Supreme Court Rejects Eminent Domain 'Extortion' Case
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review a New York case challenging a use of eminent domain that the landowner called "extortion." The case was one of more than 100 that the court rejected Tuesday without comment. It would have provided the justices an opportunity to clarify their controversial 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, in which they ruled that local governments can seize personal property for redevelopment plans. The New York case, Didden v. Village of Port Chester, revolved around landowner Bart Didden's claim that the village allowed a developer to extort him before condemning his property under eminent domain and giving it to the developer to build a drugstore. As Cybercast News Service previously reported, local authorities wanted the developer, Gregory Wasser of G&S Investors, to build a Walgreens pharmacy on Didden's land as part of the village's 1999 redevelopment plan. Didden, however, worked privately with competing pharmacy CVS, to build a branch of their store on the land. Didden claimed that Wasser threatened to have the land transferred under eminent domain unless Didden paid the developer $800,000 or made him a 50 percent partner in the CVS project. A day after Didden refused the offer the village began the process of condemning his land. After the court declined to hear his case, Didden maintained that he is the victim of extortion. In a release issued by his lawyers at the Institute for Justice, Didden said "a private citizen using the government's power is extorting me" and that "the government is making this extortion possible."....
Friday, January 19, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
Park chief, residents spar over pass plan Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Suzanne Lewis faced tough questions Thursday from Cody business leaders opposing a draft proposal that would close Sylvan Pass to snowmobiles and snow coaches. Speaking to a group of Cody Country Chamber of Commerce members, Lewis cited a tight park budget and declining winter traffic numbers through the East Entrance as factors behind the proposed pass closure. She rejected the notion that the National Park Service was overstating avalanche risks as an excuse to close the pass. A study submitted by Park County commissioners found only one minor incident related to avalanches on the pass over the past 30 years. "Thirty years of not doing the right thing doesn't mean we should continue 30 years more of risk," Lewis said. Bob Coe, owner of the Pahaska Tepee resort near Yellowstone's east gate, said many park activities are risky, ranging from hiking in bear country to burns from thermal features....
Editorial - A blunder THE DEPARTMENT of Defense is starting to look pretty ham-handed in its handling of the Army’s proposal to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. Most recently it turns out that no further extension is to be granted ranchers and other people living near the maneuver site for comments on an environmental assessment of more troops using the training grounds. In October, the U.S. Department of Defense released a draft report on the possible impacts from an expected influx of 8,000 additional soldiers to Fort Carson who are expected to train at the Pinon Canyon training site. Comments on the study were due Nov. 27 but that deadline was extended to Jan. 11. But after raging blizzards struck the region last month, ranchers had asked for another extension. Ranchers have spent the past four weeks trying to dig out from snowstorms so severe the region has been declared a federal disaster area. Those ranchers have had an immediate concern, to save as many head of cattle as possible. Those animals are their livelihoods. A spokesman for a group opposing the expansion says letters from GOP Sen. Wayne Allard and Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar asking for a further extension went unheeded by Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey. What a public relations blunder....
This city knows the drill LIKE many Western towns, Rifle is a plain-looking community in a remarkable location. The town is wedged into a gulley carved by Rifle Creek as it trickles from the northern plateaus into the Colorado River. Most of Rifle consists of a narrow grid of modest clapboard and midcentury houses. It's the scenery that commands attention here. Looming above town are enormous sagebrush-studded plateaus, framed by rocky triangular hills that recede into the horizon. Winding roads lead into notches and hollows that cradle ranches and homes. The setting is spectacular in another way too: One of the richest natural gas fields on the continent lies beneath the ground. The gas deposits of the Piceance Basin lay trapped beneath hard sands, too costly to extract for decades. But technological advancements and sky-high gas prices changed that just as the Bush administration opened more public lands for exploration. Drilling rigs have mushroomed on the wind-swept mesas here. Big-rigs hauling drilling equipment and waste rumble down dirt roads that previously saw cattle drives. Rifle is prospering. Its population has risen 20% in the last six years to 8,500. The state projects it will reach 40,000 by 2020. Talk of the town's changing character is thick at the Elks Lodge and in cafes and butcher shops. Locals still can't get over downtown's two-hour parking limit imposed last May....
Millions of Texans want water rights in Oklahoma After a leisurely drive through the countryside between Dallas and the Red River, it's not hard to see why Texans want so badly to buy southern Oklahoma water rights. Thousands of large houses are going up in what used to be Texas pastureland. The Texans don't want to wait until the state's water sale moratorium expires in 2009. They sought permission to take 460,000 acre feet from three Oklahoma water basins and have filed a lawsuit in federal court to break the five-year ban. That moratorium came about after a proposed water sale drew the interests of ranchers, Native American tribes and civic interests throughout southern Oklahoma. The moratorium, first passed in 2002, was extended in 2004 until 2009. It passed the House in 2004 by a margin of 96-1 and the Senate 46-0. The water sale ban was designed to give Oklahomans time to complete a water plan that will determine the state's water supply and needs for the next 50 years. State Rep. Jerry Ellis, D-Valliant, who represents McCurtain County, in the Oklahoma House, said the amount of water sought exceeds the amount used by Oklahoma City and Tulsa combined....
Groups look to revive bill for drilling damages Agriculture producers and some environmental groups are negotiating with the state’s oil and gas industry to revive legislation to compensate private landowners for property damages caused by drilling. The New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau and the Oil and Gas Accountability Project banded together last year to push legislation called the Surface Owners Protection Act. The House approved the bill, but it never reached the Senate floor for a vote, according to New Mexico Oil and Gas Association President Bob Gallagher. “We’re close to an agreement that both sides could live with. But close is not there,” he said. “Also, we thought we had an agreement last year and the other side walked out at the 11th hour.” Local oil and gas companies say they supported the original bill and spent hours negotiating for it, even though they had no legal obligation to do so....
Boarder's speed a factor in crash? A witness to Sunday's backcountry accident might clear a snowmobile driver of any suspicion of negligence in a collision with a snowboarder, according to a source familiar with the investigation. The witness on Wednesday accompanied investigators from the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office and U.S. Forest Service to the scene of the accident near Hurricane Point on Richmond Ridge and helped them piece together what happened. Based on his information, it is believed the snowmobile was traveling up a groomed route around 12 mph during the collision with snowboarder Doran Laybourn, who was heading down the same route, according to the source. The person wanted to remain anonymous because the investigation is ongoing. Law enforcement officials have deemed the witness credible. His name wasn't released, but it was disclosed he is a member of Mountain Rescue Aspen....
Report: Confusion marred search Kati and James Kim ripped the visor mirror out of their car and tried directing reflected light at airplanes flying over them. They shouted and struggled in vain to relight a fire, in the rain, when a helicopter passed overhead. They hoped that somehow, someone would respond to the note they had written with a crayon and stuck in a zip-lock bag to a gate on a federal wilderness road in southern Oregon: "Low on Gas, Low on Food, 2 Babies." When none of that worked, Kati Kim told investigators in a report issued Thursday, her husband left to seek help, believing, she said, that there was a town with amenities only about four miles away. He had barely eaten for the past week, she said, "saving the food for the babies."...The 150-page report, ordered by Kulongoski in the wake of international attention directed on the tragedy, concluded that the search for the family had been marred by "frequent confusion" over just who was in charge. The report provides details of factors leading to that confusion: the number of governmental bodies involved in the search, personality conflicts between officials, sensitivities about comparative ranks, and one particularly inexperienced search official. In addition, it states, vital information from cellphone records might have helped searchers locate the family a day earlier. But the report did not conclude whether the death would have been prevented if these defects in the search process had not occurred....
Editorial - Trust in mining here toppled a long time ago The felling of San Manuel's twin smelter stacks can be seen as a metaphor for the crumbling of community trust in the entire mining industry. It's a trust that Augusta Resource Corp. must re-establish if it hopes to open an 800-acre open-pit copper mine south of Tucson. Wednesday, with a boom and a cloud of smoke, the 500-foot twin stacks of the former smelter complex at San Manuel slowly listed and crashed to the ground in a plume of dust. The stacks were a highly visible part of a 50-year mining and smelting operation about 45 miles northeast of Tucson. The Star's Richard Ducote reported in Wednesday's paper that at full production San Manuel's underground copper mine, a part of the former Magma Copper complex, was the largest in North America. During the smelter's lifetime, it produced 14 billion pounds of copper, Ducote reported. Economics, not lack of copper, brought the stacks down....
Aircraft deicing chemicals studied U.S. scientists have found aircraft deicing chemicals are toxic to aquatic life forms. The U.S. Geological Survey has been examining toxicity of a variety of formulations used to remove or prevent dangerous ice buildup on aircraft. The study confirmed proprietary additives are responsible for the observed toxicity. The USGS scientists compared nine different formulations of deicers and found neither the primary ingredients -- ethylene glycol and propylene glycol -- nor the known additives accounted for all observed toxicity. Additives are included to improve a formulation's effectiveness. Those that are proprietary have compositions known only to the manufacturer. Although research conducted in the 1990's revealed the toxicity of proprietary additives, the new study compared numerous deicers and anti-icers and confirmed most still have toxic additives that have not been publicly identified....
Environmentalists seek to join case over Death Valley roads Six environmental groups filed legal papers Thursday to join Death Valley National Park in fighting a federal court lawsuit that, if successful, could open miles of desert canyons and valleys to motorized vehicles. Last October, Inyo County sued the federal government seeking to re-establish its access to four dirt roads near the Nevada border that park officials seized when the national park was established in 1994. The environmentalists say the old mining roads were washed away years ago, and allowing vehicles into those areas now could endanger sensitive animal and plant species found in remote stretches of the desert. If Judge Anthony Ishii grants the motion to intervene, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Inyo, California Wilderness Coalition, Center for Biological Diversity, The Wilderness Society and the National Parks Conservation Association would become parties to the suit. If the county prevails, the groups believe the park's fragile ecosystem could suffer, to the detriment of the federally protected desert tortoise, desert bighorn sheep, mountain lions and other rare wildlife that roam there....
Naturalists tell their failures, successes The first attempt to reintroduce black-footed ferrets into the wild flopped. Coyotes gobbled up the polecats, which once lived across the Great Plains but were on the brink of extinction, because the cage-born ferrets never learned about natural predators, how to hunt prairie dogs or to take over their burrows for homes. The second time around, biologists used stuffed owls, remote-controlled "robo-badgers" and domestic dogs to chase the ferrets around, teaching them fear. They also brought in prairie dogs to teach the ferrets to catch food and live underground. With that help, the ferrets regained a solid foothold. "These are some of the problems we deal with," said Lincoln Park Zoo zoologist Rachel Santymire at a conference Thursday of about 100 biologists and nature resource managers from zoos, non-profits, nature centers, universities, state governments and Chicago-area forest preserves....
Evangelicals, Scientists Join on Warming Saying they share a moral purpose, a group of evangelicals and scientists said Wednesday they will work together to convince the nation's leaders that global warming is real. The Rev. Rich Cizik, public policy director for the National Association of Evangelicals, and Nobel-laureate Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, were among 28 signers of a statement that demands urgent changes in values, lifestyles and public policies to avert disastrous changes in climate. "God will judge us for destroying the Creation. Therefore, we as evangelicals have a responsibility to be even more vigilant than others," Cizik told a news conference. "Science can be an ally in helping us understand what faith is telling us," he said. "We will not allow the Creation to be degraded, destroyed by human folly." Among the project's supporters are Edward O. Wilson, a two-time Pulitzer prize-winning scientist and author; James Hansen, a prominent NASA climatologist; and Calvin B. DeWitt, president of the Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists....
Pelosi Creates Global Warming Committee House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought to create a special committee Thursday in an effort to jump-start long-delayed government efforts to deal with global warming and produce a bill by Independence Day. Pelosi, D-Calif., said the committee would hold hearings and recommend legislation on how to reduce greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide generated by fossil fuels, that most scientists blame for a gradual warming of the earth's climate. "I promise to do everything in my power to achieve energy independence ... and to stop global warming," Pelosi said. Pelosi set a goal of the Fourth of July for finishing a global warming bill that would "truly declare our energy independence." The committee will be led by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who shares Pelosi's goals, said a Democratic leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity because Pelosi had yet to announce her choice. Actual bill-drafting duties will be left to committees that have a say in the matter. That could be several because global climate change could affect virtually everything....
AMS CERTIFIED WEATHERMAN STRIKES BACK AT WEATHER CHANNEL CALL FOR DECERTIFICATION Well, well. Some “climate expert” on “The Weather Channel” wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for “tolerance”, huh? I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know: *Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at “The Weather Channel” probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab....
Rancher tends to buffaloes in Sandia Pueblo Lovato is a rancher of a different kind. He tends to 45 buffalo that aren't his. Officially, they belong to Sandia Pueblo, but in truth they belong to the land. It's a sacred kinship, a relationship more to be respected than understood. Lovato, 52, is caretaker of this buffalo preserve, a 1,000-acre swath of open range running along Tramway Road Northeast, just east of I-25 across from the growing Sandia Resort & Casino. His job is to maintain the sacred, prehistoric connection between American Indians, the buffalo and the land they coexist upon. Lovato isn't a member of the pueblo. He's not even American Indian. It took some time to build a relationship with the buffalo. They're still wild animals, after all, and smarter than the cattle he grew up tending. "They charged me for a year and a half," he says, walking along ground scattered with hay and buffalo droppings. "They get hot really quick. It's that wild temper that flares up. "It's that gene pool that's trying to survive."....
Life is a windmill for repairman Chuck Jones For the past 27 years Jones has owned and operated Flint Hills Windmill Repair, and said what he enjoys most about repairing windmills is working on a wide variety of windmills, being outdoors, and traveling the back road roads ofKansas. What does Jones enjoy least about working on windmills? “worrying about falling off” and “fixing the wrong windmill.” “We do a six county area,” Jones said, “and every day seems to be a little different.” Jones said they work on a wide variety of windmills, such as Aermotor, Dempster, Stover, and Challenge windmills and will soon work on a Samson Oilright near Goessel. “Finding this particular model was like finding an Edsel,” Jones said. Jones’s said that he takes care of between 1200 to 1500 windmills, has repaired many more than that, and has worked on windmills as short as nine feet — it actually pumped water, Jones said — and as tall as 50 foot....
It’s The Pitts: Exposed When it comes to remembering bad pictures everyone has a photographic memory. I know this because at the tender age of 21 I was handed a camera and the title of “field editor” without having the faintest idea how to write or take photos. Most of my problems were the camera’s fault. It had all sorts of dials, lenses and f-stops and at the time I didn’t know the difference between an f-stop and a Quick Stop. (Still don’t for that matter!) So I developed the technique of taking a picture using every conceivable combination of settings, figuring one had to be right. Surprisingly, this was seldom the case. I learned real fast that to take a good picture required hard work, patience, several rolls of film and focus. Which, by the way, most of my photos lacked. Keep in mind these were the days before digital cameras and I couldn’t see right away how bad my photos were. No, I had to wait three days for them to develop to make this discovery. I was okay when taking pictures of people, other than the occasional red dots for eyes, but with animals I never could get on their good side. You see, a beef animal is supposed to be photographed headed uphill with their hind legs offset. But whenever I’d line up a shot and say “cheese” (which is a silly thing to say to a cow in the first place) I’d end up with a grotesque looking photo of a Far Side cartoon cow. And this was back in the days when cattlemen largely made up their mind on which animal to buy based on the animal’s picture in an ad or a sale catalog. Needless to say, my photos have ruined the careers of many an aspiring bovine....
Park chief, residents spar over pass plan Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Suzanne Lewis faced tough questions Thursday from Cody business leaders opposing a draft proposal that would close Sylvan Pass to snowmobiles and snow coaches. Speaking to a group of Cody Country Chamber of Commerce members, Lewis cited a tight park budget and declining winter traffic numbers through the East Entrance as factors behind the proposed pass closure. She rejected the notion that the National Park Service was overstating avalanche risks as an excuse to close the pass. A study submitted by Park County commissioners found only one minor incident related to avalanches on the pass over the past 30 years. "Thirty years of not doing the right thing doesn't mean we should continue 30 years more of risk," Lewis said. Bob Coe, owner of the Pahaska Tepee resort near Yellowstone's east gate, said many park activities are risky, ranging from hiking in bear country to burns from thermal features....
Editorial - A blunder THE DEPARTMENT of Defense is starting to look pretty ham-handed in its handling of the Army’s proposal to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. Most recently it turns out that no further extension is to be granted ranchers and other people living near the maneuver site for comments on an environmental assessment of more troops using the training grounds. In October, the U.S. Department of Defense released a draft report on the possible impacts from an expected influx of 8,000 additional soldiers to Fort Carson who are expected to train at the Pinon Canyon training site. Comments on the study were due Nov. 27 but that deadline was extended to Jan. 11. But after raging blizzards struck the region last month, ranchers had asked for another extension. Ranchers have spent the past four weeks trying to dig out from snowstorms so severe the region has been declared a federal disaster area. Those ranchers have had an immediate concern, to save as many head of cattle as possible. Those animals are their livelihoods. A spokesman for a group opposing the expansion says letters from GOP Sen. Wayne Allard and Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar asking for a further extension went unheeded by Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey. What a public relations blunder....
This city knows the drill LIKE many Western towns, Rifle is a plain-looking community in a remarkable location. The town is wedged into a gulley carved by Rifle Creek as it trickles from the northern plateaus into the Colorado River. Most of Rifle consists of a narrow grid of modest clapboard and midcentury houses. It's the scenery that commands attention here. Looming above town are enormous sagebrush-studded plateaus, framed by rocky triangular hills that recede into the horizon. Winding roads lead into notches and hollows that cradle ranches and homes. The setting is spectacular in another way too: One of the richest natural gas fields on the continent lies beneath the ground. The gas deposits of the Piceance Basin lay trapped beneath hard sands, too costly to extract for decades. But technological advancements and sky-high gas prices changed that just as the Bush administration opened more public lands for exploration. Drilling rigs have mushroomed on the wind-swept mesas here. Big-rigs hauling drilling equipment and waste rumble down dirt roads that previously saw cattle drives. Rifle is prospering. Its population has risen 20% in the last six years to 8,500. The state projects it will reach 40,000 by 2020. Talk of the town's changing character is thick at the Elks Lodge and in cafes and butcher shops. Locals still can't get over downtown's two-hour parking limit imposed last May....
Millions of Texans want water rights in Oklahoma After a leisurely drive through the countryside between Dallas and the Red River, it's not hard to see why Texans want so badly to buy southern Oklahoma water rights. Thousands of large houses are going up in what used to be Texas pastureland. The Texans don't want to wait until the state's water sale moratorium expires in 2009. They sought permission to take 460,000 acre feet from three Oklahoma water basins and have filed a lawsuit in federal court to break the five-year ban. That moratorium came about after a proposed water sale drew the interests of ranchers, Native American tribes and civic interests throughout southern Oklahoma. The moratorium, first passed in 2002, was extended in 2004 until 2009. It passed the House in 2004 by a margin of 96-1 and the Senate 46-0. The water sale ban was designed to give Oklahomans time to complete a water plan that will determine the state's water supply and needs for the next 50 years. State Rep. Jerry Ellis, D-Valliant, who represents McCurtain County, in the Oklahoma House, said the amount of water sought exceeds the amount used by Oklahoma City and Tulsa combined....
Groups look to revive bill for drilling damages Agriculture producers and some environmental groups are negotiating with the state’s oil and gas industry to revive legislation to compensate private landowners for property damages caused by drilling. The New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau and the Oil and Gas Accountability Project banded together last year to push legislation called the Surface Owners Protection Act. The House approved the bill, but it never reached the Senate floor for a vote, according to New Mexico Oil and Gas Association President Bob Gallagher. “We’re close to an agreement that both sides could live with. But close is not there,” he said. “Also, we thought we had an agreement last year and the other side walked out at the 11th hour.” Local oil and gas companies say they supported the original bill and spent hours negotiating for it, even though they had no legal obligation to do so....
Boarder's speed a factor in crash? A witness to Sunday's backcountry accident might clear a snowmobile driver of any suspicion of negligence in a collision with a snowboarder, according to a source familiar with the investigation. The witness on Wednesday accompanied investigators from the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office and U.S. Forest Service to the scene of the accident near Hurricane Point on Richmond Ridge and helped them piece together what happened. Based on his information, it is believed the snowmobile was traveling up a groomed route around 12 mph during the collision with snowboarder Doran Laybourn, who was heading down the same route, according to the source. The person wanted to remain anonymous because the investigation is ongoing. Law enforcement officials have deemed the witness credible. His name wasn't released, but it was disclosed he is a member of Mountain Rescue Aspen....
Report: Confusion marred search Kati and James Kim ripped the visor mirror out of their car and tried directing reflected light at airplanes flying over them. They shouted and struggled in vain to relight a fire, in the rain, when a helicopter passed overhead. They hoped that somehow, someone would respond to the note they had written with a crayon and stuck in a zip-lock bag to a gate on a federal wilderness road in southern Oregon: "Low on Gas, Low on Food, 2 Babies." When none of that worked, Kati Kim told investigators in a report issued Thursday, her husband left to seek help, believing, she said, that there was a town with amenities only about four miles away. He had barely eaten for the past week, she said, "saving the food for the babies."...The 150-page report, ordered by Kulongoski in the wake of international attention directed on the tragedy, concluded that the search for the family had been marred by "frequent confusion" over just who was in charge. The report provides details of factors leading to that confusion: the number of governmental bodies involved in the search, personality conflicts between officials, sensitivities about comparative ranks, and one particularly inexperienced search official. In addition, it states, vital information from cellphone records might have helped searchers locate the family a day earlier. But the report did not conclude whether the death would have been prevented if these defects in the search process had not occurred....
Editorial - Trust in mining here toppled a long time ago The felling of San Manuel's twin smelter stacks can be seen as a metaphor for the crumbling of community trust in the entire mining industry. It's a trust that Augusta Resource Corp. must re-establish if it hopes to open an 800-acre open-pit copper mine south of Tucson. Wednesday, with a boom and a cloud of smoke, the 500-foot twin stacks of the former smelter complex at San Manuel slowly listed and crashed to the ground in a plume of dust. The stacks were a highly visible part of a 50-year mining and smelting operation about 45 miles northeast of Tucson. The Star's Richard Ducote reported in Wednesday's paper that at full production San Manuel's underground copper mine, a part of the former Magma Copper complex, was the largest in North America. During the smelter's lifetime, it produced 14 billion pounds of copper, Ducote reported. Economics, not lack of copper, brought the stacks down....
Aircraft deicing chemicals studied U.S. scientists have found aircraft deicing chemicals are toxic to aquatic life forms. The U.S. Geological Survey has been examining toxicity of a variety of formulations used to remove or prevent dangerous ice buildup on aircraft. The study confirmed proprietary additives are responsible for the observed toxicity. The USGS scientists compared nine different formulations of deicers and found neither the primary ingredients -- ethylene glycol and propylene glycol -- nor the known additives accounted for all observed toxicity. Additives are included to improve a formulation's effectiveness. Those that are proprietary have compositions known only to the manufacturer. Although research conducted in the 1990's revealed the toxicity of proprietary additives, the new study compared numerous deicers and anti-icers and confirmed most still have toxic additives that have not been publicly identified....
Environmentalists seek to join case over Death Valley roads Six environmental groups filed legal papers Thursday to join Death Valley National Park in fighting a federal court lawsuit that, if successful, could open miles of desert canyons and valleys to motorized vehicles. Last October, Inyo County sued the federal government seeking to re-establish its access to four dirt roads near the Nevada border that park officials seized when the national park was established in 1994. The environmentalists say the old mining roads were washed away years ago, and allowing vehicles into those areas now could endanger sensitive animal and plant species found in remote stretches of the desert. If Judge Anthony Ishii grants the motion to intervene, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Inyo, California Wilderness Coalition, Center for Biological Diversity, The Wilderness Society and the National Parks Conservation Association would become parties to the suit. If the county prevails, the groups believe the park's fragile ecosystem could suffer, to the detriment of the federally protected desert tortoise, desert bighorn sheep, mountain lions and other rare wildlife that roam there....
Naturalists tell their failures, successes The first attempt to reintroduce black-footed ferrets into the wild flopped. Coyotes gobbled up the polecats, which once lived across the Great Plains but were on the brink of extinction, because the cage-born ferrets never learned about natural predators, how to hunt prairie dogs or to take over their burrows for homes. The second time around, biologists used stuffed owls, remote-controlled "robo-badgers" and domestic dogs to chase the ferrets around, teaching them fear. They also brought in prairie dogs to teach the ferrets to catch food and live underground. With that help, the ferrets regained a solid foothold. "These are some of the problems we deal with," said Lincoln Park Zoo zoologist Rachel Santymire at a conference Thursday of about 100 biologists and nature resource managers from zoos, non-profits, nature centers, universities, state governments and Chicago-area forest preserves....
Evangelicals, Scientists Join on Warming Saying they share a moral purpose, a group of evangelicals and scientists said Wednesday they will work together to convince the nation's leaders that global warming is real. The Rev. Rich Cizik, public policy director for the National Association of Evangelicals, and Nobel-laureate Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, were among 28 signers of a statement that demands urgent changes in values, lifestyles and public policies to avert disastrous changes in climate. "God will judge us for destroying the Creation. Therefore, we as evangelicals have a responsibility to be even more vigilant than others," Cizik told a news conference. "Science can be an ally in helping us understand what faith is telling us," he said. "We will not allow the Creation to be degraded, destroyed by human folly." Among the project's supporters are Edward O. Wilson, a two-time Pulitzer prize-winning scientist and author; James Hansen, a prominent NASA climatologist; and Calvin B. DeWitt, president of the Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists....
Pelosi Creates Global Warming Committee House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought to create a special committee Thursday in an effort to jump-start long-delayed government efforts to deal with global warming and produce a bill by Independence Day. Pelosi, D-Calif., said the committee would hold hearings and recommend legislation on how to reduce greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide generated by fossil fuels, that most scientists blame for a gradual warming of the earth's climate. "I promise to do everything in my power to achieve energy independence ... and to stop global warming," Pelosi said. Pelosi set a goal of the Fourth of July for finishing a global warming bill that would "truly declare our energy independence." The committee will be led by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who shares Pelosi's goals, said a Democratic leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity because Pelosi had yet to announce her choice. Actual bill-drafting duties will be left to committees that have a say in the matter. That could be several because global climate change could affect virtually everything....
AMS CERTIFIED WEATHERMAN STRIKES BACK AT WEATHER CHANNEL CALL FOR DECERTIFICATION Well, well. Some “climate expert” on “The Weather Channel” wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for “tolerance”, huh? I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know: *Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at “The Weather Channel” probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab....
Rancher tends to buffaloes in Sandia Pueblo Lovato is a rancher of a different kind. He tends to 45 buffalo that aren't his. Officially, they belong to Sandia Pueblo, but in truth they belong to the land. It's a sacred kinship, a relationship more to be respected than understood. Lovato, 52, is caretaker of this buffalo preserve, a 1,000-acre swath of open range running along Tramway Road Northeast, just east of I-25 across from the growing Sandia Resort & Casino. His job is to maintain the sacred, prehistoric connection between American Indians, the buffalo and the land they coexist upon. Lovato isn't a member of the pueblo. He's not even American Indian. It took some time to build a relationship with the buffalo. They're still wild animals, after all, and smarter than the cattle he grew up tending. "They charged me for a year and a half," he says, walking along ground scattered with hay and buffalo droppings. "They get hot really quick. It's that wild temper that flares up. "It's that gene pool that's trying to survive."....
Life is a windmill for repairman Chuck Jones For the past 27 years Jones has owned and operated Flint Hills Windmill Repair, and said what he enjoys most about repairing windmills is working on a wide variety of windmills, being outdoors, and traveling the back road roads ofKansas. What does Jones enjoy least about working on windmills? “worrying about falling off” and “fixing the wrong windmill.” “We do a six county area,” Jones said, “and every day seems to be a little different.” Jones said they work on a wide variety of windmills, such as Aermotor, Dempster, Stover, and Challenge windmills and will soon work on a Samson Oilright near Goessel. “Finding this particular model was like finding an Edsel,” Jones said. Jones’s said that he takes care of between 1200 to 1500 windmills, has repaired many more than that, and has worked on windmills as short as nine feet — it actually pumped water, Jones said — and as tall as 50 foot....
It’s The Pitts: Exposed When it comes to remembering bad pictures everyone has a photographic memory. I know this because at the tender age of 21 I was handed a camera and the title of “field editor” without having the faintest idea how to write or take photos. Most of my problems were the camera’s fault. It had all sorts of dials, lenses and f-stops and at the time I didn’t know the difference between an f-stop and a Quick Stop. (Still don’t for that matter!) So I developed the technique of taking a picture using every conceivable combination of settings, figuring one had to be right. Surprisingly, this was seldom the case. I learned real fast that to take a good picture required hard work, patience, several rolls of film and focus. Which, by the way, most of my photos lacked. Keep in mind these were the days before digital cameras and I couldn’t see right away how bad my photos were. No, I had to wait three days for them to develop to make this discovery. I was okay when taking pictures of people, other than the occasional red dots for eyes, but with animals I never could get on their good side. You see, a beef animal is supposed to be photographed headed uphill with their hind legs offset. But whenever I’d line up a shot and say “cheese” (which is a silly thing to say to a cow in the first place) I’d end up with a grotesque looking photo of a Far Side cartoon cow. And this was back in the days when cattlemen largely made up their mind on which animal to buy based on the animal’s picture in an ad or a sale catalog. Needless to say, my photos have ruined the careers of many an aspiring bovine....
Thursday, January 18, 2007
GAO
Trade Adjustment Assistance: New Program for Farmers Provides Some Assistance, but Has Had Limited Participation and Low Program Expenditures. GAO-07-201, December 18.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-201
Oil and Gas Royalties: Royalty Relief Will Likely Cost the Government Billions, but the Final Costs Have Yet to Be Determined, by Mark E. Gaffigan, acting director, natural resources and environment, before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
GAO-07-369T, January 18.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-369T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07369thigh.pdf
Trade Adjustment Assistance: New Program for Farmers Provides Some Assistance, but Has Had Limited Participation and Low Program Expenditures. GAO-07-201, December 18.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-201
Oil and Gas Royalties: Royalty Relief Will Likely Cost the Government Billions, but the Final Costs Have Yet to Be Determined, by Mark E. Gaffigan, acting director, natural resources and environment, before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
GAO-07-369T, January 18.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-369T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07369thigh.pdf
NEWS ROUNDUP
Ranchers: Protect property rights Property owners should not bear the cost of the country's energy corridors, a Weston County rancher said Tuesday morning. Nancy Darnell of Weston County, who has two pipelines, a transmission line and a proposed railroad line on her ranch, said condemnation action is not economic development. She was one of a parade of ranchers from throughout the state who testified before the House Agriculture, Public Lands and Water Resources Committee Tuesday morning on House Bill 124, a measure that would change the state's eminent domain law. In general, the ranchers want more protection of their rights as landowners when industry comes looking for easements for a pipeline, for example. Many of the people testifying said they support the bill, crafted by a coalition of agriculture and industry representatives, with some amendments. Several ranchers, including Randy Dunn of Laramie, called for a requirement in the law that companies pay landowners annual rental fees rather than only a lump-sum settlement. Dunn has six pipelines and two overhead transmission lines on his ranch, which was cut in half by construction of Interstate 80....
Panel rules against landowner The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has ruled against a Park County landowner who sought to force an energy company to pay a higher bond for drilling on his land. The ruling Tuesday rejected arguments by Heart Mountain landowner Jim Dager that Windsor Energy should post a $416,000 surety bond to cover the loss of value of nearly 1,000 acres surrounding planned gas-drilling operations. The commission instead approved a proposal by Windsor to post a $13,000 bond, covering the loss of value of only the 10 acres of Dager's land that will be occupied by a well pad and disturbed by company operations. "We're happy with the decision," said Jeff Dahlberg, chief operations officer for Windsor. "It's what we expected. Anything else would have been very discouraging." Dager had argued changes to Wyoming's split-estate laws required that landowners be compensated when oil and gas operations impact land beyond the immediate footprint of roads or equipment sites. Dager said he purchased the land for its scenery, wildlife and privacy, all of which would be affected by gas operations, not just the 10 acres occupied by Windsor buildings and equipment....
Groups sue over coalbed water permits A water-rights dispute over water produced by coalbed methane drilling has landed in state District Court. The Northern Plains Resource Council and the Tongue River Water Users' Association on Tuesday sued a state agency and a gas developer, alleging their state constitutional rights are being violated. The groups also claim a state hearings examiner erred in a recent decision on an application for water rights. The suit, filed in Helena, named as defendants the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation as well as Fidelity Exploration and Production Co., a subsidiary of MDU Resources Inc. Fidelity is seeking two permits to market water produced by coalbed methane drilling for beneficial uses, including irrigation on a ranch it owns in Wyoming, dust suppression at a Montana coal mine, livestock and wildlife watering and its industrial operations. Northern Plains, the Tongue River group and several ranchers in southeastern Montana have objected to Fidelity's permit applications, saying they would harm their senior water rights in ground and surface waters and would violate the Montana Constitution....
State must regulate CBM water, council told The major losers in coal-bed methane development are the off-site landowners who live downstream from the end of the discharge water pipes, a University of Wyoming professor said Wednesday. Roger Coupal, associate professor of agriculture and applied sciences, said the state could apply a small discharge fee against industry that could be used to pay for administration and mitigation for the off-site landowners for damage to their property. It was one of several alternatives offered by Coupal, who testified Wednesday at a Wyoming Environmental Quality Council public hearing. The hearing, which packed the Cheyenne City Council chambers, stems from a petition from the Powder River Basin Resource Council calling for state regulation of coal-bed methane discharge water....
Feds won't kill excess wolves Federal wildlife officials will not eliminate excess wolf packs in Wyoming after formal delisting is proposed later this month. That notice came in response to a list of questions from state officials about a new federal wolf management plan introduced at a high-profile meeting last month in Cheyenne. State officials, including Gov. Dave Freudenthal, received the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service letter at the end of the business day Wednesday and did not have any comment on the seven-page document. State lawmakers considering changes to Wyoming’s wolf laws have said the federal response could play a significant role in that debate. A chief concern from the state is how to handle the excess packs between federal approval of a Wyoming wolf management plan and actual removal of federal protection for the animals. Wyoming is currently home to about 23 wolf packs outside Yellowstone National Park, 16 more than required under federal wolf recovery guidelines....
Scabies increasingly affecting elk The number of elk in the Yellowstone National Park region infected with scabies, a skin infestation caused by mites, is up this year, state wildlife officials say. The disease can be fatal - especially when an animal's health has been weakened for other reasons, such as old age or disease. Scabies also can cause animals to lose all their hair, said Jim Miller, a Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks game warden. "I've seen a lot of them that look naked," he said. "Just a little fuzz on them." The mites that cause scabies live at the base of host hairs and pierce the skin with their mouths. This causes inflammation, hair loss and an "oozing matter which hardens into a scab and ultimately a dark crust," according to FWP information distributed this winter to Gardiner-area hunters. The type of scabies infecting elk is not a threat to humans. Meat from infected elk isn't as tender as meat from healthy elk, park biologist Travis Wyman said....
Minerals director under fire over leases Minerals Management Service Director Johnnie Burton is under fire over when she knew about problems with oil and gas drilling leases that may cost the government billions of dollars, with a key Republican suggesting Wednesday that she may need to resign. The Interior Department's inspector general has investigated whether Burton, a former Wyoming state official, knew about the leasing errors earlier than she first told Congress. In September, Burton testified before a House committee that she first learned about the issue in late 2005 or early 2006. But the inspector general's report, due to be released at a Senate hearing today, will say that e-mails show she was told about it in early 2004. At issue are oil and gas drilling leases signed in 1998 and 1999 during the Clinton administration. A clause triggering royalty payments if energy prices rose over a certain amount was left out of those leases, costing the government potentially as much as $10 billion if not corrected....
Column - You Can Always Blame Coyote Poor Coyote. He gets blamed for everything. The Crow say Coyote created the world. The Wasco say Coyote left two grizzly bears and two wolves in the sky to form the Big Dipper. The Colville say Coyote dug a hole in the Cascade Mountains to create the Columbia River Several tribes claim that Coyote brought the world fire, like Prometheus. Coyote’s most popular role in tribal stories is as Trickster, the rebel against authority, the breaker of taboos. He is the sacred clown, buffoon, lecher, poacher, cheater. He’s also very crafty at destroying his enemies. So Coyote was at it again last week, making the town of Baker, Montana and the organizers of an annual coyote hunt look foolish with his antics. Billed as a tourist attraction, organizer Jerrid Geving also wrapped the event in the rural flag when he offered the hunt up as an effort predator control: “they do a lot of damage to livestock."....
Klamath commissioners split on tribe forestland question The question of whether ownership of the Fremont-Winema National Forest should be transferred to the Klamath Tribes has split Klamath County commissioners. A vote to schedule a Feb. 6 hearing on the potential transfer was the latest development in a debate over ownership of public lands. Commissioners Al Switzer and Bill Brown voted for the public hearing while Chairman John Elliott voted against it. “I question whether a public hearing like this does anything positive for our community,” Elliott said. But tribal officials say they need the land to become self-sufficient economically. The Klamath Basin Alliance submitted 1,100 signatures in December against the transfer of public lands. The organization opposes the transfer of ownership of any part of the forest from the federal government to the Klamath Tribes, which are seeking to recreate the reservation they had before losing federal recognition in 1961. The tribes regained recognition in 1986....
Horse sanctuary draws scrutiny State and federal officials say they're looking into allegations of animal cruelty on a private Albany County ranch that touted itself as a refuge for wild horses taken from public range. While a state Bureau of Land Management official said Wednesday a team of veterinarians is scheduled to visit the ranch Monday to assess the condition of more than 300 horses, the state BLM wild horse program leader said his assessment is that the horses are not being mistreated. "I do not think this is any form of neglect or cruelty," said Alan Shepherd, the horse program leader who visited the ranch less than a month ago. "I have seen a lot of wild horses in the wild, and when I saw these horses, I wouldn't say they're in bad shape." But Bryan Broderson, a Laramie real estate agent who grew up around horses, said the animals on the Sheep Mountain Ranch in the Centennial Valley are obviously in poor condition.....
Salamander dilemma: split or lump? A decision by a California Superior Court judge last week brought a simmering biological and legal debate back into public view: To split or to lump? San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Peter Busch effectively ruled that the California Department of Fish and Game can't automatically de-list one species of salamander just because its close relative might not need state protection. The California Fish and Game Commission has to take up the matter of whether the Scott Bar salamander -- a species once thought to be the same as the Siskiyou Mountains salamander -- might itself be on the edge, Busch ruled. Environmental groups who sued over the department's efforts to take the Siskiyou Mountains salamander off the endangered species list are worried that Scott Bar salamanders may be too few in number and inhabit too small a range to withstand logging pressure. Skeptics wonder if modern genetic techniques might create a Pandora's Box, overwhelming agencies charged to consider protection of numerous new rare species....
Snowmobilers fight wilderness proposal Most of the people who stop by Kevin Phillips' snowmobile rental shop, Mountain Mayhem, want to rent the machines to frolic in the steep terrain at nearby Mount Jefferson. But business owners like Phillips and snowmobile enthusiasts are fearing the worst over a proposal by the U.S. Forest Service to close the area to motorized vehicles. Phillips estimates that 85 percent of his customers want to ride snowmobiles there. "If they close Mount Jefferson, I'll be done renting," Phillips said. U.S. Forest Service officials have been working for several years to revise their forest plan for Montana's Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. Mount Jefferson sits on the Idaho-Montana line. The popular snowmobiling area in question is north of the border in Montana, but the easiest winter access is through Idaho's Fremont County. After gathering public comments, the agency came up with five proposals, with the preferred option calling for a wilderness designation for the mountain. Opponents have ramped up their efforts to fight the proposal. U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, sent a letter to the Forest Service last month asking it to alter its initial plans and keep the area open to snowmobiles....
Feds: Boy Scouts should pay for fire The government is asking a judge to declare Boy Scouts responsible for a fire that burned 14,200 acres and cost millions to control in 2002. If the judge agrees, the Great Salt Lake Council could be faced with reimbursing the government. Scouts who were working on wilderness survival badges caused the fire that consumed 22 square miles of federal, state and private land in the Uinta Mountains in northeastern Utah, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Overby said. A U.S. Forest Service investigator pinpointed the fire to an area where some Scouts had stayed overnight, Overby told U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell....
Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists. The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program "The Climate Code," is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their "Seal of Approval" for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe. "If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns," Cullen wrote in her December 21 weblog on the Weather Channel Website....
Pelosi May Create Global Warming Panel House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, intent on putting global warming atop the Democratic agenda, is shaking up traditional committee fiefdoms dominated by some of Congress' oldest and most powerful members. She's moving to create a special committee to recommend legislation for cutting greenhouse gases, most likely to be chaired by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a Democratic leadership aide said Wednesday. Markey has advocated raising mileage standards for cars, trucks and SUVs and is one of the House's biggest critics of oil companies and U.S. automakers. Pelosi has discussed the proposal with at least two Democratic committee chairmen: fellow Californian Henry Waxman of Oversight and Government Reform, and West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, who heads the Natural Resources panel. Pelosi intends to announce the move this week, said the leadership aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because not all of the details have been worked out. The move, to some degree, would sidestep two of the House's most powerful Democratic committee bosses, in shaping what's expected to be at least a yearlong debate on global warming....
Group Calls for Competition Title in Farm Bill The next Farm Bill should contain its first Competition Title to ensure fairness of competition in livestock markets, according to the Western Organization of Resource Councils. WORC Livestock Committee Chair Mabel Dobbs says only four companies control cattle, hog and poultry markets, making them uncompetitive and unfair for producers. "These companies use secret deals and captive supplies to lower the price paid to family farmers and ranchers – a cost that WORC estimates at $1 billion or more a year," Dobbs says. The reforms backed by WORC and other groups include: * Ending packer control of livestock markets by setting limits on packer ownership of livestock and having firm, negotiated prices for captive supply contracts. * Ensuring fair poultry contracts and markets through fairness standards for contracts and bargaining rights for contract farmers. * Keeping producers and consumers better informed through improved Livestock Mandatory Price Reporting and implementation of Country-of-Origin Labeling....
MCA, Schweitzer propose statewide natural beef program The Montana Cattlemen’s Association (MCA) and the State of Montana has proposed a marketing program targeting the natural beef market and adding value to Montana’s feeder calves. The contemplated program has been envisioned with the State of Montana to create the market and resulting demand through Gov. Brian Schweitzer's economic development team. MCA is suggesting that the product line be developed around the following definitions: 1. Montana Certified Natural Beef shall be a program administered through the Montana State Department of Agriculture and the Board of Livestock and will require at least one inspection at the ranch of origin of the cattle to assure compliance, including the required record keeping protocol. The state would maintain a list of certified ranches or ranchers and make that available to purchasers of the cattle or beef. 2. The origin of the cattle must be Montana. The beef must be from cattle born, raised and fed in the State of Montana. 3. The cattle must be raised in an environmentally prudent manner consistent with Montana's best grazing standards and raised pursuant to Beef Quality Assurance or similar guidelines. 4. The cattle shall be raised with no sub-therapeutic antibiotics, synthetic hormones, or synthetic growth promotants....
VeriPrime Certified Traceable Food Provides Cornerstone of Food Safety VeriPrime, a member-owned federation of cooperatives including producers, processors and retailers, announced today that it will introduce the VeriPrime Traceability Assurance System (VTAS), to provide safer and Certified Traceable food products to American consumers. Certified Traceable food products are tracked from “farm to fork” to ensure accountability throughout the food chain. Food retailers electing to offer consumers Certified Traceable products can immediately start the process to begin delivering Certified Traceable foods to consumers. The VTAS was introduced as a new industry best practice for farmers, ranchers, food processors and retailers. VTAS is the nation’s first and only feed and food chain traceability program via an accredited USDA certifying body. Certified Traceable food will be identified by a VeriPrime seal of approval (or label). “For the first time consumers can be assured at a glance that the food they are purchasing is traceable to its source,” said Dr. Scott Crain, DVM, CEO of VeriPrime. “Certified Traceable food is the first and best step to safer food. Although America’s food supply is one of the safest in the world, VeriPrime Certified Traceable food will make our food safer from farm to fork.” “The need for food traceability is clear. One in four Americans suffers from foodborne illnesses and nearly 5,000 die every year from the food they eat,” explained Dr. Crain. “Traceability is the cornerstone of food safety and the VTAS, as the prerequisite for all other food safety programs, ensures that everyone is accountable along each step of the food chain.”....
'Letters from a Bounty Hunter' is 'more than a shoot-em up' The greatest compliment an author can enjoy is not how many books are sold, but rather how often a book is passed from person to person. This is exactly what is happening with the very first novel published by Newport resident Jim Kennison, as family, friends and strangers eagerly share the colorful - inside and out - book with others. "I'm really quite satisfied with the way things are going," Kennison says of "Letters from a Bounty Hunter." Just published by Outskirts Press, "Letters from a Bounty Hunter" is a western fiction that is being promoted alongside books by such heavyweights as Larry McMurtry, Jack London and Louis L'Amour through Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. And the story is getting rave reviews. "As a working rancher, I don't have a lot of time to just sit and read. This book has short, action-packed chapters that let me finish a whole chapter when I'm able to take a break. It's a fine story that both my wife and I enjoyed very much," one reader wrote. Another review says, "As promised, this book does indeed offer action, adventure, education and romance. Each character, whether hero or villain, is well-developed ... Unlike many western novels, 'Bounty Hunter' is more than a shoot-em up. There is also a tender side of the story that will appeal to both men and women."....
Column - Pickup Truck Takes Its Place in Rural American Culture Here in Montana, a working truck is the equivalent of a doctor's black bag, stuffed with every little thing that you need to do your job. One of my former high school teachers, a bird hunter with a set of famous Brittany spaniels, has dog kennels built into his bed. And most fishing guides I know tow their boats along behind, the beds filled with waders and rods and oars. If it's warm enough, a lot of us give our old black labs a ride. There are ranchers with rifles in the back window and snips of bailing wire on the dashboard. Passing each other on the county road, you wave a few fingers off the steering wheel. "The day is going pretty well, thanks." At the corner cafe, you pass the time with your forearms on the tailgate, catching up on what Ron and the family have been up to since the last time you saw them....
Shootin' the Bull With Bullfighters So what? So the bullfighters who risk their lives over 100 times a weekend for the cowboys on the Professional Bull Riders tour are tougher than a hospital steak. And, yeah, they make an NFL middle linebacker look like Richard Simmons. And, true, they may be the bravest, most underpaid athletes in America. I don't give a cow chip. They're the worst damn interviews this side of the Kentucky Derby winner. I spent a day at Madison Square Garden with three of the bullfighters who save fallen cowboys from getting gored or crushed on the PBR tour. I even got into the arena with them, wore the pads and the outfit and everything. Yet every time I'd ask anything, it would get real quiet. One time this cowboy who'd already made his eight seconds was hanging on by a cuticle as the bull kept wildly spinning. So bullfighter Shorty Gorham, 28, cupped his hand over the bull's eye. "Why'd you do that?" I asked. "Cuz it works," he said. Spit....
The Curse of Rancho Los Feliz They say it’s cursed. Griffith Park – all of it. But if there is a pox on the park that Colonel Griffith Jenkins Griffith set aside, then City Councilman Tom LaBonge ought to heed the warnings of the past. The city is in the midst of redesigning some of the park right about now, and LaBonge is neck-deep in it, perhaps to manifest the latest iteration of a scourge and hex that first appeared around the time Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Yes, in 1863, according to legend (and a bit of recorded history), local rancher Don Antonio Feliz, who owned the 8,000-acre rancho, succumbed to smallpox. In his wake, a legacy dispute ensued over the signing of his will. While his niece, Dona Petranilla, was sent away to protect her from the pox, it seems one of Don Feliz’s associates, Don Antonio Coronel, bamboozled her out of the estate that would someday become Griffith Park itself. Dona Petranilla did not, however, go quietly....
Ranchers: Protect property rights Property owners should not bear the cost of the country's energy corridors, a Weston County rancher said Tuesday morning. Nancy Darnell of Weston County, who has two pipelines, a transmission line and a proposed railroad line on her ranch, said condemnation action is not economic development. She was one of a parade of ranchers from throughout the state who testified before the House Agriculture, Public Lands and Water Resources Committee Tuesday morning on House Bill 124, a measure that would change the state's eminent domain law. In general, the ranchers want more protection of their rights as landowners when industry comes looking for easements for a pipeline, for example. Many of the people testifying said they support the bill, crafted by a coalition of agriculture and industry representatives, with some amendments. Several ranchers, including Randy Dunn of Laramie, called for a requirement in the law that companies pay landowners annual rental fees rather than only a lump-sum settlement. Dunn has six pipelines and two overhead transmission lines on his ranch, which was cut in half by construction of Interstate 80....
Panel rules against landowner The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has ruled against a Park County landowner who sought to force an energy company to pay a higher bond for drilling on his land. The ruling Tuesday rejected arguments by Heart Mountain landowner Jim Dager that Windsor Energy should post a $416,000 surety bond to cover the loss of value of nearly 1,000 acres surrounding planned gas-drilling operations. The commission instead approved a proposal by Windsor to post a $13,000 bond, covering the loss of value of only the 10 acres of Dager's land that will be occupied by a well pad and disturbed by company operations. "We're happy with the decision," said Jeff Dahlberg, chief operations officer for Windsor. "It's what we expected. Anything else would have been very discouraging." Dager had argued changes to Wyoming's split-estate laws required that landowners be compensated when oil and gas operations impact land beyond the immediate footprint of roads or equipment sites. Dager said he purchased the land for its scenery, wildlife and privacy, all of which would be affected by gas operations, not just the 10 acres occupied by Windsor buildings and equipment....
Groups sue over coalbed water permits A water-rights dispute over water produced by coalbed methane drilling has landed in state District Court. The Northern Plains Resource Council and the Tongue River Water Users' Association on Tuesday sued a state agency and a gas developer, alleging their state constitutional rights are being violated. The groups also claim a state hearings examiner erred in a recent decision on an application for water rights. The suit, filed in Helena, named as defendants the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation as well as Fidelity Exploration and Production Co., a subsidiary of MDU Resources Inc. Fidelity is seeking two permits to market water produced by coalbed methane drilling for beneficial uses, including irrigation on a ranch it owns in Wyoming, dust suppression at a Montana coal mine, livestock and wildlife watering and its industrial operations. Northern Plains, the Tongue River group and several ranchers in southeastern Montana have objected to Fidelity's permit applications, saying they would harm their senior water rights in ground and surface waters and would violate the Montana Constitution....
State must regulate CBM water, council told The major losers in coal-bed methane development are the off-site landowners who live downstream from the end of the discharge water pipes, a University of Wyoming professor said Wednesday. Roger Coupal, associate professor of agriculture and applied sciences, said the state could apply a small discharge fee against industry that could be used to pay for administration and mitigation for the off-site landowners for damage to their property. It was one of several alternatives offered by Coupal, who testified Wednesday at a Wyoming Environmental Quality Council public hearing. The hearing, which packed the Cheyenne City Council chambers, stems from a petition from the Powder River Basin Resource Council calling for state regulation of coal-bed methane discharge water....
Feds won't kill excess wolves Federal wildlife officials will not eliminate excess wolf packs in Wyoming after formal delisting is proposed later this month. That notice came in response to a list of questions from state officials about a new federal wolf management plan introduced at a high-profile meeting last month in Cheyenne. State officials, including Gov. Dave Freudenthal, received the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service letter at the end of the business day Wednesday and did not have any comment on the seven-page document. State lawmakers considering changes to Wyoming’s wolf laws have said the federal response could play a significant role in that debate. A chief concern from the state is how to handle the excess packs between federal approval of a Wyoming wolf management plan and actual removal of federal protection for the animals. Wyoming is currently home to about 23 wolf packs outside Yellowstone National Park, 16 more than required under federal wolf recovery guidelines....
Scabies increasingly affecting elk The number of elk in the Yellowstone National Park region infected with scabies, a skin infestation caused by mites, is up this year, state wildlife officials say. The disease can be fatal - especially when an animal's health has been weakened for other reasons, such as old age or disease. Scabies also can cause animals to lose all their hair, said Jim Miller, a Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks game warden. "I've seen a lot of them that look naked," he said. "Just a little fuzz on them." The mites that cause scabies live at the base of host hairs and pierce the skin with their mouths. This causes inflammation, hair loss and an "oozing matter which hardens into a scab and ultimately a dark crust," according to FWP information distributed this winter to Gardiner-area hunters. The type of scabies infecting elk is not a threat to humans. Meat from infected elk isn't as tender as meat from healthy elk, park biologist Travis Wyman said....
Minerals director under fire over leases Minerals Management Service Director Johnnie Burton is under fire over when she knew about problems with oil and gas drilling leases that may cost the government billions of dollars, with a key Republican suggesting Wednesday that she may need to resign. The Interior Department's inspector general has investigated whether Burton, a former Wyoming state official, knew about the leasing errors earlier than she first told Congress. In September, Burton testified before a House committee that she first learned about the issue in late 2005 or early 2006. But the inspector general's report, due to be released at a Senate hearing today, will say that e-mails show she was told about it in early 2004. At issue are oil and gas drilling leases signed in 1998 and 1999 during the Clinton administration. A clause triggering royalty payments if energy prices rose over a certain amount was left out of those leases, costing the government potentially as much as $10 billion if not corrected....
Column - You Can Always Blame Coyote Poor Coyote. He gets blamed for everything. The Crow say Coyote created the world. The Wasco say Coyote left two grizzly bears and two wolves in the sky to form the Big Dipper. The Colville say Coyote dug a hole in the Cascade Mountains to create the Columbia River Several tribes claim that Coyote brought the world fire, like Prometheus. Coyote’s most popular role in tribal stories is as Trickster, the rebel against authority, the breaker of taboos. He is the sacred clown, buffoon, lecher, poacher, cheater. He’s also very crafty at destroying his enemies. So Coyote was at it again last week, making the town of Baker, Montana and the organizers of an annual coyote hunt look foolish with his antics. Billed as a tourist attraction, organizer Jerrid Geving also wrapped the event in the rural flag when he offered the hunt up as an effort predator control: “they do a lot of damage to livestock."....
Klamath commissioners split on tribe forestland question The question of whether ownership of the Fremont-Winema National Forest should be transferred to the Klamath Tribes has split Klamath County commissioners. A vote to schedule a Feb. 6 hearing on the potential transfer was the latest development in a debate over ownership of public lands. Commissioners Al Switzer and Bill Brown voted for the public hearing while Chairman John Elliott voted against it. “I question whether a public hearing like this does anything positive for our community,” Elliott said. But tribal officials say they need the land to become self-sufficient economically. The Klamath Basin Alliance submitted 1,100 signatures in December against the transfer of public lands. The organization opposes the transfer of ownership of any part of the forest from the federal government to the Klamath Tribes, which are seeking to recreate the reservation they had before losing federal recognition in 1961. The tribes regained recognition in 1986....
Horse sanctuary draws scrutiny State and federal officials say they're looking into allegations of animal cruelty on a private Albany County ranch that touted itself as a refuge for wild horses taken from public range. While a state Bureau of Land Management official said Wednesday a team of veterinarians is scheduled to visit the ranch Monday to assess the condition of more than 300 horses, the state BLM wild horse program leader said his assessment is that the horses are not being mistreated. "I do not think this is any form of neglect or cruelty," said Alan Shepherd, the horse program leader who visited the ranch less than a month ago. "I have seen a lot of wild horses in the wild, and when I saw these horses, I wouldn't say they're in bad shape." But Bryan Broderson, a Laramie real estate agent who grew up around horses, said the animals on the Sheep Mountain Ranch in the Centennial Valley are obviously in poor condition.....
Salamander dilemma: split or lump? A decision by a California Superior Court judge last week brought a simmering biological and legal debate back into public view: To split or to lump? San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Peter Busch effectively ruled that the California Department of Fish and Game can't automatically de-list one species of salamander just because its close relative might not need state protection. The California Fish and Game Commission has to take up the matter of whether the Scott Bar salamander -- a species once thought to be the same as the Siskiyou Mountains salamander -- might itself be on the edge, Busch ruled. Environmental groups who sued over the department's efforts to take the Siskiyou Mountains salamander off the endangered species list are worried that Scott Bar salamanders may be too few in number and inhabit too small a range to withstand logging pressure. Skeptics wonder if modern genetic techniques might create a Pandora's Box, overwhelming agencies charged to consider protection of numerous new rare species....
Snowmobilers fight wilderness proposal Most of the people who stop by Kevin Phillips' snowmobile rental shop, Mountain Mayhem, want to rent the machines to frolic in the steep terrain at nearby Mount Jefferson. But business owners like Phillips and snowmobile enthusiasts are fearing the worst over a proposal by the U.S. Forest Service to close the area to motorized vehicles. Phillips estimates that 85 percent of his customers want to ride snowmobiles there. "If they close Mount Jefferson, I'll be done renting," Phillips said. U.S. Forest Service officials have been working for several years to revise their forest plan for Montana's Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. Mount Jefferson sits on the Idaho-Montana line. The popular snowmobiling area in question is north of the border in Montana, but the easiest winter access is through Idaho's Fremont County. After gathering public comments, the agency came up with five proposals, with the preferred option calling for a wilderness designation for the mountain. Opponents have ramped up their efforts to fight the proposal. U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, sent a letter to the Forest Service last month asking it to alter its initial plans and keep the area open to snowmobiles....
Feds: Boy Scouts should pay for fire The government is asking a judge to declare Boy Scouts responsible for a fire that burned 14,200 acres and cost millions to control in 2002. If the judge agrees, the Great Salt Lake Council could be faced with reimbursing the government. Scouts who were working on wilderness survival badges caused the fire that consumed 22 square miles of federal, state and private land in the Uinta Mountains in northeastern Utah, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Overby said. A U.S. Forest Service investigator pinpointed the fire to an area where some Scouts had stayed overnight, Overby told U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell....
Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists. The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program "The Climate Code," is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their "Seal of Approval" for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe. "If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns," Cullen wrote in her December 21 weblog on the Weather Channel Website....
Pelosi May Create Global Warming Panel House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, intent on putting global warming atop the Democratic agenda, is shaking up traditional committee fiefdoms dominated by some of Congress' oldest and most powerful members. She's moving to create a special committee to recommend legislation for cutting greenhouse gases, most likely to be chaired by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a Democratic leadership aide said Wednesday. Markey has advocated raising mileage standards for cars, trucks and SUVs and is one of the House's biggest critics of oil companies and U.S. automakers. Pelosi has discussed the proposal with at least two Democratic committee chairmen: fellow Californian Henry Waxman of Oversight and Government Reform, and West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, who heads the Natural Resources panel. Pelosi intends to announce the move this week, said the leadership aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because not all of the details have been worked out. The move, to some degree, would sidestep two of the House's most powerful Democratic committee bosses, in shaping what's expected to be at least a yearlong debate on global warming....
Group Calls for Competition Title in Farm Bill The next Farm Bill should contain its first Competition Title to ensure fairness of competition in livestock markets, according to the Western Organization of Resource Councils. WORC Livestock Committee Chair Mabel Dobbs says only four companies control cattle, hog and poultry markets, making them uncompetitive and unfair for producers. "These companies use secret deals and captive supplies to lower the price paid to family farmers and ranchers – a cost that WORC estimates at $1 billion or more a year," Dobbs says. The reforms backed by WORC and other groups include: * Ending packer control of livestock markets by setting limits on packer ownership of livestock and having firm, negotiated prices for captive supply contracts. * Ensuring fair poultry contracts and markets through fairness standards for contracts and bargaining rights for contract farmers. * Keeping producers and consumers better informed through improved Livestock Mandatory Price Reporting and implementation of Country-of-Origin Labeling....
MCA, Schweitzer propose statewide natural beef program The Montana Cattlemen’s Association (MCA) and the State of Montana has proposed a marketing program targeting the natural beef market and adding value to Montana’s feeder calves. The contemplated program has been envisioned with the State of Montana to create the market and resulting demand through Gov. Brian Schweitzer's economic development team. MCA is suggesting that the product line be developed around the following definitions: 1. Montana Certified Natural Beef shall be a program administered through the Montana State Department of Agriculture and the Board of Livestock and will require at least one inspection at the ranch of origin of the cattle to assure compliance, including the required record keeping protocol. The state would maintain a list of certified ranches or ranchers and make that available to purchasers of the cattle or beef. 2. The origin of the cattle must be Montana. The beef must be from cattle born, raised and fed in the State of Montana. 3. The cattle must be raised in an environmentally prudent manner consistent with Montana's best grazing standards and raised pursuant to Beef Quality Assurance or similar guidelines. 4. The cattle shall be raised with no sub-therapeutic antibiotics, synthetic hormones, or synthetic growth promotants....
VeriPrime Certified Traceable Food Provides Cornerstone of Food Safety VeriPrime, a member-owned federation of cooperatives including producers, processors and retailers, announced today that it will introduce the VeriPrime Traceability Assurance System (VTAS), to provide safer and Certified Traceable food products to American consumers. Certified Traceable food products are tracked from “farm to fork” to ensure accountability throughout the food chain. Food retailers electing to offer consumers Certified Traceable products can immediately start the process to begin delivering Certified Traceable foods to consumers. The VTAS was introduced as a new industry best practice for farmers, ranchers, food processors and retailers. VTAS is the nation’s first and only feed and food chain traceability program via an accredited USDA certifying body. Certified Traceable food will be identified by a VeriPrime seal of approval (or label). “For the first time consumers can be assured at a glance that the food they are purchasing is traceable to its source,” said Dr. Scott Crain, DVM, CEO of VeriPrime. “Certified Traceable food is the first and best step to safer food. Although America’s food supply is one of the safest in the world, VeriPrime Certified Traceable food will make our food safer from farm to fork.” “The need for food traceability is clear. One in four Americans suffers from foodborne illnesses and nearly 5,000 die every year from the food they eat,” explained Dr. Crain. “Traceability is the cornerstone of food safety and the VTAS, as the prerequisite for all other food safety programs, ensures that everyone is accountable along each step of the food chain.”....
'Letters from a Bounty Hunter' is 'more than a shoot-em up' The greatest compliment an author can enjoy is not how many books are sold, but rather how often a book is passed from person to person. This is exactly what is happening with the very first novel published by Newport resident Jim Kennison, as family, friends and strangers eagerly share the colorful - inside and out - book with others. "I'm really quite satisfied with the way things are going," Kennison says of "Letters from a Bounty Hunter." Just published by Outskirts Press, "Letters from a Bounty Hunter" is a western fiction that is being promoted alongside books by such heavyweights as Larry McMurtry, Jack London and Louis L'Amour through Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. And the story is getting rave reviews. "As a working rancher, I don't have a lot of time to just sit and read. This book has short, action-packed chapters that let me finish a whole chapter when I'm able to take a break. It's a fine story that both my wife and I enjoyed very much," one reader wrote. Another review says, "As promised, this book does indeed offer action, adventure, education and romance. Each character, whether hero or villain, is well-developed ... Unlike many western novels, 'Bounty Hunter' is more than a shoot-em up. There is also a tender side of the story that will appeal to both men and women."....
Column - Pickup Truck Takes Its Place in Rural American Culture Here in Montana, a working truck is the equivalent of a doctor's black bag, stuffed with every little thing that you need to do your job. One of my former high school teachers, a bird hunter with a set of famous Brittany spaniels, has dog kennels built into his bed. And most fishing guides I know tow their boats along behind, the beds filled with waders and rods and oars. If it's warm enough, a lot of us give our old black labs a ride. There are ranchers with rifles in the back window and snips of bailing wire on the dashboard. Passing each other on the county road, you wave a few fingers off the steering wheel. "The day is going pretty well, thanks." At the corner cafe, you pass the time with your forearms on the tailgate, catching up on what Ron and the family have been up to since the last time you saw them....
Shootin' the Bull With Bullfighters So what? So the bullfighters who risk their lives over 100 times a weekend for the cowboys on the Professional Bull Riders tour are tougher than a hospital steak. And, yeah, they make an NFL middle linebacker look like Richard Simmons. And, true, they may be the bravest, most underpaid athletes in America. I don't give a cow chip. They're the worst damn interviews this side of the Kentucky Derby winner. I spent a day at Madison Square Garden with three of the bullfighters who save fallen cowboys from getting gored or crushed on the PBR tour. I even got into the arena with them, wore the pads and the outfit and everything. Yet every time I'd ask anything, it would get real quiet. One time this cowboy who'd already made his eight seconds was hanging on by a cuticle as the bull kept wildly spinning. So bullfighter Shorty Gorham, 28, cupped his hand over the bull's eye. "Why'd you do that?" I asked. "Cuz it works," he said. Spit....
The Curse of Rancho Los Feliz They say it’s cursed. Griffith Park – all of it. But if there is a pox on the park that Colonel Griffith Jenkins Griffith set aside, then City Councilman Tom LaBonge ought to heed the warnings of the past. The city is in the midst of redesigning some of the park right about now, and LaBonge is neck-deep in it, perhaps to manifest the latest iteration of a scourge and hex that first appeared around the time Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Yes, in 1863, according to legend (and a bit of recorded history), local rancher Don Antonio Feliz, who owned the 8,000-acre rancho, succumbed to smallpox. In his wake, a legacy dispute ensued over the signing of his will. While his niece, Dona Petranilla, was sent away to protect her from the pox, it seems one of Don Feliz’s associates, Don Antonio Coronel, bamboozled her out of the estate that would someday become Griffith Park itself. Dona Petranilla did not, however, go quietly....
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
U.S. EPA orders ARCO to investigate contamination at Anaconda Mine The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday ordered to the Atlantic Richfield Company to begin the comprehensive investigation into determine the nature and extent of contamination at the Anaconda Copper Mine in Yerington, Nev. The order requires ARCO to conduct a remedial investigation and feasibility study for most of the mine site, a necessary step in addressing imminent and substantial threats from hazardous substances at the former mine. The EPA established the scope of work for the investigation through discussions and coordination with Atlantic Richfield. "Beginning the comprehensive remedial investigation and feasibility study for this site is the next step toward a thorough cleanup," said Kathleen Johnson, the EPA's Superfund Branch Chief managing this site. "After the feasibility study is complete, the EPA, with assistance from Nevada Department of Environmental Protection and Bureau of Land Management, will select a final remedy and work toward the ultimate clean up."....
BLM seeks facilities, open pastures for wild horses to roam Wild horses have roamed the open range since Spanish conquistadors let them loose five centuries ago, but they’ve been under the Bureau of Land Management’s care for more than three decades. As part of its responsibility, the BLM is soliciting bids for one or more new horse pasture facilities west of the Mississippi River. Each pasture facility must be able to provide humane care for at least 750 wild horses, or as many as 1,500, over a one-year period with an option for additional one-year extensions. The current population of free-roaming horses and burros that the BLM manages is 31,000, about 3,500 more than the agency determines is an appropriate management level. The BLM drags away thousands of horses from the open range each year and places them into private care through adoption. There are about 28,000 horses and burros cared for either at corrals or pasture facilities. Without predators, herds can double in population every four years....
The Bald And the Bountiful We saw No. 1 before we even got to the place. There it was, cutting perfect parabolas out of the morning sky, God's own kite swooping and dipping joyously over the pine trees that line Route 335. Not too long ago, this alone would have been enough to pull the car over, call in to a radio station, tell the guys at work. "You know what I saw today? A bald eagle!" But we would see nine more before our visit to Maryland's Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge was over. These days, and particularly in this place -- and especially at this time of the year -- bald eagles going about their morning chores seem as common as the pickup trucks they fly over. It has been a remarkable and heartening recovery for one of animaldom's great raptors, from its dark days on the endangered species list in the 1970s, '80s and '90s to steadily growing numbers today. In the Visitor Center one morning last week, my two daughters and I joined a small knot of tourists in front of a mock-up eagle's nest (a huge basket of sticks topped by a beautifully stuffed bird). But we were fixated on a monitor up above, a webcam feed from a real nest out in the refuge. We were enraptured by raptors as we watched a pair of adults fly in and out with sticks for the nest and grass for lining it. (You can see the eagle cam and a gallery of images from it at http://www.fws.gov/blackwater.)
Fire When Ready Never mind the State of the State. Shut down Capitol reconstruction all you want. But for the foreseeable future, Gov. Butch Otter will have to work pretty hard to top the media splash he made last week by saying he was ready to blast away at a wolf. "I'm prepared to bid for the first ticket to shoot a wolf myself," Otter declared to a herd of hunters gathered on the Statehouse steps. News of the millionaire-turned-rancher-turned-governor's declaration found its way quickly onto national and international news wires. By last weekend, after the story circulated through outlets ranging from ESPN, The Arizona Republic and the Ottawa Citizen in Ontario, Canada (Headline: "Governor Itching to Kill Wolves"), the story made it onto National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition." They said Otter was "on the warpath." Otter, of course, has opposed wolf reintroduction for years, so to many in the audience, his bravado wasn't new....
Gov says press, state receive different wolf stories Federal officials told newspapers one thing and state officials another about the minimum number of wolves that Wyoming will eventually be expected to support, Gov. Dave Freudenthal told the Wyoming Press Association. "We're a long way from knowing what the current status of the federal minimum target is," he said Friday at a luncheon for newspaper representatives and people who work with the media. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say they're close to submitting a plan for how wolves could be managed in the state after their removal from endangered species protection. But Freudenthal has been displeased by differing things he's heard and read. "One of the requests we made was, `Tell us who can speak on behalf of the Department of Interior.' We have yet to receive that notification," he said. "But everybody is speaking on behalf of the Department of Interior in newspapers. And what they're saying in the newspapers is different than what they said in the meeting with us." He said Interior officials said in a meeting with state lawmakers and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., that they would accept a minimum of 10 breeding pairs of wolves in the state. "I read in the paper the other day that now they're saying, `Oh, we meant 15 breeding pairs,"' Freudenthal said. "Sort of, `Oops, we're sorry."' "Well, I've been down this road with them three times. I mean, I can negotiate with the devil himself, and I've got to know what his position is and I've got to know who speaks for him," he said. "And at this stage, we know neither of those."....
Bush to address global warming in annual speech President Bush will outline a policy on global warming next week in his State of the Union speech but has not dropped his opposition to mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, the White House said on Tuesday. "It's not accurate. It's wrong," White House spokesman Tony Snow said regarding media reports suggesting that Bush would agree to mandatory emissions caps in an effort to combat global warming. Such caps could require energy conservation and pollution curbs. "If you're talking about enforceable carbon caps, in terms of industry-wide and nation-wide, we knocked that down. That's not something we're talking about," Snow said. Britain's "The Observer" newspaper reported on Sunday that senior Downing Street officials, who were not named, said Bush was preparing to issue a changed climate policy during his annual State of the Union speech on January 23. U.S. allies such as Britain and Germany have pressed for a new global agreement on climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. Bush withdrew the United States from the protocol in 2001, saying its targets for reducing carbon emissions would unfairly hurt the U.S. economy....
Land set aside for 2 rare plants in St. George area The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated more than 8,000 acres of critical habitat for two endangered pea plants in the St. George area, pleasing environmentalists — yet not upsetting the Utah Department of Transportation, which plans to build a beltway where one of the plants is found. The plants are the Holmgren milkvetch, found in Washington County, Utah, and Mohave County, Ariz., and the Shivwits milkvetch, found only in Washington County. For the first, 6,289 acres, almost all of it in Utah, was designated as critical; for the Shivwits milkvetch, 2,151 acres was designated, entirely in this state. "Critical habitat is a term defined in the Endangered Species Act," says a press release issued late last month by the Fish and Wildlife Service. "It identifies geographic areas containing features essential for the conservation of a threatened or endangered species and may require special management considerations or protection." Tony Frates, conservation co-chairman of the Utah Native Plants Society, Salt Lake City, said designation of critical habitat for the Washington County species happened because of a lawsuit by his group and the Center for Biological Diversity, Tucson, Ariz....
Colton eyeing ordinance to protect endangered fly City officials are looking to expand conservation efforts to help preserve the habitat for an endangered species of fly. The few stretches of sandy soil in the city that can support the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly are being damaged by litter and the impact of homeless camps and off-road vehicles. On Tuesday, the Planning Commission will consider a proposed ordinance that would empower the city to erect fencing or take other measures to prevent trespassing and illegal dumping on areas designated as fly conservation zones. The move is part of a strategy by the city to gain the federal government's cooperation in its bid to develop most of some 200 acres of vacant land for commercial and residential use. The city would expand conservation efforts south of the proposed commercial and residential areas for the fly....
Finding a balance: water rights for Native Americans, others uncertain New Mexico, like other Western states, is grappling with American Indian water rights. Tribes and pueblos have the oldest water rights in the state, older than those of farmers, ranchers and towns. Under New Mexico law, Indian rights to water are supposed to be met before anyone else’s. But no one ever determined how much water Indian tribes and pueblos are entitled to, and that has led to decades-long battles in court. New Mexico has settlements pending in three longtime Indian water rights cases: the Aamodt case, involving four pueblos north of Santa Fe in the Pojoaque Valley, Navajo claims in the San Juan River Basin and Taos Pueblo’s claims in the Taos Valley. All three settlements still need approval and funding from state legislators and Congress. Until the settlements are finalized, the water rights of thousands of people, Indian and non-Indian, and billions of gallons of water remain uncertain. New Mexico legislators will consider Gov. Bill Richardson’s request this session for $12 million as a down payment on the three settlements. Other legislators could ask for more or less money toward the state’s share of the costs. Only the Navajo settlement is close to a congressional debate. The other two are held up by disagreements over water supplies and costs. The projected cost to settle all three disputes is $1.2 billion....
Open-pit-mine opposition unanimous for supervisors The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to oppose mining at Rosemont Ranch in the Santa Rita Mountains. The decision doesn't stop the mine. Canadian-based Augusta Resource Corp. is in the process of seeking a permit from the U.S. Forest Service to allow an 800-acre open-pit copper mine. The mine would be on private land, but the operation requires the use of surrounding Forest Service Land. But it does put the county on record opposing the mine, despite promises from Augusta to provide $117 million worth of environmental remediation — including a $50 million endowment to buy open space in other parts of the county. The standing-room-only crowd in the board hearing room Tuesday included several dozen mine employees wearing T-shirts that said "I want 1 of the 350 jobs at the mine" But they were far outnumbered by environmentalists and residents opposed to mining....
Tests to probe whether tunnel between O.C.-Riverside is feasible Water district officials will conduct geologic tests this week to determine whether a water conduit and highway tunnel can be constructed through the Santa Ana Mountains to connect Riverside and Orange counties. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is considering a conduit to carry water from Lake Mathews near Riverside to a location near Irvine, where it would be distributed to growing southern Orange County. The giant water district has joined with transportation agencies in Orange and Riverside counties, which are studying a proposal for an 11.5-mile highway tunnel through the Cleveland National Forest in the same general area as the water line. The highway tunnel is one of several options under study to relieve traffic between the two counties and would connect Interstate 15 in Corona to the Foothill-Eastern tollway in Irvine. The most expensive version would cost a minimum of $8.5 billion....
Governor denies Ducks Unlimited request for land buy Gov. John Hoeven has denied a request from a hunters' group to buy a large tract of land in Sheridan County. Ducks Unlimited said it wanted to buy the 2,320-acre tract of private land to preserve wetlands in the Coteau Hills southeast of McClusky. Hoeven, in a letter to the group, said its proposed acquisition "would not create any significant new level of protection." The property "is already almost entirely encumbered by wetland and grassland conservation easements that essentially keep the area in its existing natural state," Hoeven's letter said. The number of nonprofit groups allowed to buy land in North Dakota is limited under state law. The law, added to the state's ban on corporate farming in 1985, also requires government approval for land purchases, with the governor having the final nod. The Natural Areas Acquisition Advisory Committee, which advises the governor on land purchases by nonprofits, recommended last month that Hoeven deny the Sheridan County sale....
Shooting Ranges in Santa Ynez Mountains draw ire A pair of shooting ranges in the Santa Ynez Mountains - one formal and one informal - are drawing criticism and one could be shut down. Winchester Canyon Gun Club is seeking a new 20-year permit from the U.S. Forest Service but is facing opposition from activists who complain of the club's proximity to ancient rock drawings believed to be by ancestors of the local Chumash Indians. But the club is working with the tribe and the Forest Service and renewal of the permit was likely. More endangered is Arroyo Burro, an unsupervised target-shooting area full of abandoned cars, televisions and refrigerators where marksmen can shoot whatever they want - cars, televisions, refrigerators - without paying a fee. "The area is basically used as a dump," said Jeff Bensen of the Los Padres National Forest. "For some reason, the public feels like they can go up there, trash the place and leave."....
Farmers Fear Livestock ID Mandate Independent livestock ranchers last week were quick to criticize signals that the new Congress may soon mandate implementation of the RFID-based National Animal Identification System. Signing on to the NAIS program has been voluntary since it was first proposed in 2003, but Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), the new chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said last week that he may soon push for the program to become mandatory. “The voluntary approach is a good steppingstone in the process of achieving a functioning animal ID system,” Peterson said. “But full participation may ultimately be necessary in order to ensure that we have a system that meets the needs of livestock producers and the public.” The farmers and ranchers, and the industry groups that represent them, contend that a mandatory NAIS program would impose unnecessary costs and technical challenges on their businesses....
Grass Guzzlers One popular image of the West is tranquil cattle grazing on vast expanses of golden green rangelands. Cue the cowboys and a sunset, and the stage is set for one of the most American of meals: beef. The image used to be accurate. All cattle are ruminants – that is, grass eaters. Ruminants transform grass, which people can't digest, into meat, which is very nourishing for people – and generally considered delicious. In the last 30 to 40 years, however, the majority of beef cattle in the United States have lived the last three to four months of their lives in a feedlot, or a confined animal feeding operation. There, they are fed grain – usually corn – in order to fatten them up quickly for slaughter. But some beef lovers have concerns about the environmental effects of these facilities and about animal welfare issues related to raising thousands of cattle in a confined area. Fortunately for them, there is an old-fashioned alternative: grass-fed beef....
U.S. ranchers rarin' to goat on food idea American ranchers are seeing something in goats that the rest of the world has long appreciated - food. Increasing U.S. and European interest in goat meat - low in fat and cholesterol and high in protein and iron - still has a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the world, where goats have long been the most popular domestic animal with the most widely consumed meat and milk. Since 1999, goat meat, milk and cheese consumption in the United States and imports of those products have increased sharply, according to University of California research. In addition to being promoted as a lean meat for upscale restaurants, goat is also a staple and faith-based preference of growing U.S. ethnic populations, especially Hispanics, Asians and Muslims. Charles said her local niche market consists largely of Mexican families, who buy her Boer goat meat for christenings and other special events. Small farms across the country, especially in Texas and California, are stepping up to meet the domestic demand for goat products....
From grain elevator to dream house As Jill Baumler stood in the "head house" at the very top of her grain elevator, with a large herd of bison visible through the window behind her, she pointed out the metal contraption that used to gravity- feed grain to the warren of rooms in the building below. "They could turn the spout and pour the grain into one of 13 holes," she said, "and it would fill up one of the 13 bins." Now, after more than seven years of do-it-yourself renovation, the 13 storage bins, which once held up to 28,000 bushels, or 990 cubic meters, of grain, have been transformed into a towering six-story antique-filled home that Baumler, her husband and their four dogs plan to move into this month. Buildings like theirs were often the tallest structures on the featureless plains of the American West and Midwest, and were once a sign of prosperity, a symbol of abundance being brought in from the fields. But now they are outmoded and many have been abandoned or torn down. An estimated 27,000 of these structures dotted the U.S. farm states in the 1930s, though fewer than half remain today, according to Bruce Selyem, the president and founder of the Country Grain Elevator Historical Society. At least a few of the remaining elevators — along with grain bins and silos — have been turned into homes or offices or adapted for other uses. One elevator, in Stillwater, Minnesota, was turned into a climbing gym. Some much larger grain elevators have been turned into hotels. Yet some of the most striking conversions are residential. In Minneapolis, for example, a large terminal elevator with 12 silos is being adapted into a 20- story, 229-unit mixed-income housing project called Van Cleve Court Apartments East....
U.S. EPA orders ARCO to investigate contamination at Anaconda Mine The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday ordered to the Atlantic Richfield Company to begin the comprehensive investigation into determine the nature and extent of contamination at the Anaconda Copper Mine in Yerington, Nev. The order requires ARCO to conduct a remedial investigation and feasibility study for most of the mine site, a necessary step in addressing imminent and substantial threats from hazardous substances at the former mine. The EPA established the scope of work for the investigation through discussions and coordination with Atlantic Richfield. "Beginning the comprehensive remedial investigation and feasibility study for this site is the next step toward a thorough cleanup," said Kathleen Johnson, the EPA's Superfund Branch Chief managing this site. "After the feasibility study is complete, the EPA, with assistance from Nevada Department of Environmental Protection and Bureau of Land Management, will select a final remedy and work toward the ultimate clean up."....
BLM seeks facilities, open pastures for wild horses to roam Wild horses have roamed the open range since Spanish conquistadors let them loose five centuries ago, but they’ve been under the Bureau of Land Management’s care for more than three decades. As part of its responsibility, the BLM is soliciting bids for one or more new horse pasture facilities west of the Mississippi River. Each pasture facility must be able to provide humane care for at least 750 wild horses, or as many as 1,500, over a one-year period with an option for additional one-year extensions. The current population of free-roaming horses and burros that the BLM manages is 31,000, about 3,500 more than the agency determines is an appropriate management level. The BLM drags away thousands of horses from the open range each year and places them into private care through adoption. There are about 28,000 horses and burros cared for either at corrals or pasture facilities. Without predators, herds can double in population every four years....
The Bald And the Bountiful We saw No. 1 before we even got to the place. There it was, cutting perfect parabolas out of the morning sky, God's own kite swooping and dipping joyously over the pine trees that line Route 335. Not too long ago, this alone would have been enough to pull the car over, call in to a radio station, tell the guys at work. "You know what I saw today? A bald eagle!" But we would see nine more before our visit to Maryland's Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge was over. These days, and particularly in this place -- and especially at this time of the year -- bald eagles going about their morning chores seem as common as the pickup trucks they fly over. It has been a remarkable and heartening recovery for one of animaldom's great raptors, from its dark days on the endangered species list in the 1970s, '80s and '90s to steadily growing numbers today. In the Visitor Center one morning last week, my two daughters and I joined a small knot of tourists in front of a mock-up eagle's nest (a huge basket of sticks topped by a beautifully stuffed bird). But we were fixated on a monitor up above, a webcam feed from a real nest out in the refuge. We were enraptured by raptors as we watched a pair of adults fly in and out with sticks for the nest and grass for lining it. (You can see the eagle cam and a gallery of images from it at http://www.fws.gov/blackwater.)
Fire When Ready Never mind the State of the State. Shut down Capitol reconstruction all you want. But for the foreseeable future, Gov. Butch Otter will have to work pretty hard to top the media splash he made last week by saying he was ready to blast away at a wolf. "I'm prepared to bid for the first ticket to shoot a wolf myself," Otter declared to a herd of hunters gathered on the Statehouse steps. News of the millionaire-turned-rancher-turned-governor's declaration found its way quickly onto national and international news wires. By last weekend, after the story circulated through outlets ranging from ESPN, The Arizona Republic and the Ottawa Citizen in Ontario, Canada (Headline: "Governor Itching to Kill Wolves"), the story made it onto National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition." They said Otter was "on the warpath." Otter, of course, has opposed wolf reintroduction for years, so to many in the audience, his bravado wasn't new....
Gov says press, state receive different wolf stories Federal officials told newspapers one thing and state officials another about the minimum number of wolves that Wyoming will eventually be expected to support, Gov. Dave Freudenthal told the Wyoming Press Association. "We're a long way from knowing what the current status of the federal minimum target is," he said Friday at a luncheon for newspaper representatives and people who work with the media. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say they're close to submitting a plan for how wolves could be managed in the state after their removal from endangered species protection. But Freudenthal has been displeased by differing things he's heard and read. "One of the requests we made was, `Tell us who can speak on behalf of the Department of Interior.' We have yet to receive that notification," he said. "But everybody is speaking on behalf of the Department of Interior in newspapers. And what they're saying in the newspapers is different than what they said in the meeting with us." He said Interior officials said in a meeting with state lawmakers and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., that they would accept a minimum of 10 breeding pairs of wolves in the state. "I read in the paper the other day that now they're saying, `Oh, we meant 15 breeding pairs,"' Freudenthal said. "Sort of, `Oops, we're sorry."' "Well, I've been down this road with them three times. I mean, I can negotiate with the devil himself, and I've got to know what his position is and I've got to know who speaks for him," he said. "And at this stage, we know neither of those."....
Bush to address global warming in annual speech President Bush will outline a policy on global warming next week in his State of the Union speech but has not dropped his opposition to mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, the White House said on Tuesday. "It's not accurate. It's wrong," White House spokesman Tony Snow said regarding media reports suggesting that Bush would agree to mandatory emissions caps in an effort to combat global warming. Such caps could require energy conservation and pollution curbs. "If you're talking about enforceable carbon caps, in terms of industry-wide and nation-wide, we knocked that down. That's not something we're talking about," Snow said. Britain's "The Observer" newspaper reported on Sunday that senior Downing Street officials, who were not named, said Bush was preparing to issue a changed climate policy during his annual State of the Union speech on January 23. U.S. allies such as Britain and Germany have pressed for a new global agreement on climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. Bush withdrew the United States from the protocol in 2001, saying its targets for reducing carbon emissions would unfairly hurt the U.S. economy....
Land set aside for 2 rare plants in St. George area The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated more than 8,000 acres of critical habitat for two endangered pea plants in the St. George area, pleasing environmentalists — yet not upsetting the Utah Department of Transportation, which plans to build a beltway where one of the plants is found. The plants are the Holmgren milkvetch, found in Washington County, Utah, and Mohave County, Ariz., and the Shivwits milkvetch, found only in Washington County. For the first, 6,289 acres, almost all of it in Utah, was designated as critical; for the Shivwits milkvetch, 2,151 acres was designated, entirely in this state. "Critical habitat is a term defined in the Endangered Species Act," says a press release issued late last month by the Fish and Wildlife Service. "It identifies geographic areas containing features essential for the conservation of a threatened or endangered species and may require special management considerations or protection." Tony Frates, conservation co-chairman of the Utah Native Plants Society, Salt Lake City, said designation of critical habitat for the Washington County species happened because of a lawsuit by his group and the Center for Biological Diversity, Tucson, Ariz....
Colton eyeing ordinance to protect endangered fly City officials are looking to expand conservation efforts to help preserve the habitat for an endangered species of fly. The few stretches of sandy soil in the city that can support the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly are being damaged by litter and the impact of homeless camps and off-road vehicles. On Tuesday, the Planning Commission will consider a proposed ordinance that would empower the city to erect fencing or take other measures to prevent trespassing and illegal dumping on areas designated as fly conservation zones. The move is part of a strategy by the city to gain the federal government's cooperation in its bid to develop most of some 200 acres of vacant land for commercial and residential use. The city would expand conservation efforts south of the proposed commercial and residential areas for the fly....
Finding a balance: water rights for Native Americans, others uncertain New Mexico, like other Western states, is grappling with American Indian water rights. Tribes and pueblos have the oldest water rights in the state, older than those of farmers, ranchers and towns. Under New Mexico law, Indian rights to water are supposed to be met before anyone else’s. But no one ever determined how much water Indian tribes and pueblos are entitled to, and that has led to decades-long battles in court. New Mexico has settlements pending in three longtime Indian water rights cases: the Aamodt case, involving four pueblos north of Santa Fe in the Pojoaque Valley, Navajo claims in the San Juan River Basin and Taos Pueblo’s claims in the Taos Valley. All three settlements still need approval and funding from state legislators and Congress. Until the settlements are finalized, the water rights of thousands of people, Indian and non-Indian, and billions of gallons of water remain uncertain. New Mexico legislators will consider Gov. Bill Richardson’s request this session for $12 million as a down payment on the three settlements. Other legislators could ask for more or less money toward the state’s share of the costs. Only the Navajo settlement is close to a congressional debate. The other two are held up by disagreements over water supplies and costs. The projected cost to settle all three disputes is $1.2 billion....
Open-pit-mine opposition unanimous for supervisors The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to oppose mining at Rosemont Ranch in the Santa Rita Mountains. The decision doesn't stop the mine. Canadian-based Augusta Resource Corp. is in the process of seeking a permit from the U.S. Forest Service to allow an 800-acre open-pit copper mine. The mine would be on private land, but the operation requires the use of surrounding Forest Service Land. But it does put the county on record opposing the mine, despite promises from Augusta to provide $117 million worth of environmental remediation — including a $50 million endowment to buy open space in other parts of the county. The standing-room-only crowd in the board hearing room Tuesday included several dozen mine employees wearing T-shirts that said "I want 1 of the 350 jobs at the mine" But they were far outnumbered by environmentalists and residents opposed to mining....
Tests to probe whether tunnel between O.C.-Riverside is feasible Water district officials will conduct geologic tests this week to determine whether a water conduit and highway tunnel can be constructed through the Santa Ana Mountains to connect Riverside and Orange counties. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is considering a conduit to carry water from Lake Mathews near Riverside to a location near Irvine, where it would be distributed to growing southern Orange County. The giant water district has joined with transportation agencies in Orange and Riverside counties, which are studying a proposal for an 11.5-mile highway tunnel through the Cleveland National Forest in the same general area as the water line. The highway tunnel is one of several options under study to relieve traffic between the two counties and would connect Interstate 15 in Corona to the Foothill-Eastern tollway in Irvine. The most expensive version would cost a minimum of $8.5 billion....
Governor denies Ducks Unlimited request for land buy Gov. John Hoeven has denied a request from a hunters' group to buy a large tract of land in Sheridan County. Ducks Unlimited said it wanted to buy the 2,320-acre tract of private land to preserve wetlands in the Coteau Hills southeast of McClusky. Hoeven, in a letter to the group, said its proposed acquisition "would not create any significant new level of protection." The property "is already almost entirely encumbered by wetland and grassland conservation easements that essentially keep the area in its existing natural state," Hoeven's letter said. The number of nonprofit groups allowed to buy land in North Dakota is limited under state law. The law, added to the state's ban on corporate farming in 1985, also requires government approval for land purchases, with the governor having the final nod. The Natural Areas Acquisition Advisory Committee, which advises the governor on land purchases by nonprofits, recommended last month that Hoeven deny the Sheridan County sale....
Shooting Ranges in Santa Ynez Mountains draw ire A pair of shooting ranges in the Santa Ynez Mountains - one formal and one informal - are drawing criticism and one could be shut down. Winchester Canyon Gun Club is seeking a new 20-year permit from the U.S. Forest Service but is facing opposition from activists who complain of the club's proximity to ancient rock drawings believed to be by ancestors of the local Chumash Indians. But the club is working with the tribe and the Forest Service and renewal of the permit was likely. More endangered is Arroyo Burro, an unsupervised target-shooting area full of abandoned cars, televisions and refrigerators where marksmen can shoot whatever they want - cars, televisions, refrigerators - without paying a fee. "The area is basically used as a dump," said Jeff Bensen of the Los Padres National Forest. "For some reason, the public feels like they can go up there, trash the place and leave."....
Farmers Fear Livestock ID Mandate Independent livestock ranchers last week were quick to criticize signals that the new Congress may soon mandate implementation of the RFID-based National Animal Identification System. Signing on to the NAIS program has been voluntary since it was first proposed in 2003, but Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), the new chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said last week that he may soon push for the program to become mandatory. “The voluntary approach is a good steppingstone in the process of achieving a functioning animal ID system,” Peterson said. “But full participation may ultimately be necessary in order to ensure that we have a system that meets the needs of livestock producers and the public.” The farmers and ranchers, and the industry groups that represent them, contend that a mandatory NAIS program would impose unnecessary costs and technical challenges on their businesses....
Grass Guzzlers One popular image of the West is tranquil cattle grazing on vast expanses of golden green rangelands. Cue the cowboys and a sunset, and the stage is set for one of the most American of meals: beef. The image used to be accurate. All cattle are ruminants – that is, grass eaters. Ruminants transform grass, which people can't digest, into meat, which is very nourishing for people – and generally considered delicious. In the last 30 to 40 years, however, the majority of beef cattle in the United States have lived the last three to four months of their lives in a feedlot, or a confined animal feeding operation. There, they are fed grain – usually corn – in order to fatten them up quickly for slaughter. But some beef lovers have concerns about the environmental effects of these facilities and about animal welfare issues related to raising thousands of cattle in a confined area. Fortunately for them, there is an old-fashioned alternative: grass-fed beef....
U.S. ranchers rarin' to goat on food idea American ranchers are seeing something in goats that the rest of the world has long appreciated - food. Increasing U.S. and European interest in goat meat - low in fat and cholesterol and high in protein and iron - still has a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the world, where goats have long been the most popular domestic animal with the most widely consumed meat and milk. Since 1999, goat meat, milk and cheese consumption in the United States and imports of those products have increased sharply, according to University of California research. In addition to being promoted as a lean meat for upscale restaurants, goat is also a staple and faith-based preference of growing U.S. ethnic populations, especially Hispanics, Asians and Muslims. Charles said her local niche market consists largely of Mexican families, who buy her Boer goat meat for christenings and other special events. Small farms across the country, especially in Texas and California, are stepping up to meet the domestic demand for goat products....
From grain elevator to dream house As Jill Baumler stood in the "head house" at the very top of her grain elevator, with a large herd of bison visible through the window behind her, she pointed out the metal contraption that used to gravity- feed grain to the warren of rooms in the building below. "They could turn the spout and pour the grain into one of 13 holes," she said, "and it would fill up one of the 13 bins." Now, after more than seven years of do-it-yourself renovation, the 13 storage bins, which once held up to 28,000 bushels, or 990 cubic meters, of grain, have been transformed into a towering six-story antique-filled home that Baumler, her husband and their four dogs plan to move into this month. Buildings like theirs were often the tallest structures on the featureless plains of the American West and Midwest, and were once a sign of prosperity, a symbol of abundance being brought in from the fields. But now they are outmoded and many have been abandoned or torn down. An estimated 27,000 of these structures dotted the U.S. farm states in the 1930s, though fewer than half remain today, according to Bruce Selyem, the president and founder of the Country Grain Elevator Historical Society. At least a few of the remaining elevators — along with grain bins and silos — have been turned into homes or offices or adapted for other uses. One elevator, in Stillwater, Minnesota, was turned into a climbing gym. Some much larger grain elevators have been turned into hotels. Yet some of the most striking conversions are residential. In Minneapolis, for example, a large terminal elevator with 12 silos is being adapted into a 20- story, 229-unit mixed-income housing project called Van Cleve Court Apartments East....
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
Taming the Wild West in the Supreme Court t came as a surprise a few weeks ago when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the government's appeal in the case of Wilkie v. Robbins. After all, the case involves neither big money nor high principle nor unsettled law. But it brings a whiff of the wild, wild West to the high court, and it offers a pleasant change from writing about more citified stuff. Westerners used to have a phrase for a violent and prolonged storm. It's when "black gum and thunder meet." The tree won't break and the lightning won't let up. The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) provides the thunder. A novice cattleman named Harvey Frank Robbins is as stubborn as a black gum tree. Robbins owns the High Island Ranch near Thermopolis, Wyo. To boil down a feud now in its 12th year, Robbins does not like the bureaucrats, and the bureaucrats do not like Robbins. So far, Robbins is winning, but "so far" is not very far, and the case has yet a long way to go. The brouhaha began in the spring of 1994 when Robbins bought the ranch from George Nelson. It appears that Robbins was not born to the ways of the West. He had been in the lumber business in Alabama, selling custom flooring, but his heart hungered for a new career where the buffalo roam and the skies are not cloudy all day. Perhaps the greenhorn did not fully understand the rules of western land management. The 80,000 acres involved in this case are partly public and partly private. The federal BLM regularly swaps some of its federal land for easements over private land, and vice versa. In this case, the government negligently failed to record a critical easement before Robbins bought the ranch from Nelson and moved in. Under Wyoming law, he took unencumbered ownership....
Conservation Group, Unions Joining Forces In a first-of-its-kind alliance that could fundamentally reshape the environmental movement, 20 labor unions with nearly 5 million members are joining forces with a Republican-leaning umbrella group of conservationists -- the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership -- to put pressure on Congress and the Bush administration. The Union Sportsman's Alliance, to be rolled out in Washington on Tuesday after nearly three years of quiet negotiations, is to be a dues-based organization ($25 a year). Its primary goal is to increase federal funding for protecting wildlife habitat while guaranteeing access for hunters and anglers. The unlikely marriage of union and conservation interests comes at a time when the Bush administration, with its push for oil and gas drilling in the Rocky Mountain West, has limited public access to prime hunting and fishing areas on federal land. This has triggered a bipartisan backlash from sportsmen and conservation groups, as well as from Western politicians in both parties. The strength of that backlash is making bedfellows of blue-collar workers and old-guard conservationists, who historically have shared little but suspicion and disdain....
Our Opinion: Conservation - ranch buys still best bet Vast swaths of open land in Pima County are being protected from development, thanks to the wisdom of voters and of county leaders overseeing the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Some environmentalists are concerned that cattle grazing continues to pose problems as the county buys ranches for preservation but lets the ranchers keep operating another 10 years or longer. Other activists are miffed that more money from the conservation plan, approved by voters in May 2004, isn't being spent to purchase open space on the county's booming Northwest Side. While both concerns are legitimate - given the damage wrought by grazing and the need for open space in heavily developed areas - the land purchases to date eventually will prove to have been wise. In spending $51.6 million on seven ranches and a farm, the county is conserving 23,479 acres at an average cost of $2,200 per acre. Indeed, those lands and all others acquired so far under the 2004 county bond plan - 25,471 acres total - were bought for an average cost of $2,800 per acre. By contrast, 33 acres comprising four sites that environmentalists want purchased on the Northwest Side would cost $2.47 million, or $74,991 per acre....
Column - America Goes Insane Over the Weather It's official. America is now totally insane over the weather. Even the Weather Channel that used to simply provide reasonably accurate, short-term information about the weather is now telling everyone we’re doomed because global warming is going to destroy the Earth. Why not just rename it the AlGore Channel? The weather used to be the concern primarily of farmers and ranchers. It determines how well or not crops would grow and herds will thrive. As America became more urbanized, the rest of the population wanted to know whether to bring an umbrella or what to wear. Now it is a source of daily anxiety over the fate of the Earth. To make matters worse, people are being told and actually believing that what they do or not can affect the weather in ways to keep the seas and temperatures from rising. It is no longer the domain of the sun, the oceans, volcanoes and clouds. These puny things are nothing compared to what kind of car you drive or what you use to heat your home....
Rare double discovery fuels debate over fossil sales A team of fossil hunters has pulled a world-class dinosaur find from the badlands of western Garfield County. Frozen in the sandstone are the death poses of two beasts — a meat-eater and a plant-eater — with their tails crossed like swords. The pair's sudden, sandy burial, near the coast of Montana's prehistoric sea 75 million years ago, preserved them with remarkable detail, right down to tendons and teeth. The discovery is believed to be one of only three worldwide capturing ameat-eater and plant-eater together, and the first in North America.And it raises a titillating question: Did they die in battle? The bone-digger team, taking a page from the realm of murder mysteries and TV dramas, has dubbed their excavation "The Paleo-Incident Project." But their find has stirred up the feud between paleontologists, who want fossils donated to universities or museums, and commercial fossil hunters, who aim to cash in on their efforts....
The Warming of Greenland Mr. Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, Calif., had just landed on a newly revealed island 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Greenland. It was a moment of triumph: he had discovered the island on an ocean voyage in September 2005. Now, a year later, he and a small expedition team had returned to spend a week climbing peaks, crossing treacherous glaciers and documenting animal and plant life. Despite its remote location, the island would almost certainly have been discovered, named and mapped almost a century ago when explorers like Jean-Baptiste Charcot and Philippe, Duke of Orléans, charted these coastlines. Would have been discovered had it not been bound to the coast by glacial ice. Maps of the region show a mountainous peninsula covered with glaciers. The island’s distinct shape — like a hand with three bony fingers pointing north — looks like the end of the peninsula. Now, where the maps showed only ice, a band of fast-flowing seawater ran between a newly exposed shoreline and the aquamarine-blue walls of a retreating ice shelf. The water was littered with dozens of icebergs, some as large as half an acre; every hour or so, several more tons of ice fractured off the shelf with a thunderous crack and an earth-shaking rumble. All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising temperatures are not simply melting ice; they are changing the very geography of coastlines....
Masked marauders Ron Klataske remembers when there were a dozen coveys of quail within a mile of his family's Washington County home, and a few raccoons along the creek. Now there are more raccoons than Klataske ever imagined and maybe one small covey of quail. He thinks there's a correlation between the rise of one and fall of the other. "I don't think there's any doubt raccoons could be having a negative impact on quail," said Klataske, Audubon of Kansas executive director. R.J. Robel, a retired Kansas State professor and acclaimed upland bird biologist, agrees. "We're seeing some significant losses of all kinds of ground-nesting birds... like quail, mourning doves and meadow larks," Robel said. "All sorts of eggs are being eaten."....
Editorial - RAC involvement in setting fees is a good idea Regional citizen committees set up to help the federal Bureau of Land Management do its job are biting off a new responsibility that has the potential of biting back. For years, resource advisory councils have helped BLM in its decision-making processes, in theory at least providing the public's imprimatur or objections to proposed land management actions. The far-flung Central Montana RAC, for example, played a role in development of a management plan for the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, and it regularly works on grazing and oil- and gas-leasing issues. The latest addition to RAC members' job descriptions will be reviewing proposed recreation fees, not only for BLM properties but also those operated by the Forest Service, which is part of a different federal agency — BLM is in the Department of the Interior, while the Forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture....
Snowmobile collides with boarder on Aspen Mountain An accident Sunday on Richmond Ridge shattered the leg and face of a pro snowboarder from Missouri Heights and nearly broke his father's heart. Doran Laybourn, 26, was snowboarding on a gentle grade on a groomed, public route a few miles south of the upper terminal of the Silver Queen Gondola when a snowmobile rounded a blind curve and collided with him, according to his father, Royal Laybourn. Friends took Doran Laybourn by snowmobile to the gondola terminal where he was cared for by the ski patrol, transported to the bottom of the mountain and taken by ambulance to Aspen Valley Hospital. He was in intensive care and faced multiple surgeries Sunday night, according to his dad, and he was in stable condition Monday. Royal Laybourn said he can accept that accidents happen. What angered him was the reaction by the snowmobile driver and his colleagues. "They didn't render assistance. They just split," he said....
Forest Service called biased Cross country ski and snowshoe groups largely panned last month's decision by the U.S. Forest Service to divvy up what had been a 10,000-acre area in Logan Canyon set aside for skiers to also include snowmobiles. Their argument: The Forest Service too often sides with motorized users at the expense of nonmotorized enthusiasts when making winter recreation decisions. The verdict reached by the Wasatch-Cache National Forest regarding winter uses in the Franklin Basin-Tony Grove area of Logan Canyon, they maintain, is just the latest and most high-profile example. "This is what we've been saying for a long time," says Tim Wagner, board chairman for the Bear River Watershed Council. "The tremendous increase in [winter] motorized use in just the last 10 years has vastly trampled areas that were pretty much quiet and used by nonmotorized users traditionally. But just because there has been a tremendous increase in snowmobile use in Utah, it doesn't mean less people are recreating in a nonmotorized way." Do the skiers and snowshoers have a point? A recently released report by the Winter Wildlands Alliance, a Boise-based skiing and snowshoeing advocacy group, asserts that the Forest Service has, in fact, tilted decisively on behalf of motorized users when planning and determining winter recreation land uses on forest lands - even though in many cases skiers and snowshoers outnumber their snowmobiling brethren....
Lookout posted for ATVs in forests Officer Teddy Mullins, who patrols the George Washington and Jefferson national forests, saw lights on Pearis Mountain that he knew shouldn't be there. The surveillance in late December resulted in 50 federal charges against 12 persons caught riding all-terrain vehicles, which are illegal in much of the national forest. Seven of the machines were impounded. "We had had it under surveillance off and on for 18 months," Capt. Woody Lipps said. "We just never were able to catch anybody there." The riders were mostly 18 to 22 years old, and many had just received their ATVs for Christmas. Although there is no federal law that specifically authorizes officers to seize ATVs, Capt. Lipps said they have the right to seize evidence. "We're just going to start taking them," Capt. Lipps told the Roanoke Times. "When your $3,000 or $4,000 or $6,000 machine turns up missing and you come to the National Forest Service looking for it, we'll be happy to see that you get it back. But not until you've gotten your ticket."....
Wild being worn out of wilderness? Imagine a crisp, cool summer morning near Cathedral Lake in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. You emerge from your tent, tiptoe through the dew-soaked grass, inhale the fresh pine scent, then glance around and see a sight that sends you scurrying inside. Four other backpackers pitched camp after you turned in, some alarmingly close to "your" space; others too close to the water's edge. Hordes of day hikers have already converged on the lake during their wildflower outings. Some let their friendly dogs wander over to say hello. The U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain regional office in Denver has convened a special committee over the past year to debate what's wrong with that picture. More to the point, the agency wants to know if it should do anything about it. Colorado's growing population, coupled with soaring visits to public lands, has the Forest Service concerned about the fate of some of most scenic spots in wilderness lands. Public lands managers call those cream-of-the-crop sites "popular magnets."....
Mad cow 'minimum risk' from Canadian beef, U.S. says Coming to the aid of an American meat industry suffering from lost foreign markets, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed lifting its ban on the import of cheaper cattle from Canada, despite Canada's discovery of eight cases of mad cow disease since 2003, including five in 2006 alone. USDA officials say that a recently completed risk assessment of Canada's beef raising and feeding practices shows that U.S. consumers face "minimum risk" from the renewed import of Canadian cattle to the U.S. The USDA is accepting comments on its proposed removal of the ban until March 12, after which the department will make a final decision on whether to adopt the proposed rule. Consumer advocates and some cattle ranchers oppose the new Canadian import proposal, arguing that the new rule is driven by the needs of large meat packing corporations, and that its food safety logic is deeply flawed....
The GM hens whose eggs are designed to save lives Scientists have created a breed of designer chickens with eggs that can produce life-saving drugs. The breakthrough could help the fight against diseases such as cancer and dramatically cut the cost of treatments. But it will worry opponents of the genetic modification techniques the scientists used. The 500-strong flock was bred at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, the birthplace of Dolly the cloned sheep. The chickens' DNA was altered so that their eggs contained complex medicinal proteins. The proteins can be extracted to make drugs for humans. It is the first time scientists have successfully manipulated the birds' DNA so that their characteristics are passed down the generations. Previously the ability to make the valuable proteins had vanished in a generation or two....
Amenity Ranch Boom Spreads East he term “amenity ranch” is a part of the modern vocabulary of the West, and the mind’s eye is replete with a thousand slick ads in a hundred different magazines: a huge log mansion, picture windows warmly alight, a trout river flowing majestically with towering snow-covered peaks beyond. The fields are lush and green. The scenes of western agriculture as we have come to know it are absent from the vision. But as land prices in the most scenic and still accessible parts of the west reach astronomical levels, a new breed of amenity ranch buyers is emerging, casting about for land far from the luxury hotspots like Jackson Hole or Big Sky. This new breed has been priced out of those places, and many of them don’t seem to care about that. They don’t need ski-town ambiance, wealthy neighbors, or even rushing streams full of native trout. They just want the commodity that is perhaps the fastest disappearing one on earth -- big private spaces, clean air, a place to hunt big game and upland birds and waterfowl. Once-forgotten farm and ranch land in the plains of the West is teeming with these amenities and often sells for a price that -- for now -- pales in comparison to what's being sold in the Jackson Holes and Big Skies of the region. Over the past decade, many of these properties have been made even more desirable by enrollment in the federal Conservation Reserve Program or the Wetlands Reserve Program or the availability of Conservation Easements, or a combination of all three -- all of which encourage more wildlife habitat while providing either per-acre payments or tax breaks for buyers. This new market is driving up land prices from eastern Oregon to Kansas and Nebraska, transforming some of the most marginal operations on the prairies into valuable real estate....
Learning the ropes There are thousands of horse owners in Texas, and most don't have a clue as to how to get the best performance from their animals. That's why somewhere between 400 to 500 people endured the cold drizzle Sunday morning to watch Chris Cox put on his horsemanship demonstration in the damp coolness of Will Rogers Coliseum. "Horses are an unregulated business," Cox said after his hour-and-a-half clinic. "You have to get a driver's license to drive a car; you need training and a license to fly an airplane. Yet anyone can go out and buy a horse and start riding." Chris, please don't give this idea to the politicians. I'm sure they would love to regulate and tax all horse owners. Find another way to make your point and market your service.
It's All Trew: Artifacts aren't always what they seem The museum exhibits a large display of post mauls because they were used in building early day barbed-wire fences, especially along railroad rights of way. Some treated posts used by the railroad had lathe-turned, pointed ends to facilitate driving into the soil. A post maul goes way back in history as most were made by local blacksmiths heating cast iron over their forges and pouring the molten metal into molds. The cast iron hammer-heads will chip and flake off if used against iron stakes or posts. Mauls were used not only to drive posts but wooden stakes and stobs used in setting concrete forms and raising circus tents. Some mauls have wooden inserts to absorb the impact without damage and all have the weight of the head imprinted into the metal. Some weighed up to 40 pounds. An item often mistaken as some sort of barbed wire is a seed-corn rack. Long before seed companies originated, each farmer had to select, dry and shell out his own seed corn for the next year's planting....
Taming the Wild West in the Supreme Court t came as a surprise a few weeks ago when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the government's appeal in the case of Wilkie v. Robbins. After all, the case involves neither big money nor high principle nor unsettled law. But it brings a whiff of the wild, wild West to the high court, and it offers a pleasant change from writing about more citified stuff. Westerners used to have a phrase for a violent and prolonged storm. It's when "black gum and thunder meet." The tree won't break and the lightning won't let up. The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) provides the thunder. A novice cattleman named Harvey Frank Robbins is as stubborn as a black gum tree. Robbins owns the High Island Ranch near Thermopolis, Wyo. To boil down a feud now in its 12th year, Robbins does not like the bureaucrats, and the bureaucrats do not like Robbins. So far, Robbins is winning, but "so far" is not very far, and the case has yet a long way to go. The brouhaha began in the spring of 1994 when Robbins bought the ranch from George Nelson. It appears that Robbins was not born to the ways of the West. He had been in the lumber business in Alabama, selling custom flooring, but his heart hungered for a new career where the buffalo roam and the skies are not cloudy all day. Perhaps the greenhorn did not fully understand the rules of western land management. The 80,000 acres involved in this case are partly public and partly private. The federal BLM regularly swaps some of its federal land for easements over private land, and vice versa. In this case, the government negligently failed to record a critical easement before Robbins bought the ranch from Nelson and moved in. Under Wyoming law, he took unencumbered ownership....
Conservation Group, Unions Joining Forces In a first-of-its-kind alliance that could fundamentally reshape the environmental movement, 20 labor unions with nearly 5 million members are joining forces with a Republican-leaning umbrella group of conservationists -- the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership -- to put pressure on Congress and the Bush administration. The Union Sportsman's Alliance, to be rolled out in Washington on Tuesday after nearly three years of quiet negotiations, is to be a dues-based organization ($25 a year). Its primary goal is to increase federal funding for protecting wildlife habitat while guaranteeing access for hunters and anglers. The unlikely marriage of union and conservation interests comes at a time when the Bush administration, with its push for oil and gas drilling in the Rocky Mountain West, has limited public access to prime hunting and fishing areas on federal land. This has triggered a bipartisan backlash from sportsmen and conservation groups, as well as from Western politicians in both parties. The strength of that backlash is making bedfellows of blue-collar workers and old-guard conservationists, who historically have shared little but suspicion and disdain....
Our Opinion: Conservation - ranch buys still best bet Vast swaths of open land in Pima County are being protected from development, thanks to the wisdom of voters and of county leaders overseeing the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Some environmentalists are concerned that cattle grazing continues to pose problems as the county buys ranches for preservation but lets the ranchers keep operating another 10 years or longer. Other activists are miffed that more money from the conservation plan, approved by voters in May 2004, isn't being spent to purchase open space on the county's booming Northwest Side. While both concerns are legitimate - given the damage wrought by grazing and the need for open space in heavily developed areas - the land purchases to date eventually will prove to have been wise. In spending $51.6 million on seven ranches and a farm, the county is conserving 23,479 acres at an average cost of $2,200 per acre. Indeed, those lands and all others acquired so far under the 2004 county bond plan - 25,471 acres total - were bought for an average cost of $2,800 per acre. By contrast, 33 acres comprising four sites that environmentalists want purchased on the Northwest Side would cost $2.47 million, or $74,991 per acre....
Column - America Goes Insane Over the Weather It's official. America is now totally insane over the weather. Even the Weather Channel that used to simply provide reasonably accurate, short-term information about the weather is now telling everyone we’re doomed because global warming is going to destroy the Earth. Why not just rename it the AlGore Channel? The weather used to be the concern primarily of farmers and ranchers. It determines how well or not crops would grow and herds will thrive. As America became more urbanized, the rest of the population wanted to know whether to bring an umbrella or what to wear. Now it is a source of daily anxiety over the fate of the Earth. To make matters worse, people are being told and actually believing that what they do or not can affect the weather in ways to keep the seas and temperatures from rising. It is no longer the domain of the sun, the oceans, volcanoes and clouds. These puny things are nothing compared to what kind of car you drive or what you use to heat your home....
Rare double discovery fuels debate over fossil sales A team of fossil hunters has pulled a world-class dinosaur find from the badlands of western Garfield County. Frozen in the sandstone are the death poses of two beasts — a meat-eater and a plant-eater — with their tails crossed like swords. The pair's sudden, sandy burial, near the coast of Montana's prehistoric sea 75 million years ago, preserved them with remarkable detail, right down to tendons and teeth. The discovery is believed to be one of only three worldwide capturing ameat-eater and plant-eater together, and the first in North America.And it raises a titillating question: Did they die in battle? The bone-digger team, taking a page from the realm of murder mysteries and TV dramas, has dubbed their excavation "The Paleo-Incident Project." But their find has stirred up the feud between paleontologists, who want fossils donated to universities or museums, and commercial fossil hunters, who aim to cash in on their efforts....
The Warming of Greenland Mr. Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, Calif., had just landed on a newly revealed island 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Greenland. It was a moment of triumph: he had discovered the island on an ocean voyage in September 2005. Now, a year later, he and a small expedition team had returned to spend a week climbing peaks, crossing treacherous glaciers and documenting animal and plant life. Despite its remote location, the island would almost certainly have been discovered, named and mapped almost a century ago when explorers like Jean-Baptiste Charcot and Philippe, Duke of Orléans, charted these coastlines. Would have been discovered had it not been bound to the coast by glacial ice. Maps of the region show a mountainous peninsula covered with glaciers. The island’s distinct shape — like a hand with three bony fingers pointing north — looks like the end of the peninsula. Now, where the maps showed only ice, a band of fast-flowing seawater ran between a newly exposed shoreline and the aquamarine-blue walls of a retreating ice shelf. The water was littered with dozens of icebergs, some as large as half an acre; every hour or so, several more tons of ice fractured off the shelf with a thunderous crack and an earth-shaking rumble. All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising temperatures are not simply melting ice; they are changing the very geography of coastlines....
Masked marauders Ron Klataske remembers when there were a dozen coveys of quail within a mile of his family's Washington County home, and a few raccoons along the creek. Now there are more raccoons than Klataske ever imagined and maybe one small covey of quail. He thinks there's a correlation between the rise of one and fall of the other. "I don't think there's any doubt raccoons could be having a negative impact on quail," said Klataske, Audubon of Kansas executive director. R.J. Robel, a retired Kansas State professor and acclaimed upland bird biologist, agrees. "We're seeing some significant losses of all kinds of ground-nesting birds... like quail, mourning doves and meadow larks," Robel said. "All sorts of eggs are being eaten."....
Editorial - RAC involvement in setting fees is a good idea Regional citizen committees set up to help the federal Bureau of Land Management do its job are biting off a new responsibility that has the potential of biting back. For years, resource advisory councils have helped BLM in its decision-making processes, in theory at least providing the public's imprimatur or objections to proposed land management actions. The far-flung Central Montana RAC, for example, played a role in development of a management plan for the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, and it regularly works on grazing and oil- and gas-leasing issues. The latest addition to RAC members' job descriptions will be reviewing proposed recreation fees, not only for BLM properties but also those operated by the Forest Service, which is part of a different federal agency — BLM is in the Department of the Interior, while the Forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture....
Snowmobile collides with boarder on Aspen Mountain An accident Sunday on Richmond Ridge shattered the leg and face of a pro snowboarder from Missouri Heights and nearly broke his father's heart. Doran Laybourn, 26, was snowboarding on a gentle grade on a groomed, public route a few miles south of the upper terminal of the Silver Queen Gondola when a snowmobile rounded a blind curve and collided with him, according to his father, Royal Laybourn. Friends took Doran Laybourn by snowmobile to the gondola terminal where he was cared for by the ski patrol, transported to the bottom of the mountain and taken by ambulance to Aspen Valley Hospital. He was in intensive care and faced multiple surgeries Sunday night, according to his dad, and he was in stable condition Monday. Royal Laybourn said he can accept that accidents happen. What angered him was the reaction by the snowmobile driver and his colleagues. "They didn't render assistance. They just split," he said....
Forest Service called biased Cross country ski and snowshoe groups largely panned last month's decision by the U.S. Forest Service to divvy up what had been a 10,000-acre area in Logan Canyon set aside for skiers to also include snowmobiles. Their argument: The Forest Service too often sides with motorized users at the expense of nonmotorized enthusiasts when making winter recreation decisions. The verdict reached by the Wasatch-Cache National Forest regarding winter uses in the Franklin Basin-Tony Grove area of Logan Canyon, they maintain, is just the latest and most high-profile example. "This is what we've been saying for a long time," says Tim Wagner, board chairman for the Bear River Watershed Council. "The tremendous increase in [winter] motorized use in just the last 10 years has vastly trampled areas that were pretty much quiet and used by nonmotorized users traditionally. But just because there has been a tremendous increase in snowmobile use in Utah, it doesn't mean less people are recreating in a nonmotorized way." Do the skiers and snowshoers have a point? A recently released report by the Winter Wildlands Alliance, a Boise-based skiing and snowshoeing advocacy group, asserts that the Forest Service has, in fact, tilted decisively on behalf of motorized users when planning and determining winter recreation land uses on forest lands - even though in many cases skiers and snowshoers outnumber their snowmobiling brethren....
Lookout posted for ATVs in forests Officer Teddy Mullins, who patrols the George Washington and Jefferson national forests, saw lights on Pearis Mountain that he knew shouldn't be there. The surveillance in late December resulted in 50 federal charges against 12 persons caught riding all-terrain vehicles, which are illegal in much of the national forest. Seven of the machines were impounded. "We had had it under surveillance off and on for 18 months," Capt. Woody Lipps said. "We just never were able to catch anybody there." The riders were mostly 18 to 22 years old, and many had just received their ATVs for Christmas. Although there is no federal law that specifically authorizes officers to seize ATVs, Capt. Lipps said they have the right to seize evidence. "We're just going to start taking them," Capt. Lipps told the Roanoke Times. "When your $3,000 or $4,000 or $6,000 machine turns up missing and you come to the National Forest Service looking for it, we'll be happy to see that you get it back. But not until you've gotten your ticket."....
Wild being worn out of wilderness? Imagine a crisp, cool summer morning near Cathedral Lake in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. You emerge from your tent, tiptoe through the dew-soaked grass, inhale the fresh pine scent, then glance around and see a sight that sends you scurrying inside. Four other backpackers pitched camp after you turned in, some alarmingly close to "your" space; others too close to the water's edge. Hordes of day hikers have already converged on the lake during their wildflower outings. Some let their friendly dogs wander over to say hello. The U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain regional office in Denver has convened a special committee over the past year to debate what's wrong with that picture. More to the point, the agency wants to know if it should do anything about it. Colorado's growing population, coupled with soaring visits to public lands, has the Forest Service concerned about the fate of some of most scenic spots in wilderness lands. Public lands managers call those cream-of-the-crop sites "popular magnets."....
Mad cow 'minimum risk' from Canadian beef, U.S. says Coming to the aid of an American meat industry suffering from lost foreign markets, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed lifting its ban on the import of cheaper cattle from Canada, despite Canada's discovery of eight cases of mad cow disease since 2003, including five in 2006 alone. USDA officials say that a recently completed risk assessment of Canada's beef raising and feeding practices shows that U.S. consumers face "minimum risk" from the renewed import of Canadian cattle to the U.S. The USDA is accepting comments on its proposed removal of the ban until March 12, after which the department will make a final decision on whether to adopt the proposed rule. Consumer advocates and some cattle ranchers oppose the new Canadian import proposal, arguing that the new rule is driven by the needs of large meat packing corporations, and that its food safety logic is deeply flawed....
The GM hens whose eggs are designed to save lives Scientists have created a breed of designer chickens with eggs that can produce life-saving drugs. The breakthrough could help the fight against diseases such as cancer and dramatically cut the cost of treatments. But it will worry opponents of the genetic modification techniques the scientists used. The 500-strong flock was bred at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, the birthplace of Dolly the cloned sheep. The chickens' DNA was altered so that their eggs contained complex medicinal proteins. The proteins can be extracted to make drugs for humans. It is the first time scientists have successfully manipulated the birds' DNA so that their characteristics are passed down the generations. Previously the ability to make the valuable proteins had vanished in a generation or two....
Amenity Ranch Boom Spreads East he term “amenity ranch” is a part of the modern vocabulary of the West, and the mind’s eye is replete with a thousand slick ads in a hundred different magazines: a huge log mansion, picture windows warmly alight, a trout river flowing majestically with towering snow-covered peaks beyond. The fields are lush and green. The scenes of western agriculture as we have come to know it are absent from the vision. But as land prices in the most scenic and still accessible parts of the west reach astronomical levels, a new breed of amenity ranch buyers is emerging, casting about for land far from the luxury hotspots like Jackson Hole or Big Sky. This new breed has been priced out of those places, and many of them don’t seem to care about that. They don’t need ski-town ambiance, wealthy neighbors, or even rushing streams full of native trout. They just want the commodity that is perhaps the fastest disappearing one on earth -- big private spaces, clean air, a place to hunt big game and upland birds and waterfowl. Once-forgotten farm and ranch land in the plains of the West is teeming with these amenities and often sells for a price that -- for now -- pales in comparison to what's being sold in the Jackson Holes and Big Skies of the region. Over the past decade, many of these properties have been made even more desirable by enrollment in the federal Conservation Reserve Program or the Wetlands Reserve Program or the availability of Conservation Easements, or a combination of all three -- all of which encourage more wildlife habitat while providing either per-acre payments or tax breaks for buyers. This new market is driving up land prices from eastern Oregon to Kansas and Nebraska, transforming some of the most marginal operations on the prairies into valuable real estate....
Learning the ropes There are thousands of horse owners in Texas, and most don't have a clue as to how to get the best performance from their animals. That's why somewhere between 400 to 500 people endured the cold drizzle Sunday morning to watch Chris Cox put on his horsemanship demonstration in the damp coolness of Will Rogers Coliseum. "Horses are an unregulated business," Cox said after his hour-and-a-half clinic. "You have to get a driver's license to drive a car; you need training and a license to fly an airplane. Yet anyone can go out and buy a horse and start riding." Chris, please don't give this idea to the politicians. I'm sure they would love to regulate and tax all horse owners. Find another way to make your point and market your service.
It's All Trew: Artifacts aren't always what they seem The museum exhibits a large display of post mauls because they were used in building early day barbed-wire fences, especially along railroad rights of way. Some treated posts used by the railroad had lathe-turned, pointed ends to facilitate driving into the soil. A post maul goes way back in history as most were made by local blacksmiths heating cast iron over their forges and pouring the molten metal into molds. The cast iron hammer-heads will chip and flake off if used against iron stakes or posts. Mauls were used not only to drive posts but wooden stakes and stobs used in setting concrete forms and raising circus tents. Some mauls have wooden inserts to absorb the impact without damage and all have the weight of the head imprinted into the metal. Some weighed up to 40 pounds. An item often mistaken as some sort of barbed wire is a seed-corn rack. Long before seed companies originated, each farmer had to select, dry and shell out his own seed corn for the next year's planting....
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Ah, those were the days, weren't they?
By: Julie Carter
It can be argued over the hood of a pickup or while leaning on the gate waiting for the brand inspector, whether the world is now a lot more complicated or there is simply just more of it to understand.
The cow business might possibly be the last bastion of commerce conducted on a man's word. Cattlemen of good repute can still buy and sell cattle over the phone and the rancher will send the check with trucker when the herd leaves the ranch.
A generation has passed since the day of signature loans for large amounts of money for cattle, equipment, feed or whatever. Now you need to have a credit report from some place in the sky and mortgage whatever you were using the money for and sometimes even throw in the first-born male child for security.
And counter checks? Remember when you just walked into any place of business and filled out a blank check they had on the counter, and signed it?
Now you have to have three picture ID's, your home and cell phone numbers, your blood type and recent dental records to cash a $12 check in a business you frequent three times a week.
The concept of buying groceries on a tab still exists in a few places off the beaten track and there are even some, but not many, that will let you pay only when the fall check comes after the calves, lambs or wool is sold even knowing sometimes, it might not happen this year.
Along with the economic changes we have also lost an entire language that was common to rural living. If you hear it now, it is usually prefaced with "my grandmother used to say," or "my Dad used to call it that."
"Store bought" was an indicator of a slight increase in financial status. Eating "light bread" as opposed to biscuits or cornbread was usually said when it came from the store.
"Store bought" also meant it had extra value and often came with braggin' rights.
Getting big enough to reach the "foot feed" in the pickup so I could drive was a milestone. I remember my first "picture show," and when my brothers got their "ears lowered."
Does anyone get lumbago anymore or self-medicate with castor oil and prune juice? And remember Methola-tum rub and that stinkin' rag around your neck if you had a cough?
There was a time when the saddle was a workbench in the making of Western history and then became a throne in a tradition that endures yet today.
But just as fishing became a sport, so, also, did cowboying. Horses have gained recreational value and saddles are created specific to the job of cutting, steer roping, team roping, calf roping, barrel racing, reining.
One saddle that does all is an endangered species.
And remember the horse racks that fit in the bed of the pickup? The fancier ones had a hood right over the top of the cab to protect the eyes and head of the horse. Somewhere in time horse trailers got popular and now cost more than a house and will certainly serve as a better house than a few I've lived in.
This is the standard "I remember when Hershey bars were a nickel and I walked five miles to school, up hill both directions" discussion. It doesn't have an ending and serves no purpose other than the warm fuzzies of reminiscing the "good old days."
We now live, absolutely, in a high-tech fast-paced world that swallows up time faster than we can get comfortable with each new thing. Most fads of the new millennium involve some sort of electronic, computerized, digitized gadget.
Anyone recall Big Chief tablets with pages of paper that had wood chips embedded in them so big that your pencil skipped when you wrote over one?
© Julie Carter 2007
By: Julie Carter
It can be argued over the hood of a pickup or while leaning on the gate waiting for the brand inspector, whether the world is now a lot more complicated or there is simply just more of it to understand.
The cow business might possibly be the last bastion of commerce conducted on a man's word. Cattlemen of good repute can still buy and sell cattle over the phone and the rancher will send the check with trucker when the herd leaves the ranch.
A generation has passed since the day of signature loans for large amounts of money for cattle, equipment, feed or whatever. Now you need to have a credit report from some place in the sky and mortgage whatever you were using the money for and sometimes even throw in the first-born male child for security.
And counter checks? Remember when you just walked into any place of business and filled out a blank check they had on the counter, and signed it?
Now you have to have three picture ID's, your home and cell phone numbers, your blood type and recent dental records to cash a $12 check in a business you frequent three times a week.
The concept of buying groceries on a tab still exists in a few places off the beaten track and there are even some, but not many, that will let you pay only when the fall check comes after the calves, lambs or wool is sold even knowing sometimes, it might not happen this year.
Along with the economic changes we have also lost an entire language that was common to rural living. If you hear it now, it is usually prefaced with "my grandmother used to say," or "my Dad used to call it that."
"Store bought" was an indicator of a slight increase in financial status. Eating "light bread" as opposed to biscuits or cornbread was usually said when it came from the store.
"Store bought" also meant it had extra value and often came with braggin' rights.
Getting big enough to reach the "foot feed" in the pickup so I could drive was a milestone. I remember my first "picture show," and when my brothers got their "ears lowered."
Does anyone get lumbago anymore or self-medicate with castor oil and prune juice? And remember Methola-tum rub and that stinkin' rag around your neck if you had a cough?
There was a time when the saddle was a workbench in the making of Western history and then became a throne in a tradition that endures yet today.
But just as fishing became a sport, so, also, did cowboying. Horses have gained recreational value and saddles are created specific to the job of cutting, steer roping, team roping, calf roping, barrel racing, reining.
One saddle that does all is an endangered species.
And remember the horse racks that fit in the bed of the pickup? The fancier ones had a hood right over the top of the cab to protect the eyes and head of the horse. Somewhere in time horse trailers got popular and now cost more than a house and will certainly serve as a better house than a few I've lived in.
This is the standard "I remember when Hershey bars were a nickel and I walked five miles to school, up hill both directions" discussion. It doesn't have an ending and serves no purpose other than the warm fuzzies of reminiscing the "good old days."
We now live, absolutely, in a high-tech fast-paced world that swallows up time faster than we can get comfortable with each new thing. Most fads of the new millennium involve some sort of electronic, computerized, digitized gadget.
Anyone recall Big Chief tablets with pages of paper that had wood chips embedded in them so big that your pencil skipped when you wrote over one?
© Julie Carter 2007
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