NEWS ROUNDUP
Guardsmen come to Colo. ranchers' rescue As a column of National Guard trucks rolled up to Billy Jack Hawkins' home on the plains, the 57-year-old rancher stomped his boots in the snow and marveled at the blizzard it had taken the troops more than four hours to dig through. "It's a bad one," the bearded Hawkins said of the snowstorm that buried his ranch and his only way back to town - 20 miles up the road - for six days. "We were locked in. No way out." Hundreds of National Guard members this week joined local and state officials spread across southeastern Colorado hunting for stranded ranchers and their multibillion-dollar herds of cattle. Helicopters delivered hundreds of bales of hay across the Oklahoma Panhandle, Kansas and Colorado's rangeland, while ranchers in smaller copters landed near frozen streams and broke up the ice with sledgehammers so their livestock could drink. Tens of thousands of cattle were caught in the blizzard that dumped up to 3 feet of snow a week ago in eastern Colorado and the Kansas and Nebraska plains....
Defense attorney blasts charges against fire crew boss His voice was barely audible in the small courtroom as Ellreese Daniels -- believed to be the first federal firefighter to face criminal charges for getting his crew trapped in a deadly forest fire -- made his initial appearance Thursday in federal court. The 46-year-old Daniels quietly answered the magistrate's questions regarding the manslaughter charges filed against him and then left the federal courthouse in Spokane. Outside the building, he stood silently beside his public defender as she blasted prosecutors for singling out Daniels for criminal charges involving the Thirtymile Fire near Winthrop that claimed the lives of four firefighters, all from Central Washington. n a telephone interview after Thursday's hearing, the mother of one of the killed firefighters said the criminal case was the beginning of accountability for the Forest Service. Kathie FitzPatrick of Yakima, who noted her daughter Karen was the youngest professional firefighter to be killed on the job in the United States, said she has no problem with Daniels being the only one to face charges in the Thirtymile Fire. "I agree that he's not the only person, but he certainly was at a pivotal point and could have directed them to safety, even in those last moments, and he didn't," FitzPatrick said. "If they are going to pinch somebody, that's a good place to start."....
2nd huge suit filed over use of Indian money Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne will be forced in 2007 to balance two major class action lawsuits, one involving billions of dollars owed to a half-million American Indian landowners, and now a trust-fund suit that includes more than 250 tribes. The Native American Rights Fund, a nonprofit law firm in Boulder, Colo., announced Wednesday the latest class action filing in federal district court in Washington, D.C. The tribal trust-fund suit seeks full and complete accountings from the Interior Department on tribal accounts worth an estimated $200 billion. "This lawsuit is a reflection of a huge historical problem with the federal government's mismanagement of tribal trust accounts," said Nez Perce Tribal Chairwoman Rebecca Miles. "We have tried to work with the agencies and we have tried to work with Congress. Our hope now is with the courts. We are pleased to step forward with NARF in leading this fight for Indian justice." For the Interior Department, the new suit nearly mirrors the decade-old Elouise Cobell lawsuit, which seeks a historical accounting of the individual trust fund money accounts managed by the department. Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton said the Cobell suit consumed the majority of her time in office....
Yellowstone wolves can wander far The identification of a sheep-killing predator in Eastern Montana is still unknown, but wolf biologists say it wouldn't be unusual for a wolf from the Yellowstone National Park ecosystem to wander that far. The latest evidence: A Yellowstone wolf that wandered more than 300 miles from home last spring before getting hit by a vehicle just east of Sturgis, S.D. DNA testing confirmed that the wolf came from the Yellowstone area, according to preliminary results last summer and a final report issued in late December. Similar genetic testing is being conducted on the animal that was shot Nov. 2 in Garfield County. The predator, blamed for killing more than 100 sheep over several months, was initially thought to be a wolf until federal agents shot it and examined it closely. The animal's reddish coat, along with its relatively good teeth and claws, raised doubts about whether it was one of the 1,200 or so wolves living in and around Yellowstone. DNA tests on the animal at University of California-Los Angeles and the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Ore., should shed light on its origins....
Defenders of Wildlife Celebrates 20th Anniversary of Wolf Compensation Program Over the last 20 years, Defenders of Wildlife has paid livestock owners in the northern Rockies nearly $700,000 from The Bailey Wildlife Foundation Wolf Compensation Trust, the first privately funded program to reimburse 100 percent of the market value of verified livestock losses to wolves. Defenders initiated the program to help reduce the economic impact of wolf reintroduction on local ranchers, despite the fact that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) reports that less than 1 percent of all livestock mortalities in the northern Rockies have been caused by wolves. Reports issued by the National Agricultural Statistics Service show that significantly more livestock are lost to disease, birthing problems, injuries, theft and other predators than wolves. From 1987 through 2006, Defenders paid livestock owners for more than 650 cattle, approximately 1,645 sheep (including mature unborn lambs and deaths from injuries), 35 livestock guarding and herding dogs, 10 goats, 10 horses, six llamas, an alpaca, a donkey and a mule. These numbers also include "probable" losses, for which Defenders pays 50 percent of the market value....
New Motion Filed to Stop BLM's Wild Horse Round Up The Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest service started rounding up wild horses and burros from the Spring Mountains Wednesday. The government says it's necessary because there are too many animals and not enough food. Already 125 wild burros have been captured, but animal activists hope to put a stop to the roundup. Late Thursday afternoon, lawyers for wild horse advocates asked a federal judge to put an end to the current roundup. A similar request was rejected by Federal Court Judge Kent Dawson last week. Lawyer John Cereso filed documents around 4 p.m. Thursday, which ask for an emergency injunction to prevent the roundup from moving forward....
Supreme Court to vote Friday on Lolo post-burn case A coalition of forest industry groups joined Mineral County in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider the Lolo post-burn case. If they do not, the groups say, the nine-state region served by the Ninth Circuit court could face “analysis paralysis” for years to come. The justices are expected to vote Friday on whether to take on the case. Their decision will be announced Monday Jan. 8 at 10 a.m. Eastern time. The forest industry groups enhanced Mineral County’s case by pointing out that the Ninth Circuit Court decision is contrary to Supreme Court precedents and in conflict with rulings of nine other circuits. The problem is the Ninth Circuit, the brief suggested, and its “increasingly aberrant NEPA jurisprudence.” Between 2002 and 2006, the Forest Service won 35 of 37 NEPA or NFMA cases in the lower courts. The Ninth Circuit reversed 20 of those 35 cases, ruling against the Forest Service in every instance. Yet during the same period, the same agency, operating from the same laws, prevailed in 16 of 23 appeals in other circuits. “In both absolute numbers and proportions of adverse rulings against the Forest Service, the Ninth Circuit is in a different legal universe than the rest of the country,” the brief concludes. The Supreme Court itself unanimously reversed all five Ninth Circuit cases involving NEPA. It also reversed six of seven other Ninth Circuit environmental decisions, four unanimously, the brief pointed out....
Interagency Web site to manage natural resources Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are leading an effort to develop an interagency Web portal that will help the nation’s natural resource managers and others get better information about how people’s behavior and actions affect environments. NOAA’s Coastal Services Center -- which is based in Charleston, S.C., and provides technology, services and information to coastal resource managers -- is spearheading development of HumanDimensions.gov (HD). The portal is intended to provide case studies, policies and legislation, methodologies, agency-specific information, a calendar of events and an online forum that will focus on the application of social science to natural resource management. According to the HD.gov portal, which currently only provides scant information about the project, there is a wide variety of social science information as it relates to natural resource management on the Internet, but the information is redundant and incomplete....
Editorial - Protect Waldo's purity Unique natural treasures impose upon their custodians unique responsibilities. For that reason, the extreme purity of Waldo Lake requires that the Willamette National Forest take extreme care to protect against degradation. Errors should be on the side of caution; close calls should be decided in the lake's favor. After nearly 10 years of discussion and study, boats with gas-powered engines should be banned from Waldo Lake. Waldo Lake, located 20 miles east of Oakridge, is the headwaters of the North Fork of the Willamette River. It is among the clearest lakes in the world - geologically akin to Lake Tahoe and chemically like Crater Lake, but more pure than either. The Atlas of Oregon Lakes describes Waldo's clarity as "closely similar to that of rainwater in a pristine envi- ronment." The greatest threat to Waldo Lake's purity comes from human intrusion, which accelerated by a factor of 10 with the construction of a paved road in 1969. The road made Waldo Lake readily accessible from Eugene and other Willamette Valley communities. While people create more problems for the lake than the boats they bring with them, the precautionary principle - do nothing that can't be undone - argues for a policy recognizing that oil and water don't mix....
Lynx shooting lands Van Buren man in jail for 21 days A Van Buren man who said that his shooting of a lynx was a case of mistaken identity was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court to 21 days in jail for possessing a federally protected threatened species. Ricky Learnard, 41, pleaded guilty to the charge, just prior to sentencing. Learnard told U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Kravchuk that he had been hunting for grouse near his home in late November 2005 when he shot at what he thought was a bobcat. "We were inadvertently stalking the same prey," Learnard said of himself and the lynx. "It was three feet from us, crouched down in tall grass. When it leapt toward the grouse, I shot it in the air. When I went over to look at it and saw its large paws, I knew it was a lynx ... Once I knew it was a lynx I did things I shouldn’t have." The investigation that led to Learnard’s court appearance began on Jan. 12, 2006, when Kevin L. Fortin, 57, of Van Buren was stopped at the Hamlin border crossing with 30 pelts in the back of his truck. One pelt labeled "bobcat" was a lynx, according to court documents....
Editorial - When polar bears are political pawns Normally, when parties settle a lawsuit, each side makes some concessions. Which is why it's puzzling, to say the least, that the Bush administration asked for so little when it abandoned a legal fight with environmental groups over the role of the Endangered Species Act in protecting polar bears. The bears are already protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. That law prevents anyone from attempting to "harass, hunt, capture or kill" polar bears and other animals covered by the act, such as porpoises and manatees. It also severely limits the importation and sale of trophies or other products from the covered species. Nor is the bear population in alarming decline - if it is in decline at all. And developers obviously aren't building subdivisions across the tundra and threatening bear habitat. So what's going on? Placing the bears under the jurisdiction of the species act would give environmentalists added legal leverage to target the construction of U.S. power plants anywhere in the country that use fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases that arguably might contribute to the melting of the polar icecaps. The goal would be to get regulators and courts to impose an energy diet on the nation without the input of elected lawmakers and without any assurance that the economically crippling policy would boost polar bear populations....
Cloud seeding plan for range stirs fears A proposed cloud seeding experiment in the Wind River Range that officials say could help solve water shortages is ill-advised according to conservation groups who worry about the project’s proximity to the Bridger Wilderness. The experiment, which would be conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, is designed to determine how well the technology works to produce more snowfall. Researchers would use 12 generators strategically placed in the Bridger-Teton National Forest near the Wind River Range in addition to five generators that are currently in place on private and state lands. The Bridger-Teton expects to start the public-involvement process on the project this month. The five-year study could open the door for a permanent cloud seeding operation that officials say would help agriculture, fisheries, hydropower, municipal water supplies and other forms of water use. Researchers finished a similar experiment in the Star Valley area in the fall of 2006. Conservation groups oppose the study, which they say could affect animal and plant ecosystems as well as deprive downwind locations of much needed precipitation. They also question whether the Wilderness Act, which protects the Wind River Range as a place to be preserved in its “natural condition,” would allow cloud seeding....
Reclamation Bureau Changes Grounds for Firing E-Mailing Biologist In an unusual move, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has withdrawn a proposed termination of a biologist for being "subversive" and revealing "administratively controlled information" in sending e-mails to environmentalists and other agencies. Instead, the agency has substituted a new letter proposing dismissal on the grounds of causing "embarrassment" and putting the agency in a "negative light," according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The renewed effort to fire the biologist for reporting violations of law and improprieties sets up a new test for federal whistleblower laws. Pending a final agency decision, Charles (Rex) Wahl, a GS-12 Environmental Specialist, remains on paid administrative leave, as he has been since mid-September. In October, Reclamation also dismissed Wahl's wife Cherie from a temporary clerk-typist position. The agency action concerns seven e-mails Wahl sent to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), Army Corps and an environmental group between February and May 2006. In each message, Wahl alerted the recipients as to potential problems in filings made and reports compiled by Reclamation. Originally, the agency had cited 11 e-mails from Wahl, including one to his ex-wife who now works at FWS, discussing a video of wetlands in the Colorado River region....
Water ruling stands The government has chosen not to appeal a federal judge's September ruling throwing out an agreement governing the amount of water flowing in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The Interior Department had filed notice it might appeal the ruling by U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer, but withdrew the notice last week, clearing the way for work to determine how much water the river needs through the canyon to satisfy the needs of wildlife and human uses. Brimmer in September said a 2003 agreement forcing the Black Canyon National Park to give up its 1933 water right to the river without public involvement was "nonsensical." He overturned the plan, which set a minimum flow of 300 cubic feet per second....
It’s The Pitts: Watered Stock A long time ago I heard an unsubstantiated rumor that there was once a cowboy who went to town and did not drink. I never did believe it. I do have first hand knowledge though of a set of calves that went to town and wouldn’t drink. Many years ago I was out back, in the pens, at an auction market looking at some cows I was thinking of buying during a special cow sale later in the day. While walking around in my usual vacant stupor I came across a most unusual sight: In a big pen holding a set of drouthed-out desert calves someone had dug a ditch and let the water trough overflow so that the water would run down that ditch. Being of a curious nature, I asked the auction owner what was going on with the new river. He explained that three days prior a consignor had sent him a set of calves to sell that came from the high desert of northern Arizona. They had just been taken off the cow so naturally they came off the truck bawling, looking for their mothers and practically cut in two by the long journey. The auction owner had three days to get them presentable but after a couple hours he noticed that, although they were eating the good hay he provided, they weren’t filling up....
Friday, January 05, 2007
Thursday, January 04, 2007
USDA PROPOSES TO ALLOW ADDITIONAL IMPORTS FROM BSE MINIMAL-RISK COUNTRIES
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service today announced a proposal to expand the list of allowable imports from countries recognized as presenting a minimal risk of introducing bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) into the United States. Currently, Canada is the only minimal-risk country designated by the United States. "This proposal would continue to protect against BSE in the United States while taking the next step forward in our efforts to implement science-based trade relations with countries that have appropriate safeguards in place to prevent BSE," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. "We previously recognized Canada's comprehensive set of safeguards and we have now completed a risk assessment confirming that additional animals and products can be safely traded. Our approach is consistent with science-based international guidelines." The proposal expands upon a rule published by APHIS in January 2005 that allowed the importation of certain live ruminants and ruminant products, including cattle under 30 months of age for delivery to a slaughterhouse or feedlot, from countries recognized as minimal-risk. In the rule announced today, APHIS is proposing to allow the importation of:
* Live cattle and other bovines for any use born on or after, March 1, 1999, the date determined by APHIS to be the date of effective enforcement of the ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban in Canada;
* Blood and blood products derived from bovines, collected under certain conditions; and
* Casings and part of the small intestine derived from bovines.
As part of the proposal, APHIS conducted a thorough risk assessment following guidelines put forth by the World Organization for Animal Health, or OIE, and found that the risk associated with these commodities is minimal. This assessment evaluated the entire risk pathway, including mitigations in place both in Canada and the United States. The assessment included evaluating the likelihood of introduction of BSE via imports, the likelihood of animal exposure if this were to occur and the subsequent consequences. All of these were combined to give the overall minimal risk estimation. It is important to note that BSE transmission is prevented in bovines by a series of safeguards, including; slaughter controls and dead animal disposal, rendering inactivation, feed manufacturing and use controls, and biologic limitations to susceptibility. These layers of protection work together to prevent spread of the disease. In the United States, human health is protected by a system of interlocking safeguards that ensure the safety of U.S. beef. The most important of these safeguards is the ban on specified risk materials from the food supply and the Food and Drug Administration's ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban. Canada has similar safeguards in place. The risk assessment concluded that for all the commodities considered under the current proposal, the risk of BSE infectivity is minimal and the disease will not become established in the United States. The proposed rule will be published in the Jan. 9, 2007 Federal Register and is available on our Web site at www.aphis.usda.gov . APHIS invites comments on this proposed rule. Consideration will be given to comments received on or before March 12, 2007. Send an original and three copies of postal mail or commercial delivery comments to Docket No. APHIS-2006-0041, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8, 4700 River Road, Unit 118, Riverdale, Md. 20737-1238. If you wish to submit a comment using the Internet, go to the Federal eRulemaking portal at http://www.regulations.gov , select "Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service" from the agency drop-down menu; then click on "Submit." In the Docket ID column, select APHIS-2006-0041 to submit or view public comments and to view the proposal and the supporting and related materials available electronically. Comments are posted on the Regulations.gov Web site and may also be viewed at USDA, Room 1141, South Building, 14th St. and Independence Ave., S.W., Washington, D.C., between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. To facilitate entry into the comment reading room, please call (202) 690-2817.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service today announced a proposal to expand the list of allowable imports from countries recognized as presenting a minimal risk of introducing bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) into the United States. Currently, Canada is the only minimal-risk country designated by the United States. "This proposal would continue to protect against BSE in the United States while taking the next step forward in our efforts to implement science-based trade relations with countries that have appropriate safeguards in place to prevent BSE," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. "We previously recognized Canada's comprehensive set of safeguards and we have now completed a risk assessment confirming that additional animals and products can be safely traded. Our approach is consistent with science-based international guidelines." The proposal expands upon a rule published by APHIS in January 2005 that allowed the importation of certain live ruminants and ruminant products, including cattle under 30 months of age for delivery to a slaughterhouse or feedlot, from countries recognized as minimal-risk. In the rule announced today, APHIS is proposing to allow the importation of:
* Live cattle and other bovines for any use born on or after, March 1, 1999, the date determined by APHIS to be the date of effective enforcement of the ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban in Canada;
* Blood and blood products derived from bovines, collected under certain conditions; and
* Casings and part of the small intestine derived from bovines.
As part of the proposal, APHIS conducted a thorough risk assessment following guidelines put forth by the World Organization for Animal Health, or OIE, and found that the risk associated with these commodities is minimal. This assessment evaluated the entire risk pathway, including mitigations in place both in Canada and the United States. The assessment included evaluating the likelihood of introduction of BSE via imports, the likelihood of animal exposure if this were to occur and the subsequent consequences. All of these were combined to give the overall minimal risk estimation. It is important to note that BSE transmission is prevented in bovines by a series of safeguards, including; slaughter controls and dead animal disposal, rendering inactivation, feed manufacturing and use controls, and biologic limitations to susceptibility. These layers of protection work together to prevent spread of the disease. In the United States, human health is protected by a system of interlocking safeguards that ensure the safety of U.S. beef. The most important of these safeguards is the ban on specified risk materials from the food supply and the Food and Drug Administration's ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban. Canada has similar safeguards in place. The risk assessment concluded that for all the commodities considered under the current proposal, the risk of BSE infectivity is minimal and the disease will not become established in the United States. The proposed rule will be published in the Jan. 9, 2007 Federal Register and is available on our Web site at www.aphis.usda.gov . APHIS invites comments on this proposed rule. Consideration will be given to comments received on or before March 12, 2007. Send an original and three copies of postal mail or commercial delivery comments to Docket No. APHIS-2006-0041, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8, 4700 River Road, Unit 118, Riverdale, Md. 20737-1238. If you wish to submit a comment using the Internet, go to the Federal eRulemaking portal at http://www.regulations.gov , select "Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service" from the agency drop-down menu; then click on "Submit." In the Docket ID column, select APHIS-2006-0041 to submit or view public comments and to view the proposal and the supporting and related materials available electronically. Comments are posted on the Regulations.gov Web site and may also be viewed at USDA, Room 1141, South Building, 14th St. and Independence Ave., S.W., Washington, D.C., between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. To facilitate entry into the comment reading room, please call (202) 690-2817.
Hay falls to hungry cows Ranchers, pilots and snowmobilers on Wednesday searched for thousands of cattle trapped by heavy snow and high drifts in Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico. Eight Colorado National Guard helicopters and a C-130 cargo plane were dispatched in the state's campaign to save livestock herds snowed in by back-to-back holiday blizzards. Volunteer snowmobile search-and-rescue groups from elsewhere in the state joined the effort on the ground. "We think there are probably 30,000 head out there that are at risk that we're having to make sure we feed," said Maj. Gen. Mason Whitney of the Colorado Guard. An undetermined number of cows died in southwestern Kansas. One feedlot owner in Haskell County, Kan., said he lost 450 cattle and 20 dairy cows. "I don't know what we are going to do, how we are going to dispose of them," County Commissioner Gene Ochs said of the carcasses. Don Ament, Colorado agriculture commissioner, said a Lamar-area rancher said he could find only half of his 600-head herd. "You've got cattle walking over the tops of fences and just roaming around," Ament said....
N.M. residents try to reach hungry cattle Some of the snow has begun to melt, but officials in Union County, N.M., still are struggling to get their livestock fed and get on with their lives. After last weeks winter storm left estimates of as much as 40 inches of snow and drifts high as 16 feet, getting back to a normal way of life has been difficult. Clayton, N.M., city manager and emergency management coordinator Mike Running said most of the state roads would be clear by the end of the day Wednesday. The next step today will be clearing the county roads so trucks and equipment may get through to the hardest-hit areas, Running said. t's been difficult to get to the livestock in the area, Running said. "We do have access to National Guard helicopters, to do some air drops of food," he said. "The ranchers need the roads open so they can get to their cattle. Our process is being hindered by not being able to get our equipment to these areas." Another problem developing is getting propane to these areas, he said....
Ag director says snowstorms may bring heavy cattle losses Colorado's top agriculture director said Wednesday that it's too early to determine whether the back-to-back snowstorms over the Christmas and New Year's holiday have taken large casualties in cattle herds in Southeastern Colorado. Don Ament, who has served as Colorado’s lead agriculture official since 1999, earlier in the day announced that he is retiring. He said reports that the livestock on the Eastern Plains largely went unharmed by the recent storms are premature in their assessments. "Yesterday (Tuesday) was the first time we started getting farmers and ranchers out of their homesteads and ranch quarters and out to see where everything is," Ament said. "We don't have enough reconnaissance up here to know that we don't have a bunch of cattle buried in irrigation ditches and ravines." Ament said he's basing his thinking of a worst-case scenario on conversations with many farmers and ranchers who have told him "this is by far the worst storm we've ever had." Ament said he's keeping in mind that residents' most recent perspective is the 1997 blizzard in which 30,000 head of cattle were killed which translated to a $28 million loss to the region....
Cattle slimmer as large bands of prairie dogs enjoy fat of land Steers are slimmer when prairie dogs are around, says a new study detailing competition between cattle and the rodents. Prairie dogs in a big colony eat so much grass that cattle trying to graze the same range can't bulk up as much as those on prairie-dog-free land, the Colorado State University study found. The cost can be up to 38 pounds a season - roughly $38 per animal - according to CSU biologist Mike Antolin, one of the study's authors. Antolin and his colleagues also found no effect from small prairie dog colonies, occupying 5 percent or less of rangeland. "We're going to make everybody mad on this one," Antolin said. "They have impact, but they're not uniformly bad. Below a certain level, they don't take enough grass to compete with cattle." The team's work - published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment - is the first to calculate the economic toll exacted by prairie dogs on cattle production, Antolin said. Where prairie dog colonies extended over 20 percent of a range, the dollar value of steers' weight gain dropped by about 6 percent, according to the new study. Weight gain dropped by nearly 14 percent where prairie dogs occupied 60 percent of the land. Given the new data, ranchers shouldn't bother trying to kill prairie dogs, said CSU extension agronomist Randy Buhler, who was not involved in the study. The expense of bait, poison and labor to eliminate them "could be acutely hazardous to your profit," Buhler, of the Logan County extension office, wrote in the High Plains/Midwest Ag Journal....
GF&P: Lockout effect minimal The hunting lockout by landowners angry with Game, Fish & Parks Department policies hasn’t hurt hunting- licenses sales or reduced the number of deer and antelope killed during the past four seasons, GF&P Secretary John Cooper said. “From my standpoint, I certainly haven’t seen it have an impact on hunter access, licenses sales or the harvest of antelope and deer,” Cooper said. Organizers began the South Dakota lockout in 2003 to protest GF&P policies, particularly the agency’s policy of entering private land without permission to check hunters. Participants claim that the lockout totals more than 4 million acres, but Cooper said GF&P rarely hears from hunters who say they were denied access to private land....
Man renews drive to eliminate wolves A self-described wolf fighter from central Idaho has renewed his quest to win voter support for eliminating the predators from the state after failing to get a similar measure on last November's ballot. Ron Gillett, a hunting outfitter from Stanley, aims to gather enough voter signatures for his initiative in time for the general election in November 2008. Like last year's thwarted initiative, it calls for the state to end all wolf recovery efforts and to remove "all wolves reintroduced into Idaho from Canada to the extent allowed by law." Canadian gray wolves were brought to Idaho, starting with 35 animals in 1995 and 1996, after being hunted nearly to extinction. Since then, they've prospered in the state's rugged interior, with the population growing to about 650 animals in 60 packs this year. Gillett, who says he'll fight until all wolves have been driven from the state, argues they're eating too many elk and livestock and threatening the livelihoods of outfitters and ranchers. "There's only one way to manage wolves in Idaho, and it's to get rid of them," Gillett said Wednesday....
Year of the wolf: 2007 could be decisive year in long-running debate For Jack Turnell, the future of wolves in Wyoming will hit close to home. Turnell lives about 12 miles west of Meeteetse along the Greybull River. His home area, and the grazing area for his cattle, has been proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as trophy game country for wolves. Wyoming's current plan for wolves, once they're removed from federal protection, is to classify them as predators outside national parks and wilderness areas, allowing them to be shot on sight. That plan has been rejected by the federal government out of concern it wouldn't do enough to ensure wolves will not again become endangered. The new federal proposal would expand the area where wolves are considered trophy game -- subject to regulated killing -- to a broader area of public and private land in northwest Wyoming. The line would extend east to Cody and down through Meeteetse, to Pinedale and Alpine and to the Idaho border. Turnell said he would rather the trophy game area stay in the wilderness areas and national parks, as Wyoming originally proposed. But in order for that to happen, the state will likely need a victory in court....
Feds eye managing wolves state by state Wildlife managers in Montana and Idaho have been told wolves will be delisted in their states regardless of Wyoming's future. But what does that mean for the number of wolves each state must maintain? That was part of a question posed by Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer last week. Schweitzer said he had a discussion with federal officials about Montana's plan, and asked what will happen in Montana if wolf populations drop in Idaho and Wyoming. Schweitzer said he was told Montana will be judged on its own merits, and if Montana has 100 wolves in 10 breeding pairs, it is doing its part. "I'm wondering if it's true," Schweitzer said. Mitch King, regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Denver, said this week the agency is looking at a state-by-state management policy. So, if Montana or any other state is maintaining its required numbers and wolf populations plummet in other states, that compliant state can continue as it is....
Coyotes taking bite out of Hill Country On the opening morning of the 206-2007 archery-only season, I was set up in a ground blind near a deer trail in Llano County. At the crack of dawn, a lone coyote sounded off a few hundred yards away. It was soon joined by what sounded like a choir of coyotes on an adjoining hillside. I saw no deer that weekend and found coyote sign everywhere. Fast forward a month to the opening of the general season and the same thing happened with a lone coyote calling out but this time it sounded like it was joined by a full choir and symphony of its kin from every direction. I have hunted the Hill Country since 1986 and used to guide hunts for exotics in Kerr, Real and Edwards Counties and I have never heard so many coyotes or seen so much coyote sign as I have this year. A study based on predator control trapping conducted by U.S. Department of Agriculture showed that in the 1950s there were virtually no coyotes in the Hill Country. By 1960, there were 188 trapped and by 1980 that number had increased to 637. When the study concluded in 1994, there were 2,594 coyotes trapped in the study area that year alone....
Colorado-born lynx gives birth; milestone in reintroduction plan A lynx born in Colorado has given birth to two kittens, a major milestone in the state's ambitious attempt to reintroduce the elusive cats, researchers said Tuesday. It was the first documented case of a Colorado-born lynx giving birth since the reintroduction program began in 1999. The cat, born in 2004, gave birth to two males in mid-June, buoying hopes that lynx will develop into a self-sustaining population in the state. "From here on out, we're just waiting to see if we can maintain a good survival rate," said Tanya Shenk, the Colorado Division of Wildlife's lead researcher on the program. The news was tempered, however, by a dramatic reduction in the number of births this year. Colorado Division of Wildlife researchers found four dens with a total of 11 kittens, down from 18 dens with 50 kittens last year. Biologists are puzzled by the decline and studying possible reasons. Shenk said one possibility is that recent releases of adult cats could have disrupted the cats' social structure. But that is only speculation, she added....
Energy corridors 6 months behind schedule The designation of thousands of miles of “energy corridors” through 11 states, mandated by Congress in 2005 and meant to be implemented by August 2007, is proving to be more difficult than anticipated. A spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management acknowledged Wednesday that they probably will miss the August deadline, but added that the various federal agencies involved in the energy corridor effort agree that it’s better to do the job correctly than to rush through the process. “A two-year window to complete everything … I think that was a pretty aggressive timetable,” said Heather Feeney, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management. “Congress was notified that we were not going to make our original deadline for publishing the draft PEIS in December 2006; the ultimate interest is getting it done properly.” Instead, the draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) probably will be ready for public perusal by April or May, Feeney said. Once it’s issued, federal law requires a minimum 45-day comment period, followed by an internal analysis of any issues raised and formal written responses to those comments. It’s only after that process that a final Record of Decision, designating the corridors, would be issued — leading those involved in the process to believe they will miss the August 2007 deadline....
OMB Accepts “Rule 2“ On Canadian Beef The Office of Management and Budget has concluded its review of USDA’s “Rule 2“ that would liberalize imports of beef and cattle from Canada and returned it to USDA for publishing in the Congressional Record in the near future. OMB found the Proposed Rule, “BSE, Minimal Risk Regions and Importation of Commodities,“ both “economically significant and a major rule.“ Although the contents of the Proposed Rule are still unknown, the Rule is expected to allow, at minimum, the import of boneless beef from cattle over thirty months of age, and probably the import of live cattle over that age as well. In any case, there are still many steps to come, Ted Haney, chief executive of the Canadian Beef Export Federation tells Meatingplace.com. Once the Rule is published, it will be exposed to a comment period of 30 to 90 days, then another waiting period while USDA examines the comments, then another review by OMB, and finally possible Congressional action. “With the change to a Democratic Congress, it’s impossible to predict what the reaction will be,“ Haney says. Bill Bullard, chief executive of Ranchers-Cattlemen’s Action Legal Fund, which is suing USDA to prevent imports of live cattle from Canada, says his organization is encouraging its members to prod their representatives to in turn urge USDA to cease all action on the Proposed Rule. “We are hopeful that the (new Democratic-controlled Congress) will intervene with USDA to prevent adoption of this rule,“ Bullard tells Meatingplace.com. He adds that both Canada and the United States have at some point proposed strengthened feed bans, and that to resume trade in live animals before stronger feed bans are in place would be “irresponsible.“....
Western Comic Books And Super Heroes For bestselling writer Jeff Mariotte, 2007's Western Extravaganza begins on January 17 with the release of Desperadoes: Buffalo Dreams #1, launching a four-issue miniseries of that critically acclaimed western/horror comic book, with art by Alberto Dose (Flash). The four issues ship monthly from IDW Publishing. Additionally, the first Desperadoes miniseries, A Moment's Sunlight, with artwork by John Cassaday, has just become available online, in PDF form, at PullboxOnline.com. "I love the American west," Mariotte said. "The history, the natural beauty, the people. My neighbors are ranchers and cowboys, and my place is smack between Tombstone and Skeleton Canyon, where Geronimo's surrender ended the longest war in American history. I could hardly live here and not write about the west." Desperadoes is just the start of a year dominated by work involving the western genre. In March, Hachette Books will release DC Universe: Trail of Time, a novel teaming Superman, the Phantom Stranger and the Demon with DC Comics western heroes Jonah Hex, Bat Lash, Scalphunter, and El Diablo, and including a cameo by yet another classic DC western character....
Column: Baxter Black : A changing of the guard This year-end marks a political changing of the guard. It was a year of mixed blessings. The economy is booming, unemployment is down, the results of No Child Left Behind accountable education are encouraging, the prescription drug benefits program is a big success, we mark the fifth year of post 9-11 success of Homeland Security, the deficit reduction is ahead of schedule, the cattle market has remained strong, the drought has broken for a large part of America, but...It's not enough to overcome our deep concern about how to deal with terrorism overseas, the continuing financial gap between the upper middle class and the lower middle class, and the irony of the real danger of terrorist infiltration and a border so porous hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of illegals cross back and forth to Mexico every year. It would be such a gift to us all, such a relief, to see our president and our Congress find common ground....
N.M. residents try to reach hungry cattle Some of the snow has begun to melt, but officials in Union County, N.M., still are struggling to get their livestock fed and get on with their lives. After last weeks winter storm left estimates of as much as 40 inches of snow and drifts high as 16 feet, getting back to a normal way of life has been difficult. Clayton, N.M., city manager and emergency management coordinator Mike Running said most of the state roads would be clear by the end of the day Wednesday. The next step today will be clearing the county roads so trucks and equipment may get through to the hardest-hit areas, Running said. t's been difficult to get to the livestock in the area, Running said. "We do have access to National Guard helicopters, to do some air drops of food," he said. "The ranchers need the roads open so they can get to their cattle. Our process is being hindered by not being able to get our equipment to these areas." Another problem developing is getting propane to these areas, he said....
Ag director says snowstorms may bring heavy cattle losses Colorado's top agriculture director said Wednesday that it's too early to determine whether the back-to-back snowstorms over the Christmas and New Year's holiday have taken large casualties in cattle herds in Southeastern Colorado. Don Ament, who has served as Colorado’s lead agriculture official since 1999, earlier in the day announced that he is retiring. He said reports that the livestock on the Eastern Plains largely went unharmed by the recent storms are premature in their assessments. "Yesterday (Tuesday) was the first time we started getting farmers and ranchers out of their homesteads and ranch quarters and out to see where everything is," Ament said. "We don't have enough reconnaissance up here to know that we don't have a bunch of cattle buried in irrigation ditches and ravines." Ament said he's basing his thinking of a worst-case scenario on conversations with many farmers and ranchers who have told him "this is by far the worst storm we've ever had." Ament said he's keeping in mind that residents' most recent perspective is the 1997 blizzard in which 30,000 head of cattle were killed which translated to a $28 million loss to the region....
Cattle slimmer as large bands of prairie dogs enjoy fat of land Steers are slimmer when prairie dogs are around, says a new study detailing competition between cattle and the rodents. Prairie dogs in a big colony eat so much grass that cattle trying to graze the same range can't bulk up as much as those on prairie-dog-free land, the Colorado State University study found. The cost can be up to 38 pounds a season - roughly $38 per animal - according to CSU biologist Mike Antolin, one of the study's authors. Antolin and his colleagues also found no effect from small prairie dog colonies, occupying 5 percent or less of rangeland. "We're going to make everybody mad on this one," Antolin said. "They have impact, but they're not uniformly bad. Below a certain level, they don't take enough grass to compete with cattle." The team's work - published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment - is the first to calculate the economic toll exacted by prairie dogs on cattle production, Antolin said. Where prairie dog colonies extended over 20 percent of a range, the dollar value of steers' weight gain dropped by about 6 percent, according to the new study. Weight gain dropped by nearly 14 percent where prairie dogs occupied 60 percent of the land. Given the new data, ranchers shouldn't bother trying to kill prairie dogs, said CSU extension agronomist Randy Buhler, who was not involved in the study. The expense of bait, poison and labor to eliminate them "could be acutely hazardous to your profit," Buhler, of the Logan County extension office, wrote in the High Plains/Midwest Ag Journal....
GF&P: Lockout effect minimal The hunting lockout by landowners angry with Game, Fish & Parks Department policies hasn’t hurt hunting- licenses sales or reduced the number of deer and antelope killed during the past four seasons, GF&P Secretary John Cooper said. “From my standpoint, I certainly haven’t seen it have an impact on hunter access, licenses sales or the harvest of antelope and deer,” Cooper said. Organizers began the South Dakota lockout in 2003 to protest GF&P policies, particularly the agency’s policy of entering private land without permission to check hunters. Participants claim that the lockout totals more than 4 million acres, but Cooper said GF&P rarely hears from hunters who say they were denied access to private land....
Man renews drive to eliminate wolves A self-described wolf fighter from central Idaho has renewed his quest to win voter support for eliminating the predators from the state after failing to get a similar measure on last November's ballot. Ron Gillett, a hunting outfitter from Stanley, aims to gather enough voter signatures for his initiative in time for the general election in November 2008. Like last year's thwarted initiative, it calls for the state to end all wolf recovery efforts and to remove "all wolves reintroduced into Idaho from Canada to the extent allowed by law." Canadian gray wolves were brought to Idaho, starting with 35 animals in 1995 and 1996, after being hunted nearly to extinction. Since then, they've prospered in the state's rugged interior, with the population growing to about 650 animals in 60 packs this year. Gillett, who says he'll fight until all wolves have been driven from the state, argues they're eating too many elk and livestock and threatening the livelihoods of outfitters and ranchers. "There's only one way to manage wolves in Idaho, and it's to get rid of them," Gillett said Wednesday....
Year of the wolf: 2007 could be decisive year in long-running debate For Jack Turnell, the future of wolves in Wyoming will hit close to home. Turnell lives about 12 miles west of Meeteetse along the Greybull River. His home area, and the grazing area for his cattle, has been proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as trophy game country for wolves. Wyoming's current plan for wolves, once they're removed from federal protection, is to classify them as predators outside national parks and wilderness areas, allowing them to be shot on sight. That plan has been rejected by the federal government out of concern it wouldn't do enough to ensure wolves will not again become endangered. The new federal proposal would expand the area where wolves are considered trophy game -- subject to regulated killing -- to a broader area of public and private land in northwest Wyoming. The line would extend east to Cody and down through Meeteetse, to Pinedale and Alpine and to the Idaho border. Turnell said he would rather the trophy game area stay in the wilderness areas and national parks, as Wyoming originally proposed. But in order for that to happen, the state will likely need a victory in court....
Feds eye managing wolves state by state Wildlife managers in Montana and Idaho have been told wolves will be delisted in their states regardless of Wyoming's future. But what does that mean for the number of wolves each state must maintain? That was part of a question posed by Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer last week. Schweitzer said he had a discussion with federal officials about Montana's plan, and asked what will happen in Montana if wolf populations drop in Idaho and Wyoming. Schweitzer said he was told Montana will be judged on its own merits, and if Montana has 100 wolves in 10 breeding pairs, it is doing its part. "I'm wondering if it's true," Schweitzer said. Mitch King, regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Denver, said this week the agency is looking at a state-by-state management policy. So, if Montana or any other state is maintaining its required numbers and wolf populations plummet in other states, that compliant state can continue as it is....
Coyotes taking bite out of Hill Country On the opening morning of the 206-2007 archery-only season, I was set up in a ground blind near a deer trail in Llano County. At the crack of dawn, a lone coyote sounded off a few hundred yards away. It was soon joined by what sounded like a choir of coyotes on an adjoining hillside. I saw no deer that weekend and found coyote sign everywhere. Fast forward a month to the opening of the general season and the same thing happened with a lone coyote calling out but this time it sounded like it was joined by a full choir and symphony of its kin from every direction. I have hunted the Hill Country since 1986 and used to guide hunts for exotics in Kerr, Real and Edwards Counties and I have never heard so many coyotes or seen so much coyote sign as I have this year. A study based on predator control trapping conducted by U.S. Department of Agriculture showed that in the 1950s there were virtually no coyotes in the Hill Country. By 1960, there were 188 trapped and by 1980 that number had increased to 637. When the study concluded in 1994, there were 2,594 coyotes trapped in the study area that year alone....
Colorado-born lynx gives birth; milestone in reintroduction plan A lynx born in Colorado has given birth to two kittens, a major milestone in the state's ambitious attempt to reintroduce the elusive cats, researchers said Tuesday. It was the first documented case of a Colorado-born lynx giving birth since the reintroduction program began in 1999. The cat, born in 2004, gave birth to two males in mid-June, buoying hopes that lynx will develop into a self-sustaining population in the state. "From here on out, we're just waiting to see if we can maintain a good survival rate," said Tanya Shenk, the Colorado Division of Wildlife's lead researcher on the program. The news was tempered, however, by a dramatic reduction in the number of births this year. Colorado Division of Wildlife researchers found four dens with a total of 11 kittens, down from 18 dens with 50 kittens last year. Biologists are puzzled by the decline and studying possible reasons. Shenk said one possibility is that recent releases of adult cats could have disrupted the cats' social structure. But that is only speculation, she added....
Energy corridors 6 months behind schedule The designation of thousands of miles of “energy corridors” through 11 states, mandated by Congress in 2005 and meant to be implemented by August 2007, is proving to be more difficult than anticipated. A spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management acknowledged Wednesday that they probably will miss the August deadline, but added that the various federal agencies involved in the energy corridor effort agree that it’s better to do the job correctly than to rush through the process. “A two-year window to complete everything … I think that was a pretty aggressive timetable,” said Heather Feeney, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management. “Congress was notified that we were not going to make our original deadline for publishing the draft PEIS in December 2006; the ultimate interest is getting it done properly.” Instead, the draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) probably will be ready for public perusal by April or May, Feeney said. Once it’s issued, federal law requires a minimum 45-day comment period, followed by an internal analysis of any issues raised and formal written responses to those comments. It’s only after that process that a final Record of Decision, designating the corridors, would be issued — leading those involved in the process to believe they will miss the August 2007 deadline....
OMB Accepts “Rule 2“ On Canadian Beef The Office of Management and Budget has concluded its review of USDA’s “Rule 2“ that would liberalize imports of beef and cattle from Canada and returned it to USDA for publishing in the Congressional Record in the near future. OMB found the Proposed Rule, “BSE, Minimal Risk Regions and Importation of Commodities,“ both “economically significant and a major rule.“ Although the contents of the Proposed Rule are still unknown, the Rule is expected to allow, at minimum, the import of boneless beef from cattle over thirty months of age, and probably the import of live cattle over that age as well. In any case, there are still many steps to come, Ted Haney, chief executive of the Canadian Beef Export Federation tells Meatingplace.com. Once the Rule is published, it will be exposed to a comment period of 30 to 90 days, then another waiting period while USDA examines the comments, then another review by OMB, and finally possible Congressional action. “With the change to a Democratic Congress, it’s impossible to predict what the reaction will be,“ Haney says. Bill Bullard, chief executive of Ranchers-Cattlemen’s Action Legal Fund, which is suing USDA to prevent imports of live cattle from Canada, says his organization is encouraging its members to prod their representatives to in turn urge USDA to cease all action on the Proposed Rule. “We are hopeful that the (new Democratic-controlled Congress) will intervene with USDA to prevent adoption of this rule,“ Bullard tells Meatingplace.com. He adds that both Canada and the United States have at some point proposed strengthened feed bans, and that to resume trade in live animals before stronger feed bans are in place would be “irresponsible.“....
Western Comic Books And Super Heroes For bestselling writer Jeff Mariotte, 2007's Western Extravaganza begins on January 17 with the release of Desperadoes: Buffalo Dreams #1, launching a four-issue miniseries of that critically acclaimed western/horror comic book, with art by Alberto Dose (Flash). The four issues ship monthly from IDW Publishing. Additionally, the first Desperadoes miniseries, A Moment's Sunlight, with artwork by John Cassaday, has just become available online, in PDF form, at PullboxOnline.com. "I love the American west," Mariotte said. "The history, the natural beauty, the people. My neighbors are ranchers and cowboys, and my place is smack between Tombstone and Skeleton Canyon, where Geronimo's surrender ended the longest war in American history. I could hardly live here and not write about the west." Desperadoes is just the start of a year dominated by work involving the western genre. In March, Hachette Books will release DC Universe: Trail of Time, a novel teaming Superman, the Phantom Stranger and the Demon with DC Comics western heroes Jonah Hex, Bat Lash, Scalphunter, and El Diablo, and including a cameo by yet another classic DC western character....
Column: Baxter Black : A changing of the guard This year-end marks a political changing of the guard. It was a year of mixed blessings. The economy is booming, unemployment is down, the results of No Child Left Behind accountable education are encouraging, the prescription drug benefits program is a big success, we mark the fifth year of post 9-11 success of Homeland Security, the deficit reduction is ahead of schedule, the cattle market has remained strong, the drought has broken for a large part of America, but...It's not enough to overcome our deep concern about how to deal with terrorism overseas, the continuing financial gap between the upper middle class and the lower middle class, and the irony of the real danger of terrorist infiltration and a border so porous hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of illegals cross back and forth to Mexico every year. It would be such a gift to us all, such a relief, to see our president and our Congress find common ground....
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
SNOW DISASTER FUND ESTABLISHED
The New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association (NMCGA) has established a snow disaster fund for those who wish to help out ranchers in New Mexico who have been devestated by one of the largest storms on record.
At the present time there are some ranchers in dire need of hay, others who are hiring private contractors to get roads open, and even those who are seeking snow mobiles so they can deliver feed.
One NMCGA member has already donated a load of hay.
NMCGA is coordinating with federal and state agencies including Governor Bill Richardson's office, the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service, the New Mexico Livestock Board, the Farm Services Agency and the congressional delegation to get aid where it is needed, but the efforts are a slow and there are thousands of head of livestock at risk at this point in time.
If anyone would like to contribute to the effort, they can send checks to:
New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association
POB 7517
Albuquerque NM 87194
Please indicate that the funds are for storm relief.
If you have questions, please let us know.
Caren Cowan
Executive Director
New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association
505.247.0584 phone
505.842.1766 fax
www.nmagriculture.org web site
nmcga@nmagriculture.org email
The New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association (NMCGA) has established a snow disaster fund for those who wish to help out ranchers in New Mexico who have been devestated by one of the largest storms on record.
At the present time there are some ranchers in dire need of hay, others who are hiring private contractors to get roads open, and even those who are seeking snow mobiles so they can deliver feed.
One NMCGA member has already donated a load of hay.
NMCGA is coordinating with federal and state agencies including Governor Bill Richardson's office, the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service, the New Mexico Livestock Board, the Farm Services Agency and the congressional delegation to get aid where it is needed, but the efforts are a slow and there are thousands of head of livestock at risk at this point in time.
If anyone would like to contribute to the effort, they can send checks to:
New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association
POB 7517
Albuquerque NM 87194
Please indicate that the funds are for storm relief.
If you have questions, please let us know.
Caren Cowan
Executive Director
New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association
505.247.0584 phone
505.842.1766 fax
www.nmagriculture.org web site
nmcga@nmagriculture.org email
Media Release Jan 3 2006:
For information on this media release
Contact Gila Livestock Growers Association
505-772-5753
505-621-3726
Joinanddonate@gilalivestockgrowers.org
Wolf Success Alters Lives of Inhabitants
According to the residents of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area, there are a minimum of 37 documented wolves in the wilds of New Mexico, and a minimum of a dozen individual animals and pairs that remain uncounted by the agencies managing the program. There are an additional 15 wolves known to be in Arizona with undocumented individual and pairs in that state as well.
“Despite the requirements in final rule, I doubt we will ever see an accurate wolf count done through the Interagency Field Team, Says Laura Schneberger. They don’t have the man power, it’s not in their best interest to show the total overall success of the program. If they succeed in getting 100-125 wolves on the ground, they will have to pack it up and move the program elsewhere and nobody seems to want to do that.”
Schneberger, a rancher and President of the Gila Livestock Growers association has been affected by the program for nine years. She believes there are many more wolves in the wild than those the agency will admit are in the recovery area.
“The Interagency Field Team, who are in charge of getting the facts to the public, seem to be playing both sides against the middle to drag out the reintroduction as long as possible. They know of literally dozens of un-collared animals out there and if pressed will admit to seeing these animals from the air when they conduct weekly location flights. The problem is once the end of the year count comes along, they can only find but a fraction of those wolves. So the program uses a smaller number than is actually out there. The year end count is usually only a couple weeks worth of work”, says Schneberger. “But worse, non government organizations that support the wolf recovery, constantly complain about how small the number of animals in the wild actually is. They then issue press releases or file lawsuits pretending that the collared animals are the actual total numbers in the wild. It is a manipulation of the public the media and the judicial system, none of whom are getting reliable information. I have often wondered why FWS doesn’t correct this misinformation but they don’t.”
According to John Oakleaf the Fish and Wildlife Service’s field team coordinator, there are 4 known packs in the Gila National Forest and some dispersing wolves.
The Saddle pack has 6-9 documented wolves, 3 wear collars (AF797, AM732, M1007), and there are 3-6 un-collared pups, 3 were observed in late October, 6 observed in July.
The Middle Fork pack has 2 wolves, both wear collars (AF861, AM871). The pack was assumed to have denned in early 2006 based on aerial locations. However, subsequent observations have been unable to confirm the survival of pups therefore, pup status remains unknown.
The San Mateo pack north of Reserve NM consists of (AF903, M927) However, M927 was found dead, in November. Previous counts in were at 4-5 animals including 3 adults and 1-2 pups. 2 pups were observed earlier in the year, 1 pup was observed in November. Currently the IFT counts 3-4 wolves with 2 adults, 1 wears a collar, and 1-2 pups.
The Meridian pack consists of (AM806 and f1028) - 2 collared individuals 1 pup and 1 adult.
In November, Male 859 was lethally removed for its third livestock depredation incident. Its mate, F924 was trapped and removed after her second depredation incident. She is eligible for re-release into the BRWRA at a later time.
“We have those wolves that the team knows about, and more that they don’t,” says Schneberger.
“Most sightings go uninvestigated, but my documentation shows a pack of six wolves near Quemado on the Arizona border that killed a dog and harassed livestock in early 2006; 2 wolves seen and heard at Mule creek NM by local ranchers and hunters; 2 wolves are near Mimbres NM; 2-7 wolves or possibly wolf hybrids north of Luna NM; 2 un-collared wolves in the San Francisco basin east of Reserve.” “Wolves have been seen in Sierra and Socorro counties; 3 were seen on highway 59 near Dusty NM; 1 near Winston NM. There are several sightings of single wolves east of Datil NM and as far south as Kingston NM. There also seems to be a newly formed pack at Collins Park in the same region that is currently occupied by both the Saddle and Luna packs. I used to keep count in Arizona too but with the population explosion here I can’t keep up in Arizona anymore. However, I have received several reports of people encountering un-collared wolves there as well.”
Ranchers and rural occupants believe the wolves are now breeding with dogs and coyotes. Last week two wolf-like animals were shot north of Luna NM. The animals have some wolf-like characteristics, with a mane and a 36-40mm canine spread of a typical Mexican wolf as well as the color and markings of a domestic dog.
The animals were working as a pack to kill an elk calf when a landowner in the area shot two of the three animals. {See attached photos}
Livestock depredations have been increasing in the BRWRA as well. Compared with wolf populations in northern states on the verge of delisting wolves, the southwest depredations are significantly higher.
In Idaho which has 650 or more individual gray wolves, livestock depredations for 2005 are 2.9 per wolf. New Mexico and Arizona have about 60 wolves currently documented by FWS to be in the wild. In both Arizona and New Mexico during fiscal year 05-06, Mexican wolves were responsible for 6.0 livestock kills per wolf. In the Southwest there are more than double the depredations as states with recovered populations, with less than a tenth of the wolves on the ground.
“There is no doubt both people and wolves are suffering from the policies of this program and the managers are either in denial or playing games with the public,” says Schneberger. “It is time the agencies came clean with the facts on how many wolves they have and how they plan on expanding the program to other areas of the state. There has literally been an explosion in the New Mexico population in the past two years and this type of disastrous management cannot go on indefinitely.”
For the Schneberger family the program has been a disaster. The family came home from an overnight Christmas trip and found wolf tracks in the snow at their home. One of the family’s two five month old Great Pyrenees pups was missing and is presumed dead.
“We didn’t witness the attack like so many families in this area have, but it is still devastating to my kids and to me. It is no longer just about our livestock and economic survival now about the safety of our kids.”
Dog killing is becoming a problem within the program. Within a twenty mile radius of Wall Lake, ten miles down the canyon from the Schneberger ranch, the Aspen pack, has killed 6-7 dogs in the past year. One attack occurred in the presence of an eight year old girl The field team refers to the child as “an individual” in their monthly report. The dog was taken to the vet and survived but the IFT officers told the family they should not allow their daughter to be outside near their dogs.
Jim Harris, a neighbor of the girls’ family says, “ We all think what might have happened if she had not had that dog with her to get between her and that wolf.”
“What level of sacrifice by these people does the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the NM Department of Game and Fish consider acceptable?” asks Joe Delk. “How many ranchers have to go broke, how many pets and working dogs have to die? Will the death of a child finally be the sacrificial boundary? How do these agencies measure fear, anguish, helplessness and hopelessness and why should a disproportionate few people in a poor rural community have to bear all the sacrifice for what is supposedly a program to benefit the public?"
Delk, the Executive Director of the Paragon Foundation, a New Mexico based property rights organization that recently sponsored a wolf impact forum in Las Cruces and plans on hosting more around the state, also questions the programs management practices.
Mary McNab, Blue Arizona resident living in the BRWRA agrees that the program is poorly managed but feels the program has been less than honest with the public from the earliest days of the planning.
“The wolves are being dumped in small spots of the recovery area that are sometimes only as large as twelve square miles. These areas are still surrounded by towns, schools, livestock and backyards. There is no core area for recovery here, so the wolves are forced into habituation behavior by close proximity to all and sundry that was already here. There is no place for them to escape to the wild, there is no core recovery area for them to learn to be wild. These are impossible circumstances for the people to live with.”
Every day that goes by allowing the animals to prey on people at their homes and on their privately owned animals increases the habituation behavior and spreads it to other pack members. Dr. Valerius Geist from the University of Calgary also worries about the behavior of Mexican wolves in the southwest.
“In short, what is being observed is pre-attack behavior. I am an ethologist by profession. That is I profess animal behavior. I am very familiar indeed with wolf behavior and I see a need to inform the Southwest program managers that their assessments that wolves are showing no signs of aggression and just appear curious, puts persons in jeopardy. I see here a misunderstanding of the exploratory behavior of wolves."
For information on this media release
Contact Gila Livestock Growers Association
505-772-5753
505-621-3726
Joinanddonate@gilalivestockgrowers.org
Wolf Success Alters Lives of Inhabitants
According to the residents of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area, there are a minimum of 37 documented wolves in the wilds of New Mexico, and a minimum of a dozen individual animals and pairs that remain uncounted by the agencies managing the program. There are an additional 15 wolves known to be in Arizona with undocumented individual and pairs in that state as well.
“Despite the requirements in final rule, I doubt we will ever see an accurate wolf count done through the Interagency Field Team, Says Laura Schneberger. They don’t have the man power, it’s not in their best interest to show the total overall success of the program. If they succeed in getting 100-125 wolves on the ground, they will have to pack it up and move the program elsewhere and nobody seems to want to do that.”
Schneberger, a rancher and President of the Gila Livestock Growers association has been affected by the program for nine years. She believes there are many more wolves in the wild than those the agency will admit are in the recovery area.
“The Interagency Field Team, who are in charge of getting the facts to the public, seem to be playing both sides against the middle to drag out the reintroduction as long as possible. They know of literally dozens of un-collared animals out there and if pressed will admit to seeing these animals from the air when they conduct weekly location flights. The problem is once the end of the year count comes along, they can only find but a fraction of those wolves. So the program uses a smaller number than is actually out there. The year end count is usually only a couple weeks worth of work”, says Schneberger. “But worse, non government organizations that support the wolf recovery, constantly complain about how small the number of animals in the wild actually is. They then issue press releases or file lawsuits pretending that the collared animals are the actual total numbers in the wild. It is a manipulation of the public the media and the judicial system, none of whom are getting reliable information. I have often wondered why FWS doesn’t correct this misinformation but they don’t.”
According to John Oakleaf the Fish and Wildlife Service’s field team coordinator, there are 4 known packs in the Gila National Forest and some dispersing wolves.
The Saddle pack has 6-9 documented wolves, 3 wear collars (AF797, AM732, M1007), and there are 3-6 un-collared pups, 3 were observed in late October, 6 observed in July.
The Middle Fork pack has 2 wolves, both wear collars (AF861, AM871). The pack was assumed to have denned in early 2006 based on aerial locations. However, subsequent observations have been unable to confirm the survival of pups therefore, pup status remains unknown.
The San Mateo pack north of Reserve NM consists of (AF903, M927) However, M927 was found dead, in November. Previous counts in were at 4-5 animals including 3 adults and 1-2 pups. 2 pups were observed earlier in the year, 1 pup was observed in November. Currently the IFT counts 3-4 wolves with 2 adults, 1 wears a collar, and 1-2 pups.
The Meridian pack consists of (AM806 and f1028) - 2 collared individuals 1 pup and 1 adult.
In November, Male 859 was lethally removed for its third livestock depredation incident. Its mate, F924 was trapped and removed after her second depredation incident. She is eligible for re-release into the BRWRA at a later time.
“We have those wolves that the team knows about, and more that they don’t,” says Schneberger.
“Most sightings go uninvestigated, but my documentation shows a pack of six wolves near Quemado on the Arizona border that killed a dog and harassed livestock in early 2006; 2 wolves seen and heard at Mule creek NM by local ranchers and hunters; 2 wolves are near Mimbres NM; 2-7 wolves or possibly wolf hybrids north of Luna NM; 2 un-collared wolves in the San Francisco basin east of Reserve.” “Wolves have been seen in Sierra and Socorro counties; 3 were seen on highway 59 near Dusty NM; 1 near Winston NM. There are several sightings of single wolves east of Datil NM and as far south as Kingston NM. There also seems to be a newly formed pack at Collins Park in the same region that is currently occupied by both the Saddle and Luna packs. I used to keep count in Arizona too but with the population explosion here I can’t keep up in Arizona anymore. However, I have received several reports of people encountering un-collared wolves there as well.”
Ranchers and rural occupants believe the wolves are now breeding with dogs and coyotes. Last week two wolf-like animals were shot north of Luna NM. The animals have some wolf-like characteristics, with a mane and a 36-40mm canine spread of a typical Mexican wolf as well as the color and markings of a domestic dog.
The animals were working as a pack to kill an elk calf when a landowner in the area shot two of the three animals. {See attached photos}
Livestock depredations have been increasing in the BRWRA as well. Compared with wolf populations in northern states on the verge of delisting wolves, the southwest depredations are significantly higher.
In Idaho which has 650 or more individual gray wolves, livestock depredations for 2005 are 2.9 per wolf. New Mexico and Arizona have about 60 wolves currently documented by FWS to be in the wild. In both Arizona and New Mexico during fiscal year 05-06, Mexican wolves were responsible for 6.0 livestock kills per wolf. In the Southwest there are more than double the depredations as states with recovered populations, with less than a tenth of the wolves on the ground.
“There is no doubt both people and wolves are suffering from the policies of this program and the managers are either in denial or playing games with the public,” says Schneberger. “It is time the agencies came clean with the facts on how many wolves they have and how they plan on expanding the program to other areas of the state. There has literally been an explosion in the New Mexico population in the past two years and this type of disastrous management cannot go on indefinitely.”
For the Schneberger family the program has been a disaster. The family came home from an overnight Christmas trip and found wolf tracks in the snow at their home. One of the family’s two five month old Great Pyrenees pups was missing and is presumed dead.
“We didn’t witness the attack like so many families in this area have, but it is still devastating to my kids and to me. It is no longer just about our livestock and economic survival now about the safety of our kids.”
Dog killing is becoming a problem within the program. Within a twenty mile radius of Wall Lake, ten miles down the canyon from the Schneberger ranch, the Aspen pack, has killed 6-7 dogs in the past year. One attack occurred in the presence of an eight year old girl The field team refers to the child as “an individual” in their monthly report. The dog was taken to the vet and survived but the IFT officers told the family they should not allow their daughter to be outside near their dogs.
Jim Harris, a neighbor of the girls’ family says, “ We all think what might have happened if she had not had that dog with her to get between her and that wolf.”
“What level of sacrifice by these people does the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the NM Department of Game and Fish consider acceptable?” asks Joe Delk. “How many ranchers have to go broke, how many pets and working dogs have to die? Will the death of a child finally be the sacrificial boundary? How do these agencies measure fear, anguish, helplessness and hopelessness and why should a disproportionate few people in a poor rural community have to bear all the sacrifice for what is supposedly a program to benefit the public?"
Delk, the Executive Director of the Paragon Foundation, a New Mexico based property rights organization that recently sponsored a wolf impact forum in Las Cruces and plans on hosting more around the state, also questions the programs management practices.
Mary McNab, Blue Arizona resident living in the BRWRA agrees that the program is poorly managed but feels the program has been less than honest with the public from the earliest days of the planning.
“The wolves are being dumped in small spots of the recovery area that are sometimes only as large as twelve square miles. These areas are still surrounded by towns, schools, livestock and backyards. There is no core area for recovery here, so the wolves are forced into habituation behavior by close proximity to all and sundry that was already here. There is no place for them to escape to the wild, there is no core recovery area for them to learn to be wild. These are impossible circumstances for the people to live with.”
Every day that goes by allowing the animals to prey on people at their homes and on their privately owned animals increases the habituation behavior and spreads it to other pack members. Dr. Valerius Geist from the University of Calgary also worries about the behavior of Mexican wolves in the southwest.
“In short, what is being observed is pre-attack behavior. I am an ethologist by profession. That is I profess animal behavior. I am very familiar indeed with wolf behavior and I see a need to inform the Southwest program managers that their assessments that wolves are showing no signs of aggression and just appear curious, puts persons in jeopardy. I see here a misunderstanding of the exploratory behavior of wolves."
NEWS ROUNDUP
As Costs of Wildfires Grow, So Does a Question: Who Should Pay? The steeply rising cost of preventing and suppressing wildfires, which burned more of the American landscape in 2006 than in any other year since at least 1960, is creating a rift between Washington and state and local governments over how the burden ought to be shouldered. A study issued in November by the inspector general’s office of the United States Department of Agriculture, the parent agency of the Forest Service, said the nature of the wildfire threat was changing as private homes and communities pushed ever closer to the boundaries of once-remote public lands. Those communities and landowners, rather than federal taxpayers, should have to pay for more of their own fire protection, the report concluded. States and local governments are gearing up to fight back in Congress, arguing that decades of federal mismanagement of national forests and open spaces, not development, created the threat and that little communities with few resources are neither responsible for it nor equipped to make a difference. The pattern of wildfire distribution during the recently ended fire season, which charred more than 9.8 million acres, supports either side. According to federal statistics, more state, county and private lands burned than in any other year since 1997 — about half the total 2006 losses — primarily because of monstrous blazes in Oklahoma, in Texas and across the Upper Plains, regions where most property is privately owned. That finding, though also driven by broader factors like drought and heat that have little to do with residential development in fire-prone areas, supports the federal contention that the government has had to shift an increasingly large share of its resources from the task of protecting its own forests to firefighting elsewhere. In some places, though, the issue is more complex. In Stillwater County, Mont., north of Yellowstone National Park, for example, the small, long-established towns of Nye and Fishtail are bordered on two sides by national forest. In early July, the first of two huge fires erupted in the forest and roared into those communities, where 100,000 acres of mostly private land and 32 homes were burned. The blaze was the worst in the county’s history, local officials say....
Counties could lose millions in funding if law isn't renewed A law that has sent millions in revenue generated from National Forest lands to the states is expiring. The thought has county officials in Montana perspiring. It's called the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000. The funding comes from mineral resources, grazing fees and other sources. It's appropriated to states where national forests are located. This year, the final year of the act, Montana counties will get $13 million from the U.S. Forest Service. The check hit the mail Wednesday. But if the act isn't reauthorized, states could lose millions of dollars in federal funding. "It's a huge amount," Montana Association Counties Executive Director Harold Blattie said. Congress let the act expire before adjourning in 2006 and MACO is lobbying hard to get the Act reauthorized in 2007. So are the National Association of Counties and National Coalition of Forest Counties and Schools. If the act is not reauthorized, every county in Montana will pay the price — whether or not forested land lies within its border, according to MACO....
Outdoors: Researchers fight to save Idaho cod from extinction They're green, eel-like and incredibly difficult to raise in captivity, but Kootenai River burbot are now successfully spawning in plastic tanks at the University of Idaho. The tasty, freshwater codfish once sustained the Kootenai Tribe through the coldest months of winter, but fewer than 40 wild burbot are believed to be in the river today. In a desperate move to keep the fish from vanishing and until the politically sticky questions can be addressed about why the fish are in trouble in the first place the tribe is placing its hopes on setting up a hatchery. Problem is, nobody in the world has been able to figure out a way to raise the fish. They spawn in winter under ice, and young burbot eat things like bugs, plankton and other creatures found in only wild rivers. "Nobody has ever cultured this fish before," said Sue Ireland, fisheries biologist for the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho. "This is really feeling in the dark." It's getting a bit less dark, though. Four years ago, researchers at the University of Idaho began tackling the problem, courtesy of funding from the tribe, the Idaho Fish and Game Department and the Bonneville Power Administration....
Flower species wins fed habitat Two nearly extinct wildflowers found only in Washington County and just over the state line in Arizona now have a protected home. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has formally designated nearly 6,300 acres as critical habitat for the Holmgren milkvetch and the Shivwitz milkvetch. It marks only the second and third time the federal agency has created critical habitat for an endangered plant species in Utah. Under the designation, geographic areas containing features essential for the survival are managed for the protection of the species. "What has occurred in this instance is quite exceptional for Utah," Tony Frates, conservation co-chair of the Utah Native Plant Society, said Tuesday. "It's a long and complicated ruling, but the local field office did a real thorough job. And the [critical habitat] designation will be very helpful in keeping these two species from becoming extinct." Prompting the listing and new habitat designation has been Washington County's explosive growth and development. Specifically, the two plant species are in the path of a planned freeway interchange and roadway in St. George's south corridor that will link the city with its future airport and a planned community....
Locals: Keep East Entrance open The National Park Service lacks “adequate justification to support closure” of Sylvan Pass and has not sufficiently addressed safety, social or economic concerns in their draft winter use plan for Yellowstone National Park, according to a firm hired by Park County and Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s planning office. Ecosystem Research Group of Missoula, Mont., presented comments to Park County commissioners Tuesday in a draft document. The firm compiled arguments against the Park Service's preferred alternative, which maintains current Yellowstone winter use management provisions yet calls for closing Sylvan Pass and the East Entrance outside Cody. The proposed closure is based on avalanche danger, rising costs to control avalanches and decreased visitation numbers at that gate, according to park officials. Four of six proposed alternatives close Sylvan Pass to varying degrees of oversnow travel. “We are expressing grave concern about the closing of Sylvan Pass,” said Temple Stevenson, natural resource policy analyst for the governor’s office....
Interior announces intention to re-establish relationship with tribes Three officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday their intention to re-establish a working relationship between the agency and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes regarding management and operation of the National Bison Range. Under the agreement announced by Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett, FWS Director Dale Hall and Associate Deputy Interior Secretary Jim Cason the FWS would continue to manage the range as a national wildlife refuge. The tribes would undertake field and maintenance work, animal care and related duties on the range completely encompassed within the Flathead Reservation. In 2005 FWS entered into an annual funding agreement with the tribes to perform certain non-managerial functions on the range during Fiscal Year 2006. But on Dec. 11 FWS pulled the controversial agreement, saying the tribes had failed to live up to their responsibilities and had created an unacceptable workplace environment. Tribal officials said they were caught off guard by the move and denied allegations made in a letter from FWS Regional Director Mitch King that also said the agency was terminating negotiations for future AFAs....
Wyo targets wolf packs As they move toward delisting, many of the wolf packs in northwest Wyoming may be in the crosshairs. There are estimated to be 23 wolf packs outside Yellowstone National Park, with three packs in the park. Under federal guidelines, Wyoming needs to maintain a minimum of seven packs outside the park, in addition to three inside, to ensure that wolves will not become endangered again. Wyoming representatives have said they would like the federal government to eliminate the extra packs -- about 16 -- before removing wolves from federal protection and turning over management to the state. The prospect of eliminating wolf packs has been mentioned in recent discussions between state and federal officials about a possible new approach to wolf management in Wyoming. The state's wolf management plan has been rejected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because it would subject the animals to unregulated killing in areas except Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and surrounding wilderness. A new proposal aimed at resolving the dispute would increase the area where wolves would be treated as "trophy game," meaning they could only be killed with permission from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Regardless of which management plan prevails, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said reducing packs has always been on the table....
Plains suffering from glut of snow Utility crews struggled to restore electrical service to tens of thousands of homes in four states today as grocery store shelves went bare and ranchers tried to reach hungry cattle isolated after a blizzard dumped nearly 3 feet of snow on the Plains. In Colorado, National Guard troops and state workers prepared to bring groceries into snowbound areas with Humvees and drop hay bales into farm fields. Across the region, from the Oklahoma panhandle to Nebraska, planes have been searching snow-covered highways and fields for stranded travelers and using heat-sensing equipment to locate cattle in need of food. Hay could be dropped by military planes or helicopters or delivered by snowmobile, said Polly White of the Colorado Division of Emergency Management. What no one wants is a repeat of 1997, when a blizzard killed up to 30,000 farm animals and cost farmers and ranchers an estimated $28 million, White said. Ice and heavy snow also bent over electrical towers and downed hundreds of miles of power lines. At least 60,000 homes and businesses in western Kansas, more than 15,000 in Nebraska, and 6,000-plus in Colorado and Oklahoma were without electricity, and some utility officials warned it could take more than a week to restore....
Choppers to the rescue Ranchers across Southeastern Colorado either tried to reach their cattle or hoped the Colorado Army National Guard could Tuesday as the animals stood in 3- to 4-foot deep snow. Helicopter crews operated out of the airports near Lamar, Springfield and Las Animas to reach the animals. Aircrew members joined forces with ranchers, who volunteered to help on the flights, to throw out bales of hay to the stranded animals and, where possible, landed to break the ice in cattle water tanks. Leonard Pruett, a cattle specialist for the Colorado State University Extension Service, said ranchers have been calling to ask for the hay bale flights, but aircrews also have helped whatever isolated animals they see. "If we see cattle out there that don't look like they've been fed, we'll drop hay to them," Pruett said. "We're doing everything we can to make sure they survive. Ranchers will be charged for the cost of the hay, but not the cost of flying it to the animals, he said....
Editorial - Operation rescue A MASSIVE effort is underway to help save the cattle industry in Southeast Colorado in the wake of two holiday season blizzards. While major highways were finally opened late Sunday, most rural roads were still covered by deep snow and impassable. That made reaching cattle herds difficult if not impossible. State officials estimate that the majority of the 345,000 head of cattle in the region were stranded in 3 feet of snow on pasture land, where the storms also left 15-foot drifts in some places. Baca County officials reported numerous calls this week about cattle getting weak, falling down and unable to make it through the drifts. The snow poses a special danger to mother cows and newborn calves. There was no immediate estimate how many cow-calf pairs might be imperiled, though. Our hats are off to the National Guard troops and the county officials who are doing their utmost to save lives and livelihoods in Southeastern Colorado....
Remembering The Crash Of 1942 On Thursday, October 15, 1942, a B-17 bomber from Alamogordo Army Air Field was finishing a training run over Magdalena Flats with full crew of nine aboard. Magdalena rancher Tom Kelly was 17 years old and remembers seeing the plane fly over the village on a foggy night. Kelly is the only person still alive who helped the Army recovery team find the crash site and recover the bodies of the nine airmen who perished. As the village board considers installing a plaque commemorating those who died in the crash, Kelly visited the site for the first time in decades. Over breakfast recently at the Magdalena Café, Kelly told this reporter the story of the crash and subsequent recovery effort. As Kelly told the story, the Café became quieter as more diners listened to the story....
As Costs of Wildfires Grow, So Does a Question: Who Should Pay? The steeply rising cost of preventing and suppressing wildfires, which burned more of the American landscape in 2006 than in any other year since at least 1960, is creating a rift between Washington and state and local governments over how the burden ought to be shouldered. A study issued in November by the inspector general’s office of the United States Department of Agriculture, the parent agency of the Forest Service, said the nature of the wildfire threat was changing as private homes and communities pushed ever closer to the boundaries of once-remote public lands. Those communities and landowners, rather than federal taxpayers, should have to pay for more of their own fire protection, the report concluded. States and local governments are gearing up to fight back in Congress, arguing that decades of federal mismanagement of national forests and open spaces, not development, created the threat and that little communities with few resources are neither responsible for it nor equipped to make a difference. The pattern of wildfire distribution during the recently ended fire season, which charred more than 9.8 million acres, supports either side. According to federal statistics, more state, county and private lands burned than in any other year since 1997 — about half the total 2006 losses — primarily because of monstrous blazes in Oklahoma, in Texas and across the Upper Plains, regions where most property is privately owned. That finding, though also driven by broader factors like drought and heat that have little to do with residential development in fire-prone areas, supports the federal contention that the government has had to shift an increasingly large share of its resources from the task of protecting its own forests to firefighting elsewhere. In some places, though, the issue is more complex. In Stillwater County, Mont., north of Yellowstone National Park, for example, the small, long-established towns of Nye and Fishtail are bordered on two sides by national forest. In early July, the first of two huge fires erupted in the forest and roared into those communities, where 100,000 acres of mostly private land and 32 homes were burned. The blaze was the worst in the county’s history, local officials say....
Counties could lose millions in funding if law isn't renewed A law that has sent millions in revenue generated from National Forest lands to the states is expiring. The thought has county officials in Montana perspiring. It's called the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000. The funding comes from mineral resources, grazing fees and other sources. It's appropriated to states where national forests are located. This year, the final year of the act, Montana counties will get $13 million from the U.S. Forest Service. The check hit the mail Wednesday. But if the act isn't reauthorized, states could lose millions of dollars in federal funding. "It's a huge amount," Montana Association Counties Executive Director Harold Blattie said. Congress let the act expire before adjourning in 2006 and MACO is lobbying hard to get the Act reauthorized in 2007. So are the National Association of Counties and National Coalition of Forest Counties and Schools. If the act is not reauthorized, every county in Montana will pay the price — whether or not forested land lies within its border, according to MACO....
Outdoors: Researchers fight to save Idaho cod from extinction They're green, eel-like and incredibly difficult to raise in captivity, but Kootenai River burbot are now successfully spawning in plastic tanks at the University of Idaho. The tasty, freshwater codfish once sustained the Kootenai Tribe through the coldest months of winter, but fewer than 40 wild burbot are believed to be in the river today. In a desperate move to keep the fish from vanishing and until the politically sticky questions can be addressed about why the fish are in trouble in the first place the tribe is placing its hopes on setting up a hatchery. Problem is, nobody in the world has been able to figure out a way to raise the fish. They spawn in winter under ice, and young burbot eat things like bugs, plankton and other creatures found in only wild rivers. "Nobody has ever cultured this fish before," said Sue Ireland, fisheries biologist for the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho. "This is really feeling in the dark." It's getting a bit less dark, though. Four years ago, researchers at the University of Idaho began tackling the problem, courtesy of funding from the tribe, the Idaho Fish and Game Department and the Bonneville Power Administration....
Flower species wins fed habitat Two nearly extinct wildflowers found only in Washington County and just over the state line in Arizona now have a protected home. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has formally designated nearly 6,300 acres as critical habitat for the Holmgren milkvetch and the Shivwitz milkvetch. It marks only the second and third time the federal agency has created critical habitat for an endangered plant species in Utah. Under the designation, geographic areas containing features essential for the survival are managed for the protection of the species. "What has occurred in this instance is quite exceptional for Utah," Tony Frates, conservation co-chair of the Utah Native Plant Society, said Tuesday. "It's a long and complicated ruling, but the local field office did a real thorough job. And the [critical habitat] designation will be very helpful in keeping these two species from becoming extinct." Prompting the listing and new habitat designation has been Washington County's explosive growth and development. Specifically, the two plant species are in the path of a planned freeway interchange and roadway in St. George's south corridor that will link the city with its future airport and a planned community....
Locals: Keep East Entrance open The National Park Service lacks “adequate justification to support closure” of Sylvan Pass and has not sufficiently addressed safety, social or economic concerns in their draft winter use plan for Yellowstone National Park, according to a firm hired by Park County and Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s planning office. Ecosystem Research Group of Missoula, Mont., presented comments to Park County commissioners Tuesday in a draft document. The firm compiled arguments against the Park Service's preferred alternative, which maintains current Yellowstone winter use management provisions yet calls for closing Sylvan Pass and the East Entrance outside Cody. The proposed closure is based on avalanche danger, rising costs to control avalanches and decreased visitation numbers at that gate, according to park officials. Four of six proposed alternatives close Sylvan Pass to varying degrees of oversnow travel. “We are expressing grave concern about the closing of Sylvan Pass,” said Temple Stevenson, natural resource policy analyst for the governor’s office....
Interior announces intention to re-establish relationship with tribes Three officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday their intention to re-establish a working relationship between the agency and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes regarding management and operation of the National Bison Range. Under the agreement announced by Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett, FWS Director Dale Hall and Associate Deputy Interior Secretary Jim Cason the FWS would continue to manage the range as a national wildlife refuge. The tribes would undertake field and maintenance work, animal care and related duties on the range completely encompassed within the Flathead Reservation. In 2005 FWS entered into an annual funding agreement with the tribes to perform certain non-managerial functions on the range during Fiscal Year 2006. But on Dec. 11 FWS pulled the controversial agreement, saying the tribes had failed to live up to their responsibilities and had created an unacceptable workplace environment. Tribal officials said they were caught off guard by the move and denied allegations made in a letter from FWS Regional Director Mitch King that also said the agency was terminating negotiations for future AFAs....
Wyo targets wolf packs As they move toward delisting, many of the wolf packs in northwest Wyoming may be in the crosshairs. There are estimated to be 23 wolf packs outside Yellowstone National Park, with three packs in the park. Under federal guidelines, Wyoming needs to maintain a minimum of seven packs outside the park, in addition to three inside, to ensure that wolves will not become endangered again. Wyoming representatives have said they would like the federal government to eliminate the extra packs -- about 16 -- before removing wolves from federal protection and turning over management to the state. The prospect of eliminating wolf packs has been mentioned in recent discussions between state and federal officials about a possible new approach to wolf management in Wyoming. The state's wolf management plan has been rejected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because it would subject the animals to unregulated killing in areas except Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and surrounding wilderness. A new proposal aimed at resolving the dispute would increase the area where wolves would be treated as "trophy game," meaning they could only be killed with permission from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Regardless of which management plan prevails, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said reducing packs has always been on the table....
Plains suffering from glut of snow Utility crews struggled to restore electrical service to tens of thousands of homes in four states today as grocery store shelves went bare and ranchers tried to reach hungry cattle isolated after a blizzard dumped nearly 3 feet of snow on the Plains. In Colorado, National Guard troops and state workers prepared to bring groceries into snowbound areas with Humvees and drop hay bales into farm fields. Across the region, from the Oklahoma panhandle to Nebraska, planes have been searching snow-covered highways and fields for stranded travelers and using heat-sensing equipment to locate cattle in need of food. Hay could be dropped by military planes or helicopters or delivered by snowmobile, said Polly White of the Colorado Division of Emergency Management. What no one wants is a repeat of 1997, when a blizzard killed up to 30,000 farm animals and cost farmers and ranchers an estimated $28 million, White said. Ice and heavy snow also bent over electrical towers and downed hundreds of miles of power lines. At least 60,000 homes and businesses in western Kansas, more than 15,000 in Nebraska, and 6,000-plus in Colorado and Oklahoma were without electricity, and some utility officials warned it could take more than a week to restore....
Choppers to the rescue Ranchers across Southeastern Colorado either tried to reach their cattle or hoped the Colorado Army National Guard could Tuesday as the animals stood in 3- to 4-foot deep snow. Helicopter crews operated out of the airports near Lamar, Springfield and Las Animas to reach the animals. Aircrew members joined forces with ranchers, who volunteered to help on the flights, to throw out bales of hay to the stranded animals and, where possible, landed to break the ice in cattle water tanks. Leonard Pruett, a cattle specialist for the Colorado State University Extension Service, said ranchers have been calling to ask for the hay bale flights, but aircrews also have helped whatever isolated animals they see. "If we see cattle out there that don't look like they've been fed, we'll drop hay to them," Pruett said. "We're doing everything we can to make sure they survive. Ranchers will be charged for the cost of the hay, but not the cost of flying it to the animals, he said....
Editorial - Operation rescue A MASSIVE effort is underway to help save the cattle industry in Southeast Colorado in the wake of two holiday season blizzards. While major highways were finally opened late Sunday, most rural roads were still covered by deep snow and impassable. That made reaching cattle herds difficult if not impossible. State officials estimate that the majority of the 345,000 head of cattle in the region were stranded in 3 feet of snow on pasture land, where the storms also left 15-foot drifts in some places. Baca County officials reported numerous calls this week about cattle getting weak, falling down and unable to make it through the drifts. The snow poses a special danger to mother cows and newborn calves. There was no immediate estimate how many cow-calf pairs might be imperiled, though. Our hats are off to the National Guard troops and the county officials who are doing their utmost to save lives and livelihoods in Southeastern Colorado....
Remembering The Crash Of 1942 On Thursday, October 15, 1942, a B-17 bomber from Alamogordo Army Air Field was finishing a training run over Magdalena Flats with full crew of nine aboard. Magdalena rancher Tom Kelly was 17 years old and remembers seeing the plane fly over the village on a foggy night. Kelly is the only person still alive who helped the Army recovery team find the crash site and recover the bodies of the nine airmen who perished. As the village board considers installing a plaque commemorating those who died in the crash, Kelly visited the site for the first time in decades. Over breakfast recently at the Magdalena Café, Kelly told this reporter the story of the crash and subsequent recovery effort. As Kelly told the story, the Café became quieter as more diners listened to the story....
"The Great Wilderness Compromise"
PBS "NOW" heads out West on Friday, January 5 to examine a controversial
effort to find common ground on wilderness protection in the reddest state
in America: Idaho. Correspondent Jon Christensen follows Rep. Mike Simpson,
the Republican sponsor of a compromise wilderness bill, from the halls of
Congress to the peaks of the White Cloud Mountains. To break through the
polarization that has stymied efforts to protect wilderness in Idaho for a
generation, Simpson has worked hand-in-hand with environmentalist Rick
Johnson of the Idaho Conservation League for six years carefully crafting a
local compromise that gives something to everyone, but none of them
everything that they want. "NOW" talked with residents, ranchers, off-road
vehicle fans, and wilderness advocates, including singer-songwriter Carole
King, an ardent opponent of the compromise, which would give public land to
small towns in the region for future growth ‹ the most controversial of the
bills many trade-offs. Exchanging public land for wilderness is a tug-of-war
that has entered into a number of wilderness bills that were seeking passage
in the last session of Congress. And the Idaho compromise will be among the
first bills put on the congressional agenda in the new year. "NOW" offers a
window into the passions that drive the wedges ‹ and the ongoing quest for
common ground‹ in western wilderness politics.
To find your local show time, check http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.
You can also see the entire 20-minute report plus additional online features
after January 5 at http://www.pbs.org/now/.
For more information about the program, which is part of a longer
documentary in progress on wilderness politics in the West, e-mail
jonchristensen@stanford.edu.
Thanks! And Happy New Year!
Jon Christensen
Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Science and Policy
Ph.D. Candidate, History Department
Stanford University
PBS "NOW" heads out West on Friday, January 5 to examine a controversial
effort to find common ground on wilderness protection in the reddest state
in America: Idaho. Correspondent Jon Christensen follows Rep. Mike Simpson,
the Republican sponsor of a compromise wilderness bill, from the halls of
Congress to the peaks of the White Cloud Mountains. To break through the
polarization that has stymied efforts to protect wilderness in Idaho for a
generation, Simpson has worked hand-in-hand with environmentalist Rick
Johnson of the Idaho Conservation League for six years carefully crafting a
local compromise that gives something to everyone, but none of them
everything that they want. "NOW" talked with residents, ranchers, off-road
vehicle fans, and wilderness advocates, including singer-songwriter Carole
King, an ardent opponent of the compromise, which would give public land to
small towns in the region for future growth ‹ the most controversial of the
bills many trade-offs. Exchanging public land for wilderness is a tug-of-war
that has entered into a number of wilderness bills that were seeking passage
in the last session of Congress. And the Idaho compromise will be among the
first bills put on the congressional agenda in the new year. "NOW" offers a
window into the passions that drive the wedges ‹ and the ongoing quest for
common ground‹ in western wilderness politics.
To find your local show time, check http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.
You can also see the entire 20-minute report plus additional online features
after January 5 at http://www.pbs.org/now/.
For more information about the program, which is part of a longer
documentary in progress on wilderness politics in the West, e-mail
jonchristensen@stanford.edu.
Thanks! And Happy New Year!
Jon Christensen
Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Science and Policy
Ph.D. Candidate, History Department
Stanford University
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
Energy/Ag Alliance Fractures Over Eminent Domain For several decades now, the political interests of the energy and agricultural communities have been closely aligned in the Wyoming Legislature -- against federal regulations, but for federal tax breaks and support programs. Oh, and by the way, getting pretty much what they wanted from the state government and along similar lines. For all those years, Big Ag and Big Energy were reliable allies, but perhaps not for much longer. A deep fracture line has appeared between the two groups, and it is called eminent domain. Dustin Bleizeffer of the Casper Star Tribune has a New Year's Day package exploring the issue, including how landowners are objecting to a railroad's use of eminent domain, and a Rock Springs businessman who was forced to relocate his businesses by the Wyoming Department of Transportation. Basically, more and more ranchers, landowners and business people are feeling like road kill on the super highway to progress. Energy companies, railroads, government all use eminent domain to achieve their goals, and it has been going on for a long time. When it happened to just a few, the rest tended to shrug their shoulders and chalk it up to the price paid for progress -- a good thing for everyone. What's different now, is the super-heated pace of energy development and growth in Wyoming. The number of people getting run over by eminent domain is growing, and it seems like there's a critical mass of resentment and betrayal building up. We'll have to see how this plays out in the upcoming legislative session, but it could well be that there are enough angry, bitter people out there, that the legislature will listen and even up the playing field between the big boys and the little guys....
Property power struggle Some say the cowboy is nothing more than a romantic image of an ideal that simply doesn't exist today in the West. So is the notion that owning property means you can keep people out and conduct your own business on your own terms. Growing numbers of property owners in Wyoming are demanding reform of the state's eminent domain laws to protect what they say might be a dying Western value. Rancher Eric Barlow recently toured his neighbor's ranch in Powder River Breaks country between Gillette and Buffalo and noted a property line dividing the flat-bottom valley pasture between two brothers' ranches. On one side a coal-bed methane company had cut a long ditch carefully meandering to one side of the bottomland so it didn't disturb much of the pasture. On the other side of the property line, the man-made ditch was ripped zigzag from one side to the other, as if it were purposely cut to damage as much of the bottomland pasture as possible. This, said Barlow, was no mistake. He believes it was meant to punish the one rancher for not agreeing to the company's terms. The company initiated eminent domain proceedings to cut the zigzagging ditch and force coal-bed methane water onto the ranch where it isn't wanted. "A coal-bed methane company will not pass up an opportunity to make an example of a rancher, just to show the rest what they are capable of," Barlow said. What coal-bed methane companies are capable of is taking private property for their own economic gain. They're not the only ones....
Editorial - Charges against fire boss heap travesty atop tragedy Firefighter bosses may start feeling the heat like never before. Federal prosecutors in Spokane charged a Forest Service crew boss with manslaughter Dec. 23 in connection with the deaths of four firefighters in a 2001 wildfire in northcentral Washington. This first-of-its-kind criminal case is a gross miscarriage of justice on its face. But even if the charges don't stand up in court, prosecutors have sent an unmistakable - and unfortunate - message to men and women up and down the chain of command: Avoid all risks and cover your rear. The ultimate effect could be less-effective firefighting leading to bigger, more dangerous fires and, perversely, even greater risk of fire fatalities in the future. Prosecutors say 46-year-old Ellreese Daniels committed involuntary manslaughter by failing to prevent his crew from being overrun by the Thirtymile fire near Winthrop, Wash., July 10, 2001. The criminal complaint says he and others committed a variety of mistakes, among them: underestimating the fire's potential, failing to anticipate extreme fire behavior, inadequately communicating among themselves and failing to ensure the crew's proper deployment of emergency fire shelters in the face of advancing flames. Prosecutors also say Daniels lied about some of his actions afterward. Ten firefighters and two campers trapped with the crew survived; four crew members died in their emergency shelters of asphyxia from inhaling superheated gases from the fire raging around them. The fire started as a picnicker's campfire....
At last, justice may prevail in Thirtymile Fire Four manslaughter charges brought against a U.S. Forest Service crew boss nearly 51/2 years after the deadly Thirtymile Fire in Okanogan County could finally be proof that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied. Ellreese Daniels is accused of allowing his 14-member squad to be trapped by the Thirtymile Fire in July 2001. The four involuntary manslaughter charges filed against him earlier this month are widely believed to be the first homicide charges ever brought against a firefighter whose crew was overtaken by flames. Daniels also faces seven counts of lying to investigators about his role in fighting the 9,300-acre fire, which grew from an unattended campfire...The documents repeatedly blamed the tragedy on numerous mistakes by more than one unnamed supervisor. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Hopkins said federal rules prevent him from saying whether charges against other Thirtymile Fire bosses are expected. That possibility, both in the Thirtymile disaster and in subsequent fires that have left firefighters dead, is reportedly sending a chill through the professional firefighting ranks. They fear that they, too, may be held responsible if people under their command die. They should fear that -- and they should be held criminally responsible, but only when their actions allow the ever-present dangers inherent in firefighting to escalate through negligence and disregard for human safety....
Frontier family fights to return home Since 1878, four generations of Vadis and Howard Stratton's family lived as homesteaders on this mountain, much like TV's "The Waltons," the clan says. The family made electricity with an 1893 waterwheel, powered by a creek shooting downhill through a homemade pipe. Vadis Stratton and her late husband, Howard, who both didn't drink, smoke or cuss, raised seven kids here. Their home was a 1912 log cabin with a wood-burning stove near the original shed-sized 1878 dwelling. They cut timber for nearby Butte's mines and even prospected for gold. Right through last year, Vadis used a wringer washer. It all made for a 19th Century homestead working until the present day. Chester Arthur was president when the government invited covered-wagon pioneers like the Strattons' ancestors to settle the summits and valleys on the Continental Divide. Now the government has ordered the Strattons to leave, evicting the last of the frontier families that had populated this mountain and its namesake hamlet of Highland City, a nearly vanished ghost town founded in the 1860s gold rush. After winning a court ruling in 2005, the U.S. Forest Service declared 81-year-old Vadis Stratton and her son David, 42, illegal squatters in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and forced the matriarch in August to move into a senior citizen home in Butte, an hour's drive away....
Blown-down trees windfall for streams Wind, fire, floods . . . the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife finds a silver lining in everything nature can throw at the state. Especially trees. The agency, with help from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State Parks and a $28,750 grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, is collecting as many 20-inch (diameter) trees as possible from a veritable forest that blew down along the central Oregon Coast during December windstorms. Downed trees 40 to 50 feet long are destined to be placed in several streams to provide rearing habitat for small salmon and steelhead, capture gravel and create side channels for both juvenile and adult fish. Four log-truckloads of conifer logs have been collected so far, and as many as 10 more might be collected from the December windfall. Jason Kirchner, a department fish habitat biologist, said he has planned seven to 10 projects next summer to improve 12 to 15 miles of streams. He'll use 10 to 200 logs per project....
Blackfeet claim entitlement to 'substantial allocation' of water Leaders of the Blackfeet Tribe told state and federal officials here that their reservation deserves much more water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers than it is getting now. The tribe is in water-rights talks with the Montana Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission to determine how much water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers, along with other drainages, will be allocated to the tribe - and how much will be left over for other users. A public negotiation session was held Dec. 20 in Great Falls. Water from the two rivers, which form in the mountains west of the reservation and flow through it, currently is being diverted to thousands of farmers and residents along the Montana Hi-Line. Tribal officials aren't proposing to stop the distribution. But they argue they deserve more - what one called a ''substantial allocation'' - than they're getting. ''It's our water,'' Tribal Chairman Earl Old Person said. The outcome of the negotiations will affect thousands of residents on the reservation and those living downstream across north-central Montana....
Column - Balancing the needs of winter recreationists Utah boasts the “greatest snow on Earth” and for decades local residents and visitors have ventured into the Tony Grove/Franklin Basin area to ski, snowmobile and simply enjoy the beauty of the snow and mountains that Logan Canyon has to offer. Over time, conflicts between motorized and non-motorized recreationists have developed. Ultimately, a fair distribution of recreation experiences within a limited area means both sides have to give a little. The issues are not about acres. You'll read many articles on who has the most acres available to use and what is fair and what isn't. But that's misleading. Not every acre is equal. Instead, the issues center on quality of snow, family tradition, available terrain, existing parking, proximity to the community of Logan, and the list goes on. The Tony Grove/Franklin Basin has it all; it's the hotspot, the gem for winter recreation. The conflict has a long history. Local newspaper articles describing the issues date back to 1975. The Forest Service responded to these growing conflicts and concerns in the Logan Ranger District in the 2003 Revised Forest Plan and its accompanying environmental impact statement. Still the conflict continued....
Editorial - BLM's landscape system is in danger Three weeks after he took office, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne stopped the worst parts of a proposed overhaul of national parks management policies. Now he needs to do the same with a proposed overhaul of the Bureau of Land Management, announced to employees Nov. 30. The BLM manages three times as much public land as the National Park Service. The resignation of BLM Director Kathleen Clarke last Thursday gives Kempthorne the opportunity to show that the BLM remains committed to its conservation mission. The BLM is the steward of many of the great landscapes of the American West. In particular, the lands and waters of the National Landscape Conservation System have been called "hidden treasures of the American West." They include national monuments, national conservation areas, wilderness areas (and wilderness study areas), historic trails and wild and scenic rivers. These great Western landscapes are the sister system to our national parks, but more rugged. They are highly visited. The proposed reorganization would dump a variety of unrelated programs into the National Landscape Conservation System, thus diluting resources that would be devoted to managing the system, which is already strained for resources. Worse, this latest reorganization plan was hatched in secret with no public review and no congressional oversight. No details have been publicly released, although recommendations were presented to employees Nov. 30 by live satellite broadcast. U.S. Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, and 25 other House members called in a Dec. 20 letter for the BLM to halt the proposed reorganization until Congress examines the implications for the 26 million acre National Landscape Conservation System....
Eagle suit could affect Big Chino pumping A lawsuit that is expected to be filed within the next few weeks will, if successful, make things a bit more challenging for the Prescott area communities to pump the Big Chino aquifer. On Nov. 2 the Arizona-based environmental organization Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its decision to remove all bald eagles from the endangered species list. The CBD contends in its notice that the Arizona born and raised desert nesting bald eagle is a separate and distinct species that, unlike it relatives to the north, has not recovered and requires continued protection...Of the 47 known breeding sites in Arizona, more than one third of them are on the Verde River. Several are located in the upper reaches of the Verde River, along a stretch of riparian habitat that critics contend will be most impacted by plans to pump the Big Chino. The US Geological Survey has determined that approximately 80 percent of the flow of the upper reaches of the Verde River comes from the Big Chino aquifer. Under the protection of the endangered species act, it is against the law to degrade the habitat of a listed species without the consultation and approval of the federal government first....
Endangered Idaho Snail Losing Habitat After clambering down a canyon wall, ducking poison ivy vines and wading chest-deep across a lukewarm stream, Cary Myler spied some flecks that look like pepper sprinkled on a wet rock and announced, "Found some." The pinhead-sized dots are Bruneau hot springsnails. The tiny mollusks that thrive in water as warm as 100 degrees are found nowhere else in the world but here, in the bottom of this southwestern Idaho desert canyon riddled with hot springs 70 miles southeast of Boise. A decade ago, the snails were at the center of a national battle over federal laws designed to protect endangered species. Today, years after the lawsuits were decided and most of the rhetoric retired, they are closer to extinction than ever before. The level of the underground geothermal aquifer that feeds the seeps and springs of hot water where the snails live keeps dropping....
NYT Editorial - Environmental Harmony The long history of Congressional bipartisan cooperation on environmental issues dating back to Richard Nixon has been seriously challenged only twice. The first time was in 1995, when the Gingrich Republicans swept into Washington determined to roll back environmental laws, a threat averted by President Bill Clinton’s veto pen and the exertions of a group of moderate Republicans. The second challenge occurred during the Congress that has now thankfully drawn to a close. The Democrats’ return to power in both houses has raised hopes that some of the old cooperative spirit can be restored and progress made on vital matters like global warming, oil dependency, national parks and threatened wetlands. Environmentalists in the House will certainly have more time to work on positive legislation, since they will no longer have to play defense against Richard Pombo, the California Republican who produced a stream of destructive schemes to open up protected public lands for commercial exploitation, rescind a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling and undermine the Endangered Species Act. Mr. Pombo has been ushered into well-deserved retirement by California voters. On the Senate side, there have been striking changes in leadership. Barbara Boxer, who cares about global warming, replaces James Inhofe, who doesn’t, as head of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Jeff Bingaman, who emphasizes conservation as the appropriate response to oil dependency, replaces Pete Domenici, who tends to favor greater production of America’s dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas, as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Although he’ll need Mr. Domenici’s help, Mr. Bingaman will almost certainly make a major push for new energy legislation, based on proposals that already have broad bipartisan support and would offer a menu of loans, direct subsidies and tax breaks to encourage the production of fuel-efficient cars as well as alternatives to gasoline....
Studies: Lynx habitat may be at risk Some conservationists believe development of a private ski resort on Battle Mountain, as currently designed, will destroy potential lynx habitat and areas the animals might travel through. Colorado Wild conservationists based in Durango and others evaluated the Ginn Co.'s development south of Minturn and submitted their findings to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal agency is conducting an environmental study of the development and what may have to be done to lessen the effect on wildlife. Ginn Co. officials hope to build 1,700 homes, a golf course and 1,100 acres of ski terrain on and around Battle Mountain. Whether lynx roam Battle Mountain is debatable. The Ginn Co. found no traces of lynx in the area, although the Colorado Division of Wildlife has tracked lynx moving across the property....
In California, wild pigs hunted in defense of nature Save the flowers. Save the birds. Kill the pigs. This was Ted Champagne's mission deep in a maze of tule-covered islands and twisting sloughs where he steered his shallow hunting boat and waited for his Catahoula hounds to catch a whiff of wild pigs. The dogs, Butch and Porter, held their bodies taut and sniffed furiously. Champagne kept his 12-gauge shotgun close. He kept his 10-inch-long knife closer, strapped to his side and ready for use in case he found a pig in thick grass and reeds where it could be hard to tell if he was shooting a pig or his dogs. "Once the dogs smell something and jump out of the boat, things move fast," Champagne said. "You want to get in and finish it fast." Champagne is no ordinary hunter in this big marsh, but rather a guardian of endangered flowers and plants. He hunts to protect nature. Champagne volunteers his hunting services for a conservation group, the Solano Land Trust, one of a growing number of California public and nonprofit landowners who kill wild pigs to prevent them from damaging or killing native plants and wildlife....
Why voters rejected Santa Clara County open space measure It is one of the most vexing questions about last month's elections in Silicon Valley. Urban and suburban voters outnumber rural voters by a 15-1 ratio in Santa Clara County. The region has far more registered Democrats than Republicans, and a steady track record of supporting environmental issues. Yet those voters rejected Measure A, an initiative backed by every major local environmental group and many prominent Democratic politicians that would have placed landmark restrictions on development on hillsides and ranch lands. How? A Mercury News computer mapping analysis of all 1,244 precincts in Santa Clara County provides clues. As expected, Measure A won biggest in Palo Alto and Mountain View -- urban areas with lots of liberal voters and environmentalists. It lost biggest in Gilroy and Morgan Hill -- rural areas with more conservative voters, farmers and private-property-rights advocates. But a color-coded county map of the precinct results shows that the race was decided along the Highway 85 corridor....
Column - The Risks of Too Much City The coming year marks a great milestone in the human saga, a development similar in magnitude to the agricultural era and the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, a majority of human beings will be living in vast urban areas, many in megacities and suburban extensions with populations of 10 million or more, according to the United Nations. We have become "Homo Urbanus." Two hundred years ago, the average person on Earth might meet 200 to 300 people in a lifetime. Today a resident of New York City can live and work among 220,000 people within a 10-minute radius of his home or office in midtown Manhattan. Only one city in all of history -- ancient Rome -- boasted a population of more than a million before the 19th century. London became the first modern city with a population over 1 million in 1820. Today 414 cities boast populations of a million or more, and there's no end in sight. As long as the human race had to rely on solar flow, the winds and currents, and animal and human power to sustain life, the population remained relatively low to accommodate nature's carrying capacity: the biosphere's ability to recycle waste and replenish resources. The tipping point was the exhuming of large amounts of stored sun, first in the form of coal deposits, then oil and natural gas. Harnessed by the steam engine and later the internal combustion engine and converted to electricity and distributed across power lines, fossil fuels allowed humanity to create new technologies that dramatically increased food production and manufactured goods and services. The unprecedented increase in productivity led to runaway population growth and the urbanization of the world. No one is really sure whether this turning point in human living arrangements ought to be celebrated, lamented or merely acknowledged. That's because our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats....
Berry: Corporate economy is enemy For more than 40 years, author and poet Wendell Berry has advocated for local agriculture, good land stewardship and less corporate control of economies. He's walked the talk on his Kentucky farm 50 miles east of Louisville, plowing his fields with horse teams, producing most of his family's food and writing prolifically, without a computer, on a changing American culture. He believes now, more than ever, that conservationists and local land users such as farmers and loggers need to come together. "The split between people who produce from the land, like ranchers, and conservationists has been a tragic loss and a tragic waste of time," Berry said recently from his Kentucky farm. "The two sides have a common enemy they should recognize. The global corporate economy is the enemy." Berry, 72, will be a special speaker at the Quivira Coalition conference at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 18 in Albuquerque. He said he supports the coalition's efforts to bridge the gap between agriculture, land managers and environmentalists....
Federal Subsidies Turn Farms Into Big Business The cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar system of federal farm subsidies is an iconic image of the struggling family farmer: small, powerless against Mother Nature, tied to the land by blood. Without generous government help, farm-state politicians say, thousands of these hardworking families would fail, threatening the nation's abundant food supply...This imagery secures billions annually in what one grower called "empathy payments" for farmers. But it is misleading. Today, most of the nation's food is produced by modern family farms that are large operations using state-of-the-art computers, marketing consultants and technologies that cut labor, time and costs. The owners are frequently college graduates who are as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a tractor. They cover more acres and produce more crops with fewer workers than ever before. The very policies touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms are instead helping to accelerate their demise, economists, analysts and farmers say. That's because owners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out....
Cows Engineered to Lack Mad Cow Disease Scientists have genetically engineered a dozen cows to be free from the proteins that cause mad cow disease, a breakthrough that may make the animals immune to the brain-wasting disease. An international team of researchers from the U.S. and Japan reported Sunday that they had "knocked out" the gene responsible for making the proteins, called prions. The disease didn't take hold when brain tissue from two of the genetically engineered cows was exposed to bad prions in the laboratory, they said. Experts said the work may offer another layer of security to people concerned about eating infected beef, although though any food derived from genetically engineered animals must first be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The surviving cows are now being injected directly with mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, to make certain the cattle are immune to it....
It's All Trew: Resourcefulness, greed make for salty brew The transformation from open-range to farming settlements brewed up some strange happenings in the Texas Panhandle. Add a mixture of nationalities, stir in every vocation you can think of then add a generous helping of man's natural greed - and the resulting brew sometimes became explosive. This was especially true in areas where the railroads chose to build. In 1876, the new State of Texas was financially broke but rich in land. The quickest way to turn land into money was by selling it. The fastest way to accomplish such sales was to build a railroad into virgin territory and open it for settlement. To encourage the building of railroads, the state offered to give 16 sections of land, or 10,240 acres, for each mile of new track laid. The railroad companies built the track, took the land, waited for the price to rise then sold it for money to build more track. Occasionally, a choice site on a side-track was created and private railroad investors took over, establishing a town and began selling lots and business opportunities to the public, creating big profits for the stockholders. The town of Salisbury, in what would become Hall County, was one of those choice sites....
Energy/Ag Alliance Fractures Over Eminent Domain For several decades now, the political interests of the energy and agricultural communities have been closely aligned in the Wyoming Legislature -- against federal regulations, but for federal tax breaks and support programs. Oh, and by the way, getting pretty much what they wanted from the state government and along similar lines. For all those years, Big Ag and Big Energy were reliable allies, but perhaps not for much longer. A deep fracture line has appeared between the two groups, and it is called eminent domain. Dustin Bleizeffer of the Casper Star Tribune has a New Year's Day package exploring the issue, including how landowners are objecting to a railroad's use of eminent domain, and a Rock Springs businessman who was forced to relocate his businesses by the Wyoming Department of Transportation. Basically, more and more ranchers, landowners and business people are feeling like road kill on the super highway to progress. Energy companies, railroads, government all use eminent domain to achieve their goals, and it has been going on for a long time. When it happened to just a few, the rest tended to shrug their shoulders and chalk it up to the price paid for progress -- a good thing for everyone. What's different now, is the super-heated pace of energy development and growth in Wyoming. The number of people getting run over by eminent domain is growing, and it seems like there's a critical mass of resentment and betrayal building up. We'll have to see how this plays out in the upcoming legislative session, but it could well be that there are enough angry, bitter people out there, that the legislature will listen and even up the playing field between the big boys and the little guys....
Property power struggle Some say the cowboy is nothing more than a romantic image of an ideal that simply doesn't exist today in the West. So is the notion that owning property means you can keep people out and conduct your own business on your own terms. Growing numbers of property owners in Wyoming are demanding reform of the state's eminent domain laws to protect what they say might be a dying Western value. Rancher Eric Barlow recently toured his neighbor's ranch in Powder River Breaks country between Gillette and Buffalo and noted a property line dividing the flat-bottom valley pasture between two brothers' ranches. On one side a coal-bed methane company had cut a long ditch carefully meandering to one side of the bottomland so it didn't disturb much of the pasture. On the other side of the property line, the man-made ditch was ripped zigzag from one side to the other, as if it were purposely cut to damage as much of the bottomland pasture as possible. This, said Barlow, was no mistake. He believes it was meant to punish the one rancher for not agreeing to the company's terms. The company initiated eminent domain proceedings to cut the zigzagging ditch and force coal-bed methane water onto the ranch where it isn't wanted. "A coal-bed methane company will not pass up an opportunity to make an example of a rancher, just to show the rest what they are capable of," Barlow said. What coal-bed methane companies are capable of is taking private property for their own economic gain. They're not the only ones....
Editorial - Charges against fire boss heap travesty atop tragedy Firefighter bosses may start feeling the heat like never before. Federal prosecutors in Spokane charged a Forest Service crew boss with manslaughter Dec. 23 in connection with the deaths of four firefighters in a 2001 wildfire in northcentral Washington. This first-of-its-kind criminal case is a gross miscarriage of justice on its face. But even if the charges don't stand up in court, prosecutors have sent an unmistakable - and unfortunate - message to men and women up and down the chain of command: Avoid all risks and cover your rear. The ultimate effect could be less-effective firefighting leading to bigger, more dangerous fires and, perversely, even greater risk of fire fatalities in the future. Prosecutors say 46-year-old Ellreese Daniels committed involuntary manslaughter by failing to prevent his crew from being overrun by the Thirtymile fire near Winthrop, Wash., July 10, 2001. The criminal complaint says he and others committed a variety of mistakes, among them: underestimating the fire's potential, failing to anticipate extreme fire behavior, inadequately communicating among themselves and failing to ensure the crew's proper deployment of emergency fire shelters in the face of advancing flames. Prosecutors also say Daniels lied about some of his actions afterward. Ten firefighters and two campers trapped with the crew survived; four crew members died in their emergency shelters of asphyxia from inhaling superheated gases from the fire raging around them. The fire started as a picnicker's campfire....
At last, justice may prevail in Thirtymile Fire Four manslaughter charges brought against a U.S. Forest Service crew boss nearly 51/2 years after the deadly Thirtymile Fire in Okanogan County could finally be proof that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied. Ellreese Daniels is accused of allowing his 14-member squad to be trapped by the Thirtymile Fire in July 2001. The four involuntary manslaughter charges filed against him earlier this month are widely believed to be the first homicide charges ever brought against a firefighter whose crew was overtaken by flames. Daniels also faces seven counts of lying to investigators about his role in fighting the 9,300-acre fire, which grew from an unattended campfire...The documents repeatedly blamed the tragedy on numerous mistakes by more than one unnamed supervisor. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Hopkins said federal rules prevent him from saying whether charges against other Thirtymile Fire bosses are expected. That possibility, both in the Thirtymile disaster and in subsequent fires that have left firefighters dead, is reportedly sending a chill through the professional firefighting ranks. They fear that they, too, may be held responsible if people under their command die. They should fear that -- and they should be held criminally responsible, but only when their actions allow the ever-present dangers inherent in firefighting to escalate through negligence and disregard for human safety....
Frontier family fights to return home Since 1878, four generations of Vadis and Howard Stratton's family lived as homesteaders on this mountain, much like TV's "The Waltons," the clan says. The family made electricity with an 1893 waterwheel, powered by a creek shooting downhill through a homemade pipe. Vadis Stratton and her late husband, Howard, who both didn't drink, smoke or cuss, raised seven kids here. Their home was a 1912 log cabin with a wood-burning stove near the original shed-sized 1878 dwelling. They cut timber for nearby Butte's mines and even prospected for gold. Right through last year, Vadis used a wringer washer. It all made for a 19th Century homestead working until the present day. Chester Arthur was president when the government invited covered-wagon pioneers like the Strattons' ancestors to settle the summits and valleys on the Continental Divide. Now the government has ordered the Strattons to leave, evicting the last of the frontier families that had populated this mountain and its namesake hamlet of Highland City, a nearly vanished ghost town founded in the 1860s gold rush. After winning a court ruling in 2005, the U.S. Forest Service declared 81-year-old Vadis Stratton and her son David, 42, illegal squatters in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and forced the matriarch in August to move into a senior citizen home in Butte, an hour's drive away....
Blown-down trees windfall for streams Wind, fire, floods . . . the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife finds a silver lining in everything nature can throw at the state. Especially trees. The agency, with help from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State Parks and a $28,750 grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, is collecting as many 20-inch (diameter) trees as possible from a veritable forest that blew down along the central Oregon Coast during December windstorms. Downed trees 40 to 50 feet long are destined to be placed in several streams to provide rearing habitat for small salmon and steelhead, capture gravel and create side channels for both juvenile and adult fish. Four log-truckloads of conifer logs have been collected so far, and as many as 10 more might be collected from the December windfall. Jason Kirchner, a department fish habitat biologist, said he has planned seven to 10 projects next summer to improve 12 to 15 miles of streams. He'll use 10 to 200 logs per project....
Blackfeet claim entitlement to 'substantial allocation' of water Leaders of the Blackfeet Tribe told state and federal officials here that their reservation deserves much more water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers than it is getting now. The tribe is in water-rights talks with the Montana Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission to determine how much water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers, along with other drainages, will be allocated to the tribe - and how much will be left over for other users. A public negotiation session was held Dec. 20 in Great Falls. Water from the two rivers, which form in the mountains west of the reservation and flow through it, currently is being diverted to thousands of farmers and residents along the Montana Hi-Line. Tribal officials aren't proposing to stop the distribution. But they argue they deserve more - what one called a ''substantial allocation'' - than they're getting. ''It's our water,'' Tribal Chairman Earl Old Person said. The outcome of the negotiations will affect thousands of residents on the reservation and those living downstream across north-central Montana....
Column - Balancing the needs of winter recreationists Utah boasts the “greatest snow on Earth” and for decades local residents and visitors have ventured into the Tony Grove/Franklin Basin area to ski, snowmobile and simply enjoy the beauty of the snow and mountains that Logan Canyon has to offer. Over time, conflicts between motorized and non-motorized recreationists have developed. Ultimately, a fair distribution of recreation experiences within a limited area means both sides have to give a little. The issues are not about acres. You'll read many articles on who has the most acres available to use and what is fair and what isn't. But that's misleading. Not every acre is equal. Instead, the issues center on quality of snow, family tradition, available terrain, existing parking, proximity to the community of Logan, and the list goes on. The Tony Grove/Franklin Basin has it all; it's the hotspot, the gem for winter recreation. The conflict has a long history. Local newspaper articles describing the issues date back to 1975. The Forest Service responded to these growing conflicts and concerns in the Logan Ranger District in the 2003 Revised Forest Plan and its accompanying environmental impact statement. Still the conflict continued....
Editorial - BLM's landscape system is in danger Three weeks after he took office, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne stopped the worst parts of a proposed overhaul of national parks management policies. Now he needs to do the same with a proposed overhaul of the Bureau of Land Management, announced to employees Nov. 30. The BLM manages three times as much public land as the National Park Service. The resignation of BLM Director Kathleen Clarke last Thursday gives Kempthorne the opportunity to show that the BLM remains committed to its conservation mission. The BLM is the steward of many of the great landscapes of the American West. In particular, the lands and waters of the National Landscape Conservation System have been called "hidden treasures of the American West." They include national monuments, national conservation areas, wilderness areas (and wilderness study areas), historic trails and wild and scenic rivers. These great Western landscapes are the sister system to our national parks, but more rugged. They are highly visited. The proposed reorganization would dump a variety of unrelated programs into the National Landscape Conservation System, thus diluting resources that would be devoted to managing the system, which is already strained for resources. Worse, this latest reorganization plan was hatched in secret with no public review and no congressional oversight. No details have been publicly released, although recommendations were presented to employees Nov. 30 by live satellite broadcast. U.S. Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, and 25 other House members called in a Dec. 20 letter for the BLM to halt the proposed reorganization until Congress examines the implications for the 26 million acre National Landscape Conservation System....
Eagle suit could affect Big Chino pumping A lawsuit that is expected to be filed within the next few weeks will, if successful, make things a bit more challenging for the Prescott area communities to pump the Big Chino aquifer. On Nov. 2 the Arizona-based environmental organization Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its decision to remove all bald eagles from the endangered species list. The CBD contends in its notice that the Arizona born and raised desert nesting bald eagle is a separate and distinct species that, unlike it relatives to the north, has not recovered and requires continued protection...Of the 47 known breeding sites in Arizona, more than one third of them are on the Verde River. Several are located in the upper reaches of the Verde River, along a stretch of riparian habitat that critics contend will be most impacted by plans to pump the Big Chino. The US Geological Survey has determined that approximately 80 percent of the flow of the upper reaches of the Verde River comes from the Big Chino aquifer. Under the protection of the endangered species act, it is against the law to degrade the habitat of a listed species without the consultation and approval of the federal government first....
Endangered Idaho Snail Losing Habitat After clambering down a canyon wall, ducking poison ivy vines and wading chest-deep across a lukewarm stream, Cary Myler spied some flecks that look like pepper sprinkled on a wet rock and announced, "Found some." The pinhead-sized dots are Bruneau hot springsnails. The tiny mollusks that thrive in water as warm as 100 degrees are found nowhere else in the world but here, in the bottom of this southwestern Idaho desert canyon riddled with hot springs 70 miles southeast of Boise. A decade ago, the snails were at the center of a national battle over federal laws designed to protect endangered species. Today, years after the lawsuits were decided and most of the rhetoric retired, they are closer to extinction than ever before. The level of the underground geothermal aquifer that feeds the seeps and springs of hot water where the snails live keeps dropping....
NYT Editorial - Environmental Harmony The long history of Congressional bipartisan cooperation on environmental issues dating back to Richard Nixon has been seriously challenged only twice. The first time was in 1995, when the Gingrich Republicans swept into Washington determined to roll back environmental laws, a threat averted by President Bill Clinton’s veto pen and the exertions of a group of moderate Republicans. The second challenge occurred during the Congress that has now thankfully drawn to a close. The Democrats’ return to power in both houses has raised hopes that some of the old cooperative spirit can be restored and progress made on vital matters like global warming, oil dependency, national parks and threatened wetlands. Environmentalists in the House will certainly have more time to work on positive legislation, since they will no longer have to play defense against Richard Pombo, the California Republican who produced a stream of destructive schemes to open up protected public lands for commercial exploitation, rescind a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling and undermine the Endangered Species Act. Mr. Pombo has been ushered into well-deserved retirement by California voters. On the Senate side, there have been striking changes in leadership. Barbara Boxer, who cares about global warming, replaces James Inhofe, who doesn’t, as head of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Jeff Bingaman, who emphasizes conservation as the appropriate response to oil dependency, replaces Pete Domenici, who tends to favor greater production of America’s dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas, as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Although he’ll need Mr. Domenici’s help, Mr. Bingaman will almost certainly make a major push for new energy legislation, based on proposals that already have broad bipartisan support and would offer a menu of loans, direct subsidies and tax breaks to encourage the production of fuel-efficient cars as well as alternatives to gasoline....
Studies: Lynx habitat may be at risk Some conservationists believe development of a private ski resort on Battle Mountain, as currently designed, will destroy potential lynx habitat and areas the animals might travel through. Colorado Wild conservationists based in Durango and others evaluated the Ginn Co.'s development south of Minturn and submitted their findings to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal agency is conducting an environmental study of the development and what may have to be done to lessen the effect on wildlife. Ginn Co. officials hope to build 1,700 homes, a golf course and 1,100 acres of ski terrain on and around Battle Mountain. Whether lynx roam Battle Mountain is debatable. The Ginn Co. found no traces of lynx in the area, although the Colorado Division of Wildlife has tracked lynx moving across the property....
In California, wild pigs hunted in defense of nature Save the flowers. Save the birds. Kill the pigs. This was Ted Champagne's mission deep in a maze of tule-covered islands and twisting sloughs where he steered his shallow hunting boat and waited for his Catahoula hounds to catch a whiff of wild pigs. The dogs, Butch and Porter, held their bodies taut and sniffed furiously. Champagne kept his 12-gauge shotgun close. He kept his 10-inch-long knife closer, strapped to his side and ready for use in case he found a pig in thick grass and reeds where it could be hard to tell if he was shooting a pig or his dogs. "Once the dogs smell something and jump out of the boat, things move fast," Champagne said. "You want to get in and finish it fast." Champagne is no ordinary hunter in this big marsh, but rather a guardian of endangered flowers and plants. He hunts to protect nature. Champagne volunteers his hunting services for a conservation group, the Solano Land Trust, one of a growing number of California public and nonprofit landowners who kill wild pigs to prevent them from damaging or killing native plants and wildlife....
Why voters rejected Santa Clara County open space measure It is one of the most vexing questions about last month's elections in Silicon Valley. Urban and suburban voters outnumber rural voters by a 15-1 ratio in Santa Clara County. The region has far more registered Democrats than Republicans, and a steady track record of supporting environmental issues. Yet those voters rejected Measure A, an initiative backed by every major local environmental group and many prominent Democratic politicians that would have placed landmark restrictions on development on hillsides and ranch lands. How? A Mercury News computer mapping analysis of all 1,244 precincts in Santa Clara County provides clues. As expected, Measure A won biggest in Palo Alto and Mountain View -- urban areas with lots of liberal voters and environmentalists. It lost biggest in Gilroy and Morgan Hill -- rural areas with more conservative voters, farmers and private-property-rights advocates. But a color-coded county map of the precinct results shows that the race was decided along the Highway 85 corridor....
Column - The Risks of Too Much City The coming year marks a great milestone in the human saga, a development similar in magnitude to the agricultural era and the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, a majority of human beings will be living in vast urban areas, many in megacities and suburban extensions with populations of 10 million or more, according to the United Nations. We have become "Homo Urbanus." Two hundred years ago, the average person on Earth might meet 200 to 300 people in a lifetime. Today a resident of New York City can live and work among 220,000 people within a 10-minute radius of his home or office in midtown Manhattan. Only one city in all of history -- ancient Rome -- boasted a population of more than a million before the 19th century. London became the first modern city with a population over 1 million in 1820. Today 414 cities boast populations of a million or more, and there's no end in sight. As long as the human race had to rely on solar flow, the winds and currents, and animal and human power to sustain life, the population remained relatively low to accommodate nature's carrying capacity: the biosphere's ability to recycle waste and replenish resources. The tipping point was the exhuming of large amounts of stored sun, first in the form of coal deposits, then oil and natural gas. Harnessed by the steam engine and later the internal combustion engine and converted to electricity and distributed across power lines, fossil fuels allowed humanity to create new technologies that dramatically increased food production and manufactured goods and services. The unprecedented increase in productivity led to runaway population growth and the urbanization of the world. No one is really sure whether this turning point in human living arrangements ought to be celebrated, lamented or merely acknowledged. That's because our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats....
Berry: Corporate economy is enemy For more than 40 years, author and poet Wendell Berry has advocated for local agriculture, good land stewardship and less corporate control of economies. He's walked the talk on his Kentucky farm 50 miles east of Louisville, plowing his fields with horse teams, producing most of his family's food and writing prolifically, without a computer, on a changing American culture. He believes now, more than ever, that conservationists and local land users such as farmers and loggers need to come together. "The split between people who produce from the land, like ranchers, and conservationists has been a tragic loss and a tragic waste of time," Berry said recently from his Kentucky farm. "The two sides have a common enemy they should recognize. The global corporate economy is the enemy." Berry, 72, will be a special speaker at the Quivira Coalition conference at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 18 in Albuquerque. He said he supports the coalition's efforts to bridge the gap between agriculture, land managers and environmentalists....
Federal Subsidies Turn Farms Into Big Business The cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar system of federal farm subsidies is an iconic image of the struggling family farmer: small, powerless against Mother Nature, tied to the land by blood. Without generous government help, farm-state politicians say, thousands of these hardworking families would fail, threatening the nation's abundant food supply...This imagery secures billions annually in what one grower called "empathy payments" for farmers. But it is misleading. Today, most of the nation's food is produced by modern family farms that are large operations using state-of-the-art computers, marketing consultants and technologies that cut labor, time and costs. The owners are frequently college graduates who are as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a tractor. They cover more acres and produce more crops with fewer workers than ever before. The very policies touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms are instead helping to accelerate their demise, economists, analysts and farmers say. That's because owners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out....
Cows Engineered to Lack Mad Cow Disease Scientists have genetically engineered a dozen cows to be free from the proteins that cause mad cow disease, a breakthrough that may make the animals immune to the brain-wasting disease. An international team of researchers from the U.S. and Japan reported Sunday that they had "knocked out" the gene responsible for making the proteins, called prions. The disease didn't take hold when brain tissue from two of the genetically engineered cows was exposed to bad prions in the laboratory, they said. Experts said the work may offer another layer of security to people concerned about eating infected beef, although though any food derived from genetically engineered animals must first be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The surviving cows are now being injected directly with mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, to make certain the cattle are immune to it....
It's All Trew: Resourcefulness, greed make for salty brew The transformation from open-range to farming settlements brewed up some strange happenings in the Texas Panhandle. Add a mixture of nationalities, stir in every vocation you can think of then add a generous helping of man's natural greed - and the resulting brew sometimes became explosive. This was especially true in areas where the railroads chose to build. In 1876, the new State of Texas was financially broke but rich in land. The quickest way to turn land into money was by selling it. The fastest way to accomplish such sales was to build a railroad into virgin territory and open it for settlement. To encourage the building of railroads, the state offered to give 16 sections of land, or 10,240 acres, for each mile of new track laid. The railroad companies built the track, took the land, waited for the price to rise then sold it for money to build more track. Occasionally, a choice site on a side-track was created and private railroad investors took over, establishing a town and began selling lots and business opportunities to the public, creating big profits for the stockholders. The town of Salisbury, in what would become Hall County, was one of those choice sites....
Monday, January 01, 2007
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
A look back and a hopeful look ahead
By Julie Carter
There has been a long-standing saying around here about this time of year that goes something along the lines of "We'll just get this year over with so we can start on next year."
That thought has been somewhat of a slogan for ranching for the past decade of droughts and rollercoaster prices. That will not change, because the sources of the hardships haven't changed.
The brink of a new year seems to be a popular time to reflect on the past and then move on to resolutions.
Resolutions are often repeats of redundant attempts to move forward when everything except your will power is pushing you back. It has been my experience that the best thing you can do for a new year is learn what you can from the old year and move on.
This County Views column began as a guest column in 2002 with an esteemed life-long resident of Lincoln County, Johnson Stearns, telling about life in early county days. The wisdom in his story was that, in all the changes that have come and gone in 75 years, the way the sun rises and sets has not changed one bit.
Matt Ferguson delightfully told of fixing pipeline leaks and other assorted ranch jobs that have little or no dignity. His daughter brought it all into perspective for him when she let him know "how lucky he was because he got to play in the mud whenever he wanted to."
Welda Grider shared stories of ranch living. The nuances of hired cowboys, their ongoing antics and raising children to be the good help on the ranch brought some seldom-pondered ranch living realities to town. She even explained why getting kicked in the shins by a calf or run over by a cow in the corral is all part of the Ranch Kid 101 curriculum.
Ronnie Merritt gave us a four-part history of his family's origins in the far northeast end of Lincoln County. His words painted pictures of pioneer ranching that are forever a treasure to this county's history.
I have shared with you the memories of my simple childhood growing up on a high-mountain ranch in Colorado, of the struggles and blessings of living so very rural and the uniqueness of the people who live off the land.
We have talked about cowboy lifestyles, clothing, manners and cuisine. At length we have shared the stories of the ranch wife's jobs that require more a keen sense of humor than skills.
I shared my heart with you over the death of a people whose lives were a vital part of the fabric of this rural way of life and the gaping hole their passing left. I laughed at myself, and with you, over a laundry list of everyday ranch life happenings ranging from taking a dirty ranch pickup to the big city carwashes to the evolution of the "hunters of wild game."
It has been heart-warming fun for me to share my back-porch thoughts with you as well as the "you can't make this stuff up" stories of others. Although the West is changing, the cowboy "ain't dead yet," so there will be more stories to tell.
Turning the page of the calendar doesn't change a thing. It is a ceremony we put too much emphasis on and hope, that because of it, things will be different.
What has begun within each of us today will be seed for tomorrow - no matter what the calendar says.
May your year be blessed with all that you need and most of what you want.
© Julie Carter 2006
A Kelo Christmas
Suzanne Kelo, the Plaintiff in the now infamous Kelo v. City of New London case has sent a Christmas Card to the people who took her house away:
Here is my house that you did take
From me to you, this spell I make
Your houses, your homes
Your family, your friends
May they live in misery
That never ends.
I curse you all
May you rot in hell
To each of you
I send this spell
For the rest of your lives
I wish you ill
I send this now
By the power of will
A look back and a hopeful look ahead
By Julie Carter
There has been a long-standing saying around here about this time of year that goes something along the lines of "We'll just get this year over with so we can start on next year."
That thought has been somewhat of a slogan for ranching for the past decade of droughts and rollercoaster prices. That will not change, because the sources of the hardships haven't changed.
The brink of a new year seems to be a popular time to reflect on the past and then move on to resolutions.
Resolutions are often repeats of redundant attempts to move forward when everything except your will power is pushing you back. It has been my experience that the best thing you can do for a new year is learn what you can from the old year and move on.
This County Views column began as a guest column in 2002 with an esteemed life-long resident of Lincoln County, Johnson Stearns, telling about life in early county days. The wisdom in his story was that, in all the changes that have come and gone in 75 years, the way the sun rises and sets has not changed one bit.
Matt Ferguson delightfully told of fixing pipeline leaks and other assorted ranch jobs that have little or no dignity. His daughter brought it all into perspective for him when she let him know "how lucky he was because he got to play in the mud whenever he wanted to."
Welda Grider shared stories of ranch living. The nuances of hired cowboys, their ongoing antics and raising children to be the good help on the ranch brought some seldom-pondered ranch living realities to town. She even explained why getting kicked in the shins by a calf or run over by a cow in the corral is all part of the Ranch Kid 101 curriculum.
Ronnie Merritt gave us a four-part history of his family's origins in the far northeast end of Lincoln County. His words painted pictures of pioneer ranching that are forever a treasure to this county's history.
I have shared with you the memories of my simple childhood growing up on a high-mountain ranch in Colorado, of the struggles and blessings of living so very rural and the uniqueness of the people who live off the land.
We have talked about cowboy lifestyles, clothing, manners and cuisine. At length we have shared the stories of the ranch wife's jobs that require more a keen sense of humor than skills.
I shared my heart with you over the death of a people whose lives were a vital part of the fabric of this rural way of life and the gaping hole their passing left. I laughed at myself, and with you, over a laundry list of everyday ranch life happenings ranging from taking a dirty ranch pickup to the big city carwashes to the evolution of the "hunters of wild game."
It has been heart-warming fun for me to share my back-porch thoughts with you as well as the "you can't make this stuff up" stories of others. Although the West is changing, the cowboy "ain't dead yet," so there will be more stories to tell.
Turning the page of the calendar doesn't change a thing. It is a ceremony we put too much emphasis on and hope, that because of it, things will be different.
What has begun within each of us today will be seed for tomorrow - no matter what the calendar says.
May your year be blessed with all that you need and most of what you want.
© Julie Carter 2006
A Kelo Christmas
Suzanne Kelo, the Plaintiff in the now infamous Kelo v. City of New London case has sent a Christmas Card to the people who took her house away:
Here is my house that you did take
From me to you, this spell I make
Your houses, your homes
Your family, your friends
May they live in misery
That never ends.
I curse you all
May you rot in hell
To each of you
I send this spell
For the rest of your lives
I wish you ill
I send this now
By the power of will
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