NEWS ROUNDUP
Wolves killing sheep, cattle by the dozens near Council Sheep and cattle ranchers in the Council area say wolves have killed dozens of sheep and several cattle. These ranchers say its been going on for a while now and they fear wolves could put them out of business. Alvin Yantis' family has ranched in Council for more than a century. He has about 180 head of cattle that graze on 50,000 acres of Council Mountain. But a pack of wolves have killed several of his cows and nine calves. A neighboring sheep rancher, Ron Shurtz, has had more than 100 sheep killed. Yantis says if it continues, wolves could wipe them all out of business. “So, we're looking at this winter if they come in and they, you know, they got into Ronnie's sheep and killed over 100 head in one night. If they do that to your cows, you're out of business in one night,” said Yantis. This morning he takes us to an unusual sight - a herd of 50 to 60 elk are grazing just outside of town. Normally they would be up in the hills, but Yantis says wolves on Council Mountain are keeping them away....
Case against arson-murder suspect called `overwhelming' A 36-year-old auto mechanic from Beaumont was charged Thursday with arson and five counts of murder for allegedly setting last week's Esperanza fire, which killed five U.S. Forest Service firefighters and destroyed 34 homes in a remote mountain area of Riverside County. Convicted felon Raymond Lee Oyler has been in custody since Tuesday, when authorities arrested him on suspicion of setting two smaller blazes in June and announced that he was a "person of interest" in the fatal arson fire. If convicted, Oyler could face the death penalty. Authorities provided little information about what led them to Oyler. Prosecutors said they found "a consistency" to the string of fires set in the San Gorgonio Pass from early June through October....
Defense fund started for commanders A federal firefighters group has started a legal defense fund to protect the rights of fire commanders likely to be questioned in several investigations into the deaths of five U.S. Forest Service firefighters in the Esperanza Fire. Casey Judd, business manager for the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, said the advocacy group is advising firefighters to avoid answering questions in the federal inquiry. "It's not a question of wrongdoing" by any firefighters during the Esperanza Fire, Judd said. "We want to make sure that each of them is able to exercise their constitutional rights." Judd said a federal law passed after the fatal July 2001 Thirtymile Fire in Washington exposes fire commanders to criminal prosecution. It directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture's inspector general to investigate how and why firefighters died. In addition to the USDA inspector general, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the Esperanza Fire because federal employees died on the job. California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection also has a joint internal inquiry with the U.S. Forest Service....
The Power of Fire For those who live in or near areas heavily susceptible to burning, it is devastating, destructively menacing, but as natural as the wind, rain or clouds. In fact, the cyclical process, which for Southern California once included naturally caused fires every 20 to 50 years, has been so slowed and subverted by humanity that the perilous danger of fire has grown exponentially. Non-native grasses originally dropped off the boots of Spanish explorers have thrived, crowding out indigenous vegetation and creating new cycles of fire and re-growth that further constrict native plants and exacerbate the danger of fire. For the past 100 years, fire suppression has been the norm in forestry; only recently have controlled burns and natural fire progression become recognized as the best way to manage the resources of public forest lands. Many of the nation's forests are congested with excess growth, which for more than a century has allowed incredible amounts of combustible fuel to accumulate....
Judge asked to undo Bush's forest rules Environmentalists asked a federal judge Wednesday to overturn the Bush administration's rules for managing the country's 155 national forests, arguing that the regulations illegally weaken protections for wilderness and wildlife. Lawyers for the environmentalists told U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton that the rules do not include the safeguards for endangered wildlife and forests that federal law requires. The rules allowed forest management plans to be revised without environmental studies and repealed a requirement for forests to maintain "viable" populations of native wildlife. They also argued that the administration failed to study adequately the environmental impact of changing forest management practices and did not give the public enough opportunity to comment on the revisions....
Jousting about windmills A gathering of people in Jacksboro on Monday might go down in the books as an early skirmish in a looming battle that could pit neighbor against neighbor and play out in courtrooms across the region. The issue is wind. International companies are scouting the plains and hills, looking for places to put towering turbines to harness the power of wind and convert it into electricity. Several area communities have called town hall meetings to discuss the implications. Some landowners embrace the giants as an alternative to dwindling oil supplies - and a source of new revenue from land leases. Others oppose them as noisy, ugly behemoths that will decrease the value of the land rather than decrease dependence on fossil fuel. Dan Stephenson is one Jack County rancher who fears the coming of the windmills....
Collision course? Wyoming remains embroiled in multiple legal and philosophical discussions about what are the true beneficial uses of water produced in association with coal-bed methane -- one of Wyoming's main economic engines. Two state entities are involved in coming up with answers to the question, but there's some disagreement about whether they are working with or against each other. The Coalbed Natural Gas Water Use Task Force, formed in February, is a 15-member board of legislators, industry and agriculture representatives. The group meets today in Douglas to discuss, among other things, the beneficial uses of coal-bed methane water. At the same time, the state Environmental Quality Council is considering the same question. The citizen-appointee council, which regularly reviews the rules and regulations of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, is proceeding with a rules that could more sharply define "beneficial use" as it applies to DEQ's authority over coal-bed methane water management....
Numbers Boost Sought for Prairie Chicken Panhandle rancher Jim Bill Anderson has for years been helping to keep the rare lesser prairie chicken from a federal wildlife watch list. Now he's hoping other Texans follow his lead after the signing Thursday in Austin of an agreement between officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The agreement calls for participating landowners to control brush, manage grazing and conduct planned burns to build and maintain the bird's habitat of low shrub and grasslands. That natural landscape has shrunk through various land uses. "We have the habitat they like and maintain it, and they flourish," said Anderson, who opens up some of his thousands of acres to bird-watchers each year. "I'm glad they're doing it." Landowners who have a wildlife management plan in place already or are willing to develop one can join the conservation effort. They also would avoid further restrictions if the lesser prairie chicken moves from candidate status to threatened or endangered on the federal Endangered Species List....
Public blasts Army plans to expand training site Ranchers, high school students and biologists Wednesday condemned the Army's plans to expand operations at the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in southeastern Colorado. Sam Johnson, an ecologist from Colorado Springs, said the study claimed that there was no baseline data available on the land, vegetation and wildlife, so no impact could be estimated. "There are 300 species of plants, 250 species of birds, not to mention invertebrates," he said. "It's like saying I'm going to hit the motherboard of a computer with a hammer and it will still work." "This is a prelude to the expansion," said Kennie German, of Model. "When they started the maneuver site, they said they would never use live fire. We're getting used to getting lied to."....
National Wildlife Refuge Funding Cut By 10 Percent The Bush administration has ordered a 10 percent across-the-board cutback in funding for the National Wildlife Refuge System, leaving dozens of refuges without any assigned staff, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, PEER. The Refuge System, a part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will see declining budgets through 2011 under the Bush plan, despite significant increases in the number of refuges, visitors and an array of other costs, according to PEER, a national association of government employees in natural resources agencies. PEER says that since Congress has yet to act on the Fish and Wildlife Service budget for FY 2007, the Bush administration is implementing the cuts without waiting for Congressional approval. Each of the seven Fish and Wildlife Service regional offices across the country is now planning to absorb the budget cuts....
Conservationists to sue U.S. over status of Ariz. bald eagles Arizona conservationists will go another round with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concerning Arizona bald eagles and whether they deserve special protection under the Endangered Species Act. This time the fight may go to the federal courts. The Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon Society filed a notice of intent to sue Fish and Wildlife on Thursday for rejecting a petition by the conservationists to list desert nesting bald eagles - most live in Arizona - as a "distinct population segment." The classification would qualify Arizona eagles for endangered-species protection if bald eagles lose it nationally, as expected. In August, Fish and Wildlife denied the petition, ruling that threats to the desert eagle, such as the impact of Arizona's population boom and declining rivers, couldn't be scientifically assessed and that desert eagles aren't distinct, despite their thicker eggshells, earlier breeding season and smaller size....
Bush Appointee Said to Reject Advice on Endangered Species A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has rejected staff scientists' recommendations to protect imperiled animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act at least six times in the past three years, documents show. In addition, staff complaints that their scientific findings were frequently overruled or disparaged at the behest of landowners or industry have led the agency's inspector general to look into the role of Julie MacDonald, who has been deputy assistant secretary of the interior for fish and wildlife and parks since 2004, in decisions on protecting endangered species. The documents show that MacDonald has repeatedly refused to go along with staff reports concluding that species such as the white-tailed prairie dog and the Gunnison sage grouse are at risk of extinction. Career officials and scientists urged the department to identify the species as either threatened or endangered. Overall, President Bush's appointees have added far fewer species to the protected list than did the administrations of either Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush, according to the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity. As of now, the administration has listed 56 species under the Endangered Species Act, for a rate of about 10 a year. Under Clinton, officials listed 512 species, or 64 a year, and under George H.W. Bush, the department listed 234, or 59 a year....
Environmentalists Attack Richard Pombo One of the few real conservative heroes in the current Congress, Rep. Richard Pombo of California, is in danger of being defeated for re-election because of an all-out assault by left-wing environmental groups and the moneyed elite who support environmental zealotry. Polls now show him tied with the Democratic opponent he defeated in 2004 by 61% to 38%. It's not just the anti-Republican wave that threatens Pombo. The big environmental pressure groups have made him their top, almost their only, target. Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund opened a fully staffed office in his Northern California district (which includes farming areas in the San Joaquin Valley south of Sacramento and outlying suburbs east of San Francisco Bay) last spring. By the end of September, they had already spent more than half-a-million dollars and planned to spend hundreds of thousands more before Election Day. Americans for Conservation, a 527 independent expenditure committee set up earlier this year and controlled by Defenders of Wildlife, reported in its most recent filing that it had made media buys of $500,000, all of it aimed at defeating Pombo. The group lists only eight donors, who include an heir to the Getty Oil fortune, an heir to the Hewlett-Packard computer fortune, and an investment partner of the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.)....
Overzealous enforcement does the law no favors Perhaps nothing is more infuriating to Americans than the unreasonable enforcement of reasonable laws, particularly laws dealing with protection of the environment. Just ask Cuong Ly of Freeport or Johanna Tutone of Camden, a couple of otherwise law-abiding restaurateurs who have felt the full force of the law, one for displaying exotic fish and the other an old stuffed bird in their respective establishments. Their stories have been widely reported nationally -- even internationally -- because of the perception of unnecessarily narrow interpretation and ham-fisted enforcement of the laws they broke. The aims of laws in question are perfectly defensible. It was the manner of enforcement -- and perhaps the way the stories were reported -- that attracted a negative public reaction. Much was made last summer of the fact that state fish and wildlife wardens were armed when they showed up at the China Rose, Ly's restaurant, to remove 10 large koi from a tank in the lobby where they had been quietly entertaining customers for 15 years. It didn't help that Ly complained to reporters that the incident brought back unpleasant memories of his earlier life under communist rule....
Cow Pies Power Ethanol Future Cows’ farts have long been a contributor to global warming; now their manure could be part of the solution. Two biofuel companies this week announced they are building ethanol plants powered by cow manure. Panda Ethanol on Wednesday said its plant, near Muleshoe, Texas, will produce 100 million gallons per year once it’s completed in about 18 months. E3 Biofuels said Monday it is building a 25-million-gallon ethanol refinery in Mead, Nebraska that will begin production in December. How to extract energy from poop? The facility will gasify more than 1 billion pounds of the stuff each year, generating steam used to fuel the ethanol-manufacturing process. The Muleshoe plant will be Panda’s fourth cow-pie-powered ethanol project, and will be tied with the company’s Hereford, Texas plant as the largest biomass-fueled ethanol plant in the United States, according to a press statement. It will also be one of the most fuel-efficient ethanol refineries in the nation, the company said....
Supercow and pigs that glow at night - an average day on the GM farm Channel 4 is to unveil a shocking menagerie of genetically modified animals in a new show revealing the frightening leaps technology has taken. Among the bizarre engineered creatures from around the world is a giant cow, three times the size of ordinary cattle, reared without fat to produce gallons of milk. But the so-called Belgian Blue - pictured here - is perhaps the least disturbing of the creatures to be shown in the three-part series Channel 4 Farm this winter. There are also glow-inthedark pigs and goats which produce spider's silk. TV scientist Olivia Judson and journalist Giles Coren travel the world to visit the places where these animals are now being reared....
Friday, November 03, 2006
EARTH WITHOUT PEOPLE & A RESPONSE
Imagine Earth without people
Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet's land for our cities, farmland and pastures. By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity. And we're leaving quite a mess behind: ploughed-up prairies, razed forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, mass extinctions and now the looming spectre of climate change. If they could, the other species we share Earth with would surely vote us off the planet. Now just suppose they got their wish. Imagine that all the people on Earth - all 6.5 billion of us and counting - could be spirited away tomorrow, transported to a re-education camp in a far-off galaxy. (Let's not invoke the mother of all plagues to wipe us out, if only to avoid complications from all the corpses). Left once more to its own devices, Nature would begin to reclaim the planet, as fields and pastures reverted to prairies and forest, the air and water cleansed themselves of pollutants, and roads and cities crumbled back to dust. "The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better," says John Orrock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California....
Eden Without Us?
The October 12 edition of New Scientist magazine ("Science Fact not Science Fiction") offered an article called "Imagine Earth without people" (online version ). Author Bob Holmes imagines what is evidently meant to be a heart-warming future in which all humans disappear from the planet instantaneously and things begin to "work their way back to a natural state" - "a natural state" being "the way they were before humans interfered." To begin with, then, we are to assume that the rise of mind, of consciousness, the development of language, the invention of civilization - all these and their implications - are somehow not "natural," and that their presence on the planet for these hundred thousand years or so has amounted only to "interference." Holmes writes as though he had in mind a peculiar theory of panspermia, in which seeds of our uniquely predatory species have drifted through interstellar space for eons, infecting first one and then another planet with their deadly spawn. Earth's bad luck was to have been in the wrong place and the wrong time. Holmes carefully traces out the changes that would occur in the very near term, such as the collapse of many structures (old fashioned masonry ones holding out the longest), and then at progressively longer intervals. One of the first effects, as power stations run out of fuel, is the elimination of "light pollution" of the night sky over formerly populated areas. This effect of artificial illumination was dubbed "pollution" by astronomers decades ago and is perfectly justified, given their special needs. Why it is to be thought of as pollution more generally is unexplained by Holmes, as is why its elimination would be a welcome development when there is no one left to look at the stars....
Imagine Earth without people
Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet's land for our cities, farmland and pastures. By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity. And we're leaving quite a mess behind: ploughed-up prairies, razed forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, mass extinctions and now the looming spectre of climate change. If they could, the other species we share Earth with would surely vote us off the planet. Now just suppose they got their wish. Imagine that all the people on Earth - all 6.5 billion of us and counting - could be spirited away tomorrow, transported to a re-education camp in a far-off galaxy. (Let's not invoke the mother of all plagues to wipe us out, if only to avoid complications from all the corpses). Left once more to its own devices, Nature would begin to reclaim the planet, as fields and pastures reverted to prairies and forest, the air and water cleansed themselves of pollutants, and roads and cities crumbled back to dust. "The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better," says John Orrock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California....
Eden Without Us?
The October 12 edition of New Scientist magazine ("Science Fact not Science Fiction") offered an article called "Imagine Earth without people" (online version ). Author Bob Holmes imagines what is evidently meant to be a heart-warming future in which all humans disappear from the planet instantaneously and things begin to "work their way back to a natural state" - "a natural state" being "the way they were before humans interfered." To begin with, then, we are to assume that the rise of mind, of consciousness, the development of language, the invention of civilization - all these and their implications - are somehow not "natural," and that their presence on the planet for these hundred thousand years or so has amounted only to "interference." Holmes writes as though he had in mind a peculiar theory of panspermia, in which seeds of our uniquely predatory species have drifted through interstellar space for eons, infecting first one and then another planet with their deadly spawn. Earth's bad luck was to have been in the wrong place and the wrong time. Holmes carefully traces out the changes that would occur in the very near term, such as the collapse of many structures (old fashioned masonry ones holding out the longest), and then at progressively longer intervals. One of the first effects, as power stations run out of fuel, is the elimination of "light pollution" of the night sky over formerly populated areas. This effect of artificial illumination was dubbed "pollution" by astronomers decades ago and is perfectly justified, given their special needs. Why it is to be thought of as pollution more generally is unexplained by Holmes, as is why its elimination would be a welcome development when there is no one left to look at the stars....
Thursday, November 02, 2006
FINDLAW RECENT CASE SUMMARIES
STATE OF NEW MEXICO V. GEN. ELEC. CO.
10th Circuit
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act's (CERCLA) comprehensive natural resource damages (NRD) scheme preempts any state remedy designed to achieve something other than the restoration, replacement, or acquisition of the equivalent of a contaminated natural resource. In an action in which New Mexico sought unrestricted money damages exclusively under state law for groundwater contamination in Albuquerque, an appeal from summary judgment for defendants, General Electric Co. and another company, is affirmed in part and dismissed in part for want of jurisdiction.
http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/10th/042191.html
US V. JOHNSON
1st Circuit
Following the Supreme Court's decision in Rapanos v. US, 126 S.Ct. 2208 (2006), a suit against a group of cranberry farmers for violation of the Clean Water Act is remanded to the district court for factual determinations relating to the federal government's jurisdiction over "navigable waters," and thus the wetlands in question. On remand, the government can establish jurisdiction over the target sites if it meets either the plurality's literal interpretation of the term "navigable waters" or Justice Kennedy's "substantial nexus" standard.
http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/1st/051444.html
STATE OF NEW MEXICO V. GEN. ELEC. CO.
10th Circuit
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act's (CERCLA) comprehensive natural resource damages (NRD) scheme preempts any state remedy designed to achieve something other than the restoration, replacement, or acquisition of the equivalent of a contaminated natural resource. In an action in which New Mexico sought unrestricted money damages exclusively under state law for groundwater contamination in Albuquerque, an appeal from summary judgment for defendants, General Electric Co. and another company, is affirmed in part and dismissed in part for want of jurisdiction.
http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/10th/042191.html
US V. JOHNSON
1st Circuit
Following the Supreme Court's decision in Rapanos v. US, 126 S.Ct. 2208 (2006), a suit against a group of cranberry farmers for violation of the Clean Water Act is remanded to the district court for factual determinations relating to the federal government's jurisdiction over "navigable waters," and thus the wetlands in question. On remand, the government can establish jurisdiction over the target sites if it meets either the plurality's literal interpretation of the term "navigable waters" or Justice Kennedy's "substantial nexus" standard.
http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/1st/051444.html
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Study sees shift away from ranching near Yellowstone Owning a slice of paradise isn't what it used to be. Generations of ranchers on the rural fringes of Yellowstone National Park passed their land to offspring or sold it to likeminded people. But for the past decade and longer, more ranches have been snatched up by people with less interest in turning a buck off the land than weekend trips, trout fishing and catching a glimpse of an elk or wolf on their property, according to a new study. In sales involving 400 acres or more outside Yellowstone, only 26 percent of buyers were "traditional ranchers," according to researchers' study of records from 1990 to 2001. The largest category, at 39 percent, were "amenity buyers," those who want the land not primarily for agriculture production but for its recreation and ambience, the study said. The new buyers often arrive with a different set of values from those who have family ties stretching back generations. In some cases the new owners try to fit in, and in some cases they don't. Either way, they're transforming the social and natural dynamics, said Hannah Gosnell, an assistant geography professor at Oregon State University, one of the study's authors....
Dike removal at century-old ranch site opens Nisqually estuary The Nisqually Tribe on Tuesday celebrated the return of saltwater to 140 acres of the Nisqually River estuary, where dike removal restored critical salmon habitat in south Puget Sound. The land had been used for a cattle ranch for more than a century. Tribal dancers and drummers in vibrant black-and-red blankets and other traditional garb opened the event at the edge of the estuary, where the river meets the inland sea. As speakers addressed the crowd, a 14-foot tide began slowly filling the basin. Birds darted overhead and autumn-brilliant trees rustled along the shore. The 140-acre wetland was named Blaget Marsh to honor the family. Longtime rancher Kenny Blaget sold the family's 410-acre property to the tribe for $2.4 million in 1999. Most of the 840-acre estuary was diked in the early 20th century for agricultural use. The tribe and its state and federal partners removed the dikes enclosing 100 acres this summer, following a 40-acre project earlier. The first saltwater flowed in on Oct. 1, shortly after Blaget died....
EPA sets limits on pesticide use to protect frog California's farmers and ranchers may be significantly impacted by a recent decision issued by a federal district court that prohibits the use of 66 pesticides on thousands of acres of land designated as critical habitat for the California red-legged frog, a species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. "California's farmers and ranchers will be directly impacted by this even though they were not parties to either the lawsuit or the injunction. Many of the 66 pesticides are important management tools that form an integral part of successful farming and ranching operations," said Ronda Azevedo Lucas, California Farm Bureau Federation Natural Resources and Environmental Division associate counsel. "Farm Bureau is concerned the injunction is overly broad and questions some of its scientific and legal underpinnings." The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California recently reached a settlement agreement barring the application of the pesticides in critical red-legged frog habitat areas and in adjoining buffer zones throughout the state until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completes formal consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service....
Arson suspect held; 5th firefighter dies Authorities on Tuesday arrested a 37-year-old man suspected of intentionally starting two wildfires this summer and who is considered a "person of interest" in the Esperanza blaze, which killed five firefighters. Raymond Lee Oyler of Beaumont was arrested at 3 p.m. on two counts of arson related to wildfires in June, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department said in a statement. Oyler was not named as a suspect in the Esperanza wildfire, which roared across more than 60 square miles last week. Also on Tuesday, a fifth U.S. Forest Service firefighter died of burns suffered when an engine crew was overrun by the Esperanza wildfire last week. Firefighter Pablo Cerda, 23, of Fountain Valley died at 5:08 p.m. at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, said Jeanne Wade Evans, the San Bernardino National Forest supervisor, at a press conference outside the hospital....
Firefighter supervisor pleads guilty in '04 blaze A Flagstaff man who was among the nation's elite firefighting supervisors pleaded guilty Monday to setting a 2004 wildfire that burned 22 acres of timber near Mormon Lake. Before his arrest, Van Bateman, 55, supervised all federal firefighters in the Mogollon Rim area and led one of the U.S. Forest Service's 16 incident management teams that responded to national disasters. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he spent a month assisting New York firefighters with logistics at the World Trade Center. In 2002, Bateman oversaw firefighting efforts against the Rodeo-Chediski blaze, the state's largest ever, half of which was also set by a firefighter. Paul Charlton, U.S. attorney for Arizona, said Bateman "joins a small universe of firefighters who, for reasons we may never fully understand, violated the public's trust by igniting fires, not extinguishing them."....
Cataloging nature's wounds Scientists on Monday began the long-term work to assess and repair damage done to the natural and cultural landscape by the Esperanza Fire and those who fought it. The recovery job takes brains and brawn, experts as well as inmates. The fire burned a sparsely settled 63 square miles south of Beaumont, scorching parts of the Morongo and Soboba Indian reservations and damaging as much as 90 percent of Potrero Canyon, a key endangered species preserve in Riverside County. The flames made a charcoal-covered landscape of the mountainous terrain along Highway 243, south of Interstate 10. Farther up the mountains, the burned landscape was snow-white, covered in ash. Previously a steep highway drive that takes motorists past desert scrub, sages and manzanitas on the way to a pine forest, the hillsides had only remnants of those signature plants. Animals such as chipmunks, rabbits and birds could be seen through columns of smoke that rose from smoldering roots of burned plants. Assessing damage to the landscape, animal habitats and American Indian artifacts is the first step in helping the region recover the richness of its natural and cultural heritage....
Pine Beetle infestation study: Beetles Invasion Don Goheen says mountain pine beetles are part of a forest’s landscape, but more beetles recently in the Umpqua National Forest are a sign of an oncoming and devastating outbreak. Last week the entomologist and U.S. Forest Service officials met at Diamond Lake Campground to discuss methods for curtailing a potential population explosion of mountain pine beetles. Goheen chopped away bark from a dead lodgepole pine and exposed the inner workings of beetle infestation. Clinging to the tree and underneath the bark were black beetles the size of rice kernels. To prevent a future beetle outbreak, Goheen — who works with the Southwest Oregon Forest Insect and Disease Service Center in Central Point — suggested the Forest Service should focus its concentration on high-risk stands not yet infected. His wife, Ellen Goheen, a plant pathologist with the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, said thinning and harvesting on wholesale levels could stymie the beetles’ destruction. Stands of mixed species could be thinned of lodgepole pine while stands of 80 percent lodgepole or more could be clear cut, “so your whole area doesn’t get hammered at once,” she said....
Trout Unlimited working to keep Alaska wild Trout Unlimited is taking a lead role in restoring southeast Alaska fisheries damaged by logging. From fighting erosion caused by clear-cuts and road-building to replacing culverts vital for fish passage to spawning sites, the TU Alaska Program is reminding anglers everywhere that in spite of its apparent remoteness, the 17-million acre Tongass National Forest is a public treasure. “This is a near-pristine area owned by every American,” said Scott Hed (rhymes with ‘made’), outreach director for the Sportsman’s Alliance for Alaska. “When sportsmen think of Alaska, this is the ultimate dream, the last of the last best places.”....
New Mexico Asked to Designate Pristine Waters Under Clean Water Act A coalition of conservation and wildlife groups has asked the State of New Mexico to protect some of the state’s cleanest waters that flow from its roadless national forests. The groups filed a formal petition with the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission to name the waters inside of the Inventoried Roadless Areas on the Santa Fe National Forests above the cities of Pecos and Las Vegas as Outstanding National Resource Waters (ONRWs). The Clean Water Act designation would permanently protect the critical source of drinking water for the City of Las Vegas, provide a measure of protection for the roadless forests in which these waters are found, and protect healthy landscapes for future generations of humans and wildlife. The groups filing the petition are Forest Guardians, New Mexico Wildlife Federation, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, and the Sierra Club. Among the streams nominated for protection are the Pecos and Gallinas rivers and numerous of their tributaries, which provide abundant habitat for fish and wildlife and a variety of recreational opportunities. The Pecos Wilderness Area alone receives 48,000 site visits annually for a contribution of $2.6 million to the State. The rivers not only provide municipal drinking water but also vital water for traditional agriculture downstream. In total, the nomination calls for the protection of more than 100 miles of waterway....
Wild-born ferrets popping up after biologists' restorative efforts Biologists spotlighted two black-footed ferrets that were born in the wild this year among the nine they found in a northwestern Colorado prairie dog colonies. State Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton said tracking the nocturnal animals that live in prairie dog colonies is difficult, and this year's effort is significant. Hampton says the first wild-born black-footed ferret was found by researchers in 2005, so the discovery of two additional wild-born ferrets is significant. This marks the 25th anniversary for the effort to restore the highly endangered ferrets in the United States....
McMahon acquitted of bribing federal officer One week after his former business partner pleaded guilty to bribing a federal officer, a jury acquitted Norman Geoff McMahon of all charges that he allegedly bribed the same officer, according to Norman Cairns, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney General's Office. McMahon's former NewCo Aggregate business partner, Curtis Slade, pleaded guilty on Oct. 20 to one count of bribing Ralph Mason, a former Bureau of Land Management (BLM) geologist. A jury acquitted McMahon in federal District Court on Oct. 27. He faced one count of bribing a public official and another charge of giving a gratuity payment to a public official. McMahon and Slade were charged with bribing the same BLM officer. However, Slade pleaded guilty. McMahon was accused of giving Mason $7,000 in four payments to mine humate — an organic material used in soil conditioners, supplements and fertilizers....
BLM backing for roads asked Moffat County officials asked the U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday to back their claims to roads that cut across wild federal land in northwest Colorado - a step that environmentalists call a tactic to block wilderness designation of the area. The request on five roads is a test of a new policy laid down by former Interior Secretary Gale Norton shortly before she left office in March. Norton signed a "secretarial order" telling federal land managers that if they determine such claims are valid, they can allow county governments that claim them to send crews out to maintain the roads. Environmental groups say the Norton policy carves up public lands, opens them to off-road vehicles and allows local governments to prevent land from being considered for formal wilderness designation. "Some of them go into very sensitive areas that have been closed to vehicles for a very long time," said Kristen Brengel of the Wilderness Society. "We believe BLM has the authority to deny these claims." Moffat County officials say they're simply preserving traditional access across public lands. They say they don't intend to send bulldozers out to cut new roadbeds....
'America's largest Petri dish' Infectious and sometimes deadly wildlife diseases are inching closer to Yellowstone National Park, and few of its most famous animals seem immune from the threat. The list reads like a who's who of troubling bugs and viruses: chronic wasting disease, West Nile, avian flu, whirling disease, hantavirus and brucellosis. Some are already in Yellowstone; others may be coming. If they take hold, they threaten elk, bison, deer and other mammals along with native trout and birds. Several factors are at work changing the dynamics of animal disease: more people and domestic animals living near the park, less room outside Yellowstone to find relief from disease outbreaks, and the emergence of several dangerous diseases that move quickly and infect previously unexposed animal populations....
State's shrinking glaciers: Going ... going ... gone? Like tiny doctors on the belly of a sleeping giant, three National Park Service workers trudged up the middle of the Nisqually Glacier, stepping over tiny creeks and peering down a dizzying chute where water from the melting glacier wormed into the 300-foot-thick slab of ice. Nearby, a tall plastic pole arced from the ice into the sky. Park scientist Rebecca Doyle knelt at its base, whipped out a tape measure, and began jotting down numbers. The pole is 41 feet long. Six months ago, in April, it was totally buried in snow and ice. On this recent sunny October day, so much snow had melted that only a few inches of the pole remained buried....
A dozen years of desert protection Speeding motorists bent on reaching Las Vegas or Laughlin Nev., as rapidly as possible view the eastern Mojave Desert as a vast wasteland as they zip along Interstate 15 or Interstate 40. Along the way, they pass endless clusters of creosote bushes, some of nature's oldest plants,growing in the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve. "A lot of people don't know what's out here," said Dennis Schramm, superintendent of the vast desert preserve, which marked its 12th anniversary Tuesday. "It contains over 900 species of plants, 206 species of birds, 47 species of animals and 36 species of reptiles." And it also is resplendent with massive sand dunes, desolate mountain peaks, stands of Joshua trees, Indian wall paintings called petrogylphs, herds of bighorn sheep and the historic Mojave wagon road. Alarmed by the relentless expansion of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, environmental visionaries mapped out strategy in the 1970s to counter the threat that urban growth posed for the Southern California desert....
Bush Opens National Parks to Bio-Prospecting Consider, for example, the election-season news that the National Park Service is moving forward with its plans to allow private corporations to "bioprospect" for microorganisms in national parks like Yellowstone in exchange for a piece of the action. Bioprospecting, or bio-pirating in this case since it's being taken from the public without our consent, is the act of mining for living organisms anything from microorganisms to plant and animal genes -- in the pursuit of science and/or profit. And whom should the corporate bioprospectors thank for this unprecedented gift of access to the public's natural resources? Well, both political parties and the various federal agencies they've ruled over, of course. Because it was the Clinton-led Park Service that first hatched this idea and now it's the Bush-led Park Service that is seeing it through. Yep, bipartisanship seems to work best when corporate interests are involved....
Park service ordered to review impact of drilling The National Park Service failed to take "a hard look" at the environmental impact of directional drilling on land adjacent to the Big Thicket Preserve in Southeast Texas, a federal judge ruled last week. Judge John D. Bates said that the park service's findings of no significant impact were "arbitrary and capricious" and that the agency didn't provide supporting evidence for its conclusions. "We hope it will insure more stringent rules, a little tighter regulation and that they'll be a little more protective of the environment," said Brandt Mannchen, chairman of the Big Thicket Committee for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "We hope this ruling won't just affect the Big Thicket but the entire National Park System," Mannchen said. "The Big Thicket is really the nexus of this issue because it has the most gas and drilling."....
Campaign Border Patrol First, as for the movie: "Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration," is a tour de force. It doesn't proselytize. It doesn't announce a political position. But it leaves no doubt how vexing, and at times how incredibly dangerous, is the issue of illegal immigration. Ranchers on the border have their property littered, their livestock attacked, and sometimes their safety threatened, by illegals crossing from Mexico. Police and other law-enforcement officials are attacked and in some cases killed. Drugs are run and teenage girls molested, and agitators yell that American land actually should belong to the Mexican people anyway. And, lest we forget, many of the illegals themselves, ones who themselves are peaceful but impoverished, are abused or abandoned en route by paid human-smugglers out to make a quick buck. But the documentary (available through CitizensUnited.com or at retailers such as Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, Netflix and Amazon) also gives ample time, without the moviemakers doing any editorializing, to Enrique Morones, a man dedicated to the mission of caring for the illegals and who becomes increasingly activist in pushing for open borders. Filmed over the course of seven months, the documentary comes across as being scrupulously fair. Yet it's almost impossible to finish the movie thinking anything other than that the borders must be better patrolled and protected, and that the illegal access must be stopped -- because American lands and American citizenship must not be violated....
The return of an old L.A. flame You think you know barbecue? This is real barbecue, the way people did it around here 100 years ago. Angelenos had their own style of 'cue, a heritage from the days of the 19th century Spanish rancheros, who called it carne tatemada. Down through the 1920s, no convention, charity extravaganza or Fourth of July was a party without a huge spread of our distinctive pit-cooked barbecue. We proudly served it to honored visitors, confident that it was superior to grilling and Southern barbecue alike. As late as the mid-1930s, when old-timers lamented that barbecue was dying out, you could get as many as 60,000 people to come to one of these events. Los Angeles barbecue grew out of cattle ranching, which was our main industry for many decades. We might have barbecued chicken or mutton from time to time, but the overwhelming choice around here was beef. And we used huge amounts of beef. Because there weren't any railroads to ship cattle East until late in the 19th century, hides and tallow were all that cattle ranchers had to sell. In effect, beef was a byproduct of the leather industry in L.A., so it was absurdly cheap for a very long time....
Reub Long loved 'Oregon Desert' "Reub Long's Oregon Desert," one in a series of television shows called "Oregon Experience," will bring to life a vision of rural Oregon life in this episode, which airs Friday on Oregon Public Broadcasting. This documentary tells about how, back in the early 1960's, Russ Jackman, a retired Oregon State University extension agent, and Reuben Long, a colorful Fort Rock Valley rancher, collaborated to create a unique book, "The Oregon Desert." It successfully blended natural science with cowboy humor and scholarly prose with casual meanderings. The book was a celebration of rural Western storytelling; over the years, it has become a Northwest classic. The TV show will replicate much of the point of view of the book. Reub Long, who died in 1974, lived his whole life in a flat, dry area of northern Lake County....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Thank researchers, mice for life There are people who are ennobled by their service to mankind. We think of soldiers, nurses, teachers or ministers whose contributions are recognized daily. Others are national leaders, inventors, Olympic athletes or philanthropists. Their achievements attract laudatory headlines and press. But there are many who toil beneath the radar, who persevere and over a lifetime of service produce profound long-lasting benefits to the world. One example is research scientists. I think of research scientists as the really smart people in my physiological chemistry classes who now work in bat caves chasing cures for the physical maladies of mankind. Much of our knowledge about the human body has come from studying animals. From Sir Alexander Fleming's mouse to Dr. Debakey's heart transplant calf, from NASA's monkey to Dolly the cloned sheep, animals have been used to discover and unlock the secrets of disease and initiate their cures. Is it worth it? Ask my friend with Parkinson's. Ask his family. Sir Fleming discovered penicillin in 1929. The average life span of a 29-year-old person that year in the United States was 49 years. In 2006, the average life span of a 29-year-old person is now 72....
Study sees shift away from ranching near Yellowstone Owning a slice of paradise isn't what it used to be. Generations of ranchers on the rural fringes of Yellowstone National Park passed their land to offspring or sold it to likeminded people. But for the past decade and longer, more ranches have been snatched up by people with less interest in turning a buck off the land than weekend trips, trout fishing and catching a glimpse of an elk or wolf on their property, according to a new study. In sales involving 400 acres or more outside Yellowstone, only 26 percent of buyers were "traditional ranchers," according to researchers' study of records from 1990 to 2001. The largest category, at 39 percent, were "amenity buyers," those who want the land not primarily for agriculture production but for its recreation and ambience, the study said. The new buyers often arrive with a different set of values from those who have family ties stretching back generations. In some cases the new owners try to fit in, and in some cases they don't. Either way, they're transforming the social and natural dynamics, said Hannah Gosnell, an assistant geography professor at Oregon State University, one of the study's authors....
Dike removal at century-old ranch site opens Nisqually estuary The Nisqually Tribe on Tuesday celebrated the return of saltwater to 140 acres of the Nisqually River estuary, where dike removal restored critical salmon habitat in south Puget Sound. The land had been used for a cattle ranch for more than a century. Tribal dancers and drummers in vibrant black-and-red blankets and other traditional garb opened the event at the edge of the estuary, where the river meets the inland sea. As speakers addressed the crowd, a 14-foot tide began slowly filling the basin. Birds darted overhead and autumn-brilliant trees rustled along the shore. The 140-acre wetland was named Blaget Marsh to honor the family. Longtime rancher Kenny Blaget sold the family's 410-acre property to the tribe for $2.4 million in 1999. Most of the 840-acre estuary was diked in the early 20th century for agricultural use. The tribe and its state and federal partners removed the dikes enclosing 100 acres this summer, following a 40-acre project earlier. The first saltwater flowed in on Oct. 1, shortly after Blaget died....
EPA sets limits on pesticide use to protect frog California's farmers and ranchers may be significantly impacted by a recent decision issued by a federal district court that prohibits the use of 66 pesticides on thousands of acres of land designated as critical habitat for the California red-legged frog, a species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. "California's farmers and ranchers will be directly impacted by this even though they were not parties to either the lawsuit or the injunction. Many of the 66 pesticides are important management tools that form an integral part of successful farming and ranching operations," said Ronda Azevedo Lucas, California Farm Bureau Federation Natural Resources and Environmental Division associate counsel. "Farm Bureau is concerned the injunction is overly broad and questions some of its scientific and legal underpinnings." The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California recently reached a settlement agreement barring the application of the pesticides in critical red-legged frog habitat areas and in adjoining buffer zones throughout the state until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completes formal consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service....
Arson suspect held; 5th firefighter dies Authorities on Tuesday arrested a 37-year-old man suspected of intentionally starting two wildfires this summer and who is considered a "person of interest" in the Esperanza blaze, which killed five firefighters. Raymond Lee Oyler of Beaumont was arrested at 3 p.m. on two counts of arson related to wildfires in June, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department said in a statement. Oyler was not named as a suspect in the Esperanza wildfire, which roared across more than 60 square miles last week. Also on Tuesday, a fifth U.S. Forest Service firefighter died of burns suffered when an engine crew was overrun by the Esperanza wildfire last week. Firefighter Pablo Cerda, 23, of Fountain Valley died at 5:08 p.m. at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, said Jeanne Wade Evans, the San Bernardino National Forest supervisor, at a press conference outside the hospital....
Firefighter supervisor pleads guilty in '04 blaze A Flagstaff man who was among the nation's elite firefighting supervisors pleaded guilty Monday to setting a 2004 wildfire that burned 22 acres of timber near Mormon Lake. Before his arrest, Van Bateman, 55, supervised all federal firefighters in the Mogollon Rim area and led one of the U.S. Forest Service's 16 incident management teams that responded to national disasters. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he spent a month assisting New York firefighters with logistics at the World Trade Center. In 2002, Bateman oversaw firefighting efforts against the Rodeo-Chediski blaze, the state's largest ever, half of which was also set by a firefighter. Paul Charlton, U.S. attorney for Arizona, said Bateman "joins a small universe of firefighters who, for reasons we may never fully understand, violated the public's trust by igniting fires, not extinguishing them."....
Cataloging nature's wounds Scientists on Monday began the long-term work to assess and repair damage done to the natural and cultural landscape by the Esperanza Fire and those who fought it. The recovery job takes brains and brawn, experts as well as inmates. The fire burned a sparsely settled 63 square miles south of Beaumont, scorching parts of the Morongo and Soboba Indian reservations and damaging as much as 90 percent of Potrero Canyon, a key endangered species preserve in Riverside County. The flames made a charcoal-covered landscape of the mountainous terrain along Highway 243, south of Interstate 10. Farther up the mountains, the burned landscape was snow-white, covered in ash. Previously a steep highway drive that takes motorists past desert scrub, sages and manzanitas on the way to a pine forest, the hillsides had only remnants of those signature plants. Animals such as chipmunks, rabbits and birds could be seen through columns of smoke that rose from smoldering roots of burned plants. Assessing damage to the landscape, animal habitats and American Indian artifacts is the first step in helping the region recover the richness of its natural and cultural heritage....
Pine Beetle infestation study: Beetles Invasion Don Goheen says mountain pine beetles are part of a forest’s landscape, but more beetles recently in the Umpqua National Forest are a sign of an oncoming and devastating outbreak. Last week the entomologist and U.S. Forest Service officials met at Diamond Lake Campground to discuss methods for curtailing a potential population explosion of mountain pine beetles. Goheen chopped away bark from a dead lodgepole pine and exposed the inner workings of beetle infestation. Clinging to the tree and underneath the bark were black beetles the size of rice kernels. To prevent a future beetle outbreak, Goheen — who works with the Southwest Oregon Forest Insect and Disease Service Center in Central Point — suggested the Forest Service should focus its concentration on high-risk stands not yet infected. His wife, Ellen Goheen, a plant pathologist with the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, said thinning and harvesting on wholesale levels could stymie the beetles’ destruction. Stands of mixed species could be thinned of lodgepole pine while stands of 80 percent lodgepole or more could be clear cut, “so your whole area doesn’t get hammered at once,” she said....
Trout Unlimited working to keep Alaska wild Trout Unlimited is taking a lead role in restoring southeast Alaska fisheries damaged by logging. From fighting erosion caused by clear-cuts and road-building to replacing culverts vital for fish passage to spawning sites, the TU Alaska Program is reminding anglers everywhere that in spite of its apparent remoteness, the 17-million acre Tongass National Forest is a public treasure. “This is a near-pristine area owned by every American,” said Scott Hed (rhymes with ‘made’), outreach director for the Sportsman’s Alliance for Alaska. “When sportsmen think of Alaska, this is the ultimate dream, the last of the last best places.”....
New Mexico Asked to Designate Pristine Waters Under Clean Water Act A coalition of conservation and wildlife groups has asked the State of New Mexico to protect some of the state’s cleanest waters that flow from its roadless national forests. The groups filed a formal petition with the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission to name the waters inside of the Inventoried Roadless Areas on the Santa Fe National Forests above the cities of Pecos and Las Vegas as Outstanding National Resource Waters (ONRWs). The Clean Water Act designation would permanently protect the critical source of drinking water for the City of Las Vegas, provide a measure of protection for the roadless forests in which these waters are found, and protect healthy landscapes for future generations of humans and wildlife. The groups filing the petition are Forest Guardians, New Mexico Wildlife Federation, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, and the Sierra Club. Among the streams nominated for protection are the Pecos and Gallinas rivers and numerous of their tributaries, which provide abundant habitat for fish and wildlife and a variety of recreational opportunities. The Pecos Wilderness Area alone receives 48,000 site visits annually for a contribution of $2.6 million to the State. The rivers not only provide municipal drinking water but also vital water for traditional agriculture downstream. In total, the nomination calls for the protection of more than 100 miles of waterway....
Wild-born ferrets popping up after biologists' restorative efforts Biologists spotlighted two black-footed ferrets that were born in the wild this year among the nine they found in a northwestern Colorado prairie dog colonies. State Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton said tracking the nocturnal animals that live in prairie dog colonies is difficult, and this year's effort is significant. Hampton says the first wild-born black-footed ferret was found by researchers in 2005, so the discovery of two additional wild-born ferrets is significant. This marks the 25th anniversary for the effort to restore the highly endangered ferrets in the United States....
McMahon acquitted of bribing federal officer One week after his former business partner pleaded guilty to bribing a federal officer, a jury acquitted Norman Geoff McMahon of all charges that he allegedly bribed the same officer, according to Norman Cairns, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney General's Office. McMahon's former NewCo Aggregate business partner, Curtis Slade, pleaded guilty on Oct. 20 to one count of bribing Ralph Mason, a former Bureau of Land Management (BLM) geologist. A jury acquitted McMahon in federal District Court on Oct. 27. He faced one count of bribing a public official and another charge of giving a gratuity payment to a public official. McMahon and Slade were charged with bribing the same BLM officer. However, Slade pleaded guilty. McMahon was accused of giving Mason $7,000 in four payments to mine humate — an organic material used in soil conditioners, supplements and fertilizers....
BLM backing for roads asked Moffat County officials asked the U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday to back their claims to roads that cut across wild federal land in northwest Colorado - a step that environmentalists call a tactic to block wilderness designation of the area. The request on five roads is a test of a new policy laid down by former Interior Secretary Gale Norton shortly before she left office in March. Norton signed a "secretarial order" telling federal land managers that if they determine such claims are valid, they can allow county governments that claim them to send crews out to maintain the roads. Environmental groups say the Norton policy carves up public lands, opens them to off-road vehicles and allows local governments to prevent land from being considered for formal wilderness designation. "Some of them go into very sensitive areas that have been closed to vehicles for a very long time," said Kristen Brengel of the Wilderness Society. "We believe BLM has the authority to deny these claims." Moffat County officials say they're simply preserving traditional access across public lands. They say they don't intend to send bulldozers out to cut new roadbeds....
'America's largest Petri dish' Infectious and sometimes deadly wildlife diseases are inching closer to Yellowstone National Park, and few of its most famous animals seem immune from the threat. The list reads like a who's who of troubling bugs and viruses: chronic wasting disease, West Nile, avian flu, whirling disease, hantavirus and brucellosis. Some are already in Yellowstone; others may be coming. If they take hold, they threaten elk, bison, deer and other mammals along with native trout and birds. Several factors are at work changing the dynamics of animal disease: more people and domestic animals living near the park, less room outside Yellowstone to find relief from disease outbreaks, and the emergence of several dangerous diseases that move quickly and infect previously unexposed animal populations....
State's shrinking glaciers: Going ... going ... gone? Like tiny doctors on the belly of a sleeping giant, three National Park Service workers trudged up the middle of the Nisqually Glacier, stepping over tiny creeks and peering down a dizzying chute where water from the melting glacier wormed into the 300-foot-thick slab of ice. Nearby, a tall plastic pole arced from the ice into the sky. Park scientist Rebecca Doyle knelt at its base, whipped out a tape measure, and began jotting down numbers. The pole is 41 feet long. Six months ago, in April, it was totally buried in snow and ice. On this recent sunny October day, so much snow had melted that only a few inches of the pole remained buried....
A dozen years of desert protection Speeding motorists bent on reaching Las Vegas or Laughlin Nev., as rapidly as possible view the eastern Mojave Desert as a vast wasteland as they zip along Interstate 15 or Interstate 40. Along the way, they pass endless clusters of creosote bushes, some of nature's oldest plants,growing in the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve. "A lot of people don't know what's out here," said Dennis Schramm, superintendent of the vast desert preserve, which marked its 12th anniversary Tuesday. "It contains over 900 species of plants, 206 species of birds, 47 species of animals and 36 species of reptiles." And it also is resplendent with massive sand dunes, desolate mountain peaks, stands of Joshua trees, Indian wall paintings called petrogylphs, herds of bighorn sheep and the historic Mojave wagon road. Alarmed by the relentless expansion of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, environmental visionaries mapped out strategy in the 1970s to counter the threat that urban growth posed for the Southern California desert....
Bush Opens National Parks to Bio-Prospecting Consider, for example, the election-season news that the National Park Service is moving forward with its plans to allow private corporations to "bioprospect" for microorganisms in national parks like Yellowstone in exchange for a piece of the action. Bioprospecting, or bio-pirating in this case since it's being taken from the public without our consent, is the act of mining for living organisms anything from microorganisms to plant and animal genes -- in the pursuit of science and/or profit. And whom should the corporate bioprospectors thank for this unprecedented gift of access to the public's natural resources? Well, both political parties and the various federal agencies they've ruled over, of course. Because it was the Clinton-led Park Service that first hatched this idea and now it's the Bush-led Park Service that is seeing it through. Yep, bipartisanship seems to work best when corporate interests are involved....
Park service ordered to review impact of drilling The National Park Service failed to take "a hard look" at the environmental impact of directional drilling on land adjacent to the Big Thicket Preserve in Southeast Texas, a federal judge ruled last week. Judge John D. Bates said that the park service's findings of no significant impact were "arbitrary and capricious" and that the agency didn't provide supporting evidence for its conclusions. "We hope it will insure more stringent rules, a little tighter regulation and that they'll be a little more protective of the environment," said Brandt Mannchen, chairman of the Big Thicket Committee for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "We hope this ruling won't just affect the Big Thicket but the entire National Park System," Mannchen said. "The Big Thicket is really the nexus of this issue because it has the most gas and drilling."....
Campaign Border Patrol First, as for the movie: "Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration," is a tour de force. It doesn't proselytize. It doesn't announce a political position. But it leaves no doubt how vexing, and at times how incredibly dangerous, is the issue of illegal immigration. Ranchers on the border have their property littered, their livestock attacked, and sometimes their safety threatened, by illegals crossing from Mexico. Police and other law-enforcement officials are attacked and in some cases killed. Drugs are run and teenage girls molested, and agitators yell that American land actually should belong to the Mexican people anyway. And, lest we forget, many of the illegals themselves, ones who themselves are peaceful but impoverished, are abused or abandoned en route by paid human-smugglers out to make a quick buck. But the documentary (available through CitizensUnited.com or at retailers such as Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, Netflix and Amazon) also gives ample time, without the moviemakers doing any editorializing, to Enrique Morones, a man dedicated to the mission of caring for the illegals and who becomes increasingly activist in pushing for open borders. Filmed over the course of seven months, the documentary comes across as being scrupulously fair. Yet it's almost impossible to finish the movie thinking anything other than that the borders must be better patrolled and protected, and that the illegal access must be stopped -- because American lands and American citizenship must not be violated....
The return of an old L.A. flame You think you know barbecue? This is real barbecue, the way people did it around here 100 years ago. Angelenos had their own style of 'cue, a heritage from the days of the 19th century Spanish rancheros, who called it carne tatemada. Down through the 1920s, no convention, charity extravaganza or Fourth of July was a party without a huge spread of our distinctive pit-cooked barbecue. We proudly served it to honored visitors, confident that it was superior to grilling and Southern barbecue alike. As late as the mid-1930s, when old-timers lamented that barbecue was dying out, you could get as many as 60,000 people to come to one of these events. Los Angeles barbecue grew out of cattle ranching, which was our main industry for many decades. We might have barbecued chicken or mutton from time to time, but the overwhelming choice around here was beef. And we used huge amounts of beef. Because there weren't any railroads to ship cattle East until late in the 19th century, hides and tallow were all that cattle ranchers had to sell. In effect, beef was a byproduct of the leather industry in L.A., so it was absurdly cheap for a very long time....
Reub Long loved 'Oregon Desert' "Reub Long's Oregon Desert," one in a series of television shows called "Oregon Experience," will bring to life a vision of rural Oregon life in this episode, which airs Friday on Oregon Public Broadcasting. This documentary tells about how, back in the early 1960's, Russ Jackman, a retired Oregon State University extension agent, and Reuben Long, a colorful Fort Rock Valley rancher, collaborated to create a unique book, "The Oregon Desert." It successfully blended natural science with cowboy humor and scholarly prose with casual meanderings. The book was a celebration of rural Western storytelling; over the years, it has become a Northwest classic. The TV show will replicate much of the point of view of the book. Reub Long, who died in 1974, lived his whole life in a flat, dry area of northern Lake County....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Thank researchers, mice for life There are people who are ennobled by their service to mankind. We think of soldiers, nurses, teachers or ministers whose contributions are recognized daily. Others are national leaders, inventors, Olympic athletes or philanthropists. Their achievements attract laudatory headlines and press. But there are many who toil beneath the radar, who persevere and over a lifetime of service produce profound long-lasting benefits to the world. One example is research scientists. I think of research scientists as the really smart people in my physiological chemistry classes who now work in bat caves chasing cures for the physical maladies of mankind. Much of our knowledge about the human body has come from studying animals. From Sir Alexander Fleming's mouse to Dr. Debakey's heart transplant calf, from NASA's monkey to Dolly the cloned sheep, animals have been used to discover and unlock the secrets of disease and initiate their cures. Is it worth it? Ask my friend with Parkinson's. Ask his family. Sir Fleming discovered penicillin in 1929. The average life span of a 29-year-old person that year in the United States was 49 years. In 2006, the average life span of a 29-year-old person is now 72....
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Jury: Rancher shortchanged for SH 130 land A Travis County jury ruled last week that the state underpaid an Austin cattle rancher almost $5 million when it condemned his land last year to make way for the new State Highway 130. The jury awarded Austin rancher Sam Harrell almost $7 million last week in his fight against the Texas Department of Transportation for taking 174 acres of his 290-acre organic cattle ranch located about four miles north of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. In July 2005, TxDOT offered Harrell's Harrell Ranch Ltd. about $2 million for the land. Harrell rejected the offer and the Travis County Special Commissioners' Panel then offered a little more -- $2.1 million. But Harrell's lawyer, Kevin Maguire with the Dallas office of Strasburger & Price LLP, says Harrell's ranch is no ordinary piece of ground. "It was a very unique property," he says. In fact, its one of the few ranches in the country certified to raise prized Japanese Kobe beef, which dines on beer and enjoys massages. So Harrell appealed the panel's award to trial before a Travis County jury....
Pombo in a tight contest Richard Pombo, clad in a beige polo shirt and jeans, is leaning back in a folding chair, his trademark ostrich-skin boots under a table. He's bantering with a reporter and an aide, and appears at peace. But he really isn't. Pombo, a seven-term Republican congressman, is in the tightest race he has seen in more than a decade to hold on to his once-safe seat -- and he knows it. Despite the comments of his Democratic opponent, Jerry McNerney, and the accumulated evidence of national voter surveys, Pombo thinks his troubles have nothing to do with Iraq, ethics or the general state of the nation. "I don't think it has anything to do with that," Pombo explained in his cluttered campaign office here. "I think it has to do with the millions of dollars that they've spent trashing me."....
Country, city clash over prairie dog problem Prairie dogs might be the most divisive rodents in America. To tourists and city folk, they are cute enough to send back home on a postcard. To drought-stricken western South Dakota, they are pasture-wrecking vermin worthy only of poisoning. The conflict is intensifying, especially in the Conata Basin, south of Wall, a devastated piece of cattle country that also is home to a crucial colony of black-footed ferrets. Ferrets eat prairie dogs and often are called the country's most endangered mammal. A conservation group will hold a fundraiser in Denver on Wednesday to help South Dakota's ferrets. At the same time, ranching groups are pushing political leaders to change how the federal government manages ferrets and prairie dogs. Even government agencies can't agree. Some want to poison more prairie dogs, but others are using insecticides and even vaccine to protect them from a very different threat: plague. For most of the ongoing drought, the Conata Basin has looked like a wasteland, stripped bare of grass by prairie dogs. "The grass is being overgrazed by prairie dogs to the point that the grass is being killed, and will result in soil erosion - wind and water erosion - that should be intolerable to the rest of us, the citizens of South Dakota," said state Secretary of Agriculture Larry Gabriel in Pierre....
Global Warming: What about water? Charles Holmgren says it's the little things that he notices. The Box Elder County farmer, who grows a variety of crops on 1,200 acres near here, has seen the spring runoff come down the Corrine Canal from the Bear River flows sooner than it used to. After nearly a lifetime of getting three cuts a season out of his alfalfa crop, Holmgren notes that he's now regularly getting four. And he and fellow members of the irrigation company that feeds the area's farms are paying out more in attorneys fees than they ever have before to settle water rights disputes. Holmgren can't specifically point to climate change as the culprit; it's all anecdotal at this point. But he does sense that things are different now. And he can't help but wonder what lies ahead. "It's a two-edged sword," he says. "If you have livestock, you like the warmer, drier winters. But when crop time comes around in June and July, you really need that water. It doesn't help when it comes down in February or March. Once it goes down the river, it's gone." More than any other aspect of global warming, water will likely be what defines the issue in Utah and the rest of the Intermountain West in the coming decades. The nation's most arid and sparsely populated region has been transformed by explosive growth and development in recent decades, growth that has been based largely on an ability to manage scarce and vitally important water....
Calif. wildfire fully corralled, investigation steps up An arson wildfire that killed four firefighters and charred more than 60 square miles of brushland was fully corralled as the investigation into who set it moved into high gear. Two people were brought into a sheriff's station Monday for questioning and released, according to James Crowell, assistant special agent in charge with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle cautioned investigators would be interviewing a number of people in the case. No arrests have been made and the reward for information topped $500,000. "We're trying to work through the leads that we have, and going through the process," Doyle said in a telephone interview. Before firefighters contained it Monday evening, the fire scorched 40,200 acres - or about 63 square miles - and destroyed 34 homes. It erupted Thursday as fierce Santa Ana winds blew through the region....
Tribes, Forest Service agree on plant gathering rights Four American Indian tribes have reached an agreement with the federal government over gathering plants in two national forests. The tribes and the U-S Forest Service held a ceremony in Traverse City today to seal the agreement, which covers the Huron-Manistee National Forests and the Hiawatha National Forest. Both forests are within territory the tribes ceded to the United States under an 1836 treaty....
Supreme Court hears arguments on legal immunity for feds The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday about the extent of federal employees' immunity from on-the-job lawsuits. Under the 1988 Westfall Act, federal employees are immune from suits so long as the Attorney General certifies that they were doing their job when the incident in question occurred. The government then substitutes itself as the defendant. In the case argued Monday, Osborn v. Haley, the high court must decide whether the Attorney General can certify an act as job-related simply by denying that the incident ever occurred. If an employee is sued for an act clearly not in his or her job description, can the government defend the employee anyway if they believe in the employee's innocence?....
Landowners, access group in dispute over road to BLM land Members of a land access group say two landowners in Blaine County have no authority to limit access on a road that crosses their property to reach thousands of acres of rugged public land. At issue is the route known as the Bullwhacker Road, which provides access to 50,000 acres of land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The Public Lands Access Association Inc., a small group based in Billings, claims the Bullwhacker Road is a public route under a law enacted in 1866. But the road travels through an island of 3.8 miles of private land owned by Bill and Ronnie Robinson of Lloyd. They have controlled access to the road in the past by requiring verbal or written permission to cross their land. Right now, there's a sign-in box near the gate where people must fill in permission slips to access the Robinsons' property. A note in the box denies access when the road is wet....
Ah Nei critic presses new lawsuit A Shepherd-area resident is again suing the Bureau of Land Management over its popular off-road vehicle site near his home. Brian Biggs, who lives next to the Shepherd Ah Nei Off-Highway Vehicle Area, alleges that the BLM's environmental study and decision allowing all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles to use the site violate federal law. Since Ah Nei reopened under the BLM's decision about a year ago, Biggs contends the noise and damage to public lands and his property have increased....
Horse roundup is taking the heat for deaths, injuries During a roundup of the Sulphur Herd this year, however, Nield said she witnessed a callous disregard for the horses during a roundup conducted by a BLM national contractor. "It was the first time I've seen a bad gather," she said. "The whole way the contractor did things bothered me." Nield said two mares and a foal were killed during the roundup, which was conducted in July. One mare suffered neck injuries after being roped and later died, while another mare died after running into a horse panel, breaking its neck. Another horse kicked the foal after it was rounded up with the adult horses, killing it. Gus Warr, who heads up Utah's Wild Horse and Burro Program for the BLM, said several "unavoidable accidents" occurred during the July roundup....
La Llorona haunts barrios, waterways of Yuma If you've ever been walking by the Colorado River at night, or any of the canals that run through Yuma, you might have heard her. The moans, faint at first, become more audible, then followed by sobs and intense wailing of: "Mis hijos, mis hijos," or, "my children, my children." La Llorona, or the "Weeping Woman," has been walking the banks of waterways in the Southwest and Latin America for a long time, lamenting the children she drowned to get revenge on her wayward husband. Mary Larona, a descendent of one of Yuma's founding fathers, can remember a much smaller Yuma and a time when sounds carried throughout the city. Sounds from the river. There are different versions of the legend. A popular one is that there was a mother with a wayward husband who took up with another woman. Distraught, the mother takes their two children to the river and drowns them in an insane act of revenge. Almost immediately she regrets her decision, but it's too late. The children are swept away. She is doomed forever to walk the banks of waterways, wailing and sobbing, in search of her children. The story goes even further back to pre-Colombian times, and different places in Latin America have similar versions.Miguel Leon-Portilla's book "The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico" talks of a series of omens that foretold the arrival of the Spaniards into Mexico. One of the omens is a weeping woman the people heard night after night.n Honduras, an apparition called "La Sucia," or the dirty one, wanders the river washing her clothes and lures wayward men walking late at night....
It's all Trew: Old gardeners avoided 'feast or famine' route My personal gardening experiences always seemed to take “the feast or famine” route where I suffered failure or had to give the surplus away before it ruined. The old-timers were smarter than I, and planted at intervals about two weeks apart, so that produce continued to grow and ripen on a regular basis. Not only did they plant at intervals, but they double-cropped things like turnips, which filled their root cellars just before frost. Some crops like corn furnished early roasting ears for eating then made hard grain later for grinding. Turnips furnished delicious top greens and hardy below-ground vegetables later in the fall. The better and more detailed the planting, the more produce provided and preserved. Few rural families went hungry unless the ravages of weather destroyed their gardens. During the early days of frontier settlement, most meat was derived from hunting wild game. If you needed meat, go hunting. Since most game was small pounds in edible meat, the carcass was consumed before spoilage occurred....
Jury: Rancher shortchanged for SH 130 land A Travis County jury ruled last week that the state underpaid an Austin cattle rancher almost $5 million when it condemned his land last year to make way for the new State Highway 130. The jury awarded Austin rancher Sam Harrell almost $7 million last week in his fight against the Texas Department of Transportation for taking 174 acres of his 290-acre organic cattle ranch located about four miles north of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. In July 2005, TxDOT offered Harrell's Harrell Ranch Ltd. about $2 million for the land. Harrell rejected the offer and the Travis County Special Commissioners' Panel then offered a little more -- $2.1 million. But Harrell's lawyer, Kevin Maguire with the Dallas office of Strasburger & Price LLP, says Harrell's ranch is no ordinary piece of ground. "It was a very unique property," he says. In fact, its one of the few ranches in the country certified to raise prized Japanese Kobe beef, which dines on beer and enjoys massages. So Harrell appealed the panel's award to trial before a Travis County jury....
Pombo in a tight contest Richard Pombo, clad in a beige polo shirt and jeans, is leaning back in a folding chair, his trademark ostrich-skin boots under a table. He's bantering with a reporter and an aide, and appears at peace. But he really isn't. Pombo, a seven-term Republican congressman, is in the tightest race he has seen in more than a decade to hold on to his once-safe seat -- and he knows it. Despite the comments of his Democratic opponent, Jerry McNerney, and the accumulated evidence of national voter surveys, Pombo thinks his troubles have nothing to do with Iraq, ethics or the general state of the nation. "I don't think it has anything to do with that," Pombo explained in his cluttered campaign office here. "I think it has to do with the millions of dollars that they've spent trashing me."....
Country, city clash over prairie dog problem Prairie dogs might be the most divisive rodents in America. To tourists and city folk, they are cute enough to send back home on a postcard. To drought-stricken western South Dakota, they are pasture-wrecking vermin worthy only of poisoning. The conflict is intensifying, especially in the Conata Basin, south of Wall, a devastated piece of cattle country that also is home to a crucial colony of black-footed ferrets. Ferrets eat prairie dogs and often are called the country's most endangered mammal. A conservation group will hold a fundraiser in Denver on Wednesday to help South Dakota's ferrets. At the same time, ranching groups are pushing political leaders to change how the federal government manages ferrets and prairie dogs. Even government agencies can't agree. Some want to poison more prairie dogs, but others are using insecticides and even vaccine to protect them from a very different threat: plague. For most of the ongoing drought, the Conata Basin has looked like a wasteland, stripped bare of grass by prairie dogs. "The grass is being overgrazed by prairie dogs to the point that the grass is being killed, and will result in soil erosion - wind and water erosion - that should be intolerable to the rest of us, the citizens of South Dakota," said state Secretary of Agriculture Larry Gabriel in Pierre....
Global Warming: What about water? Charles Holmgren says it's the little things that he notices. The Box Elder County farmer, who grows a variety of crops on 1,200 acres near here, has seen the spring runoff come down the Corrine Canal from the Bear River flows sooner than it used to. After nearly a lifetime of getting three cuts a season out of his alfalfa crop, Holmgren notes that he's now regularly getting four. And he and fellow members of the irrigation company that feeds the area's farms are paying out more in attorneys fees than they ever have before to settle water rights disputes. Holmgren can't specifically point to climate change as the culprit; it's all anecdotal at this point. But he does sense that things are different now. And he can't help but wonder what lies ahead. "It's a two-edged sword," he says. "If you have livestock, you like the warmer, drier winters. But when crop time comes around in June and July, you really need that water. It doesn't help when it comes down in February or March. Once it goes down the river, it's gone." More than any other aspect of global warming, water will likely be what defines the issue in Utah and the rest of the Intermountain West in the coming decades. The nation's most arid and sparsely populated region has been transformed by explosive growth and development in recent decades, growth that has been based largely on an ability to manage scarce and vitally important water....
Calif. wildfire fully corralled, investigation steps up An arson wildfire that killed four firefighters and charred more than 60 square miles of brushland was fully corralled as the investigation into who set it moved into high gear. Two people were brought into a sheriff's station Monday for questioning and released, according to James Crowell, assistant special agent in charge with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle cautioned investigators would be interviewing a number of people in the case. No arrests have been made and the reward for information topped $500,000. "We're trying to work through the leads that we have, and going through the process," Doyle said in a telephone interview. Before firefighters contained it Monday evening, the fire scorched 40,200 acres - or about 63 square miles - and destroyed 34 homes. It erupted Thursday as fierce Santa Ana winds blew through the region....
Tribes, Forest Service agree on plant gathering rights Four American Indian tribes have reached an agreement with the federal government over gathering plants in two national forests. The tribes and the U-S Forest Service held a ceremony in Traverse City today to seal the agreement, which covers the Huron-Manistee National Forests and the Hiawatha National Forest. Both forests are within territory the tribes ceded to the United States under an 1836 treaty....
Supreme Court hears arguments on legal immunity for feds The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday about the extent of federal employees' immunity from on-the-job lawsuits. Under the 1988 Westfall Act, federal employees are immune from suits so long as the Attorney General certifies that they were doing their job when the incident in question occurred. The government then substitutes itself as the defendant. In the case argued Monday, Osborn v. Haley, the high court must decide whether the Attorney General can certify an act as job-related simply by denying that the incident ever occurred. If an employee is sued for an act clearly not in his or her job description, can the government defend the employee anyway if they believe in the employee's innocence?....
Landowners, access group in dispute over road to BLM land Members of a land access group say two landowners in Blaine County have no authority to limit access on a road that crosses their property to reach thousands of acres of rugged public land. At issue is the route known as the Bullwhacker Road, which provides access to 50,000 acres of land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The Public Lands Access Association Inc., a small group based in Billings, claims the Bullwhacker Road is a public route under a law enacted in 1866. But the road travels through an island of 3.8 miles of private land owned by Bill and Ronnie Robinson of Lloyd. They have controlled access to the road in the past by requiring verbal or written permission to cross their land. Right now, there's a sign-in box near the gate where people must fill in permission slips to access the Robinsons' property. A note in the box denies access when the road is wet....
Ah Nei critic presses new lawsuit A Shepherd-area resident is again suing the Bureau of Land Management over its popular off-road vehicle site near his home. Brian Biggs, who lives next to the Shepherd Ah Nei Off-Highway Vehicle Area, alleges that the BLM's environmental study and decision allowing all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles to use the site violate federal law. Since Ah Nei reopened under the BLM's decision about a year ago, Biggs contends the noise and damage to public lands and his property have increased....
Horse roundup is taking the heat for deaths, injuries During a roundup of the Sulphur Herd this year, however, Nield said she witnessed a callous disregard for the horses during a roundup conducted by a BLM national contractor. "It was the first time I've seen a bad gather," she said. "The whole way the contractor did things bothered me." Nield said two mares and a foal were killed during the roundup, which was conducted in July. One mare suffered neck injuries after being roped and later died, while another mare died after running into a horse panel, breaking its neck. Another horse kicked the foal after it was rounded up with the adult horses, killing it. Gus Warr, who heads up Utah's Wild Horse and Burro Program for the BLM, said several "unavoidable accidents" occurred during the July roundup....
La Llorona haunts barrios, waterways of Yuma If you've ever been walking by the Colorado River at night, or any of the canals that run through Yuma, you might have heard her. The moans, faint at first, become more audible, then followed by sobs and intense wailing of: "Mis hijos, mis hijos," or, "my children, my children." La Llorona, or the "Weeping Woman," has been walking the banks of waterways in the Southwest and Latin America for a long time, lamenting the children she drowned to get revenge on her wayward husband. Mary Larona, a descendent of one of Yuma's founding fathers, can remember a much smaller Yuma and a time when sounds carried throughout the city. Sounds from the river. There are different versions of the legend. A popular one is that there was a mother with a wayward husband who took up with another woman. Distraught, the mother takes their two children to the river and drowns them in an insane act of revenge. Almost immediately she regrets her decision, but it's too late. The children are swept away. She is doomed forever to walk the banks of waterways, wailing and sobbing, in search of her children. The story goes even further back to pre-Colombian times, and different places in Latin America have similar versions.Miguel Leon-Portilla's book "The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico" talks of a series of omens that foretold the arrival of the Spaniards into Mexico. One of the omens is a weeping woman the people heard night after night.n Honduras, an apparition called "La Sucia," or the dirty one, wanders the river washing her clothes and lures wayward men walking late at night....
It's all Trew: Old gardeners avoided 'feast or famine' route My personal gardening experiences always seemed to take “the feast or famine” route where I suffered failure or had to give the surplus away before it ruined. The old-timers were smarter than I, and planted at intervals about two weeks apart, so that produce continued to grow and ripen on a regular basis. Not only did they plant at intervals, but they double-cropped things like turnips, which filled their root cellars just before frost. Some crops like corn furnished early roasting ears for eating then made hard grain later for grinding. Turnips furnished delicious top greens and hardy below-ground vegetables later in the fall. The better and more detailed the planting, the more produce provided and preserved. Few rural families went hungry unless the ravages of weather destroyed their gardens. During the early days of frontier settlement, most meat was derived from hunting wild game. If you needed meat, go hunting. Since most game was small pounds in edible meat, the carcass was consumed before spoilage occurred....
Monday, October 30, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Private lands needed for wildlife habitat Animals generally don't respond to those pesky boundaries placed by human society - they pretty much move among private, state, federal and tribal lands across Wyoming. But ask a wildlife biologist, rancher or farmer, and they'll all say the same thing: Private lands play a big role with Wyoming's wildlife, mostly by providing seasonal range for big game. A recent University of Wyoming-sponsored report, "Open Spaces Initiative," showed that private lands are crucial to herd size and viability for Wyoming's six major big-game species - elk, moose, antelope, bighorn sheep, mule deer and white-tailed deer. "Clearly, something in the neighborhood of 70 percent of the wildlife in this state spend part or all of their time on private lands," said Bob Budd, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resources Trust board. "Development tends to break that landscape up, and when you do, that has an impact on a lot of species."....
Researchers study how thinning helps stand of old-growth trees About 75 years later, a forest researcher named Steve Arno found his way in among this island of old-growth trees. His mission was to chart the fire history and characteristics of the stand. Using tree rings as his guide, Arno determined that fire had been a frequent visitor to the site as far back as the 16th century - right through the mid-1880s. Between 1885 and the fire of 1919, not much happened. From 1919 on, fires were squelched and the stand began to change. In that 75-year span, the stand missed three or four fire cycles. Small trees that normally would have succumbed to the flames got a foothold. The stand started to fill in. By the time Arno came on the scene, there were between 500 and 600 trees on every acre. Other than the ancient larch and ponderosa pine, most of the newcomers were shade-tolerant species such as Douglas and grand fir. Competition was fierce for water and nutrients. In many cases, the old-growth trees were suffering. On top of that, the potential for fire was tremendous in the thickly stocked stand....
'Cut carbon emissions now or face economic calamity later' A STARK warning of the economic costs and damage to the world that could result from global warming will be set out today in a report to be submitted to the Government. Sir Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist at the World Bank, will advise that the costs of confronting climate change are far outweighed by those of failing to act in time. His 700-word report forecasts floods, famine, mass movement of people and the destruction of species if the Earth’s temperature continues to rise. Gordon Brown, who commissioned the report, will accept its main recommendation for a global carbon-trading scheme to enforce limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The Chancellor will also announce that Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, is to advise him on environmental policy. Sir Nicholas’s report, hailed as the most comprehensive study of the economics of climate change yet, makes the case for early action to avoid a calamitous recession later. Acting now to cut carbon emissions would cost 1 per cent of global GDP a year; by doing nothing, the costs at the time would be a minimum of 5 per cent and as high as 20 per cent of GDP a year, he concludes....
Column - Wolves, cowboys and the truth John Wayne, the most iconic cowboy of our time, once said, "Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." Wise words, indeed. When it comes to wolves, the cowboys running Wyoming's government apparently believe the wisdom of yesterday is best gained by acting as if it still is yesterday - or, more precisely, that it is 1906, not 2006. Recently, Wyoming sued the federal government over the government's rejection of Wyoming's plan to allow unregulated killing of wolves outside of the state's two national parks. Notably, the federal government still protects wolves as an endangered species, meaning that the territory outside of the national parks is integral to wolf recovery. Undeterred by such legal logic, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal clicked his spurs together and said of the decision to sue, "We'd been kicked around the barroom enough, and now it's time to fight back." Unfortunately, Wyoming's tantrum drags the taxpaying public into a frivolous and prohibitively expensive legal quagmire where nobody but the lawyers survive - and to what end? Well, Wyoming officials insist that their wolf management plan will protect wolves (granting them safe haven inside the national parks) while also protecting the state's livestock industry, by allowing anyone with a gun to kill wolves that roam into other areas of the state. The state's livestock lobby insists that anything less would allow wolves to eat them out of house and home. Moreover, they contend that coyotes, mountain lions and bears already threaten to drive ranchers out of business in the Cowboy State. In the spirit of learning from yesterday, it's worth looking at some of the evidence that supports (or refutes) the fear of wild carnivores that grips Wyoming's cowboy caucus. Particularly useful is data gathered by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) regarding livestock killed by various wild carnivores. For cattle, data from 2005 indicate that wild carnivores and dogs killed 0.18 percent of the nation's cows, while 4 percent were lost to other causes including disease, birthing problems, weather and theft. Notably, of the cattle lost to wild carnivores in 2005, wolves killed only 0.02 percent....
Turf wars in Idaho's wilderness Wolf researcher Jim Akenson is riding a mule on an icy mountain trail in central Idaho when he comes upon a dead cougar. Suddenly, a pack of wolves materializes and begins howling. For one terrifying moment, the 48-year-old biologist thinks his startled mules are going to stampede and carry him off a 200-foot cliff into Big Creek. "We could not turn around," says Akenson, describing that tense winter episode four years ago in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. "It is the most precarious condition you can imagine, with wolves howling around you." The crisis ends quickly. Akenson's saddle mule, Daisy, gives the carcass an indifferent sniff, steps over it and proceeds down the trail. Cricket and Rocky, his pack mules, follow, paying the wolves no heed. Akenson shrugs it off as part of life in the Idaho wilderness. "There are circumstances when you could be in trouble with wolves," he muses. "But I think they are very rare." Akenson and his biologist wife, Holly, 48, are in the ninth year of a University of Idaho-sponsored research project on wolf and cougar interaction. They live and work at the Taylor Ranch Field Station, deep inside the largest block of contiguous wilderness in the lower 48 states....
Nebraska gov to sign Platte deal Gov. Dave Heineman on Friday said he will sign a three-state agreement that could improve and protect one of Nebraska's most vital resources, the Platte River, but that groundwater irrigators say might eventually cripple portions of the rural economy. "It provides regulatory certainty; it protects our state's farmers and ranchers from potential federal actions that could be detrimental," Heineman said about his decision to sign the Platte River Cooperative Agreement. He said he possibly spent more time on the issue than any other since becoming governor. "This is a difficult decision," he said. "There's no question the state is divided." Besides Nebraska, the cooperative agreement includes Wyoming, Colorado and the U.S. Department of Interior. Colorado Gov. Bill Owens signed the agreement Friday and Wyoming is expected to sign. The river recovery plan called for in the agreement includes acquiring land for wildlife habitat in Nebraska and increasing river flows at key times. It will cost about $317 million, with $157 million coming from the Interior Department and the rest from the three states in cash, land and water. Federal dollars have not yet received final approval....
With Hands and Hounds, Stalking Feral Hogs in Texas On a moonless October night, with the Milky Way staining the West Texas sky, a burly man in overalls turned off the engine of his mud-caked white Toyota truck. Yelps from coyotes and an owl’s hoot occasionally broke the silence. Then, from an open field, Bob Richardson heard the noise he had been awaiting. Four of his short-haired scent hounds, which had been released earlier, began to bark from the darkness. Mr. Richardson jumped out of the truck and freed a black pit bull from a cage on the truck’s flatbed. He chased after his pit bull into the darkness toward the barking hounds. He tripped in a wet ditch but kept running through the milo stalks. When he got to the baying dogs, the light on his miner’s hat revealed that the pit bull, trained for just this purpose, had clamped onto the face of a feral hog. As he had done thousands of times before, Mr. Richardson, 58, pounced on the snorting beast and tied its feet together, immobilizing it. Within minutes, he had loaded the animal barehanded into a cage. A lot of people in rural Texas catch wild hogs, which can grow to several hundred pounds, and Mr. Richardson traps them like most others. But there is sometimes a twist to Mr. Richardson’s hunts — he spends a few nights a week cruising the dirt roads of Stonewall County, a place with more hogs than people, to run down the wild animals using only his dogs and his bare hands. “It’s for fun,” he said. It has also become lucrative as Europeans and an increasing number of Americans clamor for wild boar. Mr. Richardson said he made $28,000 last year selling live feral hogs....
Profit in the Pumpkin Patch Two semitruck loads of pumpkins recently traveled from a Canyonville farm to Southern California. Those pumpkins likely ended up at a produce vendor’s stand. From there, to a family’s home. Eventually, many will probably be carved with a funky face, stuffed with a candle and put on a windowsill or porch for display leading up to Halloween. More than 150,000 pounds of pumpkins came from Mary’s Garden in Canyonville. Owner Mary Laurance sells pumpkins wholesale. She gets 10 cents a pound, on average. “It is a pretty good business,” she said. “This year, I just had an exceptionally good crop of pumpkins.” Laurance has been growing and selling pumpkins for 15 years. While she grows “everything,” she said pumpkins are the winter’s top seller....
Column - Give me a home where the buffalo roam Who would not want a home where the buffalo roam? In Southern Missouri, we are home to a great variety of family ranches and many value-added livestock operations. These ranches are part of our history and our heritage, and they are also an important part of our economy. When the federal government suggested a national animal identification system, I was skeptical. When they actually put forth a plan to make the system mandatory, I was disappointed. And when I discovered what that plan would do to our Southern Missouri ranching operations, I was furious. The U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed a national animal identification system (NAIS) that would require ranches to register their premises, tag their animals, and regularly report the movement of their animals to a government agency. Worse, if one of these animals were to get sick, at any point in the journey from field to sale barn to stockyard to slaughter, the trace-back mechanisms in this program would point a finger at the rancher, regardless of what happened in between. The monetary burdens of the mandatory program, and the liability for sick animals, would undoubtedly fall at the feet of the rancher, who is sure to assume the costs of implementing the NAIS. Those costs would be passed along each level in the supply chain, reflected only when the rancher sells his or her cattle and when the consumer goes to the supermarket to buy a steak. The middlemen look to get off scot-free. Finally, USDA proposed that this program be made mandatory by 2009, meaning every rancher in America would be forced to comply with these rules. At that point I, and the ranchers I represent, have had enough. I introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to stop the mandatory NAIS, and our U.S. Senator from Missouri, Jim Talent, introduced a similar bill in the Senate. Rather than crush our ranchers beneath the wheel of big government, I want a sound, but completely voluntary program to let ranchers who wish to track their cattle do so....
Old cattle crime rears its head again Some of the nation's largest beef-producing states are fighting a resurgence in a centuries-old crime: cattle rustling. The thefts, including one high-profile case involving the ranch of baseball legend Nolan Ryan, are directly related to the rising cost of beef, said Larry Gray, enforcement chief with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA). The TSCRA, which draws its members from Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, reported $6.2 million in livestock thefts — mostly cattle — in 2005, up from $4 million in 2004. In the past three to four years, John McBride, a spokesman for the Livestock Marketing Association, said cattle prices have approached all-time highs. "As the cattle industry has escalated, so have the number of thefts," said Joyce English, vice president of the association's Livestock Board of Trade. "Everything follows the money." Last fall, a flurry of calls from more than a dozen victims, including the foreman of Ryan's Texas ranch, reported 17 cows and 14 calves were missing. A couple of weeks later, an additional 16 calves were stolen from Ryan's spread. The reports led two investigators with the TSCRA to charge a 27-year-old suspect with running an old-time rustling enterprise valued at more than $250,000 after being in operation a little less than a year. Gray said the suspect allegedly used the livestock, most of which was branded, to bolster his own herd and sold off the calves as they were born. The break in the case came, Gray said, when one of the stolen animals was brought for sale....
Paying homage to heritage When John B. Dawson bought several homestead sites in 1903 and formed the Dawson ranch east of Hayden, he surely appreciated the beauty of the Yampa River Valley, lush with cottonwood trees lining the river and wildlife roaming the grass valley floor. The Dawson Ranch, purchased by Farrington Carpenter and known as the Carpenter Ranch since 1945, is just one of the ranches of this region that Northwest Colorado Cultural Heritage and Tourism is promoting as a local gem for tourists to explore. "This place is going to be here from now on," said Geoff Blakeslee, project director for the Nature Conservancy, which purchased the ranch in 1996. "This barn was built in 1903 out of cottonwood trees from near the river." A tour of Routt County ranches was conducted Saturday for the Cultural Heritage Tourism quarterly workshop. Thirty-five members toured the Carpenter Ranch, Morgan Bottom, and the Delaney Ranch to experience a small fraction of what the organization hopes will draw tourists to Northwest Colorado....
The bucking starts here — Drummond breeding business raises bulls for rodeo circuit On the east end of town, you could drive across the tracks and under a gate post framed by the silhouettes of two vertical bucking bulls — And under most radars in this home of World Famous Bullshippers. ‘‘Most of the ranchers know what we’re doing because we’re in the cattle business,’’ Rod Conat said as he slogged through a bull pen behind the C&G Rodeo Livestock arena. ‘‘But as far as the majority of the people in town, you ask them what we’re doing over here, they’d say, ‘I don’t really know.’’’ The region is long known for its Hereford and Angus cattle, and for the railroad docks where those animals are loaded and sent off to become choice prime ribs and steak. Now Conat, his wife, Bonnie, and partner Steven Graveley of Helmville are quietly building a breeding business that puts Drummond on the map for a different kind of bull — the one that bucks. Sequestered in a pen apart from the 100 or so bulls on the muddy grounds are Spitfire, Aces High and Zipper Twister. The Conats and Graveley, who’ve hauled bulls some 60,000 miles this year to faraway stops on the Professional Bull Riders tour, are gearing up to take the three to Las Vegas next week....
New Show Aims To Find Match For Bachelor Farmer Move over Eva Gabor. Your Green Acres rerun days as city-girl-turned-farmer's-wife appear to be numbered. On Sunday, farmers and ranchers from around Texas came for the first of four open casting calls across the country for a new reality show from the producers of "American Idol" and "The Price is Right." In "The Farmer Wants a Wife," city girls and others will vie for a chance to become a farmer's wife. Micah Keeney didn't come in a cowboy hat or boots from nearby Shallowater, preferring his typical "comfy" farmer look. He lives alone in a small, old farmhouse on his more than 3,700 acres of cotton, cattle and hay. Though he doesn't date, the 24-year-old blond said he thought he'd come see if he could find a single woman willing to come live on the land with him. The show will air next year on one of the four major networks, said Billy Kemp, the head of casting for Fremantle Media....
Private lands needed for wildlife habitat Animals generally don't respond to those pesky boundaries placed by human society - they pretty much move among private, state, federal and tribal lands across Wyoming. But ask a wildlife biologist, rancher or farmer, and they'll all say the same thing: Private lands play a big role with Wyoming's wildlife, mostly by providing seasonal range for big game. A recent University of Wyoming-sponsored report, "Open Spaces Initiative," showed that private lands are crucial to herd size and viability for Wyoming's six major big-game species - elk, moose, antelope, bighorn sheep, mule deer and white-tailed deer. "Clearly, something in the neighborhood of 70 percent of the wildlife in this state spend part or all of their time on private lands," said Bob Budd, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resources Trust board. "Development tends to break that landscape up, and when you do, that has an impact on a lot of species."....
Researchers study how thinning helps stand of old-growth trees About 75 years later, a forest researcher named Steve Arno found his way in among this island of old-growth trees. His mission was to chart the fire history and characteristics of the stand. Using tree rings as his guide, Arno determined that fire had been a frequent visitor to the site as far back as the 16th century - right through the mid-1880s. Between 1885 and the fire of 1919, not much happened. From 1919 on, fires were squelched and the stand began to change. In that 75-year span, the stand missed three or four fire cycles. Small trees that normally would have succumbed to the flames got a foothold. The stand started to fill in. By the time Arno came on the scene, there were between 500 and 600 trees on every acre. Other than the ancient larch and ponderosa pine, most of the newcomers were shade-tolerant species such as Douglas and grand fir. Competition was fierce for water and nutrients. In many cases, the old-growth trees were suffering. On top of that, the potential for fire was tremendous in the thickly stocked stand....
'Cut carbon emissions now or face economic calamity later' A STARK warning of the economic costs and damage to the world that could result from global warming will be set out today in a report to be submitted to the Government. Sir Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist at the World Bank, will advise that the costs of confronting climate change are far outweighed by those of failing to act in time. His 700-word report forecasts floods, famine, mass movement of people and the destruction of species if the Earth’s temperature continues to rise. Gordon Brown, who commissioned the report, will accept its main recommendation for a global carbon-trading scheme to enforce limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The Chancellor will also announce that Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, is to advise him on environmental policy. Sir Nicholas’s report, hailed as the most comprehensive study of the economics of climate change yet, makes the case for early action to avoid a calamitous recession later. Acting now to cut carbon emissions would cost 1 per cent of global GDP a year; by doing nothing, the costs at the time would be a minimum of 5 per cent and as high as 20 per cent of GDP a year, he concludes....
Column - Wolves, cowboys and the truth John Wayne, the most iconic cowboy of our time, once said, "Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." Wise words, indeed. When it comes to wolves, the cowboys running Wyoming's government apparently believe the wisdom of yesterday is best gained by acting as if it still is yesterday - or, more precisely, that it is 1906, not 2006. Recently, Wyoming sued the federal government over the government's rejection of Wyoming's plan to allow unregulated killing of wolves outside of the state's two national parks. Notably, the federal government still protects wolves as an endangered species, meaning that the territory outside of the national parks is integral to wolf recovery. Undeterred by such legal logic, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal clicked his spurs together and said of the decision to sue, "We'd been kicked around the barroom enough, and now it's time to fight back." Unfortunately, Wyoming's tantrum drags the taxpaying public into a frivolous and prohibitively expensive legal quagmire where nobody but the lawyers survive - and to what end? Well, Wyoming officials insist that their wolf management plan will protect wolves (granting them safe haven inside the national parks) while also protecting the state's livestock industry, by allowing anyone with a gun to kill wolves that roam into other areas of the state. The state's livestock lobby insists that anything less would allow wolves to eat them out of house and home. Moreover, they contend that coyotes, mountain lions and bears already threaten to drive ranchers out of business in the Cowboy State. In the spirit of learning from yesterday, it's worth looking at some of the evidence that supports (or refutes) the fear of wild carnivores that grips Wyoming's cowboy caucus. Particularly useful is data gathered by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) regarding livestock killed by various wild carnivores. For cattle, data from 2005 indicate that wild carnivores and dogs killed 0.18 percent of the nation's cows, while 4 percent were lost to other causes including disease, birthing problems, weather and theft. Notably, of the cattle lost to wild carnivores in 2005, wolves killed only 0.02 percent....
Turf wars in Idaho's wilderness Wolf researcher Jim Akenson is riding a mule on an icy mountain trail in central Idaho when he comes upon a dead cougar. Suddenly, a pack of wolves materializes and begins howling. For one terrifying moment, the 48-year-old biologist thinks his startled mules are going to stampede and carry him off a 200-foot cliff into Big Creek. "We could not turn around," says Akenson, describing that tense winter episode four years ago in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. "It is the most precarious condition you can imagine, with wolves howling around you." The crisis ends quickly. Akenson's saddle mule, Daisy, gives the carcass an indifferent sniff, steps over it and proceeds down the trail. Cricket and Rocky, his pack mules, follow, paying the wolves no heed. Akenson shrugs it off as part of life in the Idaho wilderness. "There are circumstances when you could be in trouble with wolves," he muses. "But I think they are very rare." Akenson and his biologist wife, Holly, 48, are in the ninth year of a University of Idaho-sponsored research project on wolf and cougar interaction. They live and work at the Taylor Ranch Field Station, deep inside the largest block of contiguous wilderness in the lower 48 states....
Nebraska gov to sign Platte deal Gov. Dave Heineman on Friday said he will sign a three-state agreement that could improve and protect one of Nebraska's most vital resources, the Platte River, but that groundwater irrigators say might eventually cripple portions of the rural economy. "It provides regulatory certainty; it protects our state's farmers and ranchers from potential federal actions that could be detrimental," Heineman said about his decision to sign the Platte River Cooperative Agreement. He said he possibly spent more time on the issue than any other since becoming governor. "This is a difficult decision," he said. "There's no question the state is divided." Besides Nebraska, the cooperative agreement includes Wyoming, Colorado and the U.S. Department of Interior. Colorado Gov. Bill Owens signed the agreement Friday and Wyoming is expected to sign. The river recovery plan called for in the agreement includes acquiring land for wildlife habitat in Nebraska and increasing river flows at key times. It will cost about $317 million, with $157 million coming from the Interior Department and the rest from the three states in cash, land and water. Federal dollars have not yet received final approval....
With Hands and Hounds, Stalking Feral Hogs in Texas On a moonless October night, with the Milky Way staining the West Texas sky, a burly man in overalls turned off the engine of his mud-caked white Toyota truck. Yelps from coyotes and an owl’s hoot occasionally broke the silence. Then, from an open field, Bob Richardson heard the noise he had been awaiting. Four of his short-haired scent hounds, which had been released earlier, began to bark from the darkness. Mr. Richardson jumped out of the truck and freed a black pit bull from a cage on the truck’s flatbed. He chased after his pit bull into the darkness toward the barking hounds. He tripped in a wet ditch but kept running through the milo stalks. When he got to the baying dogs, the light on his miner’s hat revealed that the pit bull, trained for just this purpose, had clamped onto the face of a feral hog. As he had done thousands of times before, Mr. Richardson, 58, pounced on the snorting beast and tied its feet together, immobilizing it. Within minutes, he had loaded the animal barehanded into a cage. A lot of people in rural Texas catch wild hogs, which can grow to several hundred pounds, and Mr. Richardson traps them like most others. But there is sometimes a twist to Mr. Richardson’s hunts — he spends a few nights a week cruising the dirt roads of Stonewall County, a place with more hogs than people, to run down the wild animals using only his dogs and his bare hands. “It’s for fun,” he said. It has also become lucrative as Europeans and an increasing number of Americans clamor for wild boar. Mr. Richardson said he made $28,000 last year selling live feral hogs....
Profit in the Pumpkin Patch Two semitruck loads of pumpkins recently traveled from a Canyonville farm to Southern California. Those pumpkins likely ended up at a produce vendor’s stand. From there, to a family’s home. Eventually, many will probably be carved with a funky face, stuffed with a candle and put on a windowsill or porch for display leading up to Halloween. More than 150,000 pounds of pumpkins came from Mary’s Garden in Canyonville. Owner Mary Laurance sells pumpkins wholesale. She gets 10 cents a pound, on average. “It is a pretty good business,” she said. “This year, I just had an exceptionally good crop of pumpkins.” Laurance has been growing and selling pumpkins for 15 years. While she grows “everything,” she said pumpkins are the winter’s top seller....
Column - Give me a home where the buffalo roam Who would not want a home where the buffalo roam? In Southern Missouri, we are home to a great variety of family ranches and many value-added livestock operations. These ranches are part of our history and our heritage, and they are also an important part of our economy. When the federal government suggested a national animal identification system, I was skeptical. When they actually put forth a plan to make the system mandatory, I was disappointed. And when I discovered what that plan would do to our Southern Missouri ranching operations, I was furious. The U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed a national animal identification system (NAIS) that would require ranches to register their premises, tag their animals, and regularly report the movement of their animals to a government agency. Worse, if one of these animals were to get sick, at any point in the journey from field to sale barn to stockyard to slaughter, the trace-back mechanisms in this program would point a finger at the rancher, regardless of what happened in between. The monetary burdens of the mandatory program, and the liability for sick animals, would undoubtedly fall at the feet of the rancher, who is sure to assume the costs of implementing the NAIS. Those costs would be passed along each level in the supply chain, reflected only when the rancher sells his or her cattle and when the consumer goes to the supermarket to buy a steak. The middlemen look to get off scot-free. Finally, USDA proposed that this program be made mandatory by 2009, meaning every rancher in America would be forced to comply with these rules. At that point I, and the ranchers I represent, have had enough. I introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to stop the mandatory NAIS, and our U.S. Senator from Missouri, Jim Talent, introduced a similar bill in the Senate. Rather than crush our ranchers beneath the wheel of big government, I want a sound, but completely voluntary program to let ranchers who wish to track their cattle do so....
Old cattle crime rears its head again Some of the nation's largest beef-producing states are fighting a resurgence in a centuries-old crime: cattle rustling. The thefts, including one high-profile case involving the ranch of baseball legend Nolan Ryan, are directly related to the rising cost of beef, said Larry Gray, enforcement chief with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA). The TSCRA, which draws its members from Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, reported $6.2 million in livestock thefts — mostly cattle — in 2005, up from $4 million in 2004. In the past three to four years, John McBride, a spokesman for the Livestock Marketing Association, said cattle prices have approached all-time highs. "As the cattle industry has escalated, so have the number of thefts," said Joyce English, vice president of the association's Livestock Board of Trade. "Everything follows the money." Last fall, a flurry of calls from more than a dozen victims, including the foreman of Ryan's Texas ranch, reported 17 cows and 14 calves were missing. A couple of weeks later, an additional 16 calves were stolen from Ryan's spread. The reports led two investigators with the TSCRA to charge a 27-year-old suspect with running an old-time rustling enterprise valued at more than $250,000 after being in operation a little less than a year. Gray said the suspect allegedly used the livestock, most of which was branded, to bolster his own herd and sold off the calves as they were born. The break in the case came, Gray said, when one of the stolen animals was brought for sale....
Paying homage to heritage When John B. Dawson bought several homestead sites in 1903 and formed the Dawson ranch east of Hayden, he surely appreciated the beauty of the Yampa River Valley, lush with cottonwood trees lining the river and wildlife roaming the grass valley floor. The Dawson Ranch, purchased by Farrington Carpenter and known as the Carpenter Ranch since 1945, is just one of the ranches of this region that Northwest Colorado Cultural Heritage and Tourism is promoting as a local gem for tourists to explore. "This place is going to be here from now on," said Geoff Blakeslee, project director for the Nature Conservancy, which purchased the ranch in 1996. "This barn was built in 1903 out of cottonwood trees from near the river." A tour of Routt County ranches was conducted Saturday for the Cultural Heritage Tourism quarterly workshop. Thirty-five members toured the Carpenter Ranch, Morgan Bottom, and the Delaney Ranch to experience a small fraction of what the organization hopes will draw tourists to Northwest Colorado....
The bucking starts here — Drummond breeding business raises bulls for rodeo circuit On the east end of town, you could drive across the tracks and under a gate post framed by the silhouettes of two vertical bucking bulls — And under most radars in this home of World Famous Bullshippers. ‘‘Most of the ranchers know what we’re doing because we’re in the cattle business,’’ Rod Conat said as he slogged through a bull pen behind the C&G Rodeo Livestock arena. ‘‘But as far as the majority of the people in town, you ask them what we’re doing over here, they’d say, ‘I don’t really know.’’’ The region is long known for its Hereford and Angus cattle, and for the railroad docks where those animals are loaded and sent off to become choice prime ribs and steak. Now Conat, his wife, Bonnie, and partner Steven Graveley of Helmville are quietly building a breeding business that puts Drummond on the map for a different kind of bull — the one that bucks. Sequestered in a pen apart from the 100 or so bulls on the muddy grounds are Spitfire, Aces High and Zipper Twister. The Conats and Graveley, who’ve hauled bulls some 60,000 miles this year to faraway stops on the Professional Bull Riders tour, are gearing up to take the three to Las Vegas next week....
New Show Aims To Find Match For Bachelor Farmer Move over Eva Gabor. Your Green Acres rerun days as city-girl-turned-farmer's-wife appear to be numbered. On Sunday, farmers and ranchers from around Texas came for the first of four open casting calls across the country for a new reality show from the producers of "American Idol" and "The Price is Right." In "The Farmer Wants a Wife," city girls and others will vie for a chance to become a farmer's wife. Micah Keeney didn't come in a cowboy hat or boots from nearby Shallowater, preferring his typical "comfy" farmer look. He lives alone in a small, old farmhouse on his more than 3,700 acres of cotton, cattle and hay. Though he doesn't date, the 24-year-old blond said he thought he'd come see if he could find a single woman willing to come live on the land with him. The show will air next year on one of the four major networks, said Billy Kemp, the head of casting for Fremantle Media....
Sunday, October 29, 2006
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
The Dust Police
by Larry Gabriel
Normally, the season of brisk nights, cool days and long shadows was Harry’s favorite time of year, but the corn harvest was not good this year.
Despite the comfort of his combine cab and a welcome day of sunshine, harvest was not fun. The yield was poor and the condition not much better due to prolonged drought.
Harry estimated the corn would bring in about twice the costs of harvesting it, but only half his total production costs. “That’s better than nothing,” he thought to himself as he watched a shiny, new, black Suburban pull up to the end of his field.
Even before two men in suits got out, Harry knew the visitors were city boys. They parked on the down-wind side of where the combine would come out. After the combine stopped and the dust settled, Harry climbed down from the cab to greet them.
“What can I do for you boys,” he asked.
“Well sir, we are from the federal government,” one said.
“What’s your business out here?” Harry replied.
“We are here to check out your dust,” the short one said. “We are with the United States Environmental Protection Agency,” the tall one added.
“What’s wrong with my dust,” Harry asked.
“Well sir, there is simply too much of it. A properly functioning combine should not emit as much dust as is coming from yours. We could see it for two miles and we are here to take some measurements to determine exactly how much above the permitted amount you are emitting,” the little one explained.
Harry raised the brim of his hat up and scratched his forehead with three dirty fingers and shook his head in disbelief. After a moment he said, “Now look here boys. You seem to be a little confused about the reality of things. You do know, don’t you, that combines don’t make dirt? They just blow around what God put on the crop. I don’t make dirt. I just move it around for a living.”
“Be that as it may sir, you are polluting the air we all breathe and it’s illegal,” the small guy said.
“So what’s your point,” Harry asked.
“The point is that you could receive a citation and possibly be forced to pay a fine if our readings support our observations,” the taller one explained.
“OK. Tell me this. Would you be willing to issue the same citation to any piece of equipment making a similar dust cloud in this county,” asked Harry.
“Absolutely, you just point him out and I will write him up right now,” the little one said.
“I’m mighty glad to hear that. Give that ticket to your partner here because I saw you fellows coming for three miles down that dirt road kicking up a cloud of dust while producing absolutely nothing. I will feel much better about my ticket, knowing that at least it was for something. I help produce the food you boys eat and, even if I stir a little dust, it’s worth doing,” Harry said.
Harry got on his combine, turned its tail into the nose of that shiny new vehicle and put the thresher and header in gear. The boys in the dirty tan Suburban left.
Not all stories worth telling are true.
Larry is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
The siren’s song of the West
By Julie Carter
It is a song not audible and yet it pierces the heart of men in every walk of life.
Like the music of the mythological being, the siren's song of the West pulls, tugs and creates within men an unexplainable desire.
It calls them to a way of life in place where renewed hope springs eternal and they believe for a better life in a less cluttered world.
The sirens of Greek mythology lived on a rocky island in the middle of the sea and sang melodies so beautiful that sailors passing by could not resist getting closer to them.
Following the sound of the music, the sailors would steer their boats towards them or jump in the water to get closer - both ending in disaster on the rocks.
Horace Greeley, has been credited for popularizing, 150 years ago, the idea of "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." Today, the West is still a magnet to men and women of all ages.
A study of Western culture revealed three out of five men and nearly half of women would like to be cowboys for at least a day. Many have opted for complete lifestyle changes.
In droves, they have packed up their lives and moved to the West, finding a place in the open spaces much like the 100 years of homesteaders.
The 2000 census showed eight of the ten fastest growing states are in the West, led by Nevada.
Two weeks ago, 1,200 Michigan residents stood in long lines eager to head for Wyoming's rugged, cold terrain answering a call to a job fair.
The sheer numbers dictate that not everybody can be a cowboy. But a good number will take on the trappings of the trade, buy a 40-acre ranchette, and put a rocking chair on the wrap-around porch to watch the sun set over a small barn that houses two horses, a 4-wheeler and a couple of llamas.
It is a new West and is clearly an amalgamation of the many phases of an evolving genre.
While the West does not own the cowboy, it is the cowboy that epitomizes the West in the minds of those that seek him.
Some men are born to ride and some men were born to sit in traffic. Some come to live in the West as it is now with a more modern version of the cowboy wearing sponsorship tags on his shirt and making a few hundred thousand dollars a year riding bulls or roping calves in the rodeos.
It is a West where cattle are still king and four door pickups and aluminum trailers ferry the cowboy crew miles across ranches, counties and states - a West where ranchers hang on to an ever-changing way of life necessitating better practices in order to stay on the land.
There are those who come to feed their soul from the history created by those who came west to grow with a new country.
These were men who rode hard, shot straight and died young. Their ghosts walk the boardwalks of old towns in western territories and call to a breed of modern man who find themselves living a century past their time.
While the siren of the West may not lure man to disaster, the man that heeds the call will find today's cowboy life is not in the clothes he wears or the substance of his dreams.
To this day I have not ever seen the visiting pilgrim come to the ranch, dressed out in his version of cowboy clothes, begging the boss to let him drive the feed pickup.
Now there is a sign of a complete lack of understanding about how the West is really won in this new millennium.
© Julie Carter 2006
The Dust Police
by Larry Gabriel
Normally, the season of brisk nights, cool days and long shadows was Harry’s favorite time of year, but the corn harvest was not good this year.
Despite the comfort of his combine cab and a welcome day of sunshine, harvest was not fun. The yield was poor and the condition not much better due to prolonged drought.
Harry estimated the corn would bring in about twice the costs of harvesting it, but only half his total production costs. “That’s better than nothing,” he thought to himself as he watched a shiny, new, black Suburban pull up to the end of his field.
Even before two men in suits got out, Harry knew the visitors were city boys. They parked on the down-wind side of where the combine would come out. After the combine stopped and the dust settled, Harry climbed down from the cab to greet them.
“What can I do for you boys,” he asked.
“Well sir, we are from the federal government,” one said.
“What’s your business out here?” Harry replied.
“We are here to check out your dust,” the short one said. “We are with the United States Environmental Protection Agency,” the tall one added.
“What’s wrong with my dust,” Harry asked.
“Well sir, there is simply too much of it. A properly functioning combine should not emit as much dust as is coming from yours. We could see it for two miles and we are here to take some measurements to determine exactly how much above the permitted amount you are emitting,” the little one explained.
Harry raised the brim of his hat up and scratched his forehead with three dirty fingers and shook his head in disbelief. After a moment he said, “Now look here boys. You seem to be a little confused about the reality of things. You do know, don’t you, that combines don’t make dirt? They just blow around what God put on the crop. I don’t make dirt. I just move it around for a living.”
“Be that as it may sir, you are polluting the air we all breathe and it’s illegal,” the small guy said.
“So what’s your point,” Harry asked.
“The point is that you could receive a citation and possibly be forced to pay a fine if our readings support our observations,” the taller one explained.
“OK. Tell me this. Would you be willing to issue the same citation to any piece of equipment making a similar dust cloud in this county,” asked Harry.
“Absolutely, you just point him out and I will write him up right now,” the little one said.
“I’m mighty glad to hear that. Give that ticket to your partner here because I saw you fellows coming for three miles down that dirt road kicking up a cloud of dust while producing absolutely nothing. I will feel much better about my ticket, knowing that at least it was for something. I help produce the food you boys eat and, even if I stir a little dust, it’s worth doing,” Harry said.
Harry got on his combine, turned its tail into the nose of that shiny new vehicle and put the thresher and header in gear. The boys in the dirty tan Suburban left.
Not all stories worth telling are true.
Larry is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
The siren’s song of the West
By Julie Carter
It is a song not audible and yet it pierces the heart of men in every walk of life.
Like the music of the mythological being, the siren's song of the West pulls, tugs and creates within men an unexplainable desire.
It calls them to a way of life in place where renewed hope springs eternal and they believe for a better life in a less cluttered world.
The sirens of Greek mythology lived on a rocky island in the middle of the sea and sang melodies so beautiful that sailors passing by could not resist getting closer to them.
Following the sound of the music, the sailors would steer their boats towards them or jump in the water to get closer - both ending in disaster on the rocks.
Horace Greeley, has been credited for popularizing, 150 years ago, the idea of "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." Today, the West is still a magnet to men and women of all ages.
A study of Western culture revealed three out of five men and nearly half of women would like to be cowboys for at least a day. Many have opted for complete lifestyle changes.
In droves, they have packed up their lives and moved to the West, finding a place in the open spaces much like the 100 years of homesteaders.
The 2000 census showed eight of the ten fastest growing states are in the West, led by Nevada.
Two weeks ago, 1,200 Michigan residents stood in long lines eager to head for Wyoming's rugged, cold terrain answering a call to a job fair.
The sheer numbers dictate that not everybody can be a cowboy. But a good number will take on the trappings of the trade, buy a 40-acre ranchette, and put a rocking chair on the wrap-around porch to watch the sun set over a small barn that houses two horses, a 4-wheeler and a couple of llamas.
It is a new West and is clearly an amalgamation of the many phases of an evolving genre.
While the West does not own the cowboy, it is the cowboy that epitomizes the West in the minds of those that seek him.
Some men are born to ride and some men were born to sit in traffic. Some come to live in the West as it is now with a more modern version of the cowboy wearing sponsorship tags on his shirt and making a few hundred thousand dollars a year riding bulls or roping calves in the rodeos.
It is a West where cattle are still king and four door pickups and aluminum trailers ferry the cowboy crew miles across ranches, counties and states - a West where ranchers hang on to an ever-changing way of life necessitating better practices in order to stay on the land.
There are those who come to feed their soul from the history created by those who came west to grow with a new country.
These were men who rode hard, shot straight and died young. Their ghosts walk the boardwalks of old towns in western territories and call to a breed of modern man who find themselves living a century past their time.
While the siren of the West may not lure man to disaster, the man that heeds the call will find today's cowboy life is not in the clothes he wears or the substance of his dreams.
To this day I have not ever seen the visiting pilgrim come to the ranch, dressed out in his version of cowboy clothes, begging the boss to let him drive the feed pickup.
Now there is a sign of a complete lack of understanding about how the West is really won in this new millennium.
© Julie Carter 2006
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