day rangeland management decisions. The Bureau of Land Management oversees 262 million acres, mostly in 12 Western states. About 160 million acres are used for grazing livestock. Winmill allowed the agency to overturn the Clinton-era regulations that kept ranchers from applying for private ownership of new water rights on federal land. But he said there was no evidence that cutting the public out of decision making was more efficient. ''The changes would appear to substantially affect both the amount and quality of public input,'' the judge wrote in a 19-page ruling....
Army wages a range war This quiet corner of southeast Colorado has met an unlikely enemy: the U.S. Army. The military branch wants to expand an existing weapons training site onto many of the parched cattle ranches that have sustained the fragile economies of nearby towns and villages. But the emerging opponents go far beyond the area's longtime ranchers. They seem to include just about everyone in this particular town - from a waitress at the local watering hole to a bank president to a veterinarian who performs C-sections on pregnant cows. "It's not a good thing for us," said La Junta City Manager Rick Klein, who grew up in this town of about 7,500 residents. "There's zero positive impact." When the Army wanted to build the existing Piñon Canyon maneuver site in the early 1980s, it condemned ranches south of the town to get the roughly 250,000 acres it said it needed to train soldiers for war. It has drawn a big circle around the current site in hopes it will find enough willing sellers to more than double the size of its holdings if it gets approval to do so....
Montana Ranchers criticize state over wolf management State wildlife officials take too long to authorize the killing of problem wolves, ranchers and others said Friday at a meeting of the agency oversight committee of the Environmental Quality Council. "It's like a guy's robbing a bank and you have to go get an arrest warrant," committee member Sen. Jim Shockley, R-Victor, said. "It doesn't make a lot of sense." More than 50 people attended the meeting that drew Fish, Wildlife and Parks Director Jeff Hagener, agency biologists and several state legislators. People from Idaho and Wyoming and members of anti-wolf groups pushing for indiscriminate killing of the predators also attended. A few members of conservation groups praised FWP for the job it has done since it took over wolf management from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year. However, the majority complained that FWP's reluctance to decide to kill a wolf has let too many problem animals get away. Others say the state has at times made it difficult for federal trappers to kill wolves on state land. Shockley said when ranchers were dealing directly with federal officials, problem wolves could be taken care of quickly. But since the state has taken over, things take too long....
Ranchers say livestock are losing weight from fear of wolves Consequences of the federal wolf reintroduction program in the Northern Rockies may be visible on the dinner table soon, in the form of skimpier lamb chops and porterhouse steaks that expose more bone than beef. For years, cattle ranchers and wool growers have fretted over wolves that kill dozens of cows and sheep each year. But the steepest price might be the declining weight of livestock terrified by the howls and footsteps of the predators. Currently, calves fetch $1.45 per pound on the market. So if wolves cause just a few lost pounds on each head of cattle, that quickly mounts into big losses, said Lloyd Knight, the executive director of the Idaho Cattle Association. “When the cows are scared, they bunch together, they don't spread out like they're used to. They don't eat and drink — you can just tell they're losing weight,” he said. “The loss of weight from the whole herd could cost far more than the depredation of a few calves. It's something we've been afraid of since the reintroduction program began.”....
Christo 'Over the River' proposal rolls slowly on course One year after the Over the River project moved back into the spotlight, it is still very much a proposal. Over the River, which began in 1992, next will be the subject of an exhaustive environmental impact statement, to be filed with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The bottom line: Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude want to hang 750 polypropylene panels in eight sections over 6.9 miles of the Arkansas River between Salida and Cañon City. They estimate 250,000 people would visit the valley to view the work. "We're being very cautious," said Roy L. Masinton, manager of the BLM's Royal Gorge Field Office. "The ball primarily is in their court. They need to get us the complete proposal."....
Four killed in chopper crash on fire lines Four people are dead after a helicopter crash in Valley County just after 5 p.m. Sunday. A spokesperson for the Payette National Forest tells NewsChannel 7 the chopper went down off South Fork Salmon Road in the Krassel Ranger district - that's about 20 miles west of Yellow Pine. The helicopter was ferrying three Forest Service employees to a guard station when it went down. The pilot and those three employees died. The spokesperson says the crew was part of the fire suppression effort but wouldn't say which fire they were working. The names of those aboard have not yet been released, while officials work to identify the family of those killed. The helicopter is owned by Evergreen Aviation out of McMinnville, Oregon. Calls to Evergreen late Sunday evening were not immediately returned....
Property owners sue over Colo. wildfire The owners of four properties sued the Forest Service Friday for damages sustained in the state's 2002 record-setting wildfire, saying the agency's missteps allowed the blaze to grow out of control. The federal lawsuit claims the Forest Service is responsible for the actions of a former forestry worker who pleaded guilty to starting the fire that burned 215 square miles in central Colorado about 55 miles southwest of Denver. The plaintiffs fault the agency for allowing Terry Lynn Barton to patrol the forest alone the day she set the fire, for clogging radio channels with a weather report when she tried to report the fire, and failing to properly train Barton. The suit lists plaintiffs Wallace White; Laurie Glauth and the Zelma L. Worden Trust; Charles and Marcia Phillips and the Phillips Family Trust; and Gary and Sandra Bieske. It does not specify how much of their property burned or what financial losses they suffered....
Judge halts 49 gold mining operations A federal judge ordered the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest to suspend 49 gold mining operations, citing violations of clean water laws. The mines are along the North Fork of the Burnt River near Unity in Baker County. Gold mining in the region is characterized by small-scale operations. The decision last week from Magistrate Judge Paul Papak of Portland said a Forest Service decision allowed mining that could further degrade streams that don't meet federal standards, a violation of the Clean Water Act. ''The Forest Service may not ignore or defer its responsibility to remedy existing water pollution in the project area based on a misguided notion that the right to mine trumps federal and state environmental laws,'' Papak wrote....
Opinions split on ancient footprints Plenty of southern New Mexico sun reflected off jumbles of rock and cascaded a host of colors toward the 10 hikers trekking through a canyon in the Robledo Mountains west of Las Cruces last week. Hues of gray, black, and brown — each representing a slice of the area's geologic past — were visible on slopes rising up from the canyon floor as the group progressed. But the color hikers were most interested in was red, which marks a 290-million-year-old rock layer known for containing fossilized footprints of animals. The layer has prompted contention recently because of a proposal by two New Mexico senators to create a 5,370-acre national monument (about 8.4 square miles) north of Picacho Peak to preserve fossils. The trekkers were members of an off-road vehicle group and were leading a staff member from the office of U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., on a tour. Several contended there's not enough fossil rock exposed to merit a national monument and said an existing designation by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is enough to keep the area's fossils safe. The proposed monument boundaries contain trails that are popular with off-road vehicle enthusiasts....
Drilling rules proposed Voters here might get a chance in November to decide whether the city should have its own regulations for energy development in its watershed. The city clerk Thursday certified that 2,635 signatures of registered voters out of the 4,270 on petitions turned in by the group Concerned Citizens Alliance for the proposal were valid. Only 1,580 were needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. The Grand Junction City Council is expected to decide Wednesday whether to put the measure on the ballot or consider passing the proposal itself. The alliance, the local chapter of the conservation group Western Colorado Congress, launched the initiative drive after federal oil and gas leases were sold in areas supplying drinking water for Grand Junction and neighboring Palisade. "The incredible outpouring of support this issue received from the business community, churches and from citizens of every background proves that protection of our water supply is a truly a matter of common sense," said Janet Magoon, a local school teacher....
Supplier of habitat funds receives own chunk of money Officials managing money supplied by EnCana Oil and Gas, Inc., for habitat improvement work near the Jonah Field tapped the first grant winners this week. A major winner? EnCana. The Jonah Interagency Mitigation and Reclamation Office, established in the wake of huge energy development plans for the Jonah Field 35 miles southeast of Pinedale, awarded seven grants for mitigation work from 19 applications. Each project is designed to offset the major habitat impacts projected for the Jonah Field. EnCana Oil and Gas, the main development company for the Jonah Field, was awarded up to $499,000 for a habitat improvement project that repairs the existing John Arambel Reservoir dam, provides fencing to exclude livestock from portions of the reservoir, and treats several five-acre tracts of sagebrush with an aerator. The next highest grant awarded was $76,500 for well development. In the Bureau of Land Management's decision earlier this year to allow high levels of development on the Jonah Field, EnCana agreed to give $24.5 million for mitigation work. No more than 20 percent of that can be spent in a given year....
BLM defers 16 drilling lease sales The Utah office of the federal Bureau of Land Management has decided not to include nearly 20,000 acres in an upcoming oil and gas lease sale in light of a court ruling that found the agency acted illegally when selling similar parcels. State BLM spokeswoman Christine Tincher on Friday said 16 parcels that were to be part of a 334,000-acre Aug. 15 lease sale share characteristics with those U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball on Aug. 2 said the BLM had improperly evaluated for wilderness potential. The 16 parcels are controlled by the Moab, Price and Richfield field offices of the BLM. They include land on a flank of Boulder Mountain near Bicknell, an area near Labyrinth Canyon on the Green River, an area west of Moab near the Dolores River and parcels in the Dome Plateau proposed wilderness area east of Arches National Park. For now, the sale of those parcels is deferred, but the BLM hasn't made a decision yet whether they will reappear on later lease-sale lists, Tincher said....
Burning Man celebration returns for 21st year, with more than 35,000 expected to show As if it were not hot enough, it's time for the annual Burning Man event Aug. 28-Sept. 4. Burning Man is a celebration of alternate lifestyles, and takes place on the playa of the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach. The party comes to a climax at the end of the week, when the 35,000-plus guests gather to watch the towering man erected atop of a wooden building go up in flames - the Burning Man. Onlookers make a gigantic circle around the man, many grabbing front-row seats as early as mid-Saturday afternoon. All agree it's a marvelous climax to a week of outrageous living. The whole affair takes place on the barren, flat playa about seven miles from Gerlach. It's not an inexpensive affair; tickets cost $280 until this Sunday. After that, the price goes up - how high has not been announced as yet. Tickets at the gate are sold through Aug. 31 - after that you're out of luck....
SPRING VALLEY: Water rights, riches If good fences make good neighbors, the Southern Nevada Water Authority should fit in nicely at its new spread in White Pine County. The patchwork of ranch property the authority bought last month came complete with improved fencing installed just a few years ago by the previous owner, Vidler Water Company. But new fences alone cannot explain the tremendous profit Vidler made on the deal. The Nevada-based water development company paid $4.5 million cash for the 7,150-acre ranch and its water rights during a court-ordered bankruptcy sale in 2000. Three appraisals performed between 1994 and 1999 placed the value of the ranch, one of the largest in the vast and sparsely populated Spring Valley, at $10 million to $14 million. Vidler fixed the fences and the irrigation system at the ranch, then sold the whole thing after six years to the water authority for $22 million....
Animals disappear when rivers die The water sliding down the San Pedro River near Picnic Wash won't green up many front yards in the subdivisions under construction back in town, but it is enough for a colony of beavers to build a dam. The dam, the javelina tracks, the mountain lion scat, the croaking bullfrog, the hawk soaring overhead, the chattering songbirds in the cottonwood trees, all bear witness to the power of water barely ankle deep. And yet the San Pedro can't muster even that much along lengthening stretches of its 140-mile course. Depleted by groundwater pumping, the river dries up for longer periods each year, weakening wildlife habitat until the habitat can no longer function. The jaguar, grizzly bear, river otter, gray wolf and other large mammals have gone extinct or prowl the river corridor only rarely. Only two of the San Pedro's 13 native fish survive, the rest shoved aside by as many as 14 non-natives. At increasing risk is the river's greatest treasure, its 400 species of nesting and migratory birds....
Water-spouting tree has owner scratching head Is it an artesian spring, a broken water pipe or an abandoned well? Lucille Pope's red oak tree has gurgled water for about three months, and experts can't seem to get to the root of the problem. Pope, 65, has sought answers from the Texas Forest Service, the Edwards Aquifer Authority and nurseries. They have taken pictures and conducted studies, but none have arrived at a firm answer. ''I got a mystery tree,'' Pope said in Friday editions of the San Antonio-Express News. ''What kind of mystery do I have where water comes out of a tree?''. Her son, Lloyd, 47, discovered water leaking from the tree in April. He said it was cool, like it came from the tap. Mark Peterson from the Texas Forest Service said he believes it could be a spring, but pointed out that would be rare with the drought conditions this summer....
Conservationists believe Ogallala Aquifer recharged through playa lakes Birds dart toward the edge of the great saucer-shaped depression and disappear in a patch of yellowed grass. John Wood stands in the middle of his concave field, and observes the flurry, amused. Some seasons, his field fills with water. This summer, a drought has caked the root-beer dirt, driven fissures through it. Mint-green sage and sporadic reeds cover its bottom, like camouflage. Despite its appearance, this is no ordinary field, but a wetland. Wood owns one of the largest playa lakes in Curry County. The depression spans 154 acres. A good rain — of 3 inches or more — will transform it into an oasis....
Jurassic Park Mundy visited Spring Creek in 2000 and saw the dinosaur bones and the Native American sites. "The ranch was just gargantuan," Mundy recalled. "I told Allen, 'In my opinion you don't have a ranch, you have a natural science laboratory.' And besides that, there's this huge history in the region." Which might make the property even more attractive. Besides its history of Tom Horn and the Swan ranch, Spring Creek is next door to what is left of Wilcox, Wyo., where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed the Union Pacific, triggering the manhunt that eventually forced them to flee to Bolivia. The Union Pacific still whistles past the Cook ranch today on the original track bed of the transcontinental railroad, barreling through cities and towns known to generations of Western history buffs -- Cheyenne, Laramie, Wilcox and Medicine Bow, the setting for Owen Wister's 1902 novel, The Virginian, whose laconic hero was the central character in two movies and a TV show. Mundy appraised Spring Creek at $8 million and offered a suggestion. His boyhood friend Alec Stewart served as dean of the University of Pittsburgh's Honors College, which might be interested in buying Spring Creek. The Honors College ran a student summer camp outside Yellowstone Park to study natural science. Mundy telephoned Stewart in the autumn of 2000 and told him how "you stumble all over the dinosaurs" at Spring Creek and how it was "a national treasure. What better way to oversee it than to associate it with a university?"....
Only 1 Japan Food Co Plans To Use US Beef After Ban Only one Japanese food company said in a survey that it plans to use U.S. beef following the lifting of a ban on U.S. imports, a news report said Saturday. Sales of U.S. beef resumed this week for the first time since January, after Tokyo announced on July 27 that it was easing its ban on imports of U.S. beef over mad-cow disease fears. While the decision renewed U.S. access to what was once the most lucrative export market for U.S. ranchers, Kyodo News agency cited a survey that suggests winning back market share will be difficult. In the survey, conducted last month by the Consumers Union of Japan and Food Safety Citizens' Watch, questionnaires were sent to major food industry companies such as supermarkets and fast food restaurants. Of the 21 companies that replied, only beef bowl chain Yoshinoya D&C Co. said it would use U.S. beef, the report said. Seven companies - including McDonald's Holdings Co. and Zensho Co., which also sells beef bowl dishes - said they had no plans to use U.S. beef, while seven others indicated they won't use U.S. beef "for the time being," Kyodo News reported....
Processor seeks OK for own cow testing After another futile visit to the nation's capital, John Stewart faced a tough decision. Give up, or let the courts decide. So Stewart, founder and CEO of Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the right to test every animal slaughtered at his plant for mad cow disease. The lawsuit has placed Creekstone -- a cutting-edge meat packer 25 miles north of Ponca City -- in the national spotlight. Stewart has appeared on National Public Radio to plead his case. Other media have interviewed him, and interest groups and lawmakers have joined the fray with their opinions. The USDA says it has legal jurisdiction over mad cow testing. But Stewart says the agency isn't taking the mad cow threat seriously enough....
No Man's Land: Life in the wide-open spaces No Man's Land. That's what Oklahoma's far western counties were called before statehood. A century later, the region is largely empty and getting emptier. The northwest corridor of Oklahoma is home to six counties -- Cimarron, Roger Mills, Beaver, Harper, Ellis and Dewey -- with such small population densities that the U.S. Census Bureau classifies them in its most remote category: Frontier status. That means there's six or fewer people per square mile. Census reports show the Oklahoma frontier counties reached their population peaks in the 1930s and have dwindled gradually since then, drying up like a dusty stream bed in the Oklahoma summer. But for some people, this frontier is home, and they couldn't care less about the opinions of folk from the more populous world....
Where trains once roamed A railroad section house used to sit close to Lower River Road, just across from Allen Way and catawampus from the entrance to the Chaparral subdivision. Precursor to the tavern, the first Woody Creek Store also used to be in that neighborhood, on land owned by my family, and consisted of old motel rooms and a hodgepodge of hastily built architecture that served the Rio Grande Railroad. In later years, the store used those old rooms for storage, and had a few chickens and rabbits stashed behind closed doors, ostensibly safe from the prying teeth of predators. When I was a kid, the train didn't stop at Woody Creek much, yet an employee named Blough, his wife and three kids kept the section house alive with the tasks of daily life. There were stockyards for cattle, sheep and horses, and a huge water tank, solely for the purpose of replenishing the coal-car tanks on the chuf-chuffing steam engines. The D&RG (Denver & Rio Grande Railway), as we called it, would drop off rail cars for the rancher's use, mostly in the autumn. There would be cars for shipping cattle to the packing houses in Denver, cars to be loaded with potatoes, picked from local ranches, and sometimes, a carload or two of grapes would arrive, solely for the making of wine from European recipes salvaged by our ancestors. Imagine the thrill of a kid, 8 or 9, being allowed for the first time to accompany his dad and granddad on a cattle drive to the Woody Creek stockyards, in preparation for the long haul to Denver....
Judge blocks part of new grazing rules for ranchers using federal land A judge blocked new grazing rules for ranchers using federal land Friday, saying the regulations would exclude public input. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction while environmental groups sue against the federal rules. Environmental groups claim the new rules give ranchers more water rights and control over public lands while cutting the public out of the decision-making process. Federal officials say the regulations, the first overhaul of rules since 1995, will make management of public lands more efficient - in part by limiting public comment on day-to-day rangeland management decisions. The Bureau of Land Management oversees 262 million acres, mostly in 12 Western states. About 160 million acres are used for grazing livestock. Winmill allowed the agency to overturn the Clinton-era regulations that kept ranchers from applying for private ownership of new water rights on federal land. But he said there was no evidence that cutting the public out of decision making was more efficient. ''The changes would appear to substantially affect both the amount and quality of public input,'' the judge wrote in a 19-page ruling....
Army wages a range war This quiet corner of southeast Colorado has met an unlikely enemy: the U.S. Army. The military branch wants to expand an existing weapons training site onto many of the parched cattle ranches that have sustained the fragile economies of nearby towns and villages. But the emerging opponents go far beyond the area's longtime ranchers. They seem to include just about everyone in this particular town - from a waitress at the local watering hole to a bank president to a veterinarian who performs C-sections on pregnant cows. "It's not a good thing for us," said La Junta City Manager Rick Klein, who grew up in this town of about 7,500 residents. "There's zero positive impact." When the Army wanted to build the existing Piñon Canyon maneuver site in the early 1980s, it condemned ranches south of the town to get the roughly 250,000 acres it said it needed to train soldiers for war. It has drawn a big circle around the current site in hopes it will find enough willing sellers to more than double the size of its holdings if it gets approval to do so....
Montana Ranchers criticize state over wolf management State wildlife officials take too long to authorize the killing of problem wolves, ranchers and others said Friday at a meeting of the agency oversight committee of the Environmental Quality Council. "It's like a guy's robbing a bank and you have to go get an arrest warrant," committee member Sen. Jim Shockley, R-Victor, said. "It doesn't make a lot of sense." More than 50 people attended the meeting that drew Fish, Wildlife and Parks Director Jeff Hagener, agency biologists and several state legislators. People from Idaho and Wyoming and members of anti-wolf groups pushing for indiscriminate killing of the predators also attended. A few members of conservation groups praised FWP for the job it has done since it took over wolf management from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year. However, the majority complained that FWP's reluctance to decide to kill a wolf has let too many problem animals get away. Others say the state has at times made it difficult for federal trappers to kill wolves on state land. Shockley said when ranchers were dealing directly with federal officials, problem wolves could be taken care of quickly. But since the state has taken over, things take too long....
Ranchers say livestock are losing weight from fear of wolves Consequences of the federal wolf reintroduction program in the Northern Rockies may be visible on the dinner table soon, in the form of skimpier lamb chops and porterhouse steaks that expose more bone than beef. For years, cattle ranchers and wool growers have fretted over wolves that kill dozens of cows and sheep each year. But the steepest price might be the declining weight of livestock terrified by the howls and footsteps of the predators. Currently, calves fetch $1.45 per pound on the market. So if wolves cause just a few lost pounds on each head of cattle, that quickly mounts into big losses, said Lloyd Knight, the executive director of the Idaho Cattle Association. “When the cows are scared, they bunch together, they don't spread out like they're used to. They don't eat and drink — you can just tell they're losing weight,” he said. “The loss of weight from the whole herd could cost far more than the depredation of a few calves. It's something we've been afraid of since the reintroduction program began.”....
Christo 'Over the River' proposal rolls slowly on course One year after the Over the River project moved back into the spotlight, it is still very much a proposal. Over the River, which began in 1992, next will be the subject of an exhaustive environmental impact statement, to be filed with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The bottom line: Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude want to hang 750 polypropylene panels in eight sections over 6.9 miles of the Arkansas River between Salida and Cañon City. They estimate 250,000 people would visit the valley to view the work. "We're being very cautious," said Roy L. Masinton, manager of the BLM's Royal Gorge Field Office. "The ball primarily is in their court. They need to get us the complete proposal."....
Four killed in chopper crash on fire lines Four people are dead after a helicopter crash in Valley County just after 5 p.m. Sunday. A spokesperson for the Payette National Forest tells NewsChannel 7 the chopper went down off South Fork Salmon Road in the Krassel Ranger district - that's about 20 miles west of Yellow Pine. The helicopter was ferrying three Forest Service employees to a guard station when it went down. The pilot and those three employees died. The spokesperson says the crew was part of the fire suppression effort but wouldn't say which fire they were working. The names of those aboard have not yet been released, while officials work to identify the family of those killed. The helicopter is owned by Evergreen Aviation out of McMinnville, Oregon. Calls to Evergreen late Sunday evening were not immediately returned....
Property owners sue over Colo. wildfire The owners of four properties sued the Forest Service Friday for damages sustained in the state's 2002 record-setting wildfire, saying the agency's missteps allowed the blaze to grow out of control. The federal lawsuit claims the Forest Service is responsible for the actions of a former forestry worker who pleaded guilty to starting the fire that burned 215 square miles in central Colorado about 55 miles southwest of Denver. The plaintiffs fault the agency for allowing Terry Lynn Barton to patrol the forest alone the day she set the fire, for clogging radio channels with a weather report when she tried to report the fire, and failing to properly train Barton. The suit lists plaintiffs Wallace White; Laurie Glauth and the Zelma L. Worden Trust; Charles and Marcia Phillips and the Phillips Family Trust; and Gary and Sandra Bieske. It does not specify how much of their property burned or what financial losses they suffered....
Judge halts 49 gold mining operations A federal judge ordered the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest to suspend 49 gold mining operations, citing violations of clean water laws. The mines are along the North Fork of the Burnt River near Unity in Baker County. Gold mining in the region is characterized by small-scale operations. The decision last week from Magistrate Judge Paul Papak of Portland said a Forest Service decision allowed mining that could further degrade streams that don't meet federal standards, a violation of the Clean Water Act. ''The Forest Service may not ignore or defer its responsibility to remedy existing water pollution in the project area based on a misguided notion that the right to mine trumps federal and state environmental laws,'' Papak wrote....
Opinions split on ancient footprints Plenty of southern New Mexico sun reflected off jumbles of rock and cascaded a host of colors toward the 10 hikers trekking through a canyon in the Robledo Mountains west of Las Cruces last week. Hues of gray, black, and brown — each representing a slice of the area's geologic past — were visible on slopes rising up from the canyon floor as the group progressed. But the color hikers were most interested in was red, which marks a 290-million-year-old rock layer known for containing fossilized footprints of animals. The layer has prompted contention recently because of a proposal by two New Mexico senators to create a 5,370-acre national monument (about 8.4 square miles) north of Picacho Peak to preserve fossils. The trekkers were members of an off-road vehicle group and were leading a staff member from the office of U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., on a tour. Several contended there's not enough fossil rock exposed to merit a national monument and said an existing designation by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is enough to keep the area's fossils safe. The proposed monument boundaries contain trails that are popular with off-road vehicle enthusiasts....
Drilling rules proposed Voters here might get a chance in November to decide whether the city should have its own regulations for energy development in its watershed. The city clerk Thursday certified that 2,635 signatures of registered voters out of the 4,270 on petitions turned in by the group Concerned Citizens Alliance for the proposal were valid. Only 1,580 were needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. The Grand Junction City Council is expected to decide Wednesday whether to put the measure on the ballot or consider passing the proposal itself. The alliance, the local chapter of the conservation group Western Colorado Congress, launched the initiative drive after federal oil and gas leases were sold in areas supplying drinking water for Grand Junction and neighboring Palisade. "The incredible outpouring of support this issue received from the business community, churches and from citizens of every background proves that protection of our water supply is a truly a matter of common sense," said Janet Magoon, a local school teacher....
Supplier of habitat funds receives own chunk of money Officials managing money supplied by EnCana Oil and Gas, Inc., for habitat improvement work near the Jonah Field tapped the first grant winners this week. A major winner? EnCana. The Jonah Interagency Mitigation and Reclamation Office, established in the wake of huge energy development plans for the Jonah Field 35 miles southeast of Pinedale, awarded seven grants for mitigation work from 19 applications. Each project is designed to offset the major habitat impacts projected for the Jonah Field. EnCana Oil and Gas, the main development company for the Jonah Field, was awarded up to $499,000 for a habitat improvement project that repairs the existing John Arambel Reservoir dam, provides fencing to exclude livestock from portions of the reservoir, and treats several five-acre tracts of sagebrush with an aerator. The next highest grant awarded was $76,500 for well development. In the Bureau of Land Management's decision earlier this year to allow high levels of development on the Jonah Field, EnCana agreed to give $24.5 million for mitigation work. No more than 20 percent of that can be spent in a given year....
BLM defers 16 drilling lease sales The Utah office of the federal Bureau of Land Management has decided not to include nearly 20,000 acres in an upcoming oil and gas lease sale in light of a court ruling that found the agency acted illegally when selling similar parcels. State BLM spokeswoman Christine Tincher on Friday said 16 parcels that were to be part of a 334,000-acre Aug. 15 lease sale share characteristics with those U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball on Aug. 2 said the BLM had improperly evaluated for wilderness potential. The 16 parcels are controlled by the Moab, Price and Richfield field offices of the BLM. They include land on a flank of Boulder Mountain near Bicknell, an area near Labyrinth Canyon on the Green River, an area west of Moab near the Dolores River and parcels in the Dome Plateau proposed wilderness area east of Arches National Park. For now, the sale of those parcels is deferred, but the BLM hasn't made a decision yet whether they will reappear on later lease-sale lists, Tincher said....
Burning Man celebration returns for 21st year, with more than 35,000 expected to show As if it were not hot enough, it's time for the annual Burning Man event Aug. 28-Sept. 4. Burning Man is a celebration of alternate lifestyles, and takes place on the playa of the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach. The party comes to a climax at the end of the week, when the 35,000-plus guests gather to watch the towering man erected atop of a wooden building go up in flames - the Burning Man. Onlookers make a gigantic circle around the man, many grabbing front-row seats as early as mid-Saturday afternoon. All agree it's a marvelous climax to a week of outrageous living. The whole affair takes place on the barren, flat playa about seven miles from Gerlach. It's not an inexpensive affair; tickets cost $280 until this Sunday. After that, the price goes up - how high has not been announced as yet. Tickets at the gate are sold through Aug. 31 - after that you're out of luck....
SPRING VALLEY: Water rights, riches If good fences make good neighbors, the Southern Nevada Water Authority should fit in nicely at its new spread in White Pine County. The patchwork of ranch property the authority bought last month came complete with improved fencing installed just a few years ago by the previous owner, Vidler Water Company. But new fences alone cannot explain the tremendous profit Vidler made on the deal. The Nevada-based water development company paid $4.5 million cash for the 7,150-acre ranch and its water rights during a court-ordered bankruptcy sale in 2000. Three appraisals performed between 1994 and 1999 placed the value of the ranch, one of the largest in the vast and sparsely populated Spring Valley, at $10 million to $14 million. Vidler fixed the fences and the irrigation system at the ranch, then sold the whole thing after six years to the water authority for $22 million....
Animals disappear when rivers die The water sliding down the San Pedro River near Picnic Wash won't green up many front yards in the subdivisions under construction back in town, but it is enough for a colony of beavers to build a dam. The dam, the javelina tracks, the mountain lion scat, the croaking bullfrog, the hawk soaring overhead, the chattering songbirds in the cottonwood trees, all bear witness to the power of water barely ankle deep. And yet the San Pedro can't muster even that much along lengthening stretches of its 140-mile course. Depleted by groundwater pumping, the river dries up for longer periods each year, weakening wildlife habitat until the habitat can no longer function. The jaguar, grizzly bear, river otter, gray wolf and other large mammals have gone extinct or prowl the river corridor only rarely. Only two of the San Pedro's 13 native fish survive, the rest shoved aside by as many as 14 non-natives. At increasing risk is the river's greatest treasure, its 400 species of nesting and migratory birds....
Water-spouting tree has owner scratching head Is it an artesian spring, a broken water pipe or an abandoned well? Lucille Pope's red oak tree has gurgled water for about three months, and experts can't seem to get to the root of the problem. Pope, 65, has sought answers from the Texas Forest Service, the Edwards Aquifer Authority and nurseries. They have taken pictures and conducted studies, but none have arrived at a firm answer. ''I got a mystery tree,'' Pope said in Friday editions of the San Antonio-Express News. ''What kind of mystery do I have where water comes out of a tree?''. Her son, Lloyd, 47, discovered water leaking from the tree in April. He said it was cool, like it came from the tap. Mark Peterson from the Texas Forest Service said he believes it could be a spring, but pointed out that would be rare with the drought conditions this summer....
Conservationists believe Ogallala Aquifer recharged through playa lakes Birds dart toward the edge of the great saucer-shaped depression and disappear in a patch of yellowed grass. John Wood stands in the middle of his concave field, and observes the flurry, amused. Some seasons, his field fills with water. This summer, a drought has caked the root-beer dirt, driven fissures through it. Mint-green sage and sporadic reeds cover its bottom, like camouflage. Despite its appearance, this is no ordinary field, but a wetland. Wood owns one of the largest playa lakes in Curry County. The depression spans 154 acres. A good rain — of 3 inches or more — will transform it into an oasis....
Jurassic Park Mundy visited Spring Creek in 2000 and saw the dinosaur bones and the Native American sites. "The ranch was just gargantuan," Mundy recalled. "I told Allen, 'In my opinion you don't have a ranch, you have a natural science laboratory.' And besides that, there's this huge history in the region." Which might make the property even more attractive. Besides its history of Tom Horn and the Swan ranch, Spring Creek is next door to what is left of Wilcox, Wyo., where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed the Union Pacific, triggering the manhunt that eventually forced them to flee to Bolivia. The Union Pacific still whistles past the Cook ranch today on the original track bed of the transcontinental railroad, barreling through cities and towns known to generations of Western history buffs -- Cheyenne, Laramie, Wilcox and Medicine Bow, the setting for Owen Wister's 1902 novel, The Virginian, whose laconic hero was the central character in two movies and a TV show. Mundy appraised Spring Creek at $8 million and offered a suggestion. His boyhood friend Alec Stewart served as dean of the University of Pittsburgh's Honors College, which might be interested in buying Spring Creek. The Honors College ran a student summer camp outside Yellowstone Park to study natural science. Mundy telephoned Stewart in the autumn of 2000 and told him how "you stumble all over the dinosaurs" at Spring Creek and how it was "a national treasure. What better way to oversee it than to associate it with a university?"....
Only 1 Japan Food Co Plans To Use US Beef After Ban Only one Japanese food company said in a survey that it plans to use U.S. beef following the lifting of a ban on U.S. imports, a news report said Saturday. Sales of U.S. beef resumed this week for the first time since January, after Tokyo announced on July 27 that it was easing its ban on imports of U.S. beef over mad-cow disease fears. While the decision renewed U.S. access to what was once the most lucrative export market for U.S. ranchers, Kyodo News agency cited a survey that suggests winning back market share will be difficult. In the survey, conducted last month by the Consumers Union of Japan and Food Safety Citizens' Watch, questionnaires were sent to major food industry companies such as supermarkets and fast food restaurants. Of the 21 companies that replied, only beef bowl chain Yoshinoya D&C Co. said it would use U.S. beef, the report said. Seven companies - including McDonald's Holdings Co. and Zensho Co., which also sells beef bowl dishes - said they had no plans to use U.S. beef, while seven others indicated they won't use U.S. beef "for the time being," Kyodo News reported....
Processor seeks OK for own cow testing After another futile visit to the nation's capital, John Stewart faced a tough decision. Give up, or let the courts decide. So Stewart, founder and CEO of Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the right to test every animal slaughtered at his plant for mad cow disease. The lawsuit has placed Creekstone -- a cutting-edge meat packer 25 miles north of Ponca City -- in the national spotlight. Stewart has appeared on National Public Radio to plead his case. Other media have interviewed him, and interest groups and lawmakers have joined the fray with their opinions. The USDA says it has legal jurisdiction over mad cow testing. But Stewart says the agency isn't taking the mad cow threat seriously enough....
No Man's Land: Life in the wide-open spaces No Man's Land. That's what Oklahoma's far western counties were called before statehood. A century later, the region is largely empty and getting emptier. The northwest corridor of Oklahoma is home to six counties -- Cimarron, Roger Mills, Beaver, Harper, Ellis and Dewey -- with such small population densities that the U.S. Census Bureau classifies them in its most remote category: Frontier status. That means there's six or fewer people per square mile. Census reports show the Oklahoma frontier counties reached their population peaks in the 1930s and have dwindled gradually since then, drying up like a dusty stream bed in the Oklahoma summer. But for some people, this frontier is home, and they couldn't care less about the opinions of folk from the more populous world....
Where trains once roamed A railroad section house used to sit close to Lower River Road, just across from Allen Way and catawampus from the entrance to the Chaparral subdivision. Precursor to the tavern, the first Woody Creek Store also used to be in that neighborhood, on land owned by my family, and consisted of old motel rooms and a hodgepodge of hastily built architecture that served the Rio Grande Railroad. In later years, the store used those old rooms for storage, and had a few chickens and rabbits stashed behind closed doors, ostensibly safe from the prying teeth of predators. When I was a kid, the train didn't stop at Woody Creek much, yet an employee named Blough, his wife and three kids kept the section house alive with the tasks of daily life. There were stockyards for cattle, sheep and horses, and a huge water tank, solely for the purpose of replenishing the coal-car tanks on the chuf-chuffing steam engines. The D&RG (Denver & Rio Grande Railway), as we called it, would drop off rail cars for the rancher's use, mostly in the autumn. There would be cars for shipping cattle to the packing houses in Denver, cars to be loaded with potatoes, picked from local ranches, and sometimes, a carload or two of grapes would arrive, solely for the making of wine from European recipes salvaged by our ancestors. Imagine the thrill of a kid, 8 or 9, being allowed for the first time to accompany his dad and granddad on a cattle drive to the Woody Creek stockyards, in preparation for the long haul to Denver....
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