Debate - Eminent Domain: To Preserve or To Abolish
This debate was held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., May 1st, 2006.
The Issues: In the wake of the controversial Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, some legislators are moving to place limits on the government’s power to seize citizens’ property for use by private enterprises. Is it appropriate under certain circumstances for the government to use eminent domain for the purpose of transferring a citizen’s property to a private business—or is this practice wrong in principle? Moreover, while the government is constitutionally authorized to take citizens’ property for “public use,” the question remains: Is this policy moral—and is it practical?
Does the government have a moral right to take citizens’ property under certain conditions—or do citizens have an absolute right to their personal property? Does robust economic development require the occasional use of eminent domain—or would economic progress be greater if property rights were upheld as truly inalienable? What are the moral issues involved in eminent domain? What are the practical issues? Are the moral and the practical necessarily at odds—or can they be reconciled? Mr. Finkle and Dr. Brook will present the facts in support of their respective positions.
The Debaters: Mr. Finkle became the president and CEO of the International Economic Development Council in August 2001, following IEDC’s birth through the merger of the Council for Urban Economic Development (CUED) with the American Economic Development Council (AEDC). Prior to the merger, Finkle served for 15 years as president and CEO of CUED. During that time, he oversaw the vast expansion of that organization’s membership and influence, as well as strengthening its financial footing. Dr. Brook is the president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. As a recognized expert on Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, Dr. Brook has been interviewed extensively by the print, radio and television media for the Objectivist position on current events. Among his recent interviews have been appearances on Talk Back Live (CNN), Your World with Neil Cavuto (Fox News Channel), The O'Reilly Factor (Fox News Channel) and Closing Bell and On the Money (CNBC).
Go here to listen to the debate.
Friday, February 09, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
Wildest Bill on the Hill Coming Soon Informally, the founders call it “the wildest bill on the hill,” but officially, it’s called the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act of 2007, and in the next few weeks, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) will, with the support of 187 co-sponsors (and counting), introduce the bill into the 110th Congress. It would designate many millions of acres of Wilderness, two new national park units, hundreds of miles of wild and scenic rivers, and establish linkage corridors between many of these areas. It covers all of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, and dips slightly into far eastern Oregon and Washington. And with the new political landscape created by the last election, backers are confident of their chances for success. Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (AWR), the main ball carrier of this legislation, says NREPA will be among the highest priority wilderness bills in Congress. For a more detailed explanation, go here, but in summary, here is what NREPA does....
Column - Ending the War Over Wilderness In the old days, before wolf reintroduction, Wilderness used to be the “W” word, so let’s leave Brother Wolf behind and go back to our roots, the fifty-year old controversy coming out of attempts to preserve the last blank spots on the map in the New West. All the howling over wolves of late has drowned out the debate over Wilderness, but that will change soon. With the new BlueGreen Congress at work, Wilderness advocates will be dusting off proposed legislation shelved for years and introducing it. The resulting debate might challenge the decimal level we’ve heard lately from the fight over how many wolves we should allow in the New West. Also, I fear, we’ll bloody ourselves in these fights and once again end up with nothing but bruises. Sadly, this has been the norm, ending up with no solution and making the controversy over the use of our last roadless lands seem endless. But now, we have a way to quickly end the war for Wilderness and move on. Can we do it?....
Tumacacori wilderness plan gets boost by Dems Now that his party controls Congress, Rep. Raúl Grijalva says he finally may succeed in protecting the Tumacacori Highlands near Nogales. "It does make its chances of passage much better," the Tucson Democrat said last week of legislation he'll introduce in the next 30 days to designate as wilderness about 84,000 rugged, scenic acres 40 miles south of Sahuarita. That's good news to people who support the legislation, like Mike Quigley, wilderness campaign coordinator for the Sky Island Alliance. "We were optimistic before, and given the amount of support for the idea and quality of the land we're talking about, we're more optimistic than ever," he said. The rugged mountainous area surrounded by rolling grasslands is home to a wide diversity of plants and animals, including more than 70 species of rare animals and plants such as the jaguar, elegant trogon and Chiricahua leopard frog. The area also has numerous cultural and historic sites....
Global Warming Skeptics Shunned The political climate isn't good for scientists with dissenting views on global warming, leaving some researchers to fear that honest research could be blackballed in favor of promoting a "consensus" view. A dispute erupted this week in Oregon, where Gov. Ted Kulongoski is considering firing the state's climatologist George Taylor, who has said human activity isn't the chief cause of global climate change. That view is not in line with the state policy of Oregon to reduce "greenhouse gases," which are considered by many researchers to be the chief cause of global warming. And Taylor is not alone. Although a recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report summary said there is 90 percent confidence that human activity is the main cause of global warming, climatologist are far from unanimous in that view. "It seems if scientists don't express the views of the political establishment, they will be threatened and that is a discomforting thought," said Alabama state climatologist John Christie, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville....
Editorial - Global Warming Smear(subscription required) Here are the facts as we've been able to collect them. AEI doesn't lobby, didn't offer money to scientists to question global warming, and the money it did pay for climate research didn't come from Exxon. What AEI did was send a letter to several leading climate scientists asking them to participate in a symposium that would present a "range of policy prescriptions that should be considered for climate change of uncertain dimension." Some of the scholars asked to participate, including Steve Schroeder of Texas A& M, are climatologists who believe that global warming is a major problem. AEI President Chris DeMuth says, "What the Guardian essentially characterizes as a bribe is the conventional practice of AEI -- and Brookings, Harvard and the University of Manchester -- to pay individuals" for commissioned work. He says that Exxon has contributed less than 1% of AEI's budget over the last decade. As for Exxon, Lauren Kerr, director of its Washington office, says that "none of us here had ever heard of this AEI climate change project until we read about it in the London newspapers." By the way, commissioning such research is also standard practice at NASA and other government agencies and at liberal groups such as the Pew Charitable Trusts, which have among them spent billions of dollars attempting to link fossil fuels to global warming. We don't know where the Brits first got this "news," but the leading suspects are the reliable sources at Greenpeace. They have been peddling these allegations for months, and the London newspaper sleuths seem to have swallowed them like pints on a Fleet Street lunch hour....
Green Group Distances Itself From 'Coal is Dirty' Claim Amid a renewed focus on global warming, an environmental group was alarmed this week to see its name attached to an advertising campaign asserting that "coal is filthy" when the group does not hold such a clear-cut position on the issue. The ads by the newly formed Clean Skies Coalition (CSC) used statistics and analyses from the national non-profit group Environmental Defense (ED) along with images of soot-covered faces to oppose a proposal by TXU, Texas' largest retail electricity provider, to build 11 new coal-driven energy plants. But ED representative Jim Marston said he did not want the public to think that his organization had funded or helped release the ads. Although ED opposes the TXU plan, Marston said in a statement the ad campaign "could be interpreted as a complete rejection of any coal technology." That does not reflect the views of ED, which supports the use of "clean coal" technology that minimizes "greenhouse gas" emissions from coal plants. Marston said ED was not informed that its research would be used in the advertisements....
Biologists, Nature Enthusiasts Urge Action on Global Warming Changes in the global climate that some attribute to human activity are expected to have a big impact on animals and ecosystems, according to a panel of scientists and nature enthusiasts who testified before a congressional subcommittee Wednesday. "Ecological communities will disassemble," said Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, director of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. "It's going to be a messy picture watching that happen." In testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works' subcommittee on global warming and wildlife, Lovejoy said increasing average temperatures have already led to changes in the timing of plant flowering, bird migrations and animal reproduction. Lovejoy said it is "hard to make the detailed projections" on how global warming will actually affect ecosystems, but nature "is indeed highly sensitive to climate change."....
Global warming tussles boil at White House, Capitol Global warming tussles erupted on Thursday on Capitol Hill and at the White House, where the top spokesman was grilled about U.S. President George W. Bush's early stance on the causes of climate change. Spokesman Tony Snow fielded questions about an "open letter" released on Wednesday by two White House officials complaining that some media stories inaccurately described Bush as coming late to the idea that human activities spur global warming. The letter included a quote from a Bush speech in 2001, in which he cited a National Academy of Sciences report that said climate change was "due in large part to human activity." The U.S. government has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which sets ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gases that are believed to contribute to rising global temperatures and changing weather patterns. Snow gave a fuller excerpt from Bush's 2001 speech, which dwelled on the uncertainties of the science on climate change, natural fluctuations in climate and the open question on the possible impact that various human actions have on it....
Climate change concerts 'to dwarf Live Aid' A series of concerts "bigger than Live Aid" is being planned for July, in a bid to put the subject of climate change before an audience of a global audience of 2bn. The event, scheduled for July 7, will feature co-ordinated film, music and television events in seven cities including London, Washington DC, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town and Kyoto, with major broadcasters and media owners aiming to extend the reach of public awareness of global warming. It is understood that former US vice-president Al Gore, whose movie An Inconvenient Truth brought climate change to cinema audiences last year, will announce the event tomorrow in London. The organisers hope to involve up to 2.5m people in events and link-ups at the cities involved, as well as other locations. They are promising a line-up of artists to "dwarf" that of the Live8 and Live Aid concerts, thought to be branded under the name "SOS"....
'Doomsday vault' to resist global warming effects An Arctic "doomsday vault" aimed at providing mankind with food in case of a global catastrophe will be designed to sustain the effects of climate change, the project's builders said as they unveiled the architectural plans. The top-security repository, carved into the permafrost of a mountain in the remote Svalbard archipelago near the North Pole, will preserve some three million batches of seeds from all known varieties of the planet's crops. The hope is that the vault will make it possible to re-establish crops obliterated by major disasters. "We have taken into consideration the (outside) temperature rising and have located the facility so far inside the rock that it will be in permafrost and won't be affected" by the outside temperature, Magnus Bredeli Tveiten, project manager at Norway's Directorate of Public Construction and Property, told AFP. Construction on the seed bank, also dubbed the "Noah's Ark of food", will begin in March....
Bush Seeks Public-Private Funding Boost for Parks President Bush traveled to Shenandoah National Park yesterday to tout his proposal to increase funding for national parks by $258 million next year, the first step in a plan to spend as much as $3 billion in public and private money on the popular attractions over the coming decade. Bush's proposal, which critics called a sharp turn for a president whose previous budgets did not address maintenance and staffing problems at parks across the country, targets one of the few domestic areas where he has called for funding significant new initiatives in his fiscal 2008 spending plan. The plan would pump $1 billion into the nation's 390 national parks and monuments by 2016, the park system's centennial. The proposal, which must be approved by Congress, would also call on private donors and philanthropies to donate as much as an additional $1 billion. The donated funds would be matched by the federal government....
Appeals court affirms rancher's royalties The Colorado Court of Appeals today upheld a $4 million jury award to a western Colorado sheep rancher who argued a natural-gas drilling company had not paid him all the royalties he was due over several years. Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Production Co. had appealed the August 2004 verdict, arguing that evidence was improperly excluded and that the jury instructions and damage calculations were flawed. A three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected each argument. The suit was filed by Garfield County rancher William Clough, who has since died. Clough, who owned 12,000 acres near Rifle and Parachute, was earning about $3 million a year in royalties from natural gas drilling on his land. He argued that Williams and Barrett Resources, which merged with Williams in 2001, had not paid him agreed-upon royalties from February 1996 to February 2004....
Roadless rule reinforced A federal judge in Northern California issued a final injunction Tuesday that protects 52 million acres nationwide from a repeal of the 2001 Clinton roadless rule. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte included language in her decision preventing roads and surface disturbance related to energy development, though oil and gas deposits would still be available through directional drilling. Though the issue is bound to face more legal challenges, Laporte’s order strikes down the Bush administration’s repeal of the roadless rule and requirement that governors petition the federal government to protect roadless areas in their states. The matter came before Laporte after conservation groups, including the Wilderness Society, took the repeal to court. Laporte in September said the administration’s action violated federal law because it did not undergo the necessary environmental studies....
Interior Dept. Gets Reprieve on Its Decision on Bald Eagle With a court-ordered deadline looming for removal of the bald eagle from the endangered species list, the Interior Department, rejecting the advice of its staff wildlife biologists, tried to limit a separate set of protections for the majestic bird that has served as a national symbol for centuries. Public reaction, however, to its December proposal was so sharp that the department had sought a reprieve from the deadline, which it received Wednesday. It now has until June 29 to make its final decision on the eagle’s status and the extent of its continuing protections. But even before the widespread use of pesticides in the 1940s and 1950s caused the drop in the population, the eagle had been a target for people coveting its feathers, so Congress passed a law preventing the “taking” of any eagle. This word was broadly defined to include everything from hunting the bird to simply disturbing it. Now, the department has proposed regulatory language narrowing that definition and making it harder to prove that human actions disturbed the bird. Under the new language, landowners and developers could cut down trees, build and engage in other activities in the vicinity of the bird and its nest as long as eagles were not killed or injured and did not abandon their nests. But two months before the department adopted that language, H. Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, sent his superiors a memorandum arguing for a more protective approach....
Roberts revamps surface rights The natural-gas industry is cooperating, for now, on a bill that would change the law that gives the industry power over landowners. Rep. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, introduced the bill Wednesday. "My approach to this has been to be as open as possible from the very start, because the bill's approach is very different than in the past," Roberts said. Controversies arise when different people own the surface land and the underlying minerals. Previous bills tried to spell out what steps drillers must take when they want a new well on private land. Roberts, instead, wants to declare that the surface and mineral owners are on equal footing under the law. Current law gives preference to the mineral owner. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association likes it that way. "At the end of the day, you have got to have the ability to access the minerals," said Greg Schnacke, COGA's executive vice president. "Society made the mineral estate dominant for a reason, dating back centuries, so the minerals could be brought to the surface." Roberts based her bill on a 1997 state Supreme Court decision called Gerrity v. Magness, where the judges ruled in favor of the surface owner. The judges said surface and mineral owners must accommodate each other's interests, putting the burden of proof on the energy company to show it was acting reasonably. The Legislature has never directed the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to enforce the Gerrity decision. Roberts would require the industry to minimize its impacts to the extent that it is technologically and economically possible. She believes the courts might have to get involved to decide what's possible. COGA is not opposing the bill so far and continues to work with Roberts....
Agreement reached in Wyoming on heli-skiing in roadless area Heli-skiing in a wilderness study area in western Wyoming would be drastically reduced over the next four years under an agreement among conservation groups, the U.S. Forest Service and a helicopter skiing company. The agreement stems from a court dispute over how much heli-skiing should be allowed in the Palisades Wilderness Study Area, a 136,000-acre roadless area located in the Bridger-Teton and Caribou-Targhee national forests. Heli-skiing involves using a helicopter to transport skiers into remote, backcountry areas and dropping them off at the top of a mountain to ski down. Under the proposal, High Mountains Helicopter Skiing Inc. of Teton Village, which charges a fee to fly backcountry skiers, would be allowed 854 skier days this winter season. A skier day is one person's ski trip. The permitted skier days would be reduced in subsequent winter seasons to 598 in 2007-2008, 512 in 2008-2009, 342 in 2009-2010 and 65 in 2010-2011....
Rural schools brace for losses in forest fight California rural school officials, facing a dramatic drop in funding, predict layoffs and shuttered classrooms as Western lawmakers and the Bush administration fight over a plan to sell federal timberland to prop up education in small communities. As it did last year, the White House has proposed compensating rural communities dominated by U.S. Forest Service ownership with revenue from the sale of 300,000 acres of national forest. Debate last year over the president's plan engulfed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which from 2000 to 2006 had enjoyed bipartisan support. That funding was headed for reauthorization when the White House announced its plan to raise $800 million by selling national forests. Since 2000, 780 counties and 4,400 school districts nationwide have received $440 million annually under legislation designed to allow counties and school districts to maintain programs despite reduced logging revenues. If Congress does not authorize funding before April, up to 16,000 county and school employees nationwide will lose their jobs -- around 1,700 of them in California -- said Bob Douglas, Tehama County superintendent of schools and president of the national coalition....
Forest Service Agrees to Consider Harm to Sensitive Species From Cattle Grazing Conservation groups today applauded a decision by the Gila National Forest to withdraw a controversial plan that would have re-opened an area that had been recovering for more than a decade from previous cattle grazing. The plan to graze the Hermosa Allotment could have harmed more than 100 miles of streams, jeopardized the integrity of native vegetation, and further impaired habitat for the critically endangered Mexican gray wolf and other rare species. "We're delighted that the Forest Service acknowledged the shortcomings of this plan by withdrawing the decision," said Melissa Hailey, attorney with Forest Guardians. "We challenged the plan because it didn't adequately assess the risks to wildlife, watersheds, and the Mexican wolf recovery effort." The Hermosa Allotment is part of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area and provides habitat for numerous other federally listed wildlife species, including the bald eagle, Mexican spotted owl, and Chiricahua leopard frog. It also provides habitat for at least four rare and sensitive plants that are known to be harmed by livestock grazing operations. Though the allotment has been in non-use for the last 13 years, conditions there are poor to fair, and experiencing a downward trend. The proposed decision would have opened the allotment as a grass bank, for use when other allotments were subjected to prescribed and naturally ignited fires....
Energy solution or curse on land? Utah Mining Association President David Litvin looked at displays for a proposed surface coal mine southwest of Bryce Canyon National Park and saw a solution to the country's increasing demand for electricity. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance staff attorney Stephen Bloch viewed the same displays with disdain, maintaining "some bad ideas don't go away. This was a bad idea 30 years ago and it's a bad idea now." These polar positions were expressed Wednesday night at Salt Lake City's Main Library during the fifth and final meeting in which the U.S. Bureau of Land Management was soliciting public input on issues that should be addressed in an environmental impact statement (EIS) being prepared on the coal mine proposal, known as the Coal Hollow Project. The EIS will address Alton Coal Development LLC's application to lease 3,600 acres of BLM land about three miles south of the Kane County town of Alton. The company also is seeking a state permit to mine another 440 acres of private land within the federal acreage. The Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining began that permit process last June. If both permits are approved, Alton Coal Development projects its strip mine could remove 2 million tons of coal annually. It would create 50 jobs in Alton, a ranching and livestock community of 134 residents, nearly a quarter of whom live below the poverty level. About 190 truck trips each weekday would carry the coal north through Panguitch, then west to Interstate 15 and south to a railroad line near Cedar City.....
Impact Of Oil Drilling On Wildlife Questioned A coalition of 60 groups is pushing state and federal lawmakers to better regulate oil and gas companies and a bill calling for new guidelines will be introduced at any time with the goal of protecting state's wildlife. The guidelines are designed to keep oil and gas' environmental footprint to a minimum. There are more than 30,000 wells in Colorado right now, with 30,000 more expected in the next ten years. That's where the guidelines come in. They're designed to minimize the disturbances on wildlife before it's too late. Bob Elderkin helped create them and knows better than most about oil and gas development in Colorado. Before he retired, he regulated it for the BLM, a state agency which leases land for drilling. "These guidelines are not intended to stop oil and gas in any way, shape or form, they're just intended to get surface managing agencies to start monitoring the impacts and minimizing the impacts," Elderkin said. He thinks the guidelines will help. They include pushing for fewer pipelines and roads and suggest drilling as many wells as possible on a single pad or designated area and spacing out those pads. They ask that abandoned wells be returned to a natural state. He thinks this will really help wildlife....
"EQUESTRIAN NATION" A New TV SHow for Horse Lovers Beginning this spring, horse lovers of all types will be tuning into a new magazine-style television show called Equestrian Nation, hosted by legendary Cowboy Larry Mahan. Equestrian Nation features stories about the many different equine breeds and disciplines from around the world. The show will premiere on March 2nd on the RFD-TV Network. RFD-TV is distributed on DIRECTV (Channel 379), DISH Network (Channel 9409), Mediacom and NCTC cable systems in all 50 states, serving over 28 million U.S. homes. RFD-TV has dedicated blocks of time specifically for equine programming, and Equestrian Nation will air multiple times per week. Program schedules are available at www.rfdtv.com or at www.equestriannation.tv Stories coming up include: trick roping with Montie Montana; rare footage of legendary horseman Tom Dorrance sharing some of his training techniques; a trip to Scotland to see the home of the Clydesdales and the fields they have plowed for centuries; a visit with Sons of the Pioneers, Rusty Richards; barrel racing with Charmayne James; reining with Dell Hendricks; scenic riding in Ireland; and cowboy cooking with Billy Ruiz. Agricultural stories are included, like holistic grazing of cattle and how this method can keep your pastures healthy. The show features vet tips from Dr. Doug Herthel and hoof care information with farrier John Raede....
Rancher beats giant snake to death to save grandson A 66-year-old Brazilian saved his grandson from the coils of a 16-foot anaconda by beating the snake with rocks and a knife for half an hour, police said Thursday. "When I saw the snake wrapped around my grandson's neck I thought it was going to kill him," Pereira told the Agencia Estado news service. Pereira's 8-year-old grandson, Mateus, was attacked by the anaconda Wednesday near a creek on his grandfather's ranch in the city of Cosmorama, about 250 miles northwest of Sao Paulo....
It’s The Pitts: The Weighting Game Scales have been known to lie. Back in the old days, before ranchers could send their cattle to an auction market with certified and sealed scales, all sorts of games were played with the weighing devices that determine how much cattlemen are paid for the product of their toil. In Fort Worth many years ago a crook hid himself under the pit scales and communicated with dealers using a two-way radio. When the dealers bought cattle they’d communicate their intentions to the scoundrel under the scale and he would push up on the beam of the scale so that the cattle would weigh light. Then when those same dealers sold cattle the outlaw in the pit would push down on the beam to give the cattle a heavier selling weight. You have to admit, they were creative crooks! Their profitable enterprise came to a screeching halt one day when a ringside observer noticed cigarette smoke wafting up through the boards of the scale. Now days you don’t have to worry about being short-weighed for your cattle at the auction but that doesn’t mean all shenanigans have stopped out in the country....
Wildest Bill on the Hill Coming Soon Informally, the founders call it “the wildest bill on the hill,” but officially, it’s called the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act of 2007, and in the next few weeks, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) will, with the support of 187 co-sponsors (and counting), introduce the bill into the 110th Congress. It would designate many millions of acres of Wilderness, two new national park units, hundreds of miles of wild and scenic rivers, and establish linkage corridors between many of these areas. It covers all of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, and dips slightly into far eastern Oregon and Washington. And with the new political landscape created by the last election, backers are confident of their chances for success. Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (AWR), the main ball carrier of this legislation, says NREPA will be among the highest priority wilderness bills in Congress. For a more detailed explanation, go here, but in summary, here is what NREPA does....
Column - Ending the War Over Wilderness In the old days, before wolf reintroduction, Wilderness used to be the “W” word, so let’s leave Brother Wolf behind and go back to our roots, the fifty-year old controversy coming out of attempts to preserve the last blank spots on the map in the New West. All the howling over wolves of late has drowned out the debate over Wilderness, but that will change soon. With the new BlueGreen Congress at work, Wilderness advocates will be dusting off proposed legislation shelved for years and introducing it. The resulting debate might challenge the decimal level we’ve heard lately from the fight over how many wolves we should allow in the New West. Also, I fear, we’ll bloody ourselves in these fights and once again end up with nothing but bruises. Sadly, this has been the norm, ending up with no solution and making the controversy over the use of our last roadless lands seem endless. But now, we have a way to quickly end the war for Wilderness and move on. Can we do it?....
Tumacacori wilderness plan gets boost by Dems Now that his party controls Congress, Rep. Raúl Grijalva says he finally may succeed in protecting the Tumacacori Highlands near Nogales. "It does make its chances of passage much better," the Tucson Democrat said last week of legislation he'll introduce in the next 30 days to designate as wilderness about 84,000 rugged, scenic acres 40 miles south of Sahuarita. That's good news to people who support the legislation, like Mike Quigley, wilderness campaign coordinator for the Sky Island Alliance. "We were optimistic before, and given the amount of support for the idea and quality of the land we're talking about, we're more optimistic than ever," he said. The rugged mountainous area surrounded by rolling grasslands is home to a wide diversity of plants and animals, including more than 70 species of rare animals and plants such as the jaguar, elegant trogon and Chiricahua leopard frog. The area also has numerous cultural and historic sites....
Global Warming Skeptics Shunned The political climate isn't good for scientists with dissenting views on global warming, leaving some researchers to fear that honest research could be blackballed in favor of promoting a "consensus" view. A dispute erupted this week in Oregon, where Gov. Ted Kulongoski is considering firing the state's climatologist George Taylor, who has said human activity isn't the chief cause of global climate change. That view is not in line with the state policy of Oregon to reduce "greenhouse gases," which are considered by many researchers to be the chief cause of global warming. And Taylor is not alone. Although a recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report summary said there is 90 percent confidence that human activity is the main cause of global warming, climatologist are far from unanimous in that view. "It seems if scientists don't express the views of the political establishment, they will be threatened and that is a discomforting thought," said Alabama state climatologist John Christie, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville....
Editorial - Global Warming Smear(subscription required) Here are the facts as we've been able to collect them. AEI doesn't lobby, didn't offer money to scientists to question global warming, and the money it did pay for climate research didn't come from Exxon. What AEI did was send a letter to several leading climate scientists asking them to participate in a symposium that would present a "range of policy prescriptions that should be considered for climate change of uncertain dimension." Some of the scholars asked to participate, including Steve Schroeder of Texas A& M, are climatologists who believe that global warming is a major problem. AEI President Chris DeMuth says, "What the Guardian essentially characterizes as a bribe is the conventional practice of AEI -- and Brookings, Harvard and the University of Manchester -- to pay individuals" for commissioned work. He says that Exxon has contributed less than 1% of AEI's budget over the last decade. As for Exxon, Lauren Kerr, director of its Washington office, says that "none of us here had ever heard of this AEI climate change project until we read about it in the London newspapers." By the way, commissioning such research is also standard practice at NASA and other government agencies and at liberal groups such as the Pew Charitable Trusts, which have among them spent billions of dollars attempting to link fossil fuels to global warming. We don't know where the Brits first got this "news," but the leading suspects are the reliable sources at Greenpeace. They have been peddling these allegations for months, and the London newspaper sleuths seem to have swallowed them like pints on a Fleet Street lunch hour....
Green Group Distances Itself From 'Coal is Dirty' Claim Amid a renewed focus on global warming, an environmental group was alarmed this week to see its name attached to an advertising campaign asserting that "coal is filthy" when the group does not hold such a clear-cut position on the issue. The ads by the newly formed Clean Skies Coalition (CSC) used statistics and analyses from the national non-profit group Environmental Defense (ED) along with images of soot-covered faces to oppose a proposal by TXU, Texas' largest retail electricity provider, to build 11 new coal-driven energy plants. But ED representative Jim Marston said he did not want the public to think that his organization had funded or helped release the ads. Although ED opposes the TXU plan, Marston said in a statement the ad campaign "could be interpreted as a complete rejection of any coal technology." That does not reflect the views of ED, which supports the use of "clean coal" technology that minimizes "greenhouse gas" emissions from coal plants. Marston said ED was not informed that its research would be used in the advertisements....
Biologists, Nature Enthusiasts Urge Action on Global Warming Changes in the global climate that some attribute to human activity are expected to have a big impact on animals and ecosystems, according to a panel of scientists and nature enthusiasts who testified before a congressional subcommittee Wednesday. "Ecological communities will disassemble," said Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, director of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. "It's going to be a messy picture watching that happen." In testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works' subcommittee on global warming and wildlife, Lovejoy said increasing average temperatures have already led to changes in the timing of plant flowering, bird migrations and animal reproduction. Lovejoy said it is "hard to make the detailed projections" on how global warming will actually affect ecosystems, but nature "is indeed highly sensitive to climate change."....
Global warming tussles boil at White House, Capitol Global warming tussles erupted on Thursday on Capitol Hill and at the White House, where the top spokesman was grilled about U.S. President George W. Bush's early stance on the causes of climate change. Spokesman Tony Snow fielded questions about an "open letter" released on Wednesday by two White House officials complaining that some media stories inaccurately described Bush as coming late to the idea that human activities spur global warming. The letter included a quote from a Bush speech in 2001, in which he cited a National Academy of Sciences report that said climate change was "due in large part to human activity." The U.S. government has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which sets ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gases that are believed to contribute to rising global temperatures and changing weather patterns. Snow gave a fuller excerpt from Bush's 2001 speech, which dwelled on the uncertainties of the science on climate change, natural fluctuations in climate and the open question on the possible impact that various human actions have on it....
Climate change concerts 'to dwarf Live Aid' A series of concerts "bigger than Live Aid" is being planned for July, in a bid to put the subject of climate change before an audience of a global audience of 2bn. The event, scheduled for July 7, will feature co-ordinated film, music and television events in seven cities including London, Washington DC, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town and Kyoto, with major broadcasters and media owners aiming to extend the reach of public awareness of global warming. It is understood that former US vice-president Al Gore, whose movie An Inconvenient Truth brought climate change to cinema audiences last year, will announce the event tomorrow in London. The organisers hope to involve up to 2.5m people in events and link-ups at the cities involved, as well as other locations. They are promising a line-up of artists to "dwarf" that of the Live8 and Live Aid concerts, thought to be branded under the name "SOS"....
'Doomsday vault' to resist global warming effects An Arctic "doomsday vault" aimed at providing mankind with food in case of a global catastrophe will be designed to sustain the effects of climate change, the project's builders said as they unveiled the architectural plans. The top-security repository, carved into the permafrost of a mountain in the remote Svalbard archipelago near the North Pole, will preserve some three million batches of seeds from all known varieties of the planet's crops. The hope is that the vault will make it possible to re-establish crops obliterated by major disasters. "We have taken into consideration the (outside) temperature rising and have located the facility so far inside the rock that it will be in permafrost and won't be affected" by the outside temperature, Magnus Bredeli Tveiten, project manager at Norway's Directorate of Public Construction and Property, told AFP. Construction on the seed bank, also dubbed the "Noah's Ark of food", will begin in March....
Bush Seeks Public-Private Funding Boost for Parks President Bush traveled to Shenandoah National Park yesterday to tout his proposal to increase funding for national parks by $258 million next year, the first step in a plan to spend as much as $3 billion in public and private money on the popular attractions over the coming decade. Bush's proposal, which critics called a sharp turn for a president whose previous budgets did not address maintenance and staffing problems at parks across the country, targets one of the few domestic areas where he has called for funding significant new initiatives in his fiscal 2008 spending plan. The plan would pump $1 billion into the nation's 390 national parks and monuments by 2016, the park system's centennial. The proposal, which must be approved by Congress, would also call on private donors and philanthropies to donate as much as an additional $1 billion. The donated funds would be matched by the federal government....
Appeals court affirms rancher's royalties The Colorado Court of Appeals today upheld a $4 million jury award to a western Colorado sheep rancher who argued a natural-gas drilling company had not paid him all the royalties he was due over several years. Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Production Co. had appealed the August 2004 verdict, arguing that evidence was improperly excluded and that the jury instructions and damage calculations were flawed. A three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected each argument. The suit was filed by Garfield County rancher William Clough, who has since died. Clough, who owned 12,000 acres near Rifle and Parachute, was earning about $3 million a year in royalties from natural gas drilling on his land. He argued that Williams and Barrett Resources, which merged with Williams in 2001, had not paid him agreed-upon royalties from February 1996 to February 2004....
Roadless rule reinforced A federal judge in Northern California issued a final injunction Tuesday that protects 52 million acres nationwide from a repeal of the 2001 Clinton roadless rule. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte included language in her decision preventing roads and surface disturbance related to energy development, though oil and gas deposits would still be available through directional drilling. Though the issue is bound to face more legal challenges, Laporte’s order strikes down the Bush administration’s repeal of the roadless rule and requirement that governors petition the federal government to protect roadless areas in their states. The matter came before Laporte after conservation groups, including the Wilderness Society, took the repeal to court. Laporte in September said the administration’s action violated federal law because it did not undergo the necessary environmental studies....
Interior Dept. Gets Reprieve on Its Decision on Bald Eagle With a court-ordered deadline looming for removal of the bald eagle from the endangered species list, the Interior Department, rejecting the advice of its staff wildlife biologists, tried to limit a separate set of protections for the majestic bird that has served as a national symbol for centuries. Public reaction, however, to its December proposal was so sharp that the department had sought a reprieve from the deadline, which it received Wednesday. It now has until June 29 to make its final decision on the eagle’s status and the extent of its continuing protections. But even before the widespread use of pesticides in the 1940s and 1950s caused the drop in the population, the eagle had been a target for people coveting its feathers, so Congress passed a law preventing the “taking” of any eagle. This word was broadly defined to include everything from hunting the bird to simply disturbing it. Now, the department has proposed regulatory language narrowing that definition and making it harder to prove that human actions disturbed the bird. Under the new language, landowners and developers could cut down trees, build and engage in other activities in the vicinity of the bird and its nest as long as eagles were not killed or injured and did not abandon their nests. But two months before the department adopted that language, H. Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, sent his superiors a memorandum arguing for a more protective approach....
Roberts revamps surface rights The natural-gas industry is cooperating, for now, on a bill that would change the law that gives the industry power over landowners. Rep. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, introduced the bill Wednesday. "My approach to this has been to be as open as possible from the very start, because the bill's approach is very different than in the past," Roberts said. Controversies arise when different people own the surface land and the underlying minerals. Previous bills tried to spell out what steps drillers must take when they want a new well on private land. Roberts, instead, wants to declare that the surface and mineral owners are on equal footing under the law. Current law gives preference to the mineral owner. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association likes it that way. "At the end of the day, you have got to have the ability to access the minerals," said Greg Schnacke, COGA's executive vice president. "Society made the mineral estate dominant for a reason, dating back centuries, so the minerals could be brought to the surface." Roberts based her bill on a 1997 state Supreme Court decision called Gerrity v. Magness, where the judges ruled in favor of the surface owner. The judges said surface and mineral owners must accommodate each other's interests, putting the burden of proof on the energy company to show it was acting reasonably. The Legislature has never directed the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to enforce the Gerrity decision. Roberts would require the industry to minimize its impacts to the extent that it is technologically and economically possible. She believes the courts might have to get involved to decide what's possible. COGA is not opposing the bill so far and continues to work with Roberts....
Agreement reached in Wyoming on heli-skiing in roadless area Heli-skiing in a wilderness study area in western Wyoming would be drastically reduced over the next four years under an agreement among conservation groups, the U.S. Forest Service and a helicopter skiing company. The agreement stems from a court dispute over how much heli-skiing should be allowed in the Palisades Wilderness Study Area, a 136,000-acre roadless area located in the Bridger-Teton and Caribou-Targhee national forests. Heli-skiing involves using a helicopter to transport skiers into remote, backcountry areas and dropping them off at the top of a mountain to ski down. Under the proposal, High Mountains Helicopter Skiing Inc. of Teton Village, which charges a fee to fly backcountry skiers, would be allowed 854 skier days this winter season. A skier day is one person's ski trip. The permitted skier days would be reduced in subsequent winter seasons to 598 in 2007-2008, 512 in 2008-2009, 342 in 2009-2010 and 65 in 2010-2011....
Rural schools brace for losses in forest fight California rural school officials, facing a dramatic drop in funding, predict layoffs and shuttered classrooms as Western lawmakers and the Bush administration fight over a plan to sell federal timberland to prop up education in small communities. As it did last year, the White House has proposed compensating rural communities dominated by U.S. Forest Service ownership with revenue from the sale of 300,000 acres of national forest. Debate last year over the president's plan engulfed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which from 2000 to 2006 had enjoyed bipartisan support. That funding was headed for reauthorization when the White House announced its plan to raise $800 million by selling national forests. Since 2000, 780 counties and 4,400 school districts nationwide have received $440 million annually under legislation designed to allow counties and school districts to maintain programs despite reduced logging revenues. If Congress does not authorize funding before April, up to 16,000 county and school employees nationwide will lose their jobs -- around 1,700 of them in California -- said Bob Douglas, Tehama County superintendent of schools and president of the national coalition....
Forest Service Agrees to Consider Harm to Sensitive Species From Cattle Grazing Conservation groups today applauded a decision by the Gila National Forest to withdraw a controversial plan that would have re-opened an area that had been recovering for more than a decade from previous cattle grazing. The plan to graze the Hermosa Allotment could have harmed more than 100 miles of streams, jeopardized the integrity of native vegetation, and further impaired habitat for the critically endangered Mexican gray wolf and other rare species. "We're delighted that the Forest Service acknowledged the shortcomings of this plan by withdrawing the decision," said Melissa Hailey, attorney with Forest Guardians. "We challenged the plan because it didn't adequately assess the risks to wildlife, watersheds, and the Mexican wolf recovery effort." The Hermosa Allotment is part of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area and provides habitat for numerous other federally listed wildlife species, including the bald eagle, Mexican spotted owl, and Chiricahua leopard frog. It also provides habitat for at least four rare and sensitive plants that are known to be harmed by livestock grazing operations. Though the allotment has been in non-use for the last 13 years, conditions there are poor to fair, and experiencing a downward trend. The proposed decision would have opened the allotment as a grass bank, for use when other allotments were subjected to prescribed and naturally ignited fires....
Energy solution or curse on land? Utah Mining Association President David Litvin looked at displays for a proposed surface coal mine southwest of Bryce Canyon National Park and saw a solution to the country's increasing demand for electricity. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance staff attorney Stephen Bloch viewed the same displays with disdain, maintaining "some bad ideas don't go away. This was a bad idea 30 years ago and it's a bad idea now." These polar positions were expressed Wednesday night at Salt Lake City's Main Library during the fifth and final meeting in which the U.S. Bureau of Land Management was soliciting public input on issues that should be addressed in an environmental impact statement (EIS) being prepared on the coal mine proposal, known as the Coal Hollow Project. The EIS will address Alton Coal Development LLC's application to lease 3,600 acres of BLM land about three miles south of the Kane County town of Alton. The company also is seeking a state permit to mine another 440 acres of private land within the federal acreage. The Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining began that permit process last June. If both permits are approved, Alton Coal Development projects its strip mine could remove 2 million tons of coal annually. It would create 50 jobs in Alton, a ranching and livestock community of 134 residents, nearly a quarter of whom live below the poverty level. About 190 truck trips each weekday would carry the coal north through Panguitch, then west to Interstate 15 and south to a railroad line near Cedar City.....
Impact Of Oil Drilling On Wildlife Questioned A coalition of 60 groups is pushing state and federal lawmakers to better regulate oil and gas companies and a bill calling for new guidelines will be introduced at any time with the goal of protecting state's wildlife. The guidelines are designed to keep oil and gas' environmental footprint to a minimum. There are more than 30,000 wells in Colorado right now, with 30,000 more expected in the next ten years. That's where the guidelines come in. They're designed to minimize the disturbances on wildlife before it's too late. Bob Elderkin helped create them and knows better than most about oil and gas development in Colorado. Before he retired, he regulated it for the BLM, a state agency which leases land for drilling. "These guidelines are not intended to stop oil and gas in any way, shape or form, they're just intended to get surface managing agencies to start monitoring the impacts and minimizing the impacts," Elderkin said. He thinks the guidelines will help. They include pushing for fewer pipelines and roads and suggest drilling as many wells as possible on a single pad or designated area and spacing out those pads. They ask that abandoned wells be returned to a natural state. He thinks this will really help wildlife....
"EQUESTRIAN NATION" A New TV SHow for Horse Lovers Beginning this spring, horse lovers of all types will be tuning into a new magazine-style television show called Equestrian Nation, hosted by legendary Cowboy Larry Mahan. Equestrian Nation features stories about the many different equine breeds and disciplines from around the world. The show will premiere on March 2nd on the RFD-TV Network. RFD-TV is distributed on DIRECTV (Channel 379), DISH Network (Channel 9409), Mediacom and NCTC cable systems in all 50 states, serving over 28 million U.S. homes. RFD-TV has dedicated blocks of time specifically for equine programming, and Equestrian Nation will air multiple times per week. Program schedules are available at www.rfdtv.com or at www.equestriannation.tv Stories coming up include: trick roping with Montie Montana; rare footage of legendary horseman Tom Dorrance sharing some of his training techniques; a trip to Scotland to see the home of the Clydesdales and the fields they have plowed for centuries; a visit with Sons of the Pioneers, Rusty Richards; barrel racing with Charmayne James; reining with Dell Hendricks; scenic riding in Ireland; and cowboy cooking with Billy Ruiz. Agricultural stories are included, like holistic grazing of cattle and how this method can keep your pastures healthy. The show features vet tips from Dr. Doug Herthel and hoof care information with farrier John Raede....
Rancher beats giant snake to death to save grandson A 66-year-old Brazilian saved his grandson from the coils of a 16-foot anaconda by beating the snake with rocks and a knife for half an hour, police said Thursday. "When I saw the snake wrapped around my grandson's neck I thought it was going to kill him," Pereira told the Agencia Estado news service. Pereira's 8-year-old grandson, Mateus, was attacked by the anaconda Wednesday near a creek on his grandfather's ranch in the city of Cosmorama, about 250 miles northwest of Sao Paulo....
It’s The Pitts: The Weighting Game Scales have been known to lie. Back in the old days, before ranchers could send their cattle to an auction market with certified and sealed scales, all sorts of games were played with the weighing devices that determine how much cattlemen are paid for the product of their toil. In Fort Worth many years ago a crook hid himself under the pit scales and communicated with dealers using a two-way radio. When the dealers bought cattle they’d communicate their intentions to the scoundrel under the scale and he would push up on the beam of the scale so that the cattle would weigh light. Then when those same dealers sold cattle the outlaw in the pit would push down on the beam to give the cattle a heavier selling weight. You have to admit, they were creative crooks! Their profitable enterprise came to a screeching halt one day when a ringside observer noticed cigarette smoke wafting up through the boards of the scale. Now days you don’t have to worry about being short-weighed for your cattle at the auction but that doesn’t mean all shenanigans have stopped out in the country....
Thursday, February 08, 2007
MAD COW DISEASE
Mad Cow Disease Spreads in Canada The United States said Thursday it would dispatch a specialist to help investigate Canada's latest case of mad cow, but that Washington did not expect the new finding to hurt trade between the two countries. On Wednesday, Canada confirmed its ninth case of mad cow disease since 2003, in an Alberta bull that died on a farm last week. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said that a mature bull tested positive for mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Dr. George Luterbach, the agency's senior veterinarian for Western Canada, said the animal's death caused the farm to identify it as an "animal of interest" as part of a national surveillance program. Eight previous cases of BSE have been detected in Canadian cattle since May 2003, when the discovery of an Alberta cow with the disease caused the United States to slam the border shut to cattle exports entirely. The border between the world's largest trade partners reopened for Canadian beef from younger cattle within months of the original ban. But live cattle have only been allowed to move across the border since July 2005. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will dispatch a USDA expert to Canada to help with the investigation, said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. "Based on what I know at this time, I would not expect this Canadian detection to impact our trade with Canada," Johanns said....
Ninth case of mad cow disease in Canada He would not say where in the province the animal was when it died. "These animals are removed, destroyed, tested and disposed of in a manner that they do not enter into the feed system," he said, adding officials are certain the bull also did not enter that system. Eight previous cases of BSE have been detected in Canadian cattle since May 2003, when the discovery of an Alberta cow with the disease caused the United States to slam the border shut to cattle exports entirely. The border reopened for Canadian beef from younger cattle within months of the original ban. But live cattle have only been allowed to move across the border since July 2005. New rules proposed by the US Department of Agriculture would allow exports of older live Canadian cattle to resume. They are up for public review until March 12. Almost one-third of the Canadian beef herd and one-quarter of the total herd is estimated to have been born before 1998. Luterbach said he does not expect the latest case to have a negative impact on these plans. "What's most important is that there's safeguards, there's a stringent suite of measures in place to prevent and eradicate BSE," he said. "We are open and transparent with the United States."....
USDA says Canadian mad cow case won't impact trade A day after Canada announced its ninth case of mad cow disease, the United States on Thursday said beef trade with its northern neighbor would be unaffected with regulators promising to press ahead with a draft rule to allow older Canadian cattle back in the country. "Based on what is known at this time, I would not expect this Canadian detection to impact our trade with Canada," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in a statement. Canada's latest mad cow case did not appear to affect U.S. markets, traders said. February live cattle futures closed down 0.300 cent at 93.350 cents per lb on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Still, some analysts said the latest case could prompt USDA to slow plans to increase the age of imported beef from Canada. "If there is anything that it could affect, it could be that," said Don Roose, analyst with U.S. Commodities Inc. In total, four of the nine animals that Canada has found in its domestic herd since May 2003 with mad cow disease were born at least three years after the feed ban. "While the risk assessment for the proposed rule factors in the possibility of additional cases, the open comment period allows for consideration of additional information that might result from this investigation," said Johanns. The second-largest U.S. farm group said USDA should immediately withdraw its proposal to increase Canadian beef imports. "Canada's ninth BSE case is further proof the country does not have its BSE problem under control," said Tom Buis, president of the 300,000-member National Farmers Union. "In the interest of U.S. producers and consumers, USDA should withdraw the proposed rule to expand Canadian beef and cattle imports," he added....
Mad Cow Disease Spreads in Canada The United States said Thursday it would dispatch a specialist to help investigate Canada's latest case of mad cow, but that Washington did not expect the new finding to hurt trade between the two countries. On Wednesday, Canada confirmed its ninth case of mad cow disease since 2003, in an Alberta bull that died on a farm last week. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said that a mature bull tested positive for mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Dr. George Luterbach, the agency's senior veterinarian for Western Canada, said the animal's death caused the farm to identify it as an "animal of interest" as part of a national surveillance program. Eight previous cases of BSE have been detected in Canadian cattle since May 2003, when the discovery of an Alberta cow with the disease caused the United States to slam the border shut to cattle exports entirely. The border between the world's largest trade partners reopened for Canadian beef from younger cattle within months of the original ban. But live cattle have only been allowed to move across the border since July 2005. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will dispatch a USDA expert to Canada to help with the investigation, said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. "Based on what I know at this time, I would not expect this Canadian detection to impact our trade with Canada," Johanns said....
Ninth case of mad cow disease in Canada He would not say where in the province the animal was when it died. "These animals are removed, destroyed, tested and disposed of in a manner that they do not enter into the feed system," he said, adding officials are certain the bull also did not enter that system. Eight previous cases of BSE have been detected in Canadian cattle since May 2003, when the discovery of an Alberta cow with the disease caused the United States to slam the border shut to cattle exports entirely. The border reopened for Canadian beef from younger cattle within months of the original ban. But live cattle have only been allowed to move across the border since July 2005. New rules proposed by the US Department of Agriculture would allow exports of older live Canadian cattle to resume. They are up for public review until March 12. Almost one-third of the Canadian beef herd and one-quarter of the total herd is estimated to have been born before 1998. Luterbach said he does not expect the latest case to have a negative impact on these plans. "What's most important is that there's safeguards, there's a stringent suite of measures in place to prevent and eradicate BSE," he said. "We are open and transparent with the United States."....
USDA says Canadian mad cow case won't impact trade A day after Canada announced its ninth case of mad cow disease, the United States on Thursday said beef trade with its northern neighbor would be unaffected with regulators promising to press ahead with a draft rule to allow older Canadian cattle back in the country. "Based on what is known at this time, I would not expect this Canadian detection to impact our trade with Canada," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in a statement. Canada's latest mad cow case did not appear to affect U.S. markets, traders said. February live cattle futures closed down 0.300 cent at 93.350 cents per lb on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Still, some analysts said the latest case could prompt USDA to slow plans to increase the age of imported beef from Canada. "If there is anything that it could affect, it could be that," said Don Roose, analyst with U.S. Commodities Inc. In total, four of the nine animals that Canada has found in its domestic herd since May 2003 with mad cow disease were born at least three years after the feed ban. "While the risk assessment for the proposed rule factors in the possibility of additional cases, the open comment period allows for consideration of additional information that might result from this investigation," said Johanns. The second-largest U.S. farm group said USDA should immediately withdraw its proposal to increase Canadian beef imports. "Canada's ninth BSE case is further proof the country does not have its BSE problem under control," said Tom Buis, president of the 300,000-member National Farmers Union. "In the interest of U.S. producers and consumers, USDA should withdraw the proposed rule to expand Canadian beef and cattle imports," he added....
Catron County Commission passes wolf ordinance
A new Catron County ordinance would allow a designated county officer to trap or remove endangered Mexican gray wolves if federal authorities don't act first. The ordinance, unanimously adopted by the County Commission Wednesday, is aimed at wolves that become accustomed to humans or that have made residents anxious, the Albuquerque Journal reported Thursday in a copyright story. The ordinance, which went into effect immediately, is less tolerant of wolf-human interactions than federal protocols. Commission Chairman Ed Wehrheim acknowledged conflicts between the county and federal authorities over the legality of the ordinance and whether particular wolves actually pose threats to people likely will arise. But he said the three-member board had to take action because of increasing numbers of wolf encounters, rising public anxiety and growing frustration with federal authorities. "This ordinance comes only as a last resort and only after all other avenues have been pursued to no avail," he said. Under the county's ordinance, complaints about wolves would lead to a dispatch order from the County Commission. Federal authorities would be notified and given 24 hours to remove the problem wolf. If federal authorities do not respond, the county's wolf interaction investigator would try to remove the wolf. If that doesn't work, the investigator could trap the wolf, and as a last resort, kill it....
A new Catron County ordinance would allow a designated county officer to trap or remove endangered Mexican gray wolves if federal authorities don't act first. The ordinance, unanimously adopted by the County Commission Wednesday, is aimed at wolves that become accustomed to humans or that have made residents anxious, the Albuquerque Journal reported Thursday in a copyright story. The ordinance, which went into effect immediately, is less tolerant of wolf-human interactions than federal protocols. Commission Chairman Ed Wehrheim acknowledged conflicts between the county and federal authorities over the legality of the ordinance and whether particular wolves actually pose threats to people likely will arise. But he said the three-member board had to take action because of increasing numbers of wolf encounters, rising public anxiety and growing frustration with federal authorities. "This ordinance comes only as a last resort and only after all other avenues have been pursued to no avail," he said. Under the county's ordinance, complaints about wolves would lead to a dispatch order from the County Commission. Federal authorities would be notified and given 24 hours to remove the problem wolf. If federal authorities do not respond, the county's wolf interaction investigator would try to remove the wolf. If that doesn't work, the investigator could trap the wolf, and as a last resort, kill it....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Global warming debate spurs Ore. title tiff In the face of evidence agreed upon by hundreds of climate scientists, George Taylor holds firm. He does not believe human activities are the main cause of global climate change. Taylor also holds a unique title: State Climatologist. Hundreds of scientists last Friday issued the strongest warning yet on global warming saying humans are "very likely" the cause. “Most of the climate changes we have seen up until now have been a result of natural variations,” Taylor asserts. Taylor has held the title of "state climatologist" since 1991 when the legislature created a state climate office at OSU The university created the job title, not the state. His opinions conflict not only with many other scientists, but with the state of Oregon's policies. So the governor wants to take that title from Taylor and make it a position that he would appoint....
Fed funds would aid rangeland A $2 million infusion from the federal government added to a proposed $9 million in state funds would go a long way toward keeping Utah's rangelands, watershed and sage grouse populations healthy, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said Wednesday. The $2 million, included in the proposed Bush administration budget for the Department of Interior's Healthy Lands Initiative, would be administered by the Utah Partners for Conservation and Development, a cooperative effort by state and federal agencies, Utah State University, private landowners and sporting groups. Since 2003, the partnership has spent $25 million rehabilitating 500,000 acres. Proper management of rangelands and sage grouse habitat is crucial to the state's oil and gas development, said Huntsman, who has pledged to restore 1 million acres of land in Utah during his current term in office. Huntsman emphasized that proper land and habitat restoration also would help ensure the Frontier Line - a joint venture planned by Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California - will be able to transmit not just coal-fired electricity but also power from renewable energy development....
Species Spat: Are agency turf battles hurting wildlife? As we humans crowd Arizona, we're crowding wildlife out. It does not take a rocket scientist to fathom how dwindling rivers, razed deserts and oceans of fresh concrete might just push many species--from pygmy owls and garter snakes to wee top minnows--to the razor's edge of extinction. But pell-mell growth isn't the only threat. According to biologists and conservationists, turf battles between state and federal wildlife officials are also taking a toll. In particular, critics contend that the Arizona Game and Fish Department has devolved from a conservation champion into a conservative hotbed, steeped in resentment of federal oversight and grudging to embrace the Endangered Species Act. As it happens, the ESA is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And that's what sticks in the state's craw, say critics. For evidence, they point to Arizona's enthusiasm for removing the Southwestern bald eagle from endangered-species status, or often-floundering efforts at recovering the Mexican gray wolf....
A Prickly Problem Ask residents of Gillespie County and chances are that few could imagine there being no pricklypear cactus in this part of the world. But, unless a little moth that is migrating its way across the country toward Texas can be stopped, there may come a day when the state’s official plant is in short supply. Word of that possibility -- depending on who’s asked -- may be greeted as being either good news or bad. Cause for the interest is an insect called the cactus moth (Cactoblastis cactorum) that came into Florida in 1989 and which has since been gradually heading west across the South toward the Lone Star State....
Chronic Problems on Elk Ranches Idaho hunters who like their elk wild have wrangled with elk farmers and their allies in agriculture for more than 15 years. While elk breeders here have largely kept their animals free of disease up to now, sportsmen and those charged with protecting wild herds fear that a disease outbreak among domesticated elk is inevitable and could debilitate the state’s wildlife populations. The stalemate came to a head this fall when up to 160 elk escaped from a large game farm north of Driggs. Now the Legislature is poised to hear a slew of bills, ranging from an outright ban on fenced elk hunts to a licensure system for game farms developed by a game farm industry group....
Commission to look at method to study deer-, elk-ranching rules State officials are proposing a go-slow, collaborative approach to any changes in elk- and deer-ranching rules in Oregon. A proposal to create a dozen-member Cervid Rule Advisory Group will be introduced Friday during a meeting of the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission in Seaside. If approved, the group would be made of representatives from the Oregon Elk Breeders Association, the Department of Agriculture, the Oregon Hunters Association, the MAD Elk Coalition, a non-Fish and Wildlife biologist, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Fish and Wildlife, the Oregon Cattlemen's Association and Oregon Farm Bureau. The proposal to create an advisory group is a response to the rejection of three petitions -- two from groups such as MAD Elk and the Oregon Hunters Association that advocated a phase-out of ranching, and one from the ranchers to continue the program -- at the January commission meeting....
Report: Mountain pine beetles were on destructive tear in '06 More than 660,000 acres were infected by mountain pine beetles in 2006, according to a state report released Wednesday. The 2006 Report on the Health of Colorado's Forests developed by the Colorado State Forest Service said there were about four times as many recently killed trees per acre in 2006 than the year before. Most of the damage is in high-value resort areas of Grand, Routt, Summit, Eagle and Jackson counties, the report says. The epidemic began in the mid-1990s and the drought of 2002-04 enabled the beetles to expand rapidly, the report said. Beetle-ravaged forests should be a call to action for residents and lawmakers, providing an opportunity to shape the "next forest," according to the report....
New acting BLM director has ties to West man with ties to New Mexico has been appointed acting director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced James M. Hughes' appointment Wednesday to replace Kathleen Clarke, who resigned as director in December to return to her home state of Utah. Hughes, the BLM's deputy director for programs and policy since 2002, will serve until a new BLM director is nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Hughes, who has a bachelor's degree in journalism from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, worked for former Rep. Joe Skeen, R-N.M., from 1997 to 2002, after a stint with U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. Hughes has held a variety of jobs at the Interior Department between 1986 and 1993, including deputy director for external affairs; director of congressional affairs under Interior Secretaries Donald Hodel and Manuel Lujan Jr.; and deputy assistant secretary for lands and minerals management, also under Lujan, a former New Mexico congressman....
Column - World's most expensive spec house casts a long shadow Some of my friends and neighbors resent the prospect of living near the world's most expensive spec house, a coming attraction in the Yellowstone Club. This is certainly not mere envy of the "haves" by the "have-nots," for some friends are well-educated and well-off. Rather, they correctly anticipate the imposition of costs on innocent communities. It is this injustice they begrudge. I find this proposed $155-million house a remarkable curiosity. I logged the site, or somewhere near it, four decades ago. Further, in the 1980s, I was offered that logged over land for about $10,000 per section‹and the seller would carry the debt. Although the chairman of the holding company, Burlington Resources, was a friend, this wasn't a sweetheart deal: the land was worth little. Today the land I logged is beautiful. Evidence of logging, stumps and traces of skid and haul roads, can be found, but most people wouldn't notice. However, I recall that as the area was being logged, Greens asserted that it was ruined forever. They claimed it would take time measured on a geological scale for it to recover any ecological or economic value. Since then, nature has restored the beauty of the sites and entrepreneurial magic has generated a huge increase in financial value....
BSE Confirmed In Alberta, Canada The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has confirmed the diagnosis of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a mature bull from Alberta. The animal's carcass is under CFIA control, and no part of it entered the human food or animal feed systems. Preliminary information indicates that the age of the animal falls well within the age range of previous cases detected in Canada under the national BSE surveillance program. This signifies that the animal was exposed to a very small amount of infective material, most likely during its first year of life. An epidemiological investigation directed by international guidelines is underway to examine what the animal was fed early in its life and to identify its herdmates at the time. All findings will be publicly released once the investigation concludes....
Global warming debate spurs Ore. title tiff In the face of evidence agreed upon by hundreds of climate scientists, George Taylor holds firm. He does not believe human activities are the main cause of global climate change. Taylor also holds a unique title: State Climatologist. Hundreds of scientists last Friday issued the strongest warning yet on global warming saying humans are "very likely" the cause. “Most of the climate changes we have seen up until now have been a result of natural variations,” Taylor asserts. Taylor has held the title of "state climatologist" since 1991 when the legislature created a state climate office at OSU The university created the job title, not the state. His opinions conflict not only with many other scientists, but with the state of Oregon's policies. So the governor wants to take that title from Taylor and make it a position that he would appoint....
Fed funds would aid rangeland A $2 million infusion from the federal government added to a proposed $9 million in state funds would go a long way toward keeping Utah's rangelands, watershed and sage grouse populations healthy, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said Wednesday. The $2 million, included in the proposed Bush administration budget for the Department of Interior's Healthy Lands Initiative, would be administered by the Utah Partners for Conservation and Development, a cooperative effort by state and federal agencies, Utah State University, private landowners and sporting groups. Since 2003, the partnership has spent $25 million rehabilitating 500,000 acres. Proper management of rangelands and sage grouse habitat is crucial to the state's oil and gas development, said Huntsman, who has pledged to restore 1 million acres of land in Utah during his current term in office. Huntsman emphasized that proper land and habitat restoration also would help ensure the Frontier Line - a joint venture planned by Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California - will be able to transmit not just coal-fired electricity but also power from renewable energy development....
Species Spat: Are agency turf battles hurting wildlife? As we humans crowd Arizona, we're crowding wildlife out. It does not take a rocket scientist to fathom how dwindling rivers, razed deserts and oceans of fresh concrete might just push many species--from pygmy owls and garter snakes to wee top minnows--to the razor's edge of extinction. But pell-mell growth isn't the only threat. According to biologists and conservationists, turf battles between state and federal wildlife officials are also taking a toll. In particular, critics contend that the Arizona Game and Fish Department has devolved from a conservation champion into a conservative hotbed, steeped in resentment of federal oversight and grudging to embrace the Endangered Species Act. As it happens, the ESA is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And that's what sticks in the state's craw, say critics. For evidence, they point to Arizona's enthusiasm for removing the Southwestern bald eagle from endangered-species status, or often-floundering efforts at recovering the Mexican gray wolf....
A Prickly Problem Ask residents of Gillespie County and chances are that few could imagine there being no pricklypear cactus in this part of the world. But, unless a little moth that is migrating its way across the country toward Texas can be stopped, there may come a day when the state’s official plant is in short supply. Word of that possibility -- depending on who’s asked -- may be greeted as being either good news or bad. Cause for the interest is an insect called the cactus moth (Cactoblastis cactorum) that came into Florida in 1989 and which has since been gradually heading west across the South toward the Lone Star State....
Chronic Problems on Elk Ranches Idaho hunters who like their elk wild have wrangled with elk farmers and their allies in agriculture for more than 15 years. While elk breeders here have largely kept their animals free of disease up to now, sportsmen and those charged with protecting wild herds fear that a disease outbreak among domesticated elk is inevitable and could debilitate the state’s wildlife populations. The stalemate came to a head this fall when up to 160 elk escaped from a large game farm north of Driggs. Now the Legislature is poised to hear a slew of bills, ranging from an outright ban on fenced elk hunts to a licensure system for game farms developed by a game farm industry group....
Commission to look at method to study deer-, elk-ranching rules State officials are proposing a go-slow, collaborative approach to any changes in elk- and deer-ranching rules in Oregon. A proposal to create a dozen-member Cervid Rule Advisory Group will be introduced Friday during a meeting of the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission in Seaside. If approved, the group would be made of representatives from the Oregon Elk Breeders Association, the Department of Agriculture, the Oregon Hunters Association, the MAD Elk Coalition, a non-Fish and Wildlife biologist, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Fish and Wildlife, the Oregon Cattlemen's Association and Oregon Farm Bureau. The proposal to create an advisory group is a response to the rejection of three petitions -- two from groups such as MAD Elk and the Oregon Hunters Association that advocated a phase-out of ranching, and one from the ranchers to continue the program -- at the January commission meeting....
Report: Mountain pine beetles were on destructive tear in '06 More than 660,000 acres were infected by mountain pine beetles in 2006, according to a state report released Wednesday. The 2006 Report on the Health of Colorado's Forests developed by the Colorado State Forest Service said there were about four times as many recently killed trees per acre in 2006 than the year before. Most of the damage is in high-value resort areas of Grand, Routt, Summit, Eagle and Jackson counties, the report says. The epidemic began in the mid-1990s and the drought of 2002-04 enabled the beetles to expand rapidly, the report said. Beetle-ravaged forests should be a call to action for residents and lawmakers, providing an opportunity to shape the "next forest," according to the report....
New acting BLM director has ties to West man with ties to New Mexico has been appointed acting director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced James M. Hughes' appointment Wednesday to replace Kathleen Clarke, who resigned as director in December to return to her home state of Utah. Hughes, the BLM's deputy director for programs and policy since 2002, will serve until a new BLM director is nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Hughes, who has a bachelor's degree in journalism from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, worked for former Rep. Joe Skeen, R-N.M., from 1997 to 2002, after a stint with U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. Hughes has held a variety of jobs at the Interior Department between 1986 and 1993, including deputy director for external affairs; director of congressional affairs under Interior Secretaries Donald Hodel and Manuel Lujan Jr.; and deputy assistant secretary for lands and minerals management, also under Lujan, a former New Mexico congressman....
Column - World's most expensive spec house casts a long shadow Some of my friends and neighbors resent the prospect of living near the world's most expensive spec house, a coming attraction in the Yellowstone Club. This is certainly not mere envy of the "haves" by the "have-nots," for some friends are well-educated and well-off. Rather, they correctly anticipate the imposition of costs on innocent communities. It is this injustice they begrudge. I find this proposed $155-million house a remarkable curiosity. I logged the site, or somewhere near it, four decades ago. Further, in the 1980s, I was offered that logged over land for about $10,000 per section‹and the seller would carry the debt. Although the chairman of the holding company, Burlington Resources, was a friend, this wasn't a sweetheart deal: the land was worth little. Today the land I logged is beautiful. Evidence of logging, stumps and traces of skid and haul roads, can be found, but most people wouldn't notice. However, I recall that as the area was being logged, Greens asserted that it was ruined forever. They claimed it would take time measured on a geological scale for it to recover any ecological or economic value. Since then, nature has restored the beauty of the sites and entrepreneurial magic has generated a huge increase in financial value....
BSE Confirmed In Alberta, Canada The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has confirmed the diagnosis of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a mature bull from Alberta. The animal's carcass is under CFIA control, and no part of it entered the human food or animal feed systems. Preliminary information indicates that the age of the animal falls well within the age range of previous cases detected in Canada under the national BSE surveillance program. This signifies that the animal was exposed to a very small amount of infective material, most likely during its first year of life. An epidemiological investigation directed by international guidelines is underway to examine what the animal was fed early in its life and to identify its herdmates at the time. All findings will be publicly released once the investigation concludes....
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
BORDER FENCE STOPPED - JAGUARS
From: Keeler Ranch
Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2007 6:57 PM
Subject: Border Fence stopped
Just received a call from a friend who's son-in-law is the agent in charge of building the border fence near Naco, Arizona. The fence has been stopped until they can prove a jaguar is not coming across from Mexico.
So much for a border fence and all the money that has already been spent building one.
Judy
From: Keeler Ranch
Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2007 6:57 PM
Subject: Border Fence stopped
Just received a call from a friend who's son-in-law is the agent in charge of building the border fence near Naco, Arizona. The fence has been stopped until they can prove a jaguar is not coming across from Mexico.
So much for a border fence and all the money that has already been spent building one.
Judy
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
GAO
Environmental Information: EPA Actions Could Reduce the Availability of Environmental Information to the Public, by John B.
Stephenson, director, natural resources and environment, before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. GAO-07-464T, February 6.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-464T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07464thigh.pdf
Environmental Information: EPA Actions Could Reduce the Availability of Environmental Information to the Public, by John B.
Stephenson, director, natural resources and environment, before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. GAO-07-464T, February 6.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-464T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07464thigh.pdf
NEWS ROUNDUP
For Wolves, a Recovery May Not Be the Blessing It Seems The news for the wolf last week was the opposite of a cloud with a silver lining. At first glance, it seems like a win for conservation that wolves are now successful enough that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed taking wolves in Idaho and Montana off the endangered species list. But the price of success may be high. In Idaho, the governor is ready to have hunters reduce the wolf population in the state from 650 to 100, the minimum that will keep the animal off the endangered species list. “I’m prepared to bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself,” Gov. C. L. Otter said, according to The Associated Press. Of all the protected and endangered species in the United States, none has provoked stronger feelings than the wolf, reviled or revered, depending on the person. And few have been as visible a success. The proposed delisting, as it is called, comes because the population of wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains is surging. Many people in the northern Rockies would like to see large numbers of wolves killed as soon as possible, which is why Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental group that played a pivotal role in the wolf’s return, opposes the delisting....Isn't the New York Times just a wonderful publication. The recovery of the wolf is now a bad thing?
Bush again proposes selling national forest land For the second year in a row, the Bush administration on Monday proposed selling off up to 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools and roads. And for the second year, Western lawmakers and environmentalists blasted the plan, saying short-term gains would be offset by the permanent loss of the land. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., the new chairman of an Appropriations subcommittee that oversees environmental spending, pronounced the plan dead on arrival. "They are just not going to do this. It's not going to happen," Dicks said. "We're going to find a way to fund the (rural) schools program without selling even one acre of public land," added Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana. Western lawmakers also were concerned about Bush's plan to cut the Forest Service budget by more than $100 million. The figure represents a 7 percent drop in expected spending for the current budget year....
President Bush Reinforces Commitment To Cooperative Conservation In 2006 Budget President Bush continued to build on the legacy of cooperative conservation established in his first term by supporting programs in the 2006 budget that promote partnerships with the American people to conserve our nation's land and water, wildlife and other natural resources. The Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce departments and the Environmental Protection Agency all fund key partnership programs that will empower states, tribes, local communities, conservation groups, private landowners and others to undertake conservation projects. These projects range from wetlands restoration efforts occurring along Ball Bay on Upper Klamath Lake; to the removal of invasive plants in Palm Beach, Fla.; to the development and implementation of self-regulating strategies to mitigate the trend of declining marine populations in Kenai Fjords, Alaska. The funding supports the president's executive order signed last year on "Facilitation of Cooperative Conservation."....
JOHANNS OUTLINES PRESIDENT BUSH'S FY 2008 AGRICULTURE BUDGET The 2008 budget reflects the President's priorities to encourage economic growth and increase our security. It also reflects the President's goal to keep spending under control and achieve a balanced budget. On January 31, the Administration announced a comprehensive set of Farm Bill proposals for strengthening the farm economy and rural America. Beginning in 2008, the budget incorporates a $500 million increase each year in the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) estimates to accommodate the cost of new farm bill proposals to be allocated among the various titles of the bill. Total USDA expenditures are estimated at about $89 billion in 2008, which is approximately the same level as 2007. Roughly 75 percent of expenditures, or $67 billion in 2008, will be for mandatory programs that provide services required by law, which include many of the nutrition assistance, commodity, export promotion and conservation programs. USDA's discretionary programs account for the remaining 25 percent of expenditures or $22 billion in 2008, which is approximately the same level as 2007....
President Bush’s FY 2008 Budget Proposes $1.8 Billion for BLM The Bush Administration today proposed a $1.8 billion budget in appropriated funds for the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management. This is $57.8 million above the Fiscal Year 2007 budget request. The budget fully funds fixed costs of $44.1 million. The BLM budget features a $15 million increase to implement a new Healthy Lands Initiative that will ensure energy access while protecting habitat and wildlife in the wildlife-energy interface. The President’s proposed Fiscal Year 2008 budget for the BLM also includes $142.9 million to ensure that the agency continues to provide dependable, accessible energy from public lands in an environmentally responsible manner. Hughes said the Healthy Lands Initiative will allow the BLM to conduct landscape-scale restoration in six areas: southwest Wyoming; the northwest and southeast portions of New Mexico; southcentral Idaho; southwestern Colorado; Utah; and the three-corner state area between Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada. The money budgeted for this initiative is expected to result in an additional $10 million in in-kind and monetary contributions from Federal, state, local, and oil and gas industry partners that will work collaboratively with the BLM. The Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey are included in this initiative, providing support to the BLM’s habitat restoration goals. The 2008 budget request includes an increase of $3.1 million over FY 2007 for the BLM’s oil and gas inspection and monitoring activities, which will ensure that energy development is done in an environmentally sensitive way and that terms of energy-related permits are enforced. The 2008 budget proposes to address the split-estate issue, seeking authorization to retain funding from the sale of mineral rights to current non-Federal surface landowners. Revenue would be used to acquire important habitat....
More than $2.1 Billion Requested by President Bush for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service The President's FY 2008 budget request of $1.287 billion in discretionary appropriations for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supports a range of important conservation initiatives, including efforts to improve our nation's native fisheries and assist landowners who volunteer to manage their property for the benefit of imperiled wildlife. The budget includes an additional $859.4 million available under permanent appropriations, most of which will be provided directly to states for fish and wildlife and restoration and conservation. The FY 2008 request provides critical support for the Service's efforts to expand fish access to stream habitat necessary for natural reproduction. The budget request includes $11.0 million for the fish passage program. This is a $6.0 million increase and will allow the FWS to participate in the Open Rivers Initiative....
Court denies injunction on Middle East Fork logging The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday turned down a request by a pair of environmental groups for an emergency injunction on Montana's first Healthy Forest Restoration Act fuel reduction project. In a two-sentence order, the three-judge panel denied the injunction request and retained the schedule for further court hearings on the matter. In December, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy rejected all claims of the WildWest Institute and Friends of the Bitterroot lawsuit that challenged the Bitterroot National Forest's Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project. The ruling followed months of contentious debate over the future of a project that proposed to treat about 5,000 acres in a 25,800-acre area about two miles east of Sula. The project was designed to reduce wildland fire threats to the local community and treat areas affected by a Douglas fir bark beetle epidemic....
Group counts 6,700 elk in northern Yellowstone area Officials counted slightly more elk in and around northern Yellowstone National Park in late 2006 than they did earlier in the year, but still far fewer than were counted in 2005. The annual count is done by the Northern Yellowstone Cooperative Working Group, made up of representatives from the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. On Dec. 30 the group counted 6,739 elk while flying three planes in clear weather along the park's northern boundary. That was up from 6,588 elk counted in March 2006, but well below the 9,545 that were counted in January 2005. Yellowstone biologist P.J. White said the decrease since 2005 probably is the result of predation by wolves and other large carnivores. He said predators also change elk behavior. Elk have been dispersed more, have gathered in smaller groups and have been spending more time in forested areas where they're harder to spot, he said....
Drilling begins in county-to-county water test The drilling of two holes in the Cleveland National Forest began today to test if 646 million gallons of water each day can be transported through a tunnel between Riverside and Orange counties. The Metropolitan Water District's findings could also be used to determine if construction of a vehicular tunnel is feasible. The work was postponed from a few weeks ago because the district needed clearance from the U.S. Forest Service, said spokesman Denis Wolcott. The drilling could take about three months and analysis of rock, soil and water pressure from 2,200 feet below will follow. The district board could know later this year whether a 12-mile tunnel can be constructed, though the agency does not have plans to build one immediately. The water now travels through various conduits around the mountains. The underground tunnel could be used in addition to the existing conduits....
Receiving prairie dog clearance After waiting half a year for action on a request to remove Utah prairie dogs, Cedar Ridge Golf Course and the Paiute Tribe of Utah received permits to clear their properties. John Evans, Cedar Ridge Golf Course director, said this is good news for golfers; clearing prairie dogs will make the course much more attractive. "It will make it so we can play golf again," he said. Lora Tom, Paiute Tribe of Utah chairwoman, said clearing the property will allow the tribe to grow. "We're appreciative, (and) we're surprised," she said. "It means possibilities." But receiving the permits wasn't all good news - the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service changed the parameters of the permits. The golf course and Paiute Tribe will not be allowed to trap and kill any dogs; all dogs must be relocated as "live take," said Elise Boeke, USFWS ecologist. This makes the timeline to clear both properties uncertain....
Removal order issued for endangered gray wolf in New Mexico A male endangered Mexican gray wolf has been targeted for removal by the U-S Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency said the six-year-old, wild born member of the San Mateo Pack has been involved in the killing of three cows in New Mexico since last March. The Fish and Wildlife Service began releasing wolves into the wild on the Arizona-New Mexico border in 1998 to re-establish the species in part of its historic range....
Wild eagles attack paraglider Britain's top female paraglider has cheated death after being attacked by a pair of "screeching" wild eagles while competition flying in Australia. Nicky Moss, 38, watched terrified as two huge birds began tearing into her parachute canopy, one becoming tangled in her lines and clawing at her head 2,500 meters (8,200ft) in the air. "I heard screeching behind me and a eagle flew down and attacked me, swooping down and bouncing into the side of my wing with its claws," Moss told Reuters on Friday. "Then another one appeared and together they launched a sustained attack on my glider, tearing at the wing." The encounter happened on Monday while Moss -- a member of the British paragliding team -- was preparing for world titles this month at Manilla in northern New South Wales state....
Farm Bureau celebrates the affordability of food In just five weeks, the average American earns enough disposable income to pay for his or her food supply for the entire year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. Farm Bureau is celebrating the continued affordability of food Feb. 4-10, during Food Check-Out Week. The latest statistics compiled by the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service indicate American families and individuals currently spend, on average, just 9.9 percent of their disposable personal income for food. Applying the current statistic to the calendar year means the average U.S. household will have earned enough disposable income – the portion of income available for spending or saving after taxes are paid – to pay for its annual food supply this week. In comparison to working 36 days to pay for food, Americans worked 77 days to pay their federal taxes, 62 days to pay for housing and household operation, and 52 days for health/medical care, according to The Tax Foundation....
Cattle quarantined after disease discovered For the first time since 1974, a reported case of bovine tuberculosis has been found in Colorado. Inspectors say a bull was sold from a Colorado owner in Douglas County to a meat packing facility in San Angelo, Texas. Colorado’s assistant state veterinarian, Keith Roehr, says evidence of the disease was discovered in the bull’s lungs during routine inspection of the carcass. Roehr says the bull’s meat was never moved beyond the facility. "The food supply is safe, the regular measures we have in place for meat inspection prevent any meat coming into the food chain that's infected,” said Roehr. The state has quarantined approximately 660 cattle from what Roehr calls “the herd of origin.” Roehr says any cow that had prolonged exposure to the bull, nose to nose specifically, may be infected....
Cattleman Calls On Others To Challenge Activists A Nebraska cattle producer and radio host is urging U.S. cattle producers to challenge anti-livestock activists through persistence and by becoming more visible and vocal. Trent Loos, who also is a syndicated radio personality from Loup City, Neb., in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association convention here, said producers need to engage with activists and "be ready to tell why they believe it's morally ethical to respectfully take the life of an animal to provide the essentials of life" to humans. "Put a face on food production," Loos said. Show up at protests and be visible and available because at least some who are there have never seen a farmer or rancher and are ready to talk, he said. Loos said it was difficult for the livestock industry to compete with the $120 million budget of the Humane Society of the U.S., but it was possible to make inroads with one-on-one meetings....
It's All Trew: Rawhide a versatile good Rawhide is defined as "the raw untreated skin of an animal, usually in a dried condition." The use of this crude leather dates back to the origins of man when he began using the by-products of food gathering. His supply of rawhide was replenished each time he killed an animal for food. The major uses of rawhide included clothing, housing, the making of tools and containers. This changed in the late 1870s with the birth of the Industrial Revolution. As the machines manufacturing war goods turned to making civilian goods, belting to drive these machines was in great demand. With the development of rubber-type materials still to be invented, the factories turned to leather belting to transfer power from overhead power shafts to the machines located below. The flint-hard, dried hides of the Great Plains buffalo were ideal if the hides were in proper condition. To attain this condition, the hunters had to stake the fresh hide down to the ground and scrape off the excess flesh. A poison solution was sprinkled over the hide to prevent insect damage. After two or more days, the hide was beaten with sticks to knock the dirt loose from the underside hair as buffalo loved to wallow in mud holes to protect against insects. The hide was turned over, sprinkled and left for another two days before folding with hair inside and tied into bales for transporting to market....
For Wolves, a Recovery May Not Be the Blessing It Seems The news for the wolf last week was the opposite of a cloud with a silver lining. At first glance, it seems like a win for conservation that wolves are now successful enough that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed taking wolves in Idaho and Montana off the endangered species list. But the price of success may be high. In Idaho, the governor is ready to have hunters reduce the wolf population in the state from 650 to 100, the minimum that will keep the animal off the endangered species list. “I’m prepared to bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself,” Gov. C. L. Otter said, according to The Associated Press. Of all the protected and endangered species in the United States, none has provoked stronger feelings than the wolf, reviled or revered, depending on the person. And few have been as visible a success. The proposed delisting, as it is called, comes because the population of wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains is surging. Many people in the northern Rockies would like to see large numbers of wolves killed as soon as possible, which is why Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental group that played a pivotal role in the wolf’s return, opposes the delisting....Isn't the New York Times just a wonderful publication. The recovery of the wolf is now a bad thing?
Bush again proposes selling national forest land For the second year in a row, the Bush administration on Monday proposed selling off up to 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools and roads. And for the second year, Western lawmakers and environmentalists blasted the plan, saying short-term gains would be offset by the permanent loss of the land. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., the new chairman of an Appropriations subcommittee that oversees environmental spending, pronounced the plan dead on arrival. "They are just not going to do this. It's not going to happen," Dicks said. "We're going to find a way to fund the (rural) schools program without selling even one acre of public land," added Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana. Western lawmakers also were concerned about Bush's plan to cut the Forest Service budget by more than $100 million. The figure represents a 7 percent drop in expected spending for the current budget year....
President Bush Reinforces Commitment To Cooperative Conservation In 2006 Budget President Bush continued to build on the legacy of cooperative conservation established in his first term by supporting programs in the 2006 budget that promote partnerships with the American people to conserve our nation's land and water, wildlife and other natural resources. The Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce departments and the Environmental Protection Agency all fund key partnership programs that will empower states, tribes, local communities, conservation groups, private landowners and others to undertake conservation projects. These projects range from wetlands restoration efforts occurring along Ball Bay on Upper Klamath Lake; to the removal of invasive plants in Palm Beach, Fla.; to the development and implementation of self-regulating strategies to mitigate the trend of declining marine populations in Kenai Fjords, Alaska. The funding supports the president's executive order signed last year on "Facilitation of Cooperative Conservation."....
JOHANNS OUTLINES PRESIDENT BUSH'S FY 2008 AGRICULTURE BUDGET The 2008 budget reflects the President's priorities to encourage economic growth and increase our security. It also reflects the President's goal to keep spending under control and achieve a balanced budget. On January 31, the Administration announced a comprehensive set of Farm Bill proposals for strengthening the farm economy and rural America. Beginning in 2008, the budget incorporates a $500 million increase each year in the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) estimates to accommodate the cost of new farm bill proposals to be allocated among the various titles of the bill. Total USDA expenditures are estimated at about $89 billion in 2008, which is approximately the same level as 2007. Roughly 75 percent of expenditures, or $67 billion in 2008, will be for mandatory programs that provide services required by law, which include many of the nutrition assistance, commodity, export promotion and conservation programs. USDA's discretionary programs account for the remaining 25 percent of expenditures or $22 billion in 2008, which is approximately the same level as 2007....
President Bush’s FY 2008 Budget Proposes $1.8 Billion for BLM The Bush Administration today proposed a $1.8 billion budget in appropriated funds for the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management. This is $57.8 million above the Fiscal Year 2007 budget request. The budget fully funds fixed costs of $44.1 million. The BLM budget features a $15 million increase to implement a new Healthy Lands Initiative that will ensure energy access while protecting habitat and wildlife in the wildlife-energy interface. The President’s proposed Fiscal Year 2008 budget for the BLM also includes $142.9 million to ensure that the agency continues to provide dependable, accessible energy from public lands in an environmentally responsible manner. Hughes said the Healthy Lands Initiative will allow the BLM to conduct landscape-scale restoration in six areas: southwest Wyoming; the northwest and southeast portions of New Mexico; southcentral Idaho; southwestern Colorado; Utah; and the three-corner state area between Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada. The money budgeted for this initiative is expected to result in an additional $10 million in in-kind and monetary contributions from Federal, state, local, and oil and gas industry partners that will work collaboratively with the BLM. The Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey are included in this initiative, providing support to the BLM’s habitat restoration goals. The 2008 budget request includes an increase of $3.1 million over FY 2007 for the BLM’s oil and gas inspection and monitoring activities, which will ensure that energy development is done in an environmentally sensitive way and that terms of energy-related permits are enforced. The 2008 budget proposes to address the split-estate issue, seeking authorization to retain funding from the sale of mineral rights to current non-Federal surface landowners. Revenue would be used to acquire important habitat....
More than $2.1 Billion Requested by President Bush for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service The President's FY 2008 budget request of $1.287 billion in discretionary appropriations for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supports a range of important conservation initiatives, including efforts to improve our nation's native fisheries and assist landowners who volunteer to manage their property for the benefit of imperiled wildlife. The budget includes an additional $859.4 million available under permanent appropriations, most of which will be provided directly to states for fish and wildlife and restoration and conservation. The FY 2008 request provides critical support for the Service's efforts to expand fish access to stream habitat necessary for natural reproduction. The budget request includes $11.0 million for the fish passage program. This is a $6.0 million increase and will allow the FWS to participate in the Open Rivers Initiative....
Court denies injunction on Middle East Fork logging The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday turned down a request by a pair of environmental groups for an emergency injunction on Montana's first Healthy Forest Restoration Act fuel reduction project. In a two-sentence order, the three-judge panel denied the injunction request and retained the schedule for further court hearings on the matter. In December, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy rejected all claims of the WildWest Institute and Friends of the Bitterroot lawsuit that challenged the Bitterroot National Forest's Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project. The ruling followed months of contentious debate over the future of a project that proposed to treat about 5,000 acres in a 25,800-acre area about two miles east of Sula. The project was designed to reduce wildland fire threats to the local community and treat areas affected by a Douglas fir bark beetle epidemic....
Group counts 6,700 elk in northern Yellowstone area Officials counted slightly more elk in and around northern Yellowstone National Park in late 2006 than they did earlier in the year, but still far fewer than were counted in 2005. The annual count is done by the Northern Yellowstone Cooperative Working Group, made up of representatives from the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. On Dec. 30 the group counted 6,739 elk while flying three planes in clear weather along the park's northern boundary. That was up from 6,588 elk counted in March 2006, but well below the 9,545 that were counted in January 2005. Yellowstone biologist P.J. White said the decrease since 2005 probably is the result of predation by wolves and other large carnivores. He said predators also change elk behavior. Elk have been dispersed more, have gathered in smaller groups and have been spending more time in forested areas where they're harder to spot, he said....
Drilling begins in county-to-county water test The drilling of two holes in the Cleveland National Forest began today to test if 646 million gallons of water each day can be transported through a tunnel between Riverside and Orange counties. The Metropolitan Water District's findings could also be used to determine if construction of a vehicular tunnel is feasible. The work was postponed from a few weeks ago because the district needed clearance from the U.S. Forest Service, said spokesman Denis Wolcott. The drilling could take about three months and analysis of rock, soil and water pressure from 2,200 feet below will follow. The district board could know later this year whether a 12-mile tunnel can be constructed, though the agency does not have plans to build one immediately. The water now travels through various conduits around the mountains. The underground tunnel could be used in addition to the existing conduits....
Receiving prairie dog clearance After waiting half a year for action on a request to remove Utah prairie dogs, Cedar Ridge Golf Course and the Paiute Tribe of Utah received permits to clear their properties. John Evans, Cedar Ridge Golf Course director, said this is good news for golfers; clearing prairie dogs will make the course much more attractive. "It will make it so we can play golf again," he said. Lora Tom, Paiute Tribe of Utah chairwoman, said clearing the property will allow the tribe to grow. "We're appreciative, (and) we're surprised," she said. "It means possibilities." But receiving the permits wasn't all good news - the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service changed the parameters of the permits. The golf course and Paiute Tribe will not be allowed to trap and kill any dogs; all dogs must be relocated as "live take," said Elise Boeke, USFWS ecologist. This makes the timeline to clear both properties uncertain....
Removal order issued for endangered gray wolf in New Mexico A male endangered Mexican gray wolf has been targeted for removal by the U-S Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency said the six-year-old, wild born member of the San Mateo Pack has been involved in the killing of three cows in New Mexico since last March. The Fish and Wildlife Service began releasing wolves into the wild on the Arizona-New Mexico border in 1998 to re-establish the species in part of its historic range....
Wild eagles attack paraglider Britain's top female paraglider has cheated death after being attacked by a pair of "screeching" wild eagles while competition flying in Australia. Nicky Moss, 38, watched terrified as two huge birds began tearing into her parachute canopy, one becoming tangled in her lines and clawing at her head 2,500 meters (8,200ft) in the air. "I heard screeching behind me and a eagle flew down and attacked me, swooping down and bouncing into the side of my wing with its claws," Moss told Reuters on Friday. "Then another one appeared and together they launched a sustained attack on my glider, tearing at the wing." The encounter happened on Monday while Moss -- a member of the British paragliding team -- was preparing for world titles this month at Manilla in northern New South Wales state....
Farm Bureau celebrates the affordability of food In just five weeks, the average American earns enough disposable income to pay for his or her food supply for the entire year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. Farm Bureau is celebrating the continued affordability of food Feb. 4-10, during Food Check-Out Week. The latest statistics compiled by the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service indicate American families and individuals currently spend, on average, just 9.9 percent of their disposable personal income for food. Applying the current statistic to the calendar year means the average U.S. household will have earned enough disposable income – the portion of income available for spending or saving after taxes are paid – to pay for its annual food supply this week. In comparison to working 36 days to pay for food, Americans worked 77 days to pay their federal taxes, 62 days to pay for housing and household operation, and 52 days for health/medical care, according to The Tax Foundation....
Cattle quarantined after disease discovered For the first time since 1974, a reported case of bovine tuberculosis has been found in Colorado. Inspectors say a bull was sold from a Colorado owner in Douglas County to a meat packing facility in San Angelo, Texas. Colorado’s assistant state veterinarian, Keith Roehr, says evidence of the disease was discovered in the bull’s lungs during routine inspection of the carcass. Roehr says the bull’s meat was never moved beyond the facility. "The food supply is safe, the regular measures we have in place for meat inspection prevent any meat coming into the food chain that's infected,” said Roehr. The state has quarantined approximately 660 cattle from what Roehr calls “the herd of origin.” Roehr says any cow that had prolonged exposure to the bull, nose to nose specifically, may be infected....
Cattleman Calls On Others To Challenge Activists A Nebraska cattle producer and radio host is urging U.S. cattle producers to challenge anti-livestock activists through persistence and by becoming more visible and vocal. Trent Loos, who also is a syndicated radio personality from Loup City, Neb., in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association convention here, said producers need to engage with activists and "be ready to tell why they believe it's morally ethical to respectfully take the life of an animal to provide the essentials of life" to humans. "Put a face on food production," Loos said. Show up at protests and be visible and available because at least some who are there have never seen a farmer or rancher and are ready to talk, he said. Loos said it was difficult for the livestock industry to compete with the $120 million budget of the Humane Society of the U.S., but it was possible to make inroads with one-on-one meetings....
It's All Trew: Rawhide a versatile good Rawhide is defined as "the raw untreated skin of an animal, usually in a dried condition." The use of this crude leather dates back to the origins of man when he began using the by-products of food gathering. His supply of rawhide was replenished each time he killed an animal for food. The major uses of rawhide included clothing, housing, the making of tools and containers. This changed in the late 1870s with the birth of the Industrial Revolution. As the machines manufacturing war goods turned to making civilian goods, belting to drive these machines was in great demand. With the development of rubber-type materials still to be invented, the factories turned to leather belting to transfer power from overhead power shafts to the machines located below. The flint-hard, dried hides of the Great Plains buffalo were ideal if the hides were in proper condition. To attain this condition, the hunters had to stake the fresh hide down to the ground and scrape off the excess flesh. A poison solution was sprinkled over the hide to prevent insect damage. After two or more days, the hide was beaten with sticks to knock the dirt loose from the underside hair as buffalo loved to wallow in mud holes to protect against insects. The hide was turned over, sprinkled and left for another two days before folding with hair inside and tied into bales for transporting to market....
Monday, February 05, 2007
OPINION/COMMENTARY
A month into office, Idaho's Otter governs from his gut As a freshly minted lieutenant governor, C.L. "Butch" Otter caused a furor 20 years ago by vetoing a bill lifting Idaho's drinking age to 21 from 19 that lawmakers passed to keep the feds in Washington, D.C., from denying highway payments. Gov. Cecil Andrus had left town, and Otter, a 44-year-old just two months on the job, took a populist swipe at "usurpation ... of Idaho's sovereign power by the Congress" _ his words at the time. Andrus later boosted the drinking age anyway, bAAut Otter had made his mark, for better or for worse. A month into his term as Idaho's chief executive, the now 64-year-old Republican still governs from his gut, confounding some members of his own party by putting a chokehold on the Capitol expansion. He's won the love of wolf foes, saying he'll be the first to shoot one of the predators once federal protections get lifted. And he says he wants to build more dams on Idaho's rivers, to keep more water here. "People need answers," Otter told The Associated Press Friday. "Obviously, my remarks are going to be targeted at what they can expect me to do on issues of concern to them." Remarkably, critics and allies alike say very similar things about the three-term U.S. congressman and millionaire rancher, whose offices feature cowboy prints and gigantic rodeo belt buckles: He's real, and if there's something that strikes him as good horse sense, he'll speak up....
Oil trucks are taking their toll on county roads Looking out onto the gravel road that runs along his ranch, Allan Schmidt sees something new to his serene southwest corner of this rural county: Heavy traffic. One after another, large trucks rumble by Schmidt's property, kicking up clouds of dust onto his cattle and wearing away at the gravel road. "Before, it was just us, the mailman, and the school bus," said Schmidt, who's been ranching the land since 1977. The surge of traffic in Dunn County is a direct result of the latest energy boom. As world oil prices climbed throughout 2005 and 2006, western North Dakota has come alive with oil rigs and pump jacks for the first time since the early 1980s. But the stream of heavy trucks that haul drilling machinery in and oil out have created a headache for both ranchers and county officials, who are scrambling to maintain the roads with limited budgets and small road crews....
Conflicting leases roil Legislature Conflicting bids over state land leases, and whether prior lease holders should get preferential treatment at the expense of public education revenues has spilled over into the Wyoming Legislature. House Bill 318 would generally point away from conservation groups willing to pay two-to-three times as much for state land leases than the livestock producers who have long held those leases. And one of the livestock producers who could lose some long-time leases includes Jim Magagna, executive director of the Wyoming Stock Growers and one of the state’s foremost advocates for agricultural interests. Magagna was targeted deliberately, said Jon Marvel, executive director of the conservation group Western Watersheds Project. “Mr. Magagna is the representative and the face of Wyoming livestock interests,” said Marvel. “We’ve bid on state grazing leases to symbolize the giveaway leasing to ranchers.” Marvel said he’d like to see greater competition over grazing leases, just as there is wide-open competition for mineral leases....
Cattle rancher wins conservation award Darrell Wood of Pete's Creek Partnership, one of the founding ranches of Panorama Meats, Inc. -- an Angus grass-fed beef company based in Vina -- has received one of three 2006 National Wetlands Conservation Awards from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Wood received the award for his management of the Pete's Creek wetland and riparian restoration project on 1,262 acres of the partnership's ranch, located in Lassen County just north of Susanville. The land was also certified as organic grazing land for panorama grass-fed beef cattle in July 2006. Wood is a fifth-generation California cattle rancher whose family has been grazing cattle on this land almost continually since the 1930s. The annual award recognizes the contributions by private-sector individuals and organizations to the development, restoration and enhancement of wetlands....
Column - The Withering of the American Environmental Movement A kind of political narcolepsy has settled over the American environmental movement. Call it eco-ennui. You may know the feeling: restlessness, lack of direction, evaporating budgets, diminished expectations, a simmering discontent. The affliction appears acute, possibly systemic. Unfortunately, the antidote isn't as simple as merely filing a new lawsuit in the morning or skipping that PowerPoint presentation to join a road blockade for the day. No, something much deeper may be called for: a rebellion of the heart. Just like in the good old days, not that long ago. What is it, precisely, that's going on? Was the environmental movement bewitched by eight years of Bruce Babbitt and Al Gore? Did it suffer an allergic reaction to the New Order of Things? Are we simply adrift in a brief lacuna in the evolution of the conservation movement, one of those Gouldian (Stephen Jay) pauses before a new creative eruption? Environmentalism has never thrived on an adherence to etiquette or quiet entreaties. Yet, that became the mode of operation during Clinton and it has continued through the rougher years of Bush and Cheney. Direct confrontation of governmental authority and corporate villainy was once our operation metier. No longer.....
Mont. sues for more Wyo water For rancher Art Hayes of Birney, Mont., adequate water is the "lifeblood" needed to turn lifeless ground into fertile fields for his cattle. After seven years of drought, that lifeblood is running short. Yet as the nearby Tongue River dropped to a trickle in recent years, Hayes looked upstream, toward Wyoming, and saw that things were different -- greener, he says -- across the state line. "They always seem to be irrigating there," he said Thursday. "They're holding that water up, and that water should be coming to Montana. We're in a water crisis here, and it's getting worse and worse and worse." Responding to the complaints of Hayes and others, the state of Montana filed a lawsuit against Wyoming over water rights on Thursday in the U.S. Supreme Court. The suit claims Wyoming's excessive use of water from the Tongue and a second river, the Powder, is leaving downstream ranches and farms dry....
Bill would pay to retire water rights A bill to launch a new program to pay irrigators willing to retire water rights along the upper Arkansas river drew the tentative backing of farmer and rancher groups testifying to a Senate committee Thursday. A Kansas Farm Bureau spokesman said the effort could help the region avoid further state regulation of a depleting groundwater supply and help to cushion the economic effect of declining water levels. "Clearly (the program) will not be for everyone, but shouldn't those individuals holding the water rights have the opportunity to make that decision?" said Steve Swaffar, Farm Bureau director of natural resources. But farm-related businesses opposed Senate Bill 123, which authorizes the start of the program in 10 southwest counties along the river. They pointed to a Kansas State University study showing an $8.7 million economic ripple effect on local communities from removing 100,000 acres of crop production....
Proposed ban on 'canned' hunting raises heated debate A proposal to ban private hunting preserves in North Dakota would infringe on private property rights and hurt tourism, opponents say. Supporters of the idea say "canned" hunting is unethical and may contribute to the spread of animal diseases. The debate in the North Dakota Senate's Natural Resources Committee on Thursday had people on both sides claiming that former President Theodore Roosevelt, who ranched and hunted in the North Dakota Badlands, would favor their position. "I believe he'd turn over in his grave if he knew what was going on," said Gary Masching, a Bismarck hunter who opposes game farms. Sen. Connie Triplett, D-Grand Forks, said if state lawmakers were to infringe on hunting rights, "I think Teddy Roosevelt would crawl out of his grave and come get us." The proposed bill would ban fee hunting on so-called "high fence" game farms. Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor, punishable by 30 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. After a hearing Thursday, the Natural Resources Committee recommended that the bill be defeated. The full Senate will vote on the measure later....
N.D. Saltwater Spill Prompts Questions A year after a ruptured pipeline spilled nearly 1 million gallons of saltwater into a northwestern North Dakota creek, Ned Hermanson is giving up. He intends to move his 400 cows to pastures far from the oil fields here, away from one of the biggest environmental disasters in state history. "I live day-to-day next to a neighbor that's an oil company, and they're a bad neighbor," said Hermanson, a wiry man who dips tobacco and wears a softball-sized rodeo belt buckle. "Life is too short to be mad every day at them, so I'm leaving." Officials say the plight faced by Hermanson and a dozen ranchers affected by the spill shows the need to pay more attention to wastewater pipelines nationwide. Nathan Wiser, an environmental scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency in Denver, said there are no specific federal regulations for saltwater disposal lines....
Bill favors wolf, grizzly hunts A Senate committee unanimously endorsed legislation Thursday that would allow the hunting of wolves and grizzly bears in Montana once the animals are removed from federal protections. The bill by Sen. Joe Balyeat, R-Bozeman, drew no opposition in a Senate Fish and Game Committee hearing, and is backed by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. It now goes to the Senate floor for further debate. "Will this solve the wolf problem? Unfortunately, no. ... But I do believe it's one piece of the puzzle to try to control their numbers," Balyeat said. Wolves were reintroduced to the northern Rockies a decade ago after being hunted to near-extinction. More than 1,200 now live in the region. Balyeat's bill creates wolf hunting licenses for residents and out-of-state hunters and sets up an annual lottery for wolf and grizzly bear tags. It also establishes restitution for illegal wolf killings and includes wolves in state game wasting rules....
Goodbye, Bighorn Canyon? Sandy gullies and endless sagebrush offer little hint of the watersports Mecca once envisioned for this small town near the Montana border. Back when the Big Horn River flowed strong out of the distant Wind River Mountains, it backed up seven miles from the Yellowtail Dam in Montana south to the outskirts of Lovell -- a man-made lake that once drew almost half a million visitors annually. But drought has choked the Big Horn going on eight years, chopping 30 miles off Bighorn Lake in recent summers and prompting tourists to vacation elsewhere. And now a U.S. senator from Montana -- anxious to tap the reservoir to feed a downstream trout fishery -- could crush Lovell's recreational aspirations for good. Flexing his newfound muscle as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Democrat Max Baucus has introduced legislation that could further deplete the lake. It would force the federal Bureau of Reclamation to ensure a steady flow of water out of Yellowtail Dam, drought notwithstanding....
Wild horse roundup ends Federal cowboys were able to round up about 920 wild horses last month in southwest Wyoming before bad weather shut down gathering operations this week, officials said. The roundup fell short of the Bureau of Land Management's goal of removing about 1,400 wild horses from the area in an effort to achieve herd management objectives. The agency permanently removed 846 of the horses gathered in the operation from the range, officials said. Another 41 mares were treated with a fertility control vaccine and returned to the area. BLM spokeswoman Cindy Wertz said the gathering operations aimed to reduce two overpopulated wild horse herds that roam eastern Sweetwater County within the adjacent Salt Wells and Adobe Town herd management units. Wyoming's wild horse population in recent years has reached as high as 7,000 animals. That's more than double the BLM's target management level of 3,263 wild horses statewide. Most of the state's wild horse populations are concentrated in southwest Wyoming....
Refuge plan: Cut elk, bison numbers People watching elk on the National Elk Refuge will likely see one-third fewer elk there over the next 15 years, after some animals are moved off feedlines and others are hunted. The reduction, from a target of 7,500 elk to a goal of 5,000 animals, is part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plan to manage elk and bison in the area. That plan has been in the works for a decade, and a final version was released Thursday. Bison appear to take the biggest hit in numbers, with wildlife managers looking to trim their numbers by more than half on lands around Jackson Hole. There are now about 1,200 bison on the refuge, and the management plan aims for 500. That reduction will come through hunting starting this fall. Elk numbers will also be reduced through hunting -- primarily the Grand Teton segment of the Jackson elk herd. Some hunting may be allowed on the southern end of the refuge near the town of Jackson....
Outdoor groups rally behind proposal for oil, gas well guidelines A state lawmaker said he hopes to create a national model for balancing wildlife protection and energy development when he introduces a bill laying out guidelines for softening the impact of oil and gas drilling. Supporters say 55 environmental, hunting and fishing groups are behind the proposal. Democratic Rep. Dan Gibbs of Silverthorne, the sponsor, said wildlife and energy are both important to Colorado’s economy. “I think we can strike a balance that’s reasonable,” said Gibbs, a hunter. The guidelines include reducing the amount of land disturbed by development; speeding restoration; and encouraging consultation between energy companies, landowners and wildlife officials. The bill would apply to private and state land, but not federal, where much of the development in western Colorado is taking place. “I think this could be a model for potential federal legislation as well,” Gibbs said....
Forest official: Give rules chance New rules doing away with formal environmental impact statements for long-term forest management plans make them more relevant to the public and the U.S. Forest Service head for the five-state Rocky Mountain Region said he hopes skeptics give them a chance. Critics say the new rules undermine environmental protection, but Regional Forester Rick Cables says he hopes foresters get the benefit of the doubt as they update closely watched management plans under the new set of rules. The Forest Service announced the new rules in December, saying management plans have no environmental effects and that environmental reviews can be done when individual projects envisioned in the plan are considered. "The rationale is that the plans are not making decisions that affect the land. The plans are more oriented toward sitting down with the public and agreeing on a desired future condition for the landscape," Cables said....
Experts see hope for timber industry Despite such recent news such as the closure of a Weyerhaeuser sawmill near Lebanon, economists and observers say the long-term outlook for the timber industry in Oregon is healthy. The harvest level, though, will be lower than the mid-1980s highs, and the current housing slowdown will mean a rough patch, they say. "It's a new stable industry, and it's growing," said Richard Haynes, an economist with the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland. "The region has recovered from what happened in the 1990s." In 1990, the wood manufacturing industry in Oregon employed 46,100 people. That was 3.7 percent of a 1990 nonfarm payroll of 1.25 million workers. In 2006, 32,100 people were employed in the industry, 1.9 percent of the nonfarm payroll of 1.71 million. The number of logging jobs in Oregon has fallen from 11,300 in 1990 to 7,000 in 2006. The state continues as the nation's largest producer of lumber: 31 percent more in 2004 than Washington, its nearest competitor, according to the Western Wood Products Association....
A riveting sight: 100 bald eagles on way to breakfast Dark sky, silent flight: The bald eagles lift off from their night forest roosts and rise over you in rafts as they head to the frozen valley floor of the Klamath Basin and their daily duck feast. Their eight-foot wingspans are silhouettes against the dawn sky and their white heads glisten in the muted light. In one 20-minute sequence, if you know the exact spot to wait, you might see 75 to 100 or bald eagles fly right over the top of you, one of winter's most electrifying wildlife scenes. Put this one on your life list. It's a long, grueling trip to the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge, longer yet to see this spectacular dawn scene. But it's difficult for me to imagine having the gift of life on this world and not seeing the en masse flight of the bald eagles even once....
Railroad grant paved way for huge land holdings The road runs arrow-straight, fresh blacktop laid smooth through logged-over forest, a string pulled tight between Montana's past and its future. At one end of the road: a hole tunneled through mountain, evidence of the railroad that once followed this same track west. At the other: a soaring rock and timber entryway, rustic chic highlighted in wrought iron. Welcome to Meadowbrooke, a brand new Old West subdivision slowly rising in the woods west of Kalispell. That it's being developed by the real-estate arm of Plum Creek Timber Co. is a sure sign of things to come. That its primary artery sits directly atop the old railroad bed is an indication of how things came to be. “The past is driving the future on these lands,” said George Draffen. “If you want to understand what's happening, you have to understand what happened.” Draffen is a researcher and writer, co-author of “Railroads and Clearcuts,” and according to him what happened - and what's happening - was and is the hijacking of the public trust. “The two million acres Plum Creek started with were federal lands,” Draffen said, “public land they got for free from the citizens of the United States.” Not surprisingly, Plum Creek president and CEO Rick Holley has a different take on history....
Timber in transition: Booming values shift Plum Creek from logging to real estate Used to be, the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce would get together once a year for a field trip into the woods. They called them “timber tours,” and according to chamber president Joe Unterreiner, “early on, these actually were timber tours.” But those were the days when the business of timber was the business of western Montana. Times have changed. On a soggy afternoon last fall, Unterreiner arrived on forestland owned by Plum Creek Timber Co. for a very different sort of tour. He called it “timber lite,” adding that today's Chamber of Commerce field trips emphasize “the changing economics of what's happening with timberlands.” Montana has been discovered, he said, its real estate is commanding premium prices, and companies such as Plum Creek are realizing their trees are worth more vertical than horizontal. So they're selling off big chunks of land to developers - and developing other pieces on their own....
Firefighter Pleads Guilty To Arson One of three former Mill Creek firefighters charged in November with setting fires was sentenced this week. Dewey Alvin Bell, 22, pleaded guilty in Carteret County Superior Court to two counts of second-degree arson and one count each of malicious use of an explosive device, burning personal property, and burning a boat. Bell received suspended prison sentences on Monday for each of the offenses and will be under a 60-month supervised probation period. The first six months he will face intensive supervision, said Jim Parker, Judicial District 3B manager for the N.C. Division of Community Corrections. Over the next five years, Bell will also be required to participate in paying the total $46,000 restitution to the victims in the case, Parker said. Depending on the outcome of their cases, the two others accused in the Mill Creek arsons would share in paying the restitution....
Grazing fees down from 2006 The fee for grazing livestock on federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service is dropping this year, the BLM announced Friday. Effective March 1, the fee will be $1.35 per animal unit month, down from $1.56 last year, the Forest Service said. An animal unit month is the amount of forage needed to sustain a cow and a calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats for a month. The fee is adjusted annually to take into account private grazing rates, cattle prices and the cost of livestock production. It applies to public land in 16 Western states administered by the BLM or the Forest Service. The states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming....
AEI Critiques of Warming Questioned A Washington-based think tank has been soliciting critiques of the just-released international assessment of the evidence on climate change, a move that prompted some academics and environmentalists to accuse the group of seeking to distort the latest evidence for global warming. Advocacy groups such as Greenpeace and the Public Interest Research Group questioned why the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has offered $10,000 to academics willing to contribute to a book on climate- change policy, an overture that was first reported Friday in London's Guardian newspaper. AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green -- one of two researchers who has sought to commission the critiques -- said in an interview that his group is examining the policy debate on global warming, not the science. "It's completely policy-oriented," said Green, adding that a third of the academics AEI solicited for the project are interested in participating. "Somebody wants to distort this."....
Enzi, Senators Say ‘Whoa’ To USDA Beef Import Rule The United States Department of Agriculture should hold up on its proposed plan to expand beef imports from Canada, according to U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and John Thune, R-S.D. Permitting the importation of live Canadian cattle born after March 1, 1999 and beef from animals of any age, would harm American producers economically and further endanger the U.S. market with the threat of mad cow disease. The senators sent a Feb. 2 letter to USDA Secretary Mike Johanns, urging him not to implement the rule. The text of the letter follows....
Bushels vs. beef Corn prices are at 10-year highs, but not everyone is profiting in farm country. Nearly 56 percent of U.S. corn is fed to livestock. And when feed prices go up, profits for local pork and beef producers go down. The explosive demand for corn to make ethanol fuel is sending corn prices to above $4 a bushel for the first time in about a decade, generating higher income for farmers strictly in the business of growing grain. Prices of soybeans, also a source of feed and biodiesel fuel, have risen, though less rapidly. Meanwhile, livestock producers are making adjustments, such as using alternative feed sources or selling livestock at lower weights at market, until either livestock prices rise or corn prices lower. How a livestock producer adjusts depends on the operation's overhead and set-up....
Inner city school kids adopt Montana loggers, farmers Plywood does not just appear at Home Depot and milk does not come from a carton, but there are children in our country who do not realize this. With the majority of the United States growing up in urban cultures far from the people who produce the food they need to survive, there is great disconnect and misunderstanding between consumers and producers. Provider Pals is an organization that is trying to educate the youth of our nation and hopefully create a future where decisions are based on reality rather than rumor. It is an urban-rural cultural exchange program building a bridge between urban and rural America. More than a decade ago, Bruce Vincent of Libby, Mont., was talking to a classroom of kids in Seeley Lake, Mont., about the life of a logger and forestry. As he was leaving the room the teacher mentioned the following day a woman with a wolf was going to visit and the kids would “adopt” this wolf. Vincent knew she was not only bringing a wolf to that class, but politics, as well. She would likely tell the kids that mining, ranching and logging were bad for the wolf, he recalled. “It occurred to me the only thing we had to offer the American public is us,” said Vincent. “I asked the teacher, ‘Would you like to adopt a logger?'”....
Dog Saves Craig County Rancher An Oklahoma ranch family credits their dog with saving a life. The News on 6’s Emory Bryan reports on Jackie, the hero dog. The “Circle Lazy C Ranch” is home of national champion Appaloosa horses and some Texas Longhorn Cattle. But it's the ranch dog, Jackie, that is the most valuable animal on the ranch. “She's been a sweetheart since day one,” rancher Bill Cass said. Cass runs the ranch; his wife Ethelyn runs everything else. Marked on her calendar is the cold and icy day they almost lost Bill. “I was just a churning in a big ‘ol hurry and my feet went out from under me,” said Cass. “I went as high as my head, my feet did, and there I laid.” Cass was going out to feed the horses, and he's not the kind of fella that carries a cell phone, but Jackie was by his side....
Son of Ore. rancher won't be charged in shootout One of two survivors of a deadly shooting on a northeast Oregon ranch will face no charges, the county district attorney said Thursday. Travis Beach, 28, accompanied his father Jan. 18 to a ranch where they intended to retrieve four cows, suspecting they had been rustled, Wallowa County Sheriff Fred Steen said. The father, Dennis Beach, and a caretaker at the ranch, Shane Huntsman, died as a result of a confrontation. Steen said a state brand inspector determined the cattle belonged to Beach. Huntsman and the elder Beach were shot by the same .30-caliber rifle, Steen said. Steen told the La Grande Observer that one scenario under consideration is that Huntsman shot Dennis Beach; Travis Beach and Huntsman fought; and then Travis Beach shot Huntsman....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Old westerns offered a higher standard An open letter to Hollywood from a cowboy: Making a western movie implies an obligation to a higher standard. Louis L'Amour, Gene Autry, Zane Gray, Roy Rogers, John Ford and John Wayne understood this. They acknowledged the responsibility they bore to the generations of young minds who loved their movies. We would be hard put today to name a western movie you could take a 12-year-old to. "Brokeback Mountain"? "Unforgiven"? "All The Pretty Horses"? The only new western TV show is "Deadwood." As time marches on, our children have become more sophisticated. Which, unfortunately, means profanity, lewdness, explicit violence and egregious horror are part of their everyday experience as a grade-schooler. Got cable? I'm sure this sounds like a disgruntled rant, but it's more like wishful thinking. Why is it necessary to unearth the feet of clay of our heroes? No one knows better then real cowboys that the image portrayed in the old westerns was made through rose-colored glasses....
A month into office, Idaho's Otter governs from his gut As a freshly minted lieutenant governor, C.L. "Butch" Otter caused a furor 20 years ago by vetoing a bill lifting Idaho's drinking age to 21 from 19 that lawmakers passed to keep the feds in Washington, D.C., from denying highway payments. Gov. Cecil Andrus had left town, and Otter, a 44-year-old just two months on the job, took a populist swipe at "usurpation ... of Idaho's sovereign power by the Congress" _ his words at the time. Andrus later boosted the drinking age anyway, bAAut Otter had made his mark, for better or for worse. A month into his term as Idaho's chief executive, the now 64-year-old Republican still governs from his gut, confounding some members of his own party by putting a chokehold on the Capitol expansion. He's won the love of wolf foes, saying he'll be the first to shoot one of the predators once federal protections get lifted. And he says he wants to build more dams on Idaho's rivers, to keep more water here. "People need answers," Otter told The Associated Press Friday. "Obviously, my remarks are going to be targeted at what they can expect me to do on issues of concern to them." Remarkably, critics and allies alike say very similar things about the three-term U.S. congressman and millionaire rancher, whose offices feature cowboy prints and gigantic rodeo belt buckles: He's real, and if there's something that strikes him as good horse sense, he'll speak up....
Oil trucks are taking their toll on county roads Looking out onto the gravel road that runs along his ranch, Allan Schmidt sees something new to his serene southwest corner of this rural county: Heavy traffic. One after another, large trucks rumble by Schmidt's property, kicking up clouds of dust onto his cattle and wearing away at the gravel road. "Before, it was just us, the mailman, and the school bus," said Schmidt, who's been ranching the land since 1977. The surge of traffic in Dunn County is a direct result of the latest energy boom. As world oil prices climbed throughout 2005 and 2006, western North Dakota has come alive with oil rigs and pump jacks for the first time since the early 1980s. But the stream of heavy trucks that haul drilling machinery in and oil out have created a headache for both ranchers and county officials, who are scrambling to maintain the roads with limited budgets and small road crews....
Conflicting leases roil Legislature Conflicting bids over state land leases, and whether prior lease holders should get preferential treatment at the expense of public education revenues has spilled over into the Wyoming Legislature. House Bill 318 would generally point away from conservation groups willing to pay two-to-three times as much for state land leases than the livestock producers who have long held those leases. And one of the livestock producers who could lose some long-time leases includes Jim Magagna, executive director of the Wyoming Stock Growers and one of the state’s foremost advocates for agricultural interests. Magagna was targeted deliberately, said Jon Marvel, executive director of the conservation group Western Watersheds Project. “Mr. Magagna is the representative and the face of Wyoming livestock interests,” said Marvel. “We’ve bid on state grazing leases to symbolize the giveaway leasing to ranchers.” Marvel said he’d like to see greater competition over grazing leases, just as there is wide-open competition for mineral leases....
Cattle rancher wins conservation award Darrell Wood of Pete's Creek Partnership, one of the founding ranches of Panorama Meats, Inc. -- an Angus grass-fed beef company based in Vina -- has received one of three 2006 National Wetlands Conservation Awards from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Wood received the award for his management of the Pete's Creek wetland and riparian restoration project on 1,262 acres of the partnership's ranch, located in Lassen County just north of Susanville. The land was also certified as organic grazing land for panorama grass-fed beef cattle in July 2006. Wood is a fifth-generation California cattle rancher whose family has been grazing cattle on this land almost continually since the 1930s. The annual award recognizes the contributions by private-sector individuals and organizations to the development, restoration and enhancement of wetlands....
Column - The Withering of the American Environmental Movement A kind of political narcolepsy has settled over the American environmental movement. Call it eco-ennui. You may know the feeling: restlessness, lack of direction, evaporating budgets, diminished expectations, a simmering discontent. The affliction appears acute, possibly systemic. Unfortunately, the antidote isn't as simple as merely filing a new lawsuit in the morning or skipping that PowerPoint presentation to join a road blockade for the day. No, something much deeper may be called for: a rebellion of the heart. Just like in the good old days, not that long ago. What is it, precisely, that's going on? Was the environmental movement bewitched by eight years of Bruce Babbitt and Al Gore? Did it suffer an allergic reaction to the New Order of Things? Are we simply adrift in a brief lacuna in the evolution of the conservation movement, one of those Gouldian (Stephen Jay) pauses before a new creative eruption? Environmentalism has never thrived on an adherence to etiquette or quiet entreaties. Yet, that became the mode of operation during Clinton and it has continued through the rougher years of Bush and Cheney. Direct confrontation of governmental authority and corporate villainy was once our operation metier. No longer.....
Mont. sues for more Wyo water For rancher Art Hayes of Birney, Mont., adequate water is the "lifeblood" needed to turn lifeless ground into fertile fields for his cattle. After seven years of drought, that lifeblood is running short. Yet as the nearby Tongue River dropped to a trickle in recent years, Hayes looked upstream, toward Wyoming, and saw that things were different -- greener, he says -- across the state line. "They always seem to be irrigating there," he said Thursday. "They're holding that water up, and that water should be coming to Montana. We're in a water crisis here, and it's getting worse and worse and worse." Responding to the complaints of Hayes and others, the state of Montana filed a lawsuit against Wyoming over water rights on Thursday in the U.S. Supreme Court. The suit claims Wyoming's excessive use of water from the Tongue and a second river, the Powder, is leaving downstream ranches and farms dry....
Bill would pay to retire water rights A bill to launch a new program to pay irrigators willing to retire water rights along the upper Arkansas river drew the tentative backing of farmer and rancher groups testifying to a Senate committee Thursday. A Kansas Farm Bureau spokesman said the effort could help the region avoid further state regulation of a depleting groundwater supply and help to cushion the economic effect of declining water levels. "Clearly (the program) will not be for everyone, but shouldn't those individuals holding the water rights have the opportunity to make that decision?" said Steve Swaffar, Farm Bureau director of natural resources. But farm-related businesses opposed Senate Bill 123, which authorizes the start of the program in 10 southwest counties along the river. They pointed to a Kansas State University study showing an $8.7 million economic ripple effect on local communities from removing 100,000 acres of crop production....
Proposed ban on 'canned' hunting raises heated debate A proposal to ban private hunting preserves in North Dakota would infringe on private property rights and hurt tourism, opponents say. Supporters of the idea say "canned" hunting is unethical and may contribute to the spread of animal diseases. The debate in the North Dakota Senate's Natural Resources Committee on Thursday had people on both sides claiming that former President Theodore Roosevelt, who ranched and hunted in the North Dakota Badlands, would favor their position. "I believe he'd turn over in his grave if he knew what was going on," said Gary Masching, a Bismarck hunter who opposes game farms. Sen. Connie Triplett, D-Grand Forks, said if state lawmakers were to infringe on hunting rights, "I think Teddy Roosevelt would crawl out of his grave and come get us." The proposed bill would ban fee hunting on so-called "high fence" game farms. Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor, punishable by 30 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. After a hearing Thursday, the Natural Resources Committee recommended that the bill be defeated. The full Senate will vote on the measure later....
N.D. Saltwater Spill Prompts Questions A year after a ruptured pipeline spilled nearly 1 million gallons of saltwater into a northwestern North Dakota creek, Ned Hermanson is giving up. He intends to move his 400 cows to pastures far from the oil fields here, away from one of the biggest environmental disasters in state history. "I live day-to-day next to a neighbor that's an oil company, and they're a bad neighbor," said Hermanson, a wiry man who dips tobacco and wears a softball-sized rodeo belt buckle. "Life is too short to be mad every day at them, so I'm leaving." Officials say the plight faced by Hermanson and a dozen ranchers affected by the spill shows the need to pay more attention to wastewater pipelines nationwide. Nathan Wiser, an environmental scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency in Denver, said there are no specific federal regulations for saltwater disposal lines....
Bill favors wolf, grizzly hunts A Senate committee unanimously endorsed legislation Thursday that would allow the hunting of wolves and grizzly bears in Montana once the animals are removed from federal protections. The bill by Sen. Joe Balyeat, R-Bozeman, drew no opposition in a Senate Fish and Game Committee hearing, and is backed by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. It now goes to the Senate floor for further debate. "Will this solve the wolf problem? Unfortunately, no. ... But I do believe it's one piece of the puzzle to try to control their numbers," Balyeat said. Wolves were reintroduced to the northern Rockies a decade ago after being hunted to near-extinction. More than 1,200 now live in the region. Balyeat's bill creates wolf hunting licenses for residents and out-of-state hunters and sets up an annual lottery for wolf and grizzly bear tags. It also establishes restitution for illegal wolf killings and includes wolves in state game wasting rules....
Goodbye, Bighorn Canyon? Sandy gullies and endless sagebrush offer little hint of the watersports Mecca once envisioned for this small town near the Montana border. Back when the Big Horn River flowed strong out of the distant Wind River Mountains, it backed up seven miles from the Yellowtail Dam in Montana south to the outskirts of Lovell -- a man-made lake that once drew almost half a million visitors annually. But drought has choked the Big Horn going on eight years, chopping 30 miles off Bighorn Lake in recent summers and prompting tourists to vacation elsewhere. And now a U.S. senator from Montana -- anxious to tap the reservoir to feed a downstream trout fishery -- could crush Lovell's recreational aspirations for good. Flexing his newfound muscle as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Democrat Max Baucus has introduced legislation that could further deplete the lake. It would force the federal Bureau of Reclamation to ensure a steady flow of water out of Yellowtail Dam, drought notwithstanding....
Wild horse roundup ends Federal cowboys were able to round up about 920 wild horses last month in southwest Wyoming before bad weather shut down gathering operations this week, officials said. The roundup fell short of the Bureau of Land Management's goal of removing about 1,400 wild horses from the area in an effort to achieve herd management objectives. The agency permanently removed 846 of the horses gathered in the operation from the range, officials said. Another 41 mares were treated with a fertility control vaccine and returned to the area. BLM spokeswoman Cindy Wertz said the gathering operations aimed to reduce two overpopulated wild horse herds that roam eastern Sweetwater County within the adjacent Salt Wells and Adobe Town herd management units. Wyoming's wild horse population in recent years has reached as high as 7,000 animals. That's more than double the BLM's target management level of 3,263 wild horses statewide. Most of the state's wild horse populations are concentrated in southwest Wyoming....
Refuge plan: Cut elk, bison numbers People watching elk on the National Elk Refuge will likely see one-third fewer elk there over the next 15 years, after some animals are moved off feedlines and others are hunted. The reduction, from a target of 7,500 elk to a goal of 5,000 animals, is part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plan to manage elk and bison in the area. That plan has been in the works for a decade, and a final version was released Thursday. Bison appear to take the biggest hit in numbers, with wildlife managers looking to trim their numbers by more than half on lands around Jackson Hole. There are now about 1,200 bison on the refuge, and the management plan aims for 500. That reduction will come through hunting starting this fall. Elk numbers will also be reduced through hunting -- primarily the Grand Teton segment of the Jackson elk herd. Some hunting may be allowed on the southern end of the refuge near the town of Jackson....
Outdoor groups rally behind proposal for oil, gas well guidelines A state lawmaker said he hopes to create a national model for balancing wildlife protection and energy development when he introduces a bill laying out guidelines for softening the impact of oil and gas drilling. Supporters say 55 environmental, hunting and fishing groups are behind the proposal. Democratic Rep. Dan Gibbs of Silverthorne, the sponsor, said wildlife and energy are both important to Colorado’s economy. “I think we can strike a balance that’s reasonable,” said Gibbs, a hunter. The guidelines include reducing the amount of land disturbed by development; speeding restoration; and encouraging consultation between energy companies, landowners and wildlife officials. The bill would apply to private and state land, but not federal, where much of the development in western Colorado is taking place. “I think this could be a model for potential federal legislation as well,” Gibbs said....
Forest official: Give rules chance New rules doing away with formal environmental impact statements for long-term forest management plans make them more relevant to the public and the U.S. Forest Service head for the five-state Rocky Mountain Region said he hopes skeptics give them a chance. Critics say the new rules undermine environmental protection, but Regional Forester Rick Cables says he hopes foresters get the benefit of the doubt as they update closely watched management plans under the new set of rules. The Forest Service announced the new rules in December, saying management plans have no environmental effects and that environmental reviews can be done when individual projects envisioned in the plan are considered. "The rationale is that the plans are not making decisions that affect the land. The plans are more oriented toward sitting down with the public and agreeing on a desired future condition for the landscape," Cables said....
Experts see hope for timber industry Despite such recent news such as the closure of a Weyerhaeuser sawmill near Lebanon, economists and observers say the long-term outlook for the timber industry in Oregon is healthy. The harvest level, though, will be lower than the mid-1980s highs, and the current housing slowdown will mean a rough patch, they say. "It's a new stable industry, and it's growing," said Richard Haynes, an economist with the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland. "The region has recovered from what happened in the 1990s." In 1990, the wood manufacturing industry in Oregon employed 46,100 people. That was 3.7 percent of a 1990 nonfarm payroll of 1.25 million workers. In 2006, 32,100 people were employed in the industry, 1.9 percent of the nonfarm payroll of 1.71 million. The number of logging jobs in Oregon has fallen from 11,300 in 1990 to 7,000 in 2006. The state continues as the nation's largest producer of lumber: 31 percent more in 2004 than Washington, its nearest competitor, according to the Western Wood Products Association....
A riveting sight: 100 bald eagles on way to breakfast Dark sky, silent flight: The bald eagles lift off from their night forest roosts and rise over you in rafts as they head to the frozen valley floor of the Klamath Basin and their daily duck feast. Their eight-foot wingspans are silhouettes against the dawn sky and their white heads glisten in the muted light. In one 20-minute sequence, if you know the exact spot to wait, you might see 75 to 100 or bald eagles fly right over the top of you, one of winter's most electrifying wildlife scenes. Put this one on your life list. It's a long, grueling trip to the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge, longer yet to see this spectacular dawn scene. But it's difficult for me to imagine having the gift of life on this world and not seeing the en masse flight of the bald eagles even once....
Railroad grant paved way for huge land holdings The road runs arrow-straight, fresh blacktop laid smooth through logged-over forest, a string pulled tight between Montana's past and its future. At one end of the road: a hole tunneled through mountain, evidence of the railroad that once followed this same track west. At the other: a soaring rock and timber entryway, rustic chic highlighted in wrought iron. Welcome to Meadowbrooke, a brand new Old West subdivision slowly rising in the woods west of Kalispell. That it's being developed by the real-estate arm of Plum Creek Timber Co. is a sure sign of things to come. That its primary artery sits directly atop the old railroad bed is an indication of how things came to be. “The past is driving the future on these lands,” said George Draffen. “If you want to understand what's happening, you have to understand what happened.” Draffen is a researcher and writer, co-author of “Railroads and Clearcuts,” and according to him what happened - and what's happening - was and is the hijacking of the public trust. “The two million acres Plum Creek started with were federal lands,” Draffen said, “public land they got for free from the citizens of the United States.” Not surprisingly, Plum Creek president and CEO Rick Holley has a different take on history....
Timber in transition: Booming values shift Plum Creek from logging to real estate Used to be, the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce would get together once a year for a field trip into the woods. They called them “timber tours,” and according to chamber president Joe Unterreiner, “early on, these actually were timber tours.” But those were the days when the business of timber was the business of western Montana. Times have changed. On a soggy afternoon last fall, Unterreiner arrived on forestland owned by Plum Creek Timber Co. for a very different sort of tour. He called it “timber lite,” adding that today's Chamber of Commerce field trips emphasize “the changing economics of what's happening with timberlands.” Montana has been discovered, he said, its real estate is commanding premium prices, and companies such as Plum Creek are realizing their trees are worth more vertical than horizontal. So they're selling off big chunks of land to developers - and developing other pieces on their own....
Firefighter Pleads Guilty To Arson One of three former Mill Creek firefighters charged in November with setting fires was sentenced this week. Dewey Alvin Bell, 22, pleaded guilty in Carteret County Superior Court to two counts of second-degree arson and one count each of malicious use of an explosive device, burning personal property, and burning a boat. Bell received suspended prison sentences on Monday for each of the offenses and will be under a 60-month supervised probation period. The first six months he will face intensive supervision, said Jim Parker, Judicial District 3B manager for the N.C. Division of Community Corrections. Over the next five years, Bell will also be required to participate in paying the total $46,000 restitution to the victims in the case, Parker said. Depending on the outcome of their cases, the two others accused in the Mill Creek arsons would share in paying the restitution....
Grazing fees down from 2006 The fee for grazing livestock on federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service is dropping this year, the BLM announced Friday. Effective March 1, the fee will be $1.35 per animal unit month, down from $1.56 last year, the Forest Service said. An animal unit month is the amount of forage needed to sustain a cow and a calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats for a month. The fee is adjusted annually to take into account private grazing rates, cattle prices and the cost of livestock production. It applies to public land in 16 Western states administered by the BLM or the Forest Service. The states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming....
AEI Critiques of Warming Questioned A Washington-based think tank has been soliciting critiques of the just-released international assessment of the evidence on climate change, a move that prompted some academics and environmentalists to accuse the group of seeking to distort the latest evidence for global warming. Advocacy groups such as Greenpeace and the Public Interest Research Group questioned why the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has offered $10,000 to academics willing to contribute to a book on climate- change policy, an overture that was first reported Friday in London's Guardian newspaper. AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green -- one of two researchers who has sought to commission the critiques -- said in an interview that his group is examining the policy debate on global warming, not the science. "It's completely policy-oriented," said Green, adding that a third of the academics AEI solicited for the project are interested in participating. "Somebody wants to distort this."....
Enzi, Senators Say ‘Whoa’ To USDA Beef Import Rule The United States Department of Agriculture should hold up on its proposed plan to expand beef imports from Canada, according to U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and John Thune, R-S.D. Permitting the importation of live Canadian cattle born after March 1, 1999 and beef from animals of any age, would harm American producers economically and further endanger the U.S. market with the threat of mad cow disease. The senators sent a Feb. 2 letter to USDA Secretary Mike Johanns, urging him not to implement the rule. The text of the letter follows....
Bushels vs. beef Corn prices are at 10-year highs, but not everyone is profiting in farm country. Nearly 56 percent of U.S. corn is fed to livestock. And when feed prices go up, profits for local pork and beef producers go down. The explosive demand for corn to make ethanol fuel is sending corn prices to above $4 a bushel for the first time in about a decade, generating higher income for farmers strictly in the business of growing grain. Prices of soybeans, also a source of feed and biodiesel fuel, have risen, though less rapidly. Meanwhile, livestock producers are making adjustments, such as using alternative feed sources or selling livestock at lower weights at market, until either livestock prices rise or corn prices lower. How a livestock producer adjusts depends on the operation's overhead and set-up....
Inner city school kids adopt Montana loggers, farmers Plywood does not just appear at Home Depot and milk does not come from a carton, but there are children in our country who do not realize this. With the majority of the United States growing up in urban cultures far from the people who produce the food they need to survive, there is great disconnect and misunderstanding between consumers and producers. Provider Pals is an organization that is trying to educate the youth of our nation and hopefully create a future where decisions are based on reality rather than rumor. It is an urban-rural cultural exchange program building a bridge between urban and rural America. More than a decade ago, Bruce Vincent of Libby, Mont., was talking to a classroom of kids in Seeley Lake, Mont., about the life of a logger and forestry. As he was leaving the room the teacher mentioned the following day a woman with a wolf was going to visit and the kids would “adopt” this wolf. Vincent knew she was not only bringing a wolf to that class, but politics, as well. She would likely tell the kids that mining, ranching and logging were bad for the wolf, he recalled. “It occurred to me the only thing we had to offer the American public is us,” said Vincent. “I asked the teacher, ‘Would you like to adopt a logger?'”....
Dog Saves Craig County Rancher An Oklahoma ranch family credits their dog with saving a life. The News on 6’s Emory Bryan reports on Jackie, the hero dog. The “Circle Lazy C Ranch” is home of national champion Appaloosa horses and some Texas Longhorn Cattle. But it's the ranch dog, Jackie, that is the most valuable animal on the ranch. “She's been a sweetheart since day one,” rancher Bill Cass said. Cass runs the ranch; his wife Ethelyn runs everything else. Marked on her calendar is the cold and icy day they almost lost Bill. “I was just a churning in a big ‘ol hurry and my feet went out from under me,” said Cass. “I went as high as my head, my feet did, and there I laid.” Cass was going out to feed the horses, and he's not the kind of fella that carries a cell phone, but Jackie was by his side....
Son of Ore. rancher won't be charged in shootout One of two survivors of a deadly shooting on a northeast Oregon ranch will face no charges, the county district attorney said Thursday. Travis Beach, 28, accompanied his father Jan. 18 to a ranch where they intended to retrieve four cows, suspecting they had been rustled, Wallowa County Sheriff Fred Steen said. The father, Dennis Beach, and a caretaker at the ranch, Shane Huntsman, died as a result of a confrontation. Steen said a state brand inspector determined the cattle belonged to Beach. Huntsman and the elder Beach were shot by the same .30-caliber rifle, Steen said. Steen told the La Grande Observer that one scenario under consideration is that Huntsman shot Dennis Beach; Travis Beach and Huntsman fought; and then Travis Beach shot Huntsman....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Old westerns offered a higher standard An open letter to Hollywood from a cowboy: Making a western movie implies an obligation to a higher standard. Louis L'Amour, Gene Autry, Zane Gray, Roy Rogers, John Ford and John Wayne understood this. They acknowledged the responsibility they bore to the generations of young minds who loved their movies. We would be hard put today to name a western movie you could take a 12-year-old to. "Brokeback Mountain"? "Unforgiven"? "All The Pretty Horses"? The only new western TV show is "Deadwood." As time marches on, our children have become more sophisticated. Which, unfortunately, means profanity, lewdness, explicit violence and egregious horror are part of their everyday experience as a grade-schooler. Got cable? I'm sure this sounds like a disgruntled rant, but it's more like wishful thinking. Why is it necessary to unearth the feet of clay of our heroes? No one knows better then real cowboys that the image portrayed in the old westerns was made through rose-colored glasses....
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