All:
I have made some major changes to the Trackways website: http://www.paleozoictrackways.org/. Links to Quick Facts have been added as well as video tours of the listed sites where other tracks were supposed to have been found.
Also, check out the documentation page. This page will continue to grow as time permits, but for now, make sure you look at the video of someone getting a feel good environmental petition signed.
Also, please pass this webpage to anyone concerned about land closures and protecting our right to access public lands in the manner we choose. This proposed national monument is but one of the ways land closure advocates are trying to close our access to public lands in Dona Ana County. Please help and spread the word that we need help in keeping these areas open.
Thanks,
Fred
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Friday, March 23, 2007
FindLaw Environmental Case Summaries - March 19-March 23, 2007
U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
Utah Envtl. Congress v. Troyer (03/21/07 - No. 05-4183)
In an action alleging that representatives of the U.S. Forest Service violated federal law by authorizing six projects in four national forests in Utah, authorization is reversed in part as to three projects where the Forest Service acted arbitrarily and capriciously by failing to apply the applicable regulations when it did not use the best available science standard in approving those projects.
[To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com.] http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/10th/054183.html
U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals
Action Marine, Inc. v. Continental Carbon Inc. (03/21/07 - No. 06-11311)
In case involving alleged emission of pollutants into the air from defendants' plant that darkened plaintiffs' property, denial of post-trial motion for judgment as a matter of law is affirmed as evidence and relevant law supported the jury's verdict and damage award, the final judgment, and the district court's decision to deny defendants' post-trial motion.
[To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com.] http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/11th/0611311p.pdf
U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
Utah Envtl. Congress v. Troyer (03/21/07 - No. 05-4183)
In an action alleging that representatives of the U.S. Forest Service violated federal law by authorizing six projects in four national forests in Utah, authorization is reversed in part as to three projects where the Forest Service acted arbitrarily and capriciously by failing to apply the applicable regulations when it did not use the best available science standard in approving those projects.
[To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com.] http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/10th/054183.html
U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals
Action Marine, Inc. v. Continental Carbon Inc. (03/21/07 - No. 06-11311)
In case involving alleged emission of pollutants into the air from defendants' plant that darkened plaintiffs' property, denial of post-trial motion for judgment as a matter of law is affirmed as evidence and relevant law supported the jury's verdict and damage award, the final judgment, and the district court's decision to deny defendants' post-trial motion.
[To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com.] http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/11th/0611311p.pdf
NEWS ROUNDUP
Tourists cause global warming Holidaymakers may be ruining their favourite destinations through pollution and greenhouse gases, making the tourism industry one of the world's worst polluters, experts say. A flight to that pristine beach and a few nights in an air-conditioned hotel room, when repeated on the mass scale of modern tourism, is all it takes to put the holiday business on a polluting par with heavy industries. "Tourism is unfortunately one of the vectors of (climate) change at the moment and contributes, through its excesses, to the process of global warming," World Tourism Organisation (WTO) director general Francesco Frangialli told an international conference on meteorology in Madrid this week. In 2006, 842 million people took a holiday in a foreign country and 40% of them flew to their destinations. That's 336 million people, or more than the population of the United States, taking trips which spew greenhouse gases that fuel global warming....
Grizzlies at Yellowstone no longer 'threatened' Three decades after grizzly bears nearly died out in Yellowstone National Park, federal officials announced on Thursday that the grizzlies have recovered and will cease being a "threatened" species there. The fierce predators, which total more than 500 animals in a 14,000-square-mile region in and around the park, will be taken off the endangered-species list by late April, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall said. The notice came seven weeks after the agency said it plans to remove the area's gray wolves from the list by year's end. "We are confident that the grizzly bear in Yellowstone will thrive," Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett said. Some conservation groups disagree. The Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the Natural Resources Defense Council both claim climate change and human encroachment threaten key foods and habitat for grizzlies, which coexist poorly with people, reproduce slowly and need big, undeveloped areas to live. The council threatened Thursday to sue for continued federal protection....
New Carbon-Dioxide Tracking Developed With concern growing about global warming, researchers said Wednesday they have developed a new system to track carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Being able to determine where and when this major greenhouse gas increases or decreases should help in projecting future climate change and evaluating efforts to reduce releases of carbon. "This is a pretty exciting opportunity," said Richard Spinrad, head of research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It produces an unbiased, objective statement of carbon observations, he said, but doesn't favor any particular policy or economic model. Tracking carbon dioxide release and absorption will improve understanding of its impact, he said, noting that one-third of the economy is weather and climate sensitive ranging from agriculture to transportation to insurance and real estate....
N.D. Lawmakers Consider Blackbird Kills Demand for healthier sunflower oil for potato chip frying is spurring a debate about whether millions of blackbirds should die to make it easier to raise the crop. Demand is rising for NuSun, a sunflower variety that produces oil with less saturated fat and no trans fat, said John Sandbakken, international marketing director for the National Sunflower Association. Saturated and trans fats help clog arteries and increase the risk of heart disease. One reason for NuSun's increased popularity is the decision by the Frito-Lay snack food company to use NuSun oil to cook its major brands of potato chips, Sandbakken said. The company announced the switch in May 2006, and sunflower plantings need to rise by 600,000 acres next year to meet the new demand, he said. But a roadblock to increased sunflower production is blackbirds, which feast on the oilseed crop. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the birds cause about $10 million in damage each year to sunflowers in North Dakota, which produces about half of the nation's sunflower output. Last year's North Dakota sunflower crop was valued at $158 million....
Biologists to gather to weigh ways to save border's jaguars He roars like a lion, ambushes prey and kills them with powerful crushing bites. His name is Macho B and he may be the single most photographed wild mammal in Arizona. One of four or five live jaguars seen in the state this century, Macho B ranges across mountainous terrain 30 miles north and south of the Arizona-Mexico border. More than 70 photographs and videos of the 12-year-old cat have been recorded since 1996 by volunteers who provide state biologists with much of what is known about Arizona's jaguars, which became rare about 1900. So far, Macho B is the star attraction. Macho B and his breed will come under review May 2-3 when biologists from Arizona, New Mexico and Sonora, Mexico, meet in Douglas to consider renewing the 1997 regional conservation plan for the cats, which are listed as endangered inside and outside the United States. The jaguar conservation team includes landowners, ranchers and citizen groups, in addition to state and federal agencies....
Mountain Lion Suspected of Killing Cow A 12-hundred pound cow was killed in a pasture near Tioga last week, and wildlife officials suspect it was a mountain lion that attacked the animal. Tioga-area rancher Francis Franson discovered the dead cow last Tuesday and notified authorities who tried to track the suspected mountain lion. Erma Franson says a plane was used in the tracking attempt, but no sign of the cat was found. John Paulson of the USDA Wildlife Service office in Bismarck says research by his staff indicates the attack on the large cow has all the signs of a mountain lion....
Interior chief: Energy development needn't hurt wildlife U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Wednesday that new technology will allow resources such as natural gas to be tapped without disturbing wildlife and can reduce American dependence on imported energy. Kempthorne said President Bush's budget dedicates $22 million to restore nearly 500,000 acres in six targeted areas in the West. "These areas have seen growing conflict among competing uses of the land," he said, including wildlife habitat, recreation and energy development. "I am well aware of friction among conservationists, recreationists and energy developers," he told a meeting of the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference. He added that conservation has been the rallying cry for many groups "only equaled by the cry for more energy and less dependence on foreign oil." He said the goal of the administration is to deliver the energy "in an environmentally sensitive way."....Seems to be a lot of concern about wildlife and recreationists, and none about the person who owns or leases the surface.
Arizona lawmakers pushing new ballot measure on state trust land Just months after Arizona voters rejected rival ballot measures on state trust land, lawmakers are pushing a new, scaled-back proposal. Partially a response to actual or threatened legal challenges to past state practices, the measure would provide exemptions to the Arizona Constitution's current prohibition on sale or disposal of trust land unless it is advertised and auctioned for at least the true value of the land, based on an appraisal. Arizona has approximately 9.3 million acres of trust land remaining from property given the state by the federal government at statehood for the benefit of schools and other public institutions. Use of Arizona's trust land has been controversial in recent years as urban areas have grown into surrounding desert and forests. While conservationists have pushed for preservation of open space, developers are seeking access to property for building. Meanwhile, educators want more money for schools and ranchers are fighting to preserve grazing rights....
Pentagon looking at other options on Pinon Canyon Pentagon officials have assured Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., they are looking at leasing land and other options short of condemning property in their plans to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday, Philip Crone, a deputy undersecretary of defense, told Allard the Army is looking at leasing agreements and easements as options to expand PCMS by 418,000 acres without having to purchase or condemn land. While Fort Carson officials have said they want to discuss many options with landowners around PCMS, Crone's testimony was the first time that Pentagon officials have made such an offer. Allard has said he will not support the Army's use of eminent domain to expand PCMS and credited Fort Carson officials with looking at ways that ranchers around PCMS may retain their land and grazing ability even if the 238,000-acre training area is expanded....
Stakes are high in roadless rule "Efforts to save roadless areas in the national forests have been going on for 30 years, with little progress. We're losing lands all the time. It's time for the federal government to make a decision," says John Swartout, executive director of Great Outdoors Colorado and one of the 13 members of the Colorado Roadless Task Force. "Last year," Swartout said, "Colorado came up with a proposed rule of protection, with our task force holding 13 public meetings all across the state, receiving thousands of public comments. It was a brutal process, not a lot of fun. We came up with an ugly compromise. None of the sides really liked it, but it was what we could get everyone to agree to, because of diversity on the task force. And it can work." Former Gov. Bill Owens submitted that Colorado rule to the national roadless committee last Nov. 13. But with the change of governors, Colorado has been given additional time for the new administration to evaluate the rule. "Gov. [Bill] Ritter will make the decision within the next two weeks," assured Mike King, deputy director of the Division of Natural Resources....
Refuges losing funds battle National wildlife refuges - after years of budget belt-tightening - have lost so many employees that refuges in Colorado and around the nation have been left unstaffed, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In the eight-state Mountain-Prairie Region, which includes Colorado, 44 positions have been lost since 2004. An additional 29 are slated to be cut by 2009, the service said. The impact can be seen in fewer programs for visitors and an increasing problem of invasive plants in the refuges, said Ron Shupe, deputy assistant regional director for the National Wildlife Refuge System. Keeping out invasive plants is a critical issue for refuges that are trying to maintain wildlife habitats, he said. "There are about 160,000 acres out of 3 million total upland acres needing maintenance that aren't getting it," Shupe said. Workers are also having to cover huge territories, he said. Only 78 of the 148 refuges in the Mountain- Prairie Region are staffed, Shupe said....
County says its facing economic disaster over well shutdowns Morgan County officials told Gov. Bill Ritter on Thursday the county is facing "economic catastrophe" unless they get emergency help by April 15 for farmers whose water wells were shut down by the state in a water rights dispute. They asked Ritter to issue an emergency executive order for a moratorium on shutdowns for two years so they can find a solution to a problem that has idled thousands of acres of farmland. "If these farming operations and supporting businesses are allowed to collapse or close, the economic benefits they now generate will be gone for good. My question to you, as the leaders of our state government, is, `Are you willing to shoulder the blame for the clearly pending economic catastrophe in Northeastern Colorado which will be in full bloom by the next election or are you ready to listen to the voices in the wilderness and have the courage and foresight to initiate changes which will avert or weaken the pending impact?" Don Jones, president of the Morgan County Economic Development Commission, asked Ritter....
Officials: Spring will see Tumacacori Wilderness bill It’s been nearly three three years since U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., stood in the shadow of the Tumacacori Mountains west of Tubac and pledged to introduce legislation designating some 83,000 acres of grasslands, riparian canyons, and sky island peaks a federal wilderness area. Now, Grijalva’s party has a majority in the House and Grijalva himself has been given the chairmanship of the committee charged with holding hearings on wilderness legislation. Can Santa Cruz Valley residents expect a Tumacacori Highlands wilderness bill soon? The short answer is yes. So says Doug Scott, policy director with the Campaign for America’s Wilderness and the man who literally wrote the book on the landmark Wilderness Act of 1964. “Legislation will be introduced this spring for sure,” Scott said Wednesday during a tour of the area. “I think this will be a very productive year for wilderness.”....
Activists win on three counts in forest logging challenges A federal appeals court has issued a split decision in an environmental group's challenge of six logging projects in four Utah national forests. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals this week agreed with the Utah Environmental Congress that the U.S. Forest Service failed to comply with federal environmental laws on three of the projects, all located in southern Utah. But the court upheld the agency on the other three projects at the northern end of the state. Utah Environmental Congress executive director Kevin Mueller calls the decision a significant victory for the preservation of wildlife habitat in Utah forests. Generally speaking, the environmental group challenged Forest Service regulations crafted in 2000 that require the agency use only the "best available science" in making logging project decisions, rather than the more stringent regulations that date back to the early 1980s. In the case of the three southern Utah projects, the Forest Service was bound to the older rules because the individual forest plans predate the 2000 changes. The northern Utah proposals were upheld because those forest plans were updated in 2003....
Forest Service Officially Denies Permit for Off-road Event But Unofficially Gives It the Nod Under scrutiny from conservation groups and local homeowners, the Gila National Forest denied a permit request for a large all-terrain-vehicle "Jamboree" in the Burro Mountains from March 22nd to March 25th. Despite the fact that Forest Service District Ranger Russell Ward determined that "there has been insufficient time for public participation and insufficient time to determine all the environmental effects related to [the Jamboree]," Mr. Ward invoked a bureaucratic loophole to condone and encourage the event to continue without a permit. "With a wink and a nod, the Forest Service is going to let dozens of high-powered off-road vehicles into the Burros despite admitting that this event risks harming sensitive Forest resources and exacerbating conflicts with other Forest users. How is the Service doing this? By waving a magic wand and saying the event doesn't need a permit. And that's appalling," said Chris Kassar, wildlife biologist with the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity....
Editorial - Sending swarms to harass our people Let's say government officials want you to turn over a piece of your property to them for free. Let's say you refuse, arguing that you have no legal requirement to do so. And let's say the government officials then embark on a harassment campaign to intimidate you into giving them what they want. Should that be legal? We know that the Fifth Amendment protects the public's right to keep government off their property. But is it implicit in that right that government agents cannot abuse their power to harass you? This is the subject of a case now being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Wilkie v. Robbins. As R.S. Radford and Timothy Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation explain in a Legal Times article, Harvey Frank Robbins is a Wyoming man who bought a ranch in 1993, “not knowing that the previous owner had agreed to give the Bureau of Land Management an easement over the land. BLM agents, however, had neglected to record the easement, so when the purchase went through, Robbins got the land free and clear.” This clearly was the mistake of the government agents, yet they weren't about to let Robbins off the hook when he did not accede to their request to reinstate the easement. The agents made threats against him. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke during oral arguments “of a pattern of harassing conduct that included trespasses on this man's lodge and leaving the place in disarray, videotaping the guests, selective enforcement of the grazing laws, a whole pattern of things, even asking the Bureau of Indian Affairs to impound his cattle.” Rather than punish these government agents who have clearly abused their power, the federal government is asserting in the nation's highest court the right of government representatives to act in this very manner....
Tourists cause global warming Holidaymakers may be ruining their favourite destinations through pollution and greenhouse gases, making the tourism industry one of the world's worst polluters, experts say. A flight to that pristine beach and a few nights in an air-conditioned hotel room, when repeated on the mass scale of modern tourism, is all it takes to put the holiday business on a polluting par with heavy industries. "Tourism is unfortunately one of the vectors of (climate) change at the moment and contributes, through its excesses, to the process of global warming," World Tourism Organisation (WTO) director general Francesco Frangialli told an international conference on meteorology in Madrid this week. In 2006, 842 million people took a holiday in a foreign country and 40% of them flew to their destinations. That's 336 million people, or more than the population of the United States, taking trips which spew greenhouse gases that fuel global warming....
Grizzlies at Yellowstone no longer 'threatened' Three decades after grizzly bears nearly died out in Yellowstone National Park, federal officials announced on Thursday that the grizzlies have recovered and will cease being a "threatened" species there. The fierce predators, which total more than 500 animals in a 14,000-square-mile region in and around the park, will be taken off the endangered-species list by late April, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall said. The notice came seven weeks after the agency said it plans to remove the area's gray wolves from the list by year's end. "We are confident that the grizzly bear in Yellowstone will thrive," Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett said. Some conservation groups disagree. The Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the Natural Resources Defense Council both claim climate change and human encroachment threaten key foods and habitat for grizzlies, which coexist poorly with people, reproduce slowly and need big, undeveloped areas to live. The council threatened Thursday to sue for continued federal protection....
New Carbon-Dioxide Tracking Developed With concern growing about global warming, researchers said Wednesday they have developed a new system to track carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Being able to determine where and when this major greenhouse gas increases or decreases should help in projecting future climate change and evaluating efforts to reduce releases of carbon. "This is a pretty exciting opportunity," said Richard Spinrad, head of research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It produces an unbiased, objective statement of carbon observations, he said, but doesn't favor any particular policy or economic model. Tracking carbon dioxide release and absorption will improve understanding of its impact, he said, noting that one-third of the economy is weather and climate sensitive ranging from agriculture to transportation to insurance and real estate....
N.D. Lawmakers Consider Blackbird Kills Demand for healthier sunflower oil for potato chip frying is spurring a debate about whether millions of blackbirds should die to make it easier to raise the crop. Demand is rising for NuSun, a sunflower variety that produces oil with less saturated fat and no trans fat, said John Sandbakken, international marketing director for the National Sunflower Association. Saturated and trans fats help clog arteries and increase the risk of heart disease. One reason for NuSun's increased popularity is the decision by the Frito-Lay snack food company to use NuSun oil to cook its major brands of potato chips, Sandbakken said. The company announced the switch in May 2006, and sunflower plantings need to rise by 600,000 acres next year to meet the new demand, he said. But a roadblock to increased sunflower production is blackbirds, which feast on the oilseed crop. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the birds cause about $10 million in damage each year to sunflowers in North Dakota, which produces about half of the nation's sunflower output. Last year's North Dakota sunflower crop was valued at $158 million....
Biologists to gather to weigh ways to save border's jaguars He roars like a lion, ambushes prey and kills them with powerful crushing bites. His name is Macho B and he may be the single most photographed wild mammal in Arizona. One of four or five live jaguars seen in the state this century, Macho B ranges across mountainous terrain 30 miles north and south of the Arizona-Mexico border. More than 70 photographs and videos of the 12-year-old cat have been recorded since 1996 by volunteers who provide state biologists with much of what is known about Arizona's jaguars, which became rare about 1900. So far, Macho B is the star attraction. Macho B and his breed will come under review May 2-3 when biologists from Arizona, New Mexico and Sonora, Mexico, meet in Douglas to consider renewing the 1997 regional conservation plan for the cats, which are listed as endangered inside and outside the United States. The jaguar conservation team includes landowners, ranchers and citizen groups, in addition to state and federal agencies....
Mountain Lion Suspected of Killing Cow A 12-hundred pound cow was killed in a pasture near Tioga last week, and wildlife officials suspect it was a mountain lion that attacked the animal. Tioga-area rancher Francis Franson discovered the dead cow last Tuesday and notified authorities who tried to track the suspected mountain lion. Erma Franson says a plane was used in the tracking attempt, but no sign of the cat was found. John Paulson of the USDA Wildlife Service office in Bismarck says research by his staff indicates the attack on the large cow has all the signs of a mountain lion....
Interior chief: Energy development needn't hurt wildlife U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Wednesday that new technology will allow resources such as natural gas to be tapped without disturbing wildlife and can reduce American dependence on imported energy. Kempthorne said President Bush's budget dedicates $22 million to restore nearly 500,000 acres in six targeted areas in the West. "These areas have seen growing conflict among competing uses of the land," he said, including wildlife habitat, recreation and energy development. "I am well aware of friction among conservationists, recreationists and energy developers," he told a meeting of the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference. He added that conservation has been the rallying cry for many groups "only equaled by the cry for more energy and less dependence on foreign oil." He said the goal of the administration is to deliver the energy "in an environmentally sensitive way."....Seems to be a lot of concern about wildlife and recreationists, and none about the person who owns or leases the surface.
Arizona lawmakers pushing new ballot measure on state trust land Just months after Arizona voters rejected rival ballot measures on state trust land, lawmakers are pushing a new, scaled-back proposal. Partially a response to actual or threatened legal challenges to past state practices, the measure would provide exemptions to the Arizona Constitution's current prohibition on sale or disposal of trust land unless it is advertised and auctioned for at least the true value of the land, based on an appraisal. Arizona has approximately 9.3 million acres of trust land remaining from property given the state by the federal government at statehood for the benefit of schools and other public institutions. Use of Arizona's trust land has been controversial in recent years as urban areas have grown into surrounding desert and forests. While conservationists have pushed for preservation of open space, developers are seeking access to property for building. Meanwhile, educators want more money for schools and ranchers are fighting to preserve grazing rights....
Pentagon looking at other options on Pinon Canyon Pentagon officials have assured Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., they are looking at leasing land and other options short of condemning property in their plans to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday, Philip Crone, a deputy undersecretary of defense, told Allard the Army is looking at leasing agreements and easements as options to expand PCMS by 418,000 acres without having to purchase or condemn land. While Fort Carson officials have said they want to discuss many options with landowners around PCMS, Crone's testimony was the first time that Pentagon officials have made such an offer. Allard has said he will not support the Army's use of eminent domain to expand PCMS and credited Fort Carson officials with looking at ways that ranchers around PCMS may retain their land and grazing ability even if the 238,000-acre training area is expanded....
Stakes are high in roadless rule "Efforts to save roadless areas in the national forests have been going on for 30 years, with little progress. We're losing lands all the time. It's time for the federal government to make a decision," says John Swartout, executive director of Great Outdoors Colorado and one of the 13 members of the Colorado Roadless Task Force. "Last year," Swartout said, "Colorado came up with a proposed rule of protection, with our task force holding 13 public meetings all across the state, receiving thousands of public comments. It was a brutal process, not a lot of fun. We came up with an ugly compromise. None of the sides really liked it, but it was what we could get everyone to agree to, because of diversity on the task force. And it can work." Former Gov. Bill Owens submitted that Colorado rule to the national roadless committee last Nov. 13. But with the change of governors, Colorado has been given additional time for the new administration to evaluate the rule. "Gov. [Bill] Ritter will make the decision within the next two weeks," assured Mike King, deputy director of the Division of Natural Resources....
Refuges losing funds battle National wildlife refuges - after years of budget belt-tightening - have lost so many employees that refuges in Colorado and around the nation have been left unstaffed, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In the eight-state Mountain-Prairie Region, which includes Colorado, 44 positions have been lost since 2004. An additional 29 are slated to be cut by 2009, the service said. The impact can be seen in fewer programs for visitors and an increasing problem of invasive plants in the refuges, said Ron Shupe, deputy assistant regional director for the National Wildlife Refuge System. Keeping out invasive plants is a critical issue for refuges that are trying to maintain wildlife habitats, he said. "There are about 160,000 acres out of 3 million total upland acres needing maintenance that aren't getting it," Shupe said. Workers are also having to cover huge territories, he said. Only 78 of the 148 refuges in the Mountain- Prairie Region are staffed, Shupe said....
County says its facing economic disaster over well shutdowns Morgan County officials told Gov. Bill Ritter on Thursday the county is facing "economic catastrophe" unless they get emergency help by April 15 for farmers whose water wells were shut down by the state in a water rights dispute. They asked Ritter to issue an emergency executive order for a moratorium on shutdowns for two years so they can find a solution to a problem that has idled thousands of acres of farmland. "If these farming operations and supporting businesses are allowed to collapse or close, the economic benefits they now generate will be gone for good. My question to you, as the leaders of our state government, is, `Are you willing to shoulder the blame for the clearly pending economic catastrophe in Northeastern Colorado which will be in full bloom by the next election or are you ready to listen to the voices in the wilderness and have the courage and foresight to initiate changes which will avert or weaken the pending impact?" Don Jones, president of the Morgan County Economic Development Commission, asked Ritter....
Officials: Spring will see Tumacacori Wilderness bill It’s been nearly three three years since U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., stood in the shadow of the Tumacacori Mountains west of Tubac and pledged to introduce legislation designating some 83,000 acres of grasslands, riparian canyons, and sky island peaks a federal wilderness area. Now, Grijalva’s party has a majority in the House and Grijalva himself has been given the chairmanship of the committee charged with holding hearings on wilderness legislation. Can Santa Cruz Valley residents expect a Tumacacori Highlands wilderness bill soon? The short answer is yes. So says Doug Scott, policy director with the Campaign for America’s Wilderness and the man who literally wrote the book on the landmark Wilderness Act of 1964. “Legislation will be introduced this spring for sure,” Scott said Wednesday during a tour of the area. “I think this will be a very productive year for wilderness.”....
Activists win on three counts in forest logging challenges A federal appeals court has issued a split decision in an environmental group's challenge of six logging projects in four Utah national forests. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals this week agreed with the Utah Environmental Congress that the U.S. Forest Service failed to comply with federal environmental laws on three of the projects, all located in southern Utah. But the court upheld the agency on the other three projects at the northern end of the state. Utah Environmental Congress executive director Kevin Mueller calls the decision a significant victory for the preservation of wildlife habitat in Utah forests. Generally speaking, the environmental group challenged Forest Service regulations crafted in 2000 that require the agency use only the "best available science" in making logging project decisions, rather than the more stringent regulations that date back to the early 1980s. In the case of the three southern Utah projects, the Forest Service was bound to the older rules because the individual forest plans predate the 2000 changes. The northern Utah proposals were upheld because those forest plans were updated in 2003....
Forest Service Officially Denies Permit for Off-road Event But Unofficially Gives It the Nod Under scrutiny from conservation groups and local homeowners, the Gila National Forest denied a permit request for a large all-terrain-vehicle "Jamboree" in the Burro Mountains from March 22nd to March 25th. Despite the fact that Forest Service District Ranger Russell Ward determined that "there has been insufficient time for public participation and insufficient time to determine all the environmental effects related to [the Jamboree]," Mr. Ward invoked a bureaucratic loophole to condone and encourage the event to continue without a permit. "With a wink and a nod, the Forest Service is going to let dozens of high-powered off-road vehicles into the Burros despite admitting that this event risks harming sensitive Forest resources and exacerbating conflicts with other Forest users. How is the Service doing this? By waving a magic wand and saying the event doesn't need a permit. And that's appalling," said Chris Kassar, wildlife biologist with the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity....
Editorial - Sending swarms to harass our people Let's say government officials want you to turn over a piece of your property to them for free. Let's say you refuse, arguing that you have no legal requirement to do so. And let's say the government officials then embark on a harassment campaign to intimidate you into giving them what they want. Should that be legal? We know that the Fifth Amendment protects the public's right to keep government off their property. But is it implicit in that right that government agents cannot abuse their power to harass you? This is the subject of a case now being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Wilkie v. Robbins. As R.S. Radford and Timothy Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation explain in a Legal Times article, Harvey Frank Robbins is a Wyoming man who bought a ranch in 1993, “not knowing that the previous owner had agreed to give the Bureau of Land Management an easement over the land. BLM agents, however, had neglected to record the easement, so when the purchase went through, Robbins got the land free and clear.” This clearly was the mistake of the government agents, yet they weren't about to let Robbins off the hook when he did not accede to their request to reinstate the easement. The agents made threats against him. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke during oral arguments “of a pattern of harassing conduct that included trespasses on this man's lodge and leaving the place in disarray, videotaping the guests, selective enforcement of the grazing laws, a whole pattern of things, even asking the Bureau of Indian Affairs to impound his cattle.” Rather than punish these government agents who have clearly abused their power, the federal government is asserting in the nation's highest court the right of government representatives to act in this very manner....
Thursday, March 22, 2007
FLE
Far-reaching Gun Ban Would Cripple The Second Amendment Right now, we need your help in beating back a reintroduction of the so-called "assault weapons ban," the infamous bill that outlawed many types of firearms based primarily on cosmetics, misinformation and scare tactics. The bill is HR 1022, and last month it was introduced by the Queen of Gun Control, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY). McCarthy entitled her bill the Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2007, knowing these firearms aren't "assault weapons" and knowing the bill she is reintroducing does nothing to prevent violent crime -- since the guns in question have seldom been used in crime. McCarthy's bill would reinstate all of the now defunct provisions related to semi-automatic firearms and large capacity magazines. The manufacture and/or importation of many firearms would be prohibited. This would be paired with a strong ban on the possession or transfer of detachable magazines having moderate or larger capacities. Truth be told, HR 1022 is the old ban on steroids. Fourteen more guns are listed by name than in the '94 ban, and only one "dangerous" feature, such as a pistol grip, is needed to make a "nice" gun into a "bad" gun. The old ban required two "dangerous" features, such as a pistol grip and a folding stock. This distinction effectively expands the scope of the bill to ban a far broader variety of firearms. Since the U.S. Department of Justice has already documented that the previous "assault weapons" ban did absolutely nothing to stop violent crime, it is clear that HR 1022 is simply a direct attack on the 2nd Amendment rights of gun owners....
The Witch Hunt Against Gun Owners Two weeks ago, the Roanoke (Va.) Times published an online database of registered concealed handgun permit holders in the paper's community under the sanctimonious guise of "Sunshine Week." The database included both the names and street addresses of some 135,000 Virginians with permits to carry concealed weapons. Columnist Christian Trejbal patted himself on the back for making it easy to snoop on the neighbors: "I can hear the shocked indignation of gun-toters already: It's nobody's business but mine if I want to pack heat. Au contraire. Because the government handles the permitting, it is everyone's business." Trejbal denied that compiling the concealed carry permit holders list was "about being for or against guns." But he exposed his true agenda when he compared law-abiding gun owners to . . . sex offenders: "A state that eagerly puts sex offender data online complete with an interactive map could easily do the same with gun permits, but it does not." The Roanoke Times showed reckless disregard for the safety of the license holders and reckless disregard for accuracy. In his column, Trejbal admitted that he knew some of the information he had obtained was inaccurate -- but published it anyway: "As a Sunshine Week gift, The Roanoke Times has placed the entire database, mistakes and all [emphasis added], online at http://www.roanoke.com/gunpermits. You can search to find out if neighbors, carpool partners, elected officials or anyone else has permission to carry a gun." After an uproar among gun-owners, including domestic violence victims licensed to carry, the Times finally decided to yank the database. Trejbal seems not to feel much remorse: "Did we make it easier [to obtain the information]? Yes. But it's still a public record." Let's review: He published a list he knew contained inaccuracies. His paper admits the decision endangered gun owners. He compiled a convenient shopping list for criminals -- and smacked law-abiding gun owners in the face with his comparison of their choice to exercise their rights with sex offenders....
Community Suggests Gun Possession Is Illegal For Residents Some people in a Nashville neighborhood are furious over a new rule that makes it illegal to own a gun. Residents in Nashboro Village said it's unconstitutional and leaves them defenseless. Two weeks ago, residents received a letter from their homeowners' association indicating that guns are not allowed on the property. Two weeks ago, the property management company at Nashboro Village told its residents no more guns on the property. Officials with Ghertner and Company, the property manager at Nashboro Village, would not make an on-camera comment about the gun policy but said they plan on changing the rule soon to allow firearms on the property. However, they would make it illegal to fire those guns, which residents say is still unconstitutional....
SAF supports Adventure Outdoors battle against Bloomberg The Second Amendment Foundation today confirmed that it is providing financial support to Adventure Outdoors of Smyrna, Georgia in a lawsuit against New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other New York defendants for attempting to ensnare and defame the store in Bloomberg’s infamous 2006 gun shop “sting.” SAF’s support was requested by attorney and former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, now working at the Jasper, Georgia law offices of Edwin Marger, which represents Adventure Outdoors. SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb said the foundation has sent a check to Marger, and promised to help bring public attention to the case. The Justice Department has declined to file criminal charges against any of the gun dealers targeted by Bloomberg, and has advised Bloomberg’s office that it could face “potential legal liabilities” if such sting operations continue. Earlier this year, W. Larry Ford, Assistant ATF Director for Public and Governmental Affairs, confirmed to SAF that the agency “is investigating the matter [Bloomberg’s stings] in order to determine if violations of federal firearms laws occurred.”....
Let's Ditch The Second Amendment But there's a big problem with blasting Silberman for entertaining the notion that the people's right to "keep and bear arms" may actually include an individual right to, well, keep or bear a gun in the District of Columbia: None of these words actually come from his opinion. All, in fact, were written by esteemed liberal law professors. The first is from Laurence Tribe's famed treatise on the Constitution, the latest version of which Tribe altered in recognition of the growing power of the individual-rights view of the amendment--a view he had long rejected. The second is by Sanford Levinson, who--before he stopped believing in the Constitution altogether--wrote an illuminating law review article called "the embarrassing second amendment." The final quotation is from Akhil Reed Amar's ambitious history, The Bill of Rights. One can still muster strong arguments in favor of a collective-rights conception of the Second Amendment, the view that has prevailed in most other circuits; and the individual-rights view does not necessarily doom all gun control (though it probably does doom the most sweeping bans). But the simple truth is that the individual-rights view is in intellectual ascendancy, and not just among gun-loving wing nuts. If Silberman is a radical with blithe disregard for public safety, he is in exceptionally strong company. It's time for gun-control supporters to come to grips with the fact that the amendment actually means something in contemporary society. For which reason, I hereby advance a modest proposal: Let's repeal the damned thing....
Signs of Life in the Second Amendment For nearly 70 years, the Second Amendment has been the Jimmy Hoffa of constitutional provisions -- missing, its whereabouts unknown, and presumed dead. The right to keep and bear arms, though treasured by many Americans, was a complete stranger to the Supreme Court. But recently, a federal appeals court did something no federal court had ever done before: It struck down a gun control law as a violation of the Second Amendment. The District of Columbia statute in question is one of the most stringent in the country. It bans the ownership of handguns except those registered before 1976, and it requires rifles or shotguns to be not only registered but kept unloaded and equipped with a trigger lock. Such tight restrictions, the appeals court said, can't be reconciled with the Bill of Rights. The decision does not prove that the Second Amendment is alive and well. But it does mean that, finally, we are likely to get an answer from the Supreme Court on a question that has generated endless debate: Is the Second Amendment a meaningless anachronism, or a live guarantee? The court will be confronting the issue at a time when legal scholarship is increasingly inclined to say there is indeed a right to keep and bear arms....
Use of deadly force likely to be expanded in Texas Texas legislators have sent to Gov. Rick Perry's desk a bill that allows people to use deadly force against attackers outside their homes under a much broader range of circumstances than current law allows, including in defense of their cars or businesses. There is little doubt Mr. Perry will sign the bill, which broadens the scope of self-defense claims in homicide cases, because it passed unanimously (30-0) in the Texas Senate last week and by a 133-13 margin with no debate in the House on Tuesday. And he publicly has praised the Legislature for passing it. The self-defense legislation, proponents claim, strengthens a resident's right to defend his home and harkens back to the state law before it was changed 33 years ago. The bill has been called the "Castle Doctrine," from the age-old feeling that a man's home is his castle and that he has a total right to defend it. Opponents, including some prosecutors, claim the new legislation, which for the first time includes the right to protect oneself in a vehicle and the workplace, fosters a "shoot first and ask questions later" mentality....
Lawsuit Focuses on Whether Mexico Influenced Arrest of Border Agents A government watchdog group wants to know whether the Mexican government influenced the decision by federal prosecutors to go after two ex-border agents who shot a Mexican suspected of smuggling drugs into the country. Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit on March 16 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., asking the court to force the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the State Department to release information related to the case of former U.S. Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, now serving prison sentences of 11 and 12 years respectively for the shooting incident. "We are interested in learning about any deals brokered between the U.S. and Mexico following the shooting in 2005," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. "Given the public and congressional controversy surrounding the case, the more the American people know about what happened, the better." The group brought the suit because the federal agencies did not yet respond to a Freedom of Information Act request filed on Jan. 24....
Far-reaching Gun Ban Would Cripple The Second Amendment Right now, we need your help in beating back a reintroduction of the so-called "assault weapons ban," the infamous bill that outlawed many types of firearms based primarily on cosmetics, misinformation and scare tactics. The bill is HR 1022, and last month it was introduced by the Queen of Gun Control, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY). McCarthy entitled her bill the Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2007, knowing these firearms aren't "assault weapons" and knowing the bill she is reintroducing does nothing to prevent violent crime -- since the guns in question have seldom been used in crime. McCarthy's bill would reinstate all of the now defunct provisions related to semi-automatic firearms and large capacity magazines. The manufacture and/or importation of many firearms would be prohibited. This would be paired with a strong ban on the possession or transfer of detachable magazines having moderate or larger capacities. Truth be told, HR 1022 is the old ban on steroids. Fourteen more guns are listed by name than in the '94 ban, and only one "dangerous" feature, such as a pistol grip, is needed to make a "nice" gun into a "bad" gun. The old ban required two "dangerous" features, such as a pistol grip and a folding stock. This distinction effectively expands the scope of the bill to ban a far broader variety of firearms. Since the U.S. Department of Justice has already documented that the previous "assault weapons" ban did absolutely nothing to stop violent crime, it is clear that HR 1022 is simply a direct attack on the 2nd Amendment rights of gun owners....
The Witch Hunt Against Gun Owners Two weeks ago, the Roanoke (Va.) Times published an online database of registered concealed handgun permit holders in the paper's community under the sanctimonious guise of "Sunshine Week." The database included both the names and street addresses of some 135,000 Virginians with permits to carry concealed weapons. Columnist Christian Trejbal patted himself on the back for making it easy to snoop on the neighbors: "I can hear the shocked indignation of gun-toters already: It's nobody's business but mine if I want to pack heat. Au contraire. Because the government handles the permitting, it is everyone's business." Trejbal denied that compiling the concealed carry permit holders list was "about being for or against guns." But he exposed his true agenda when he compared law-abiding gun owners to . . . sex offenders: "A state that eagerly puts sex offender data online complete with an interactive map could easily do the same with gun permits, but it does not." The Roanoke Times showed reckless disregard for the safety of the license holders and reckless disregard for accuracy. In his column, Trejbal admitted that he knew some of the information he had obtained was inaccurate -- but published it anyway: "As a Sunshine Week gift, The Roanoke Times has placed the entire database, mistakes and all [emphasis added], online at http://www.roanoke.com/gunpermits. You can search to find out if neighbors, carpool partners, elected officials or anyone else has permission to carry a gun." After an uproar among gun-owners, including domestic violence victims licensed to carry, the Times finally decided to yank the database. Trejbal seems not to feel much remorse: "Did we make it easier [to obtain the information]? Yes. But it's still a public record." Let's review: He published a list he knew contained inaccuracies. His paper admits the decision endangered gun owners. He compiled a convenient shopping list for criminals -- and smacked law-abiding gun owners in the face with his comparison of their choice to exercise their rights with sex offenders....
Community Suggests Gun Possession Is Illegal For Residents Some people in a Nashville neighborhood are furious over a new rule that makes it illegal to own a gun. Residents in Nashboro Village said it's unconstitutional and leaves them defenseless. Two weeks ago, residents received a letter from their homeowners' association indicating that guns are not allowed on the property. Two weeks ago, the property management company at Nashboro Village told its residents no more guns on the property. Officials with Ghertner and Company, the property manager at Nashboro Village, would not make an on-camera comment about the gun policy but said they plan on changing the rule soon to allow firearms on the property. However, they would make it illegal to fire those guns, which residents say is still unconstitutional....
SAF supports Adventure Outdoors battle against Bloomberg The Second Amendment Foundation today confirmed that it is providing financial support to Adventure Outdoors of Smyrna, Georgia in a lawsuit against New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other New York defendants for attempting to ensnare and defame the store in Bloomberg’s infamous 2006 gun shop “sting.” SAF’s support was requested by attorney and former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, now working at the Jasper, Georgia law offices of Edwin Marger, which represents Adventure Outdoors. SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb said the foundation has sent a check to Marger, and promised to help bring public attention to the case. The Justice Department has declined to file criminal charges against any of the gun dealers targeted by Bloomberg, and has advised Bloomberg’s office that it could face “potential legal liabilities” if such sting operations continue. Earlier this year, W. Larry Ford, Assistant ATF Director for Public and Governmental Affairs, confirmed to SAF that the agency “is investigating the matter [Bloomberg’s stings] in order to determine if violations of federal firearms laws occurred.”....
Let's Ditch The Second Amendment But there's a big problem with blasting Silberman for entertaining the notion that the people's right to "keep and bear arms" may actually include an individual right to, well, keep or bear a gun in the District of Columbia: None of these words actually come from his opinion. All, in fact, were written by esteemed liberal law professors. The first is from Laurence Tribe's famed treatise on the Constitution, the latest version of which Tribe altered in recognition of the growing power of the individual-rights view of the amendment--a view he had long rejected. The second is by Sanford Levinson, who--before he stopped believing in the Constitution altogether--wrote an illuminating law review article called "the embarrassing second amendment." The final quotation is from Akhil Reed Amar's ambitious history, The Bill of Rights. One can still muster strong arguments in favor of a collective-rights conception of the Second Amendment, the view that has prevailed in most other circuits; and the individual-rights view does not necessarily doom all gun control (though it probably does doom the most sweeping bans). But the simple truth is that the individual-rights view is in intellectual ascendancy, and not just among gun-loving wing nuts. If Silberman is a radical with blithe disregard for public safety, he is in exceptionally strong company. It's time for gun-control supporters to come to grips with the fact that the amendment actually means something in contemporary society. For which reason, I hereby advance a modest proposal: Let's repeal the damned thing....
Signs of Life in the Second Amendment For nearly 70 years, the Second Amendment has been the Jimmy Hoffa of constitutional provisions -- missing, its whereabouts unknown, and presumed dead. The right to keep and bear arms, though treasured by many Americans, was a complete stranger to the Supreme Court. But recently, a federal appeals court did something no federal court had ever done before: It struck down a gun control law as a violation of the Second Amendment. The District of Columbia statute in question is one of the most stringent in the country. It bans the ownership of handguns except those registered before 1976, and it requires rifles or shotguns to be not only registered but kept unloaded and equipped with a trigger lock. Such tight restrictions, the appeals court said, can't be reconciled with the Bill of Rights. The decision does not prove that the Second Amendment is alive and well. But it does mean that, finally, we are likely to get an answer from the Supreme Court on a question that has generated endless debate: Is the Second Amendment a meaningless anachronism, or a live guarantee? The court will be confronting the issue at a time when legal scholarship is increasingly inclined to say there is indeed a right to keep and bear arms....
Use of deadly force likely to be expanded in Texas Texas legislators have sent to Gov. Rick Perry's desk a bill that allows people to use deadly force against attackers outside their homes under a much broader range of circumstances than current law allows, including in defense of their cars or businesses. There is little doubt Mr. Perry will sign the bill, which broadens the scope of self-defense claims in homicide cases, because it passed unanimously (30-0) in the Texas Senate last week and by a 133-13 margin with no debate in the House on Tuesday. And he publicly has praised the Legislature for passing it. The self-defense legislation, proponents claim, strengthens a resident's right to defend his home and harkens back to the state law before it was changed 33 years ago. The bill has been called the "Castle Doctrine," from the age-old feeling that a man's home is his castle and that he has a total right to defend it. Opponents, including some prosecutors, claim the new legislation, which for the first time includes the right to protect oneself in a vehicle and the workplace, fosters a "shoot first and ask questions later" mentality....
Lawsuit Focuses on Whether Mexico Influenced Arrest of Border Agents A government watchdog group wants to know whether the Mexican government influenced the decision by federal prosecutors to go after two ex-border agents who shot a Mexican suspected of smuggling drugs into the country. Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit on March 16 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., asking the court to force the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the State Department to release information related to the case of former U.S. Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, now serving prison sentences of 11 and 12 years respectively for the shooting incident. "We are interested in learning about any deals brokered between the U.S. and Mexico following the shooting in 2005," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. "Given the public and congressional controversy surrounding the case, the more the American people know about what happened, the better." The group brought the suit because the federal agencies did not yet respond to a Freedom of Information Act request filed on Jan. 24....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Gore Challenges Congress on Climate Environmental activist (and former vice president) Al Gore descended on Capitol Hill yesterday, telling two congressional panels that global climate change represents the most dangerous crisis in American history and that the measures needed to fix the problem -- such as an immediate freeze on new emissions from cars and power plants -- are far more drastic than anything currently on the table. Gore, whose documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Academy Award last month, testified before both House and Senate committees in an appearance that drew international media attention and lines of would-be spectators trailing through congressional hallways. In both hearings, he had testy exchanges with lawmakers who doubted his scientific evidence or the feasibility of his solutions. Much of his day, though, was spent basking in an odd spotlight: Gore and his cause have Washington's full attention. But his message, of a feverish planet and dwindling time in which to cure it, made for a grim homecoming. "This is not a normal time. We are facing a planetary emergency," Gore said in the afternoon Senate hearing. "I'm fully aware that that phrase sounds shrill to many people's ears. But it is accurate." Gore's solutions were as sweeping as his metaphors. His recommendations began with the immediate national freeze on new emissions of carbon dioxide -- which could affect everything from cars to lawn mowers to coal-fired power plants -- and included an overhaul of the tax code. Payroll taxes should go down, Gore said, and taxes on polluters, especially those who emit carbon dioxide, should go up. Beyond that, Gore recommended a ban on incandescent light bulbs, which activists say are far less energy-efficient than new compact fluorescent bulbs; raising the fuel-efficiency standards for cars; and a "carbon-neutral mortgage association." The last would allow homeowners to more easily finance renovations to improve energy efficiency, he said. Gore acknowledged that almost all of these measures go well beyond anything lawmakers have contemplated so far....Go here for Gore's testimony and here for Bjorn Lomborg's testimony.
Gore plan would 'ban new cars and people' U.S. Rep. Joe Barton Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, today told former Vice President Al Gore his theories on global warming are not supported by the facts and if Gore's desires are implemented, there would be no new businesses, cars or even people allowed in the United States. "You just gave us an idea for a straight CO2 freeze, if I heard you correctly. I think that's an idea that's flawed. If you take that literally, we can add no new industry, nor new cars and trucks on our streets, and apparently no new people," Barton, who represents the 6th District in Texas, said. "People are mobile-source emitters. Every person emits 0.2 tons of CO2 a year, so an absolute true freeze would be no new industry, no new people, and no new cars." During a hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Barton challenged the "facts" being used to promote Gore's campaign for a new war on global warming, portrayed in Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore has called such warming "a crisis that is by far the most serious we've faced," and described it as "a true planetary emergency."....
'Anti-greenhouse religion' scorched by Czech prez As Al Gore takes testifies before two congressional committees today on "global warming," Czech President Vaclav Klaus is warning "the anti-greenhouse religion" espoused by the former vice president is the modern equivalent of communism. Responding to questions by U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and former House Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., the Czech leader said: "As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism." He added, "The so-called climate change and especially man-made climate change has become one of the most dangerous arguments aimed at distorting human efforts and public policies in the whole world."....Go here to read the Klaus letter.
FBI probes pressure on Alaska regulators before Prudhoe oil spill People contacted by investigators say the FBI is investigating whether Alaska political appointees improperly punished state regulators who tried to enforce environmental rules against oil companies operating in Alaska. The inquiry is being conducted by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office in Anchorage. It is connected to an ongoing criminal investigation of BP for allowing pipelines it operates to corrode enough to cause a large oil spill on Alaska's North Slope in 2006. Similar pipeline corrosion discovered later that year forced the shutdown of Prudhoe Bay, the most productive oil field in the United States. Now, the actions of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation have come under scrutiny from federal investigators, though it's unclear whether current or former state officials would face criminal charges. The DEC is responsible for overseeing oil operations in the state....
Navy mum on sonar use in whale case Citing the threat to national security, the U.S. Navy said it will not tell a U.S. court specifics about its use of sonar over the past four years. That response angered the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is suing the Navy to ensure sailors use sonar in a way that does not harm whales and other marine mammals. A U.S. District Court judge had asked the Navy to submit data for when and where sailors have used sonar since 2003. Navy officials worry such details could give potential enemies tactical information about how sailors use sonar to track and target submarines. Joel Reynolds, a Natural Resources Defense Council attorney, said he would challenge the Navy's position....
Report Says Corps Miscalculated on Levees The design and construction of the New Orleans hurricane levee system was flawed because the Army Corps of Engineers ignored warnings about the power of potential storms and made critical engineering miscalculations, according to a long-awaited investigative report from a team of Louisiana engineers and scientists. The "Team Louisiana" report echoed many of the findings of previous engineering inquiries but offered them in sometimes sterner terms, while highlighting some of the political forces that affected the flood system's formation. Army Corps of Engineers officials appear to have shortchanged the construction of essential flood protection systems to save money, according to the report, while at the same time, under local pressure, expanding the project's reach so that more low-lying land could be developed into new suburbs. Moreover, while the city was vulnerable to a relatively weak storm, Corps officials offered unsubstantiated assurances to the public that the system could withstand a "1 in 300 year" storm event, or a storm so severe it is likely to happen only once in 300 years, the report said....
Alaska to Pay Pilots in Plan to Kill Wolves Alaska will pay pilots licensed to shoot wolves from the air $150 for each wolf they kill under a new plan intended to protect their prey, including moose and caribou, state wildlife officials said yesterday. Efforts to control the wolf population have been complicated this year by rough winds, limited snow and higher fuel prices, making it harder to follow wolf tracks and more difficult and expensive to fly, said Ron Clarke, assistant director of the state’s Division of Wildlife Conservation. So far this year, 98 wolves have been reported killed. State officials have a goal this year of killing 382 to 664 wolves in five key areas, Mr. Clarke said. The state said Wednesday that another reason shootings had declined this year was the success of control efforts in the past. The aerial shooting program has been controversial since it began in 2003. At the time, moose populations had declined by about 50 percent over the previous two decades, affecting sport hunters and people who rely on moose for sustenance, said Bruce Bartley, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game....
Federal trappers kill 2 wolves - Montana Federal trappers shot two wolves that belonged to a pack believed to have killed a heifer on private land west of Wisdom earlier this month. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services investigated the depredation in the Big Hole Valley on March 17 and the wolves were killed two days later. Also, the remains of a dead wolf were recovered from U.S. Highway 191 near the Taylor Fork junction on March 11. The carcass was taken to the state wildlife laboratory in Bozeman for a necropsy, state wildlife officials said.
Deal expands wildlife habitat Cattle will no longer graze on a prime chunk of habitat for elk, moose, grizzlies and wolves south of Yellowstone National Park, according to a recent agreement. The deal involves 178,000 acres of national forest land southeast of Grand Teton National Park that's been identified as one of the best places for wintering elk. It's also been the source of long-running conflicts between predators and livestock. The National Wildlife Federation brokered a deal to retire grazing allotments in the area as part of a larger effort in the Yellowstone ecosystem to find ranchers willing to accept payment to no longer graze livestock in prime wildlife areas. With the latest deal, the group has put together more than 20 agreements covering nearly 500,000 acres. "We're not trying to get rid of all grazing in the Yellowstone ecosystem," said the group's Hank Fischer. "We're focusing on places where there's been conflict year in and year out." The latest effort involves a $450,000 payment to Fish Creek Cattle Co. owner Scott Stanko for the Bacon Creek and Fish Creek allotments on the Bridger-Teton National Forest in the Upper Gros Ventre drainage, Fischer said. About 100,000 acres will be closed to grazing. The remaining portions will allow infrequent grazing, but the emphasis will be on providing forage and habitat for wildlife....
Federal funds to purchase Plum Creek land holdings Montana Democratic U.S. Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester have recovered more than $8 million in federal funding to buy land in western Montana, including thousands of acres owned by Plum Creek Timber Co. in the Swan and Blackfoot valleys. The funding had earlier been set aside in the fiscal year 2007 spending bill, but temporarily dried up after Congress elected not to fund some earmarked projects. So the senators lobbied agency officials directly for the funding. The Blackfoot Community Project and Swan Valley Forest Legacy Fund each received $3 million to purchase land from Plum Creek. The funding will help The Nature Conservancy preserve 5,206 acres in the Horseshoe Hills area north of the Blackfoot-Clearwater Game Range and about 860 acres of land near Marcum Mountain east of Ovando. Once the deal is completed, The Nature Conservancy will hand over ownership of the Horseshoe Hills property to the U.S. Forest Service, and the Marcum Mountain lands will go the Bureau of Land Management as part of a long-term strategy to protect Plum Creek lands from development....
Antler hunting: Points of contentions For the past 30 years, Neil Trotta and his family have enjoyed collecting antlers shed by deer and elk on their property near East Canyon. Sometimes Trotta sells the antlers to a dealer he knows in Colorado. His home is decorated with lamps, candle holders, even a peace pipe made from antlers which deer and elk shed during February and March. But with a new regulation prohibiting antler collecting in the Division of Wildlife Resources' (DWR) northern region from Feb. 1 through April 30, Trotta and others like him must wait to get started. "You can't do it May 1," said the Utah landowner. "By May 1, the grass has grown and the sagebrush is growing and filled with ticks. The antlers have turned brown. It's hard to find them." DWR assistant director Alan Clark said the regulation was enacted at the recommendation of a group looking at why deer herds in the Cache unit in northern Utah were struggling to reach population objectives. Fawn survival is a major concern. Because the antlers have become valuable, Clark said, more people are searching for them. Some use all-terrain vehicles and drive off dirt roads, damaging habitat and, potentially, stressing fawns. There are reports of people chasing elk from vehicles, hoping the bulls shed their antlers....
Lawsuit challenges state's firefighting commitment A lawsuit filed by a former Nevada Division of Forestry helicopter pilot claims that state and federal officials conspired to pull Nevada out of the business of fighting fires from the air. Gardnerville resident Glenn Marr, 59, alleges in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed last summer that State Forester Peter Anderson decided to improve working relations between the state and federal government when he was hired in 2004. According to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Marr claims that part of that working relationship was to accommodate the federal agencies' desire to take over control of air operations of the Division of Forestry. Marr is suing the state claiming his firing violated his first amendment right to free speech. The complaint alleges that in 2005, the state began reducing the number of pilots and the number of hours flown during fire season. Marr said he complained to state forestry officials Anderson, Robert Ashworth, Mike Dondero, and Peter Cannizarro both directly and through chief pilot Pat Ross that the limitations on air operations were a danger to natural resources, lives, safety and property of residents in the path of wildfires....
Forest Service Once 'Attacked' Pine Beetle Problem One man who worked to save Colorado's forests and trees 50 years ago from a beetle epidemic believes saving the forest is no longer a top priority as pine beetles consume an area of the state the size of Rocky Mountain National Park. The government's handling of the problem now is sometimes criticized as too little, too late. At least 660,000 acres of Colorado pine trees are dead are dying from the current beetle epidemic according to aerial surveys. The government said there's no hope of stopping it. An old Forest Service documentary shows how the beetles were killed 50 years ago with a mixture of deadly pesticide and fuel oil called "goop." Hundreds of workers were trained to head into the forest and fight the beetles' advance. Bill Bailey was one of the so-called goopers. His three man team helped spray a million infected trees. "As far as the forest service was concerned, we practically controlled the infestation at that particular time," said Bailey....
Resident fights for animal owners' rights A Carbondale woman will testify for what she calls "animal owners' rights" before the state Senate's Agriculture Committee today. Lisa Speaker, founder and president of the Colorado Alliance for Animal Owners' Rights, said she will explain to the committee her proposed amendment to the Colorado Veterinary Practices Act. The amendment would allow, among other practices, equine massage therapists to massage horses without direct supervision of a veterinarian, Speaker said. Under the current law, the first conviction for performing an unsupervised massage on a horse is a misdemeanor, and the second a felony under the Colorado Veterinary Practices Act, Speaker said. "The violation is pretty harsh," she said. The bill, HB 1296, is carried by Rep. Wes McKinley, D-Walsh, and Sen. Lois Tochtrop, D-Thornton. It passed the House earlier this year 51-14. The Colorado Veterinary Medical Association, which represents 1,600 veterinarians statewide, opposes the bill. Association president Dr. Stacy Hudelson told the House Agriculture Committee in February her group is "alarmed" by the amendment, which she said would increase risks to the health and well-being of animal patients, "deconstruct" a professional licensing system and allow individual rights to "trump" the public good....Individual rights to trump the public good? Oh no!...I guess the "public good" is the state-enforced monopoly granted to the vets.
Trying to Know Billy the Kid: An Interview with Michael Wallis Michael Wallis’s new book, Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride (W. W. Norton, 328 pages, $25.95), is the closest anyone has come to a definitive biography of the most mythical figure of the American frontier. On July 14, 1881, Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. That is one of the few hard and concrete facts of his life—and even it has been challenged by generations of mythmongers. Beyond that we know little. His mother, Catherine Antrim, was Irish and died of tuberculosis when he was scarcely a teenager. He drifted into New Mexico, got caught up in the swirl of personal, political, and economic clashes known as the Lincoln County War. Nearly everything else said about his life—including when and why he went by the surnames McCarty and Bonney—is open to question. It’s probably a safe bet that he has inspired more books, movies, and controversy per known fact than any other figure in American history. A dime novel hero in his own lifetime, he was the subject of a “biography” by Pat Garrett—or at least with Garrett’s name on the cover—that transcended the dime novels only in length, and his legend generated a small library of pulp by the end of the nineteenth century....
Gore Challenges Congress on Climate Environmental activist (and former vice president) Al Gore descended on Capitol Hill yesterday, telling two congressional panels that global climate change represents the most dangerous crisis in American history and that the measures needed to fix the problem -- such as an immediate freeze on new emissions from cars and power plants -- are far more drastic than anything currently on the table. Gore, whose documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Academy Award last month, testified before both House and Senate committees in an appearance that drew international media attention and lines of would-be spectators trailing through congressional hallways. In both hearings, he had testy exchanges with lawmakers who doubted his scientific evidence or the feasibility of his solutions. Much of his day, though, was spent basking in an odd spotlight: Gore and his cause have Washington's full attention. But his message, of a feverish planet and dwindling time in which to cure it, made for a grim homecoming. "This is not a normal time. We are facing a planetary emergency," Gore said in the afternoon Senate hearing. "I'm fully aware that that phrase sounds shrill to many people's ears. But it is accurate." Gore's solutions were as sweeping as his metaphors. His recommendations began with the immediate national freeze on new emissions of carbon dioxide -- which could affect everything from cars to lawn mowers to coal-fired power plants -- and included an overhaul of the tax code. Payroll taxes should go down, Gore said, and taxes on polluters, especially those who emit carbon dioxide, should go up. Beyond that, Gore recommended a ban on incandescent light bulbs, which activists say are far less energy-efficient than new compact fluorescent bulbs; raising the fuel-efficiency standards for cars; and a "carbon-neutral mortgage association." The last would allow homeowners to more easily finance renovations to improve energy efficiency, he said. Gore acknowledged that almost all of these measures go well beyond anything lawmakers have contemplated so far....Go here for Gore's testimony and here for Bjorn Lomborg's testimony.
Gore plan would 'ban new cars and people' U.S. Rep. Joe Barton Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, today told former Vice President Al Gore his theories on global warming are not supported by the facts and if Gore's desires are implemented, there would be no new businesses, cars or even people allowed in the United States. "You just gave us an idea for a straight CO2 freeze, if I heard you correctly. I think that's an idea that's flawed. If you take that literally, we can add no new industry, nor new cars and trucks on our streets, and apparently no new people," Barton, who represents the 6th District in Texas, said. "People are mobile-source emitters. Every person emits 0.2 tons of CO2 a year, so an absolute true freeze would be no new industry, no new people, and no new cars." During a hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Barton challenged the "facts" being used to promote Gore's campaign for a new war on global warming, portrayed in Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore has called such warming "a crisis that is by far the most serious we've faced," and described it as "a true planetary emergency."....
'Anti-greenhouse religion' scorched by Czech prez As Al Gore takes testifies before two congressional committees today on "global warming," Czech President Vaclav Klaus is warning "the anti-greenhouse religion" espoused by the former vice president is the modern equivalent of communism. Responding to questions by U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and former House Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., the Czech leader said: "As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism." He added, "The so-called climate change and especially man-made climate change has become one of the most dangerous arguments aimed at distorting human efforts and public policies in the whole world."....Go here to read the Klaus letter.
FBI probes pressure on Alaska regulators before Prudhoe oil spill People contacted by investigators say the FBI is investigating whether Alaska political appointees improperly punished state regulators who tried to enforce environmental rules against oil companies operating in Alaska. The inquiry is being conducted by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office in Anchorage. It is connected to an ongoing criminal investigation of BP for allowing pipelines it operates to corrode enough to cause a large oil spill on Alaska's North Slope in 2006. Similar pipeline corrosion discovered later that year forced the shutdown of Prudhoe Bay, the most productive oil field in the United States. Now, the actions of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation have come under scrutiny from federal investigators, though it's unclear whether current or former state officials would face criminal charges. The DEC is responsible for overseeing oil operations in the state....
Navy mum on sonar use in whale case Citing the threat to national security, the U.S. Navy said it will not tell a U.S. court specifics about its use of sonar over the past four years. That response angered the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is suing the Navy to ensure sailors use sonar in a way that does not harm whales and other marine mammals. A U.S. District Court judge had asked the Navy to submit data for when and where sailors have used sonar since 2003. Navy officials worry such details could give potential enemies tactical information about how sailors use sonar to track and target submarines. Joel Reynolds, a Natural Resources Defense Council attorney, said he would challenge the Navy's position....
Report Says Corps Miscalculated on Levees The design and construction of the New Orleans hurricane levee system was flawed because the Army Corps of Engineers ignored warnings about the power of potential storms and made critical engineering miscalculations, according to a long-awaited investigative report from a team of Louisiana engineers and scientists. The "Team Louisiana" report echoed many of the findings of previous engineering inquiries but offered them in sometimes sterner terms, while highlighting some of the political forces that affected the flood system's formation. Army Corps of Engineers officials appear to have shortchanged the construction of essential flood protection systems to save money, according to the report, while at the same time, under local pressure, expanding the project's reach so that more low-lying land could be developed into new suburbs. Moreover, while the city was vulnerable to a relatively weak storm, Corps officials offered unsubstantiated assurances to the public that the system could withstand a "1 in 300 year" storm event, or a storm so severe it is likely to happen only once in 300 years, the report said....
Alaska to Pay Pilots in Plan to Kill Wolves Alaska will pay pilots licensed to shoot wolves from the air $150 for each wolf they kill under a new plan intended to protect their prey, including moose and caribou, state wildlife officials said yesterday. Efforts to control the wolf population have been complicated this year by rough winds, limited snow and higher fuel prices, making it harder to follow wolf tracks and more difficult and expensive to fly, said Ron Clarke, assistant director of the state’s Division of Wildlife Conservation. So far this year, 98 wolves have been reported killed. State officials have a goal this year of killing 382 to 664 wolves in five key areas, Mr. Clarke said. The state said Wednesday that another reason shootings had declined this year was the success of control efforts in the past. The aerial shooting program has been controversial since it began in 2003. At the time, moose populations had declined by about 50 percent over the previous two decades, affecting sport hunters and people who rely on moose for sustenance, said Bruce Bartley, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game....
Federal trappers kill 2 wolves - Montana Federal trappers shot two wolves that belonged to a pack believed to have killed a heifer on private land west of Wisdom earlier this month. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services investigated the depredation in the Big Hole Valley on March 17 and the wolves were killed two days later. Also, the remains of a dead wolf were recovered from U.S. Highway 191 near the Taylor Fork junction on March 11. The carcass was taken to the state wildlife laboratory in Bozeman for a necropsy, state wildlife officials said.
Deal expands wildlife habitat Cattle will no longer graze on a prime chunk of habitat for elk, moose, grizzlies and wolves south of Yellowstone National Park, according to a recent agreement. The deal involves 178,000 acres of national forest land southeast of Grand Teton National Park that's been identified as one of the best places for wintering elk. It's also been the source of long-running conflicts between predators and livestock. The National Wildlife Federation brokered a deal to retire grazing allotments in the area as part of a larger effort in the Yellowstone ecosystem to find ranchers willing to accept payment to no longer graze livestock in prime wildlife areas. With the latest deal, the group has put together more than 20 agreements covering nearly 500,000 acres. "We're not trying to get rid of all grazing in the Yellowstone ecosystem," said the group's Hank Fischer. "We're focusing on places where there's been conflict year in and year out." The latest effort involves a $450,000 payment to Fish Creek Cattle Co. owner Scott Stanko for the Bacon Creek and Fish Creek allotments on the Bridger-Teton National Forest in the Upper Gros Ventre drainage, Fischer said. About 100,000 acres will be closed to grazing. The remaining portions will allow infrequent grazing, but the emphasis will be on providing forage and habitat for wildlife....
Federal funds to purchase Plum Creek land holdings Montana Democratic U.S. Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester have recovered more than $8 million in federal funding to buy land in western Montana, including thousands of acres owned by Plum Creek Timber Co. in the Swan and Blackfoot valleys. The funding had earlier been set aside in the fiscal year 2007 spending bill, but temporarily dried up after Congress elected not to fund some earmarked projects. So the senators lobbied agency officials directly for the funding. The Blackfoot Community Project and Swan Valley Forest Legacy Fund each received $3 million to purchase land from Plum Creek. The funding will help The Nature Conservancy preserve 5,206 acres in the Horseshoe Hills area north of the Blackfoot-Clearwater Game Range and about 860 acres of land near Marcum Mountain east of Ovando. Once the deal is completed, The Nature Conservancy will hand over ownership of the Horseshoe Hills property to the U.S. Forest Service, and the Marcum Mountain lands will go the Bureau of Land Management as part of a long-term strategy to protect Plum Creek lands from development....
Antler hunting: Points of contentions For the past 30 years, Neil Trotta and his family have enjoyed collecting antlers shed by deer and elk on their property near East Canyon. Sometimes Trotta sells the antlers to a dealer he knows in Colorado. His home is decorated with lamps, candle holders, even a peace pipe made from antlers which deer and elk shed during February and March. But with a new regulation prohibiting antler collecting in the Division of Wildlife Resources' (DWR) northern region from Feb. 1 through April 30, Trotta and others like him must wait to get started. "You can't do it May 1," said the Utah landowner. "By May 1, the grass has grown and the sagebrush is growing and filled with ticks. The antlers have turned brown. It's hard to find them." DWR assistant director Alan Clark said the regulation was enacted at the recommendation of a group looking at why deer herds in the Cache unit in northern Utah were struggling to reach population objectives. Fawn survival is a major concern. Because the antlers have become valuable, Clark said, more people are searching for them. Some use all-terrain vehicles and drive off dirt roads, damaging habitat and, potentially, stressing fawns. There are reports of people chasing elk from vehicles, hoping the bulls shed their antlers....
Lawsuit challenges state's firefighting commitment A lawsuit filed by a former Nevada Division of Forestry helicopter pilot claims that state and federal officials conspired to pull Nevada out of the business of fighting fires from the air. Gardnerville resident Glenn Marr, 59, alleges in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed last summer that State Forester Peter Anderson decided to improve working relations between the state and federal government when he was hired in 2004. According to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Marr claims that part of that working relationship was to accommodate the federal agencies' desire to take over control of air operations of the Division of Forestry. Marr is suing the state claiming his firing violated his first amendment right to free speech. The complaint alleges that in 2005, the state began reducing the number of pilots and the number of hours flown during fire season. Marr said he complained to state forestry officials Anderson, Robert Ashworth, Mike Dondero, and Peter Cannizarro both directly and through chief pilot Pat Ross that the limitations on air operations were a danger to natural resources, lives, safety and property of residents in the path of wildfires....
Forest Service Once 'Attacked' Pine Beetle Problem One man who worked to save Colorado's forests and trees 50 years ago from a beetle epidemic believes saving the forest is no longer a top priority as pine beetles consume an area of the state the size of Rocky Mountain National Park. The government's handling of the problem now is sometimes criticized as too little, too late. At least 660,000 acres of Colorado pine trees are dead are dying from the current beetle epidemic according to aerial surveys. The government said there's no hope of stopping it. An old Forest Service documentary shows how the beetles were killed 50 years ago with a mixture of deadly pesticide and fuel oil called "goop." Hundreds of workers were trained to head into the forest and fight the beetles' advance. Bill Bailey was one of the so-called goopers. His three man team helped spray a million infected trees. "As far as the forest service was concerned, we practically controlled the infestation at that particular time," said Bailey....
Resident fights for animal owners' rights A Carbondale woman will testify for what she calls "animal owners' rights" before the state Senate's Agriculture Committee today. Lisa Speaker, founder and president of the Colorado Alliance for Animal Owners' Rights, said she will explain to the committee her proposed amendment to the Colorado Veterinary Practices Act. The amendment would allow, among other practices, equine massage therapists to massage horses without direct supervision of a veterinarian, Speaker said. Under the current law, the first conviction for performing an unsupervised massage on a horse is a misdemeanor, and the second a felony under the Colorado Veterinary Practices Act, Speaker said. "The violation is pretty harsh," she said. The bill, HB 1296, is carried by Rep. Wes McKinley, D-Walsh, and Sen. Lois Tochtrop, D-Thornton. It passed the House earlier this year 51-14. The Colorado Veterinary Medical Association, which represents 1,600 veterinarians statewide, opposes the bill. Association president Dr. Stacy Hudelson told the House Agriculture Committee in February her group is "alarmed" by the amendment, which she said would increase risks to the health and well-being of animal patients, "deconstruct" a professional licensing system and allow individual rights to "trump" the public good....Individual rights to trump the public good? Oh no!...I guess the "public good" is the state-enforced monopoly granted to the vets.
Trying to Know Billy the Kid: An Interview with Michael Wallis Michael Wallis’s new book, Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride (W. W. Norton, 328 pages, $25.95), is the closest anyone has come to a definitive biography of the most mythical figure of the American frontier. On July 14, 1881, Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. That is one of the few hard and concrete facts of his life—and even it has been challenged by generations of mythmongers. Beyond that we know little. His mother, Catherine Antrim, was Irish and died of tuberculosis when he was scarcely a teenager. He drifted into New Mexico, got caught up in the swirl of personal, political, and economic clashes known as the Lincoln County War. Nearly everything else said about his life—including when and why he went by the surnames McCarty and Bonney—is open to question. It’s probably a safe bet that he has inspired more books, movies, and controversy per known fact than any other figure in American history. A dime novel hero in his own lifetime, he was the subject of a “biography” by Pat Garrett—or at least with Garrett’s name on the cover—that transcended the dime novels only in length, and his legend generated a small library of pulp by the end of the nineteenth century....
FLE
FBI Violations May Number 3,000, Official Says The Justice Department's inspector general told a committee of angry House members yesterday that the FBI may have violated the law or government policies as many as 3,000 times since 2003 as agents secretly collected the telephone, bank and credit card records of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals residing here. Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that according to the FBI's own estimate, as many as 600 of these violations could be "cases of serious misconduct" involving the improper use of "national security letters" to compel telephone companies, banks and credit institutions to produce records. National security letters are comparable to subpoenas but are issued directly by the bureau without court review. They largely target records of transactions rather than personal documents or conversations. An FBI tally showed that the bureau made an average of 916 such requests each week from 2003 to 2005, but Fine told the House Judiciary Committee that FBI recordkeeping has been chaotic and "significantly understates" the actual use of that tool. Fine, amplifying the criticisms he made in a March 9 report, attributed the FBI's "troubling" abuse of the letters to "mistakes, carelessness, confusion, sloppiness, lack of training, lack of adequate guidance and lack of adequate oversight." His account evoked heated criticism of the bureau from Republicans and Democrats alike, including a comment from Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) that it "sounds like a report about a first- or second-grade class."....
Lawmakers warn FBI it could lose broad spying power following disclosures of abuses Republicans and Democrats sternly warned the FBI on Tuesday that it could lose its broad power to collect telephone, e-mail and financial records to hunt terrorists after revelations of widespread abuses of the authority detailed in a recent internal U.S. investigation. Their threats came as the Justice Department's chief watchdog, Glenn A. Fine, told a House of Representatives panel that the Federal Bureau of Investigation engaged in widespread and serious misuse of its authority in illegally collecting the information from Americans and foreigners through so-called national security letters. If the FBI does not move swiftly to correct the mistakes and problems revealed last week in Fine's 130-page report, "you probably won't have NSL authority," said Rep. Dan Lungren, a Republican and a supporter of the power, referring to the data requests by their initials. "From the attorney general on down, you should be ashamed of yourself," said Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican. "We stretched to try to give you the tools necessary to make America safe, and it is very, very clear that you've abused that trust." If Congress revokes some of the expansive law enforcement powers it granted in the USA Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Issa said, "America may be less safe, but the Constitution will be more secure, and it will be because of your failure to deal with this in a serious fashion."....
Senate Bill Would Mandate Disclosure of Data Mining The Justice Department is opposing bipartisan Senate legislation that would require federal agencies to disclose to Congress data-mining programs they use to find patterns of criminal or terrorist activity, saying that it duplicates a reporting requirement mandated in the 2006 renewal of the USA Patriot Act. The department, however, missed the March 9 deadline to report on its data-mining programs as required by the law. Senate Democrats, who have pressed for disclosure to ensure that privacy and civil liberties were not violated, are not pleased. "This is more stonewalling by the administration to avoid congressional oversight," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who co-sponsored the data-mining provision with Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and John E. Sununu (R-N.H.). "We specifically placed sunshine provisions in the Patriot Act reauthorization to ensure some reasonable checks on the department's data-mining activities that affect millions of Americans," Leahy said. The 2006 Patriot Act mandated a one-time report on Justice data-mining initiatives. The Senate proposal would establish a yearly reporting requirement for all federal agencies. A Justice Department inspector general's report revealed recently that the FBI improperly gathered telephone and financial records of U.S. residents using administrative subpoenas called national security letters, and in some cases merely by citing "exigent circumstances." The report, released two weeks ago, was mandated in the reauthorized Patriot Act over the Bush administration's objections. The report also found that the FBI "significantly understated" to Congress the number of national security letters it had issued. In January, Leahy asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales whether the Justice Department would produce a report on its data-mining activities. He received no reply....
Why data retention legislation would do more harm than good Do you remember every Web site you visited, every email you sent, and every word you Googled during the last two years? Probably not, but your Internet service provider might—especially if a proposal currently popular in Washington becomes law. In September, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called for a law to force Internet service providers (ISPs) to store customer information for one to two years. Rep. Dianne DeGette, D-Colo., plans to introduce such a “data retention” bill this coming spring. Mandated data retention, as proposed by Gonzales and DeGette, would be extremely costly for Internet providers and their customers and would severely harm individual privacy rights—without doing any good. Advocates of mandated data retention argue that it would aid the prosecution of child pornographers, that tracking every step a pedophile makes online is vital to achieve a conviction. Thus, they want all ISPs, search engines, and social networking sites to store their users’ IP addresses. Moreover, some suggest also tracking the identities of e-mail correspondents and recipients of instant messages. DeGette once even suggested making this information available not only to the police but also to civil litigants. Requiring the tracking and storing of every move of every Internet user would impose enormous costs on Internet service providers. Those costs would hurt prospering high tech companies and their employees, as consumers would turn away from online transactions and communications because they would consider them less secure. Meanwhile, consumers would be hurt by seeing their online options limited. In addition to economic harm, governmentally mandated data retention poses serious threats to individual privacy rights....
Conservatives Launch Effort to Rollback Presidential Abuse of Power The Liberty Coalition, a transpartisan public policy group dedicated to preserving the Bill of Rights, personal autonomy and individual privacy, applauds yesterday's launch of the American Freedom Agenda (AFA). A cooperative effort of deeply respected conservative leaders Bruce Fein, Bob Barr, David Keene and Richard Viguery, AFA's mission is to enact legislation that restores "the Constitution's checks and balances" and makes the subject "a staple of political campaigns and of foremost concern to Members of Congress and to voters and educators." At an event at the National Press Club, AFA unveiled a ten point agenda to roll back an accumulation of presidential and executive power that they argue has come at the expense of the legislative and judiciary branches of government. While Presidents have consistently overstepped their constitutional authority since the beginning of the 20th century, AFA asserts that abuse of executive power has exploded since 9/11. In the coming days, AFA will release draft legislation to: -- End the use of military commissions to prosecute crimes. -- Prohibit the use of secret evidence or evidence obtained by torture. -- Prohibit the detention of American citizens as enemy combatants without proof. -- Restore habeas corpus for alleged alien combatants. -- End National Security Agency warrentless wiretapping. -- Empower Congress to challenge presidential signing statements. -- Bar executive use of the state secret privilege to deny justice. -- Prohibit the President from collaborating with foreign governments to kidnap, detain of torture persons abroad. -- Amend the Espionage Act to permit journalists to report on classified national security matters without threat of persecution. -- Prohibit of the labeling of groups or individuals in the U.S. as global terrorists based on secret evidence....
Gunfight at D.C. Corral When Blackstone described the right to carry arms as part of the natural right of "self-preservation," he could not have envisioned the situation of a professional woman coming home late to an empty Washington, D.C., apartment. Yet in a city declared by its police chief to be in a state of "crime emergency" last summer, where being followed home from Metro stops is a not uncommon experience for female residents, where, according to FBI statistics, 3,577 burglaries were reported in 2005, and where even nonlethal Taser guns are a prohibited means of self-defense, Blackstone's description rings powerfully true. It is not surprising, then, that the most recent shots in the jurisprudential struggle over the Second Amendment have been fired here in "gun-free" Washington. On March 9, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided Parker v. District of Columbia, in which the plaintiffs challenged three D.C. gun laws that together effectively prohibit private ownership of handguns in the nation's capital. The first disputed provision bars registration of handguns. The second forbids "carrying" a pistol, even inside one's home. The third requires that pistols be kept unloaded and disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock at all times. All prevent an individual from lawfully defending his or her home against an intruder. In an opinion by Senior Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman, over a dissent by Judge Karen Henderson, the panel struck down the provisions as violating the Second Amendment. In sharp contrast to the bloated Supreme Court jurisprudence growing out of most other amendments, though, the High Court has been nearly silent on the proper interpretation of the Second. The Court's most thorough construction of the provision, in the 1939 case United States v. Miller, did not turn on whether the amendment applies to individual citizens, but on whether a short- barreled shotgun qualifies as a protected "arm." In the absence of Supreme Court guidance, a majority of federal appellate courts have adopted the collective rights model. Most recently, in the 2002 Silveira case, the Ninth Circuit held that "bear arms" refers only to carrying weapons in military service and, thus, the Second Amendment protects only collective rights. Prior to the recent Parker decision, the only federal circuit adopting the individual rights approach was the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Emerson in 2001 (a case discussed by Nelson Lund in this magazine before the decision came down, "Taking the Second Amendment Seriously," July 24, 2000). State appellate courts are likewise divided: Courts in seven states have held for an individual rights interpretation (Colorado, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Tennessee, Washington, and West Virginia), while ten others have adopted the collective rights theory (Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Utah, and Illinois)....
Border Agents Under Fire at Rio Grande Two Border Patrol agents investigating bundles of marijuana left along the Rio Grande exchanged gunfire with unseen assailants shooting from the Mexican side of the river, officials said. The agents were unharmed Tuesday, and no one was believed injured on the Mexican side, Customs and Border Protection spokesman Oscar Saldana said. It was the second time this year agents were fired at near that section of the river, which is less than 150 feet wide at that point. The agents had spotted an inflatable raft near the U.S. side of the river near Donna, a small town near the southern tip of Texas, and found four bundles of marijuana totaling 305 pounds on the river bank, Saldana said. "They went in to take a closer look. At that time the agents came under fire," Saldana said. "They immediately took cover and responded by firing as well." The raft, carrying more marijuana, apparently returned to the Mexican shore....
Mich. man's charity mower ride derailed for lack of registration A Michigan man's effort to drive around he country on a lawnmower to raise money for charity might have been cut short by a police officer who said his vehicle needed to be registered to be used on public roads. Louis Ransom, also known as ''Travlndude,'' of Fife Lake, Mich., stopped in Montpelier on Friday hoping to meet the governor when he was stopped by Montpelier Officer Jim Pontbriand. ''Vehicles that travel on our highways are required to be registered and to have a plate,'' Pontbriand said. Ransom said he'd researched the registration requirements for each state. He said he thought that ''as long as I had a slow-moving vehicle sign I would be OK, but my research must not have been thorough enough.'' Ransom's vehicle was escorted to a state parking lot. Ransom said he was committed to continuing his drive. He is raising money for the Children's Miracle Network and Shriner's Hospitals For Children....
FBI Violations May Number 3,000, Official Says The Justice Department's inspector general told a committee of angry House members yesterday that the FBI may have violated the law or government policies as many as 3,000 times since 2003 as agents secretly collected the telephone, bank and credit card records of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals residing here. Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that according to the FBI's own estimate, as many as 600 of these violations could be "cases of serious misconduct" involving the improper use of "national security letters" to compel telephone companies, banks and credit institutions to produce records. National security letters are comparable to subpoenas but are issued directly by the bureau without court review. They largely target records of transactions rather than personal documents or conversations. An FBI tally showed that the bureau made an average of 916 such requests each week from 2003 to 2005, but Fine told the House Judiciary Committee that FBI recordkeeping has been chaotic and "significantly understates" the actual use of that tool. Fine, amplifying the criticisms he made in a March 9 report, attributed the FBI's "troubling" abuse of the letters to "mistakes, carelessness, confusion, sloppiness, lack of training, lack of adequate guidance and lack of adequate oversight." His account evoked heated criticism of the bureau from Republicans and Democrats alike, including a comment from Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) that it "sounds like a report about a first- or second-grade class."....
Lawmakers warn FBI it could lose broad spying power following disclosures of abuses Republicans and Democrats sternly warned the FBI on Tuesday that it could lose its broad power to collect telephone, e-mail and financial records to hunt terrorists after revelations of widespread abuses of the authority detailed in a recent internal U.S. investigation. Their threats came as the Justice Department's chief watchdog, Glenn A. Fine, told a House of Representatives panel that the Federal Bureau of Investigation engaged in widespread and serious misuse of its authority in illegally collecting the information from Americans and foreigners through so-called national security letters. If the FBI does not move swiftly to correct the mistakes and problems revealed last week in Fine's 130-page report, "you probably won't have NSL authority," said Rep. Dan Lungren, a Republican and a supporter of the power, referring to the data requests by their initials. "From the attorney general on down, you should be ashamed of yourself," said Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican. "We stretched to try to give you the tools necessary to make America safe, and it is very, very clear that you've abused that trust." If Congress revokes some of the expansive law enforcement powers it granted in the USA Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Issa said, "America may be less safe, but the Constitution will be more secure, and it will be because of your failure to deal with this in a serious fashion."....
Senate Bill Would Mandate Disclosure of Data Mining The Justice Department is opposing bipartisan Senate legislation that would require federal agencies to disclose to Congress data-mining programs they use to find patterns of criminal or terrorist activity, saying that it duplicates a reporting requirement mandated in the 2006 renewal of the USA Patriot Act. The department, however, missed the March 9 deadline to report on its data-mining programs as required by the law. Senate Democrats, who have pressed for disclosure to ensure that privacy and civil liberties were not violated, are not pleased. "This is more stonewalling by the administration to avoid congressional oversight," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who co-sponsored the data-mining provision with Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and John E. Sununu (R-N.H.). "We specifically placed sunshine provisions in the Patriot Act reauthorization to ensure some reasonable checks on the department's data-mining activities that affect millions of Americans," Leahy said. The 2006 Patriot Act mandated a one-time report on Justice data-mining initiatives. The Senate proposal would establish a yearly reporting requirement for all federal agencies. A Justice Department inspector general's report revealed recently that the FBI improperly gathered telephone and financial records of U.S. residents using administrative subpoenas called national security letters, and in some cases merely by citing "exigent circumstances." The report, released two weeks ago, was mandated in the reauthorized Patriot Act over the Bush administration's objections. The report also found that the FBI "significantly understated" to Congress the number of national security letters it had issued. In January, Leahy asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales whether the Justice Department would produce a report on its data-mining activities. He received no reply....
Why data retention legislation would do more harm than good Do you remember every Web site you visited, every email you sent, and every word you Googled during the last two years? Probably not, but your Internet service provider might—especially if a proposal currently popular in Washington becomes law. In September, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called for a law to force Internet service providers (ISPs) to store customer information for one to two years. Rep. Dianne DeGette, D-Colo., plans to introduce such a “data retention” bill this coming spring. Mandated data retention, as proposed by Gonzales and DeGette, would be extremely costly for Internet providers and their customers and would severely harm individual privacy rights—without doing any good. Advocates of mandated data retention argue that it would aid the prosecution of child pornographers, that tracking every step a pedophile makes online is vital to achieve a conviction. Thus, they want all ISPs, search engines, and social networking sites to store their users’ IP addresses. Moreover, some suggest also tracking the identities of e-mail correspondents and recipients of instant messages. DeGette once even suggested making this information available not only to the police but also to civil litigants. Requiring the tracking and storing of every move of every Internet user would impose enormous costs on Internet service providers. Those costs would hurt prospering high tech companies and their employees, as consumers would turn away from online transactions and communications because they would consider them less secure. Meanwhile, consumers would be hurt by seeing their online options limited. In addition to economic harm, governmentally mandated data retention poses serious threats to individual privacy rights....
Conservatives Launch Effort to Rollback Presidential Abuse of Power The Liberty Coalition, a transpartisan public policy group dedicated to preserving the Bill of Rights, personal autonomy and individual privacy, applauds yesterday's launch of the American Freedom Agenda (AFA). A cooperative effort of deeply respected conservative leaders Bruce Fein, Bob Barr, David Keene and Richard Viguery, AFA's mission is to enact legislation that restores "the Constitution's checks and balances" and makes the subject "a staple of political campaigns and of foremost concern to Members of Congress and to voters and educators." At an event at the National Press Club, AFA unveiled a ten point agenda to roll back an accumulation of presidential and executive power that they argue has come at the expense of the legislative and judiciary branches of government. While Presidents have consistently overstepped their constitutional authority since the beginning of the 20th century, AFA asserts that abuse of executive power has exploded since 9/11. In the coming days, AFA will release draft legislation to: -- End the use of military commissions to prosecute crimes. -- Prohibit the use of secret evidence or evidence obtained by torture. -- Prohibit the detention of American citizens as enemy combatants without proof. -- Restore habeas corpus for alleged alien combatants. -- End National Security Agency warrentless wiretapping. -- Empower Congress to challenge presidential signing statements. -- Bar executive use of the state secret privilege to deny justice. -- Prohibit the President from collaborating with foreign governments to kidnap, detain of torture persons abroad. -- Amend the Espionage Act to permit journalists to report on classified national security matters without threat of persecution. -- Prohibit of the labeling of groups or individuals in the U.S. as global terrorists based on secret evidence....
Gunfight at D.C. Corral When Blackstone described the right to carry arms as part of the natural right of "self-preservation," he could not have envisioned the situation of a professional woman coming home late to an empty Washington, D.C., apartment. Yet in a city declared by its police chief to be in a state of "crime emergency" last summer, where being followed home from Metro stops is a not uncommon experience for female residents, where, according to FBI statistics, 3,577 burglaries were reported in 2005, and where even nonlethal Taser guns are a prohibited means of self-defense, Blackstone's description rings powerfully true. It is not surprising, then, that the most recent shots in the jurisprudential struggle over the Second Amendment have been fired here in "gun-free" Washington. On March 9, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided Parker v. District of Columbia, in which the plaintiffs challenged three D.C. gun laws that together effectively prohibit private ownership of handguns in the nation's capital. The first disputed provision bars registration of handguns. The second forbids "carrying" a pistol, even inside one's home. The third requires that pistols be kept unloaded and disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock at all times. All prevent an individual from lawfully defending his or her home against an intruder. In an opinion by Senior Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman, over a dissent by Judge Karen Henderson, the panel struck down the provisions as violating the Second Amendment. In sharp contrast to the bloated Supreme Court jurisprudence growing out of most other amendments, though, the High Court has been nearly silent on the proper interpretation of the Second. The Court's most thorough construction of the provision, in the 1939 case United States v. Miller, did not turn on whether the amendment applies to individual citizens, but on whether a short- barreled shotgun qualifies as a protected "arm." In the absence of Supreme Court guidance, a majority of federal appellate courts have adopted the collective rights model. Most recently, in the 2002 Silveira case, the Ninth Circuit held that "bear arms" refers only to carrying weapons in military service and, thus, the Second Amendment protects only collective rights. Prior to the recent Parker decision, the only federal circuit adopting the individual rights approach was the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Emerson in 2001 (a case discussed by Nelson Lund in this magazine before the decision came down, "Taking the Second Amendment Seriously," July 24, 2000). State appellate courts are likewise divided: Courts in seven states have held for an individual rights interpretation (Colorado, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Tennessee, Washington, and West Virginia), while ten others have adopted the collective rights theory (Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Utah, and Illinois)....
Border Agents Under Fire at Rio Grande Two Border Patrol agents investigating bundles of marijuana left along the Rio Grande exchanged gunfire with unseen assailants shooting from the Mexican side of the river, officials said. The agents were unharmed Tuesday, and no one was believed injured on the Mexican side, Customs and Border Protection spokesman Oscar Saldana said. It was the second time this year agents were fired at near that section of the river, which is less than 150 feet wide at that point. The agents had spotted an inflatable raft near the U.S. side of the river near Donna, a small town near the southern tip of Texas, and found four bundles of marijuana totaling 305 pounds on the river bank, Saldana said. "They went in to take a closer look. At that time the agents came under fire," Saldana said. "They immediately took cover and responded by firing as well." The raft, carrying more marijuana, apparently returned to the Mexican shore....
Mich. man's charity mower ride derailed for lack of registration A Michigan man's effort to drive around he country on a lawnmower to raise money for charity might have been cut short by a police officer who said his vehicle needed to be registered to be used on public roads. Louis Ransom, also known as ''Travlndude,'' of Fife Lake, Mich., stopped in Montpelier on Friday hoping to meet the governor when he was stopped by Montpelier Officer Jim Pontbriand. ''Vehicles that travel on our highways are required to be registered and to have a plate,'' Pontbriand said. Ransom said he'd researched the registration requirements for each state. He said he thought that ''as long as I had a slow-moving vehicle sign I would be OK, but my research must not have been thorough enough.'' Ransom's vehicle was escorted to a state parking lot. Ransom said he was committed to continuing his drive. He is raising money for the Children's Miracle Network and Shriner's Hospitals For Children....
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
Congress Looks at Solutions to Yellowstone Bison Debate Congressman, Denny Rehberg raised his voice Tuesday at a Congressional oversight hearing about the bison in Yellowstone National Park, the feared transmission of calf-aborting brucellosis from bison to Montana’s cattle, and the resulting years of killing and hazing thousands of bison that wandered out of the park in search of food. “I have an answer,” Rehberg thundered in his leadoff statement to the House Natural Resources Committee panel that oversees national parks. “Why don’t you fix your herd?” Fixing the herd—by stamping out brucellosis entirely—was central in the discussions toward solving the Yellowstone bison standoff. The hearing of the National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands Subcommittee, now chaired by Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, was the first ever to address the issue. Also new for the new Congress was testimony from the Buffalo Field Campaign, which advocates giving buffalo full access to all suitable habitat in Montana within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and managing cattle grazing in the area to keep them brucellosis-free....
Editorial - Park bison dispute migrates to Congress Migration of Yellowstone bison and federal rules on bovine health were the focus of a U.S. House subcommittee hearing Tuesday in Washington, D.C. The hearing plowed the same ground the bison debate has occupied for too many years. On Aug. 31, 1999, U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit, Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus and representatives of the Church Universal and Triumphant were among 250 people attending a ceremony at Corwin Springs to herald the preservation of thousands of acres of land just outside Yellowstone's northern boundary. U.S. taxpayers purchased about 8,000 acres from the church for $13 million. "This valley is to be available for bison," Babbitt said that day. "We need to reach an agreement about a common management plan." The bison management plan remains in "step 1" because cattle from the church's Royal Teton Ranch still graze near the park's north boundary in winter, Robin Nazzaro, of the General Accountability Office said. When the money was spent, the participating federal and state agencies expected to obtain grazing rights by the winter of 2002-03. "The value of this acquisition for the bison herd is minimal" without the winter grazing rights, Nazzaro testified....
Democrats in Congress want to stop bison slaughter Montana officials clashed with members of the House Natural Resources Committee Tuesday as the panel’s chairman said he is adamantly opposed to the “murder” of Yellowstone National Park bison. West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, the Democrat who took charge of the committee in January, has long opposed slaughtering bison that wander outside the park and has in the past tried to stop it. He hinted at a House subcommittee hearing on the issue that he may try again. “Slaughter is not management,” Rahall said. “It is an approach from a bygone era and has no place in time of rapid and scientific and economic progress. We are capable of more ingenuity and more compassion if we are willing to try.” Rahall noted that he offered an amendment in 2003 that would have stopped the slaughter of all Yellowstone bison. The amendment was defeated, 220-199. “That vote was a harbinger of what will come, that the status quo is no longer sufficient.” Rahall said.....
DU fights for land reserves Did you know that the U.S. government pays American farmers and ranchers to set aside land, let it rest and not use it to grow crops? The program is known as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which to the uninitiated appears to be a waste of taxpayer money, but that isn't necessarily so. The CRPs all across this nation, according to the Ducks Unlimited conservation organization, have proved valuable for waterfowl and wildlife production, particularly in the Prairie Pothole Region, which is believed to be the best waterfowl breeding area in the world. With that in mind, a number of DU representatives last week met with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner and officials of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality to discuss what DU believes are problems facing the land conservation programs. The fear is that during the current energy crisis, farmers will be urged to grow crops to be converted into biofuels, at the same time driving up land prices and forcing farmers to weigh the dollar amount offered for a CRP vs. the money that could be made if they jumped into the biofuel pool....
Congress Braces For Global Warming Onslaught A one-two punch in favor of global warming legislation will land on Capitol Hill this week, as former Vice President Al Gore testifies before House and Senate committees following an "action day" involving thousands of environmental activists. Gore is scheduled to testify before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce early Wednesday. The hearing entitled "Perspectives on Climate Change" will also feature Gore critic, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Denmark and author of the controversial book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." Later in the day, the former vice president will testify again, this time before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. No additional witnesses have yet been scheduled to testify....
Al Gore Continues to Demand Special Treatment Former Vice President Al Gore, despite being given major preferential treatment, has violated the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee’s (EPW) hearing rules. Gore first demanded to be granted an unprecedented 30 minute opening statement to the Senate EPW Committee for Wednesday’s (March 21) global warming hearing scheduled for 2:30 pm ET. The GOP minority on the EPW committee agreed to the 30 minute opening statement. But then Gore demanded a waiver of the EPW committee’s 48 hour rule that requires all witnesses before EPW to submit their testimony in advance. The GOP minority on the EPW committee then agreed to waive the 48 hour rule in favor of allowing Gore to submit his testimony 24 hours before the hearing. But in a breaking news development on Capitol Hill -- the former Vice President has violated the new 24 hour deadline extension by failing to submit his testimony – even with the new time extension granted to Gore....
Climate scientist sees cover-up A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he'd done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years. James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who argues global warming could be catastrophic, said NASA staffers denied his request to do a National Public Radio interview because they didn't want his message to get out. But Republicans told him the hundreds of other interviews he did belie his broad claim he was being silenced. "We have over 1,400 opportunities that you've availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled," said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican. Mr. Hansen responded: "For the sake of the taxpayers, they should be availed of my expertise. I shouldn't be required to parrot some company line."....
Bill introduced to conserve America's open spaces and farmland California U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (D) and Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) have introduced a bill to help landowners conserve our country's precious agricultural land and open spaces. The bill would permanently extend an important tax incentive for farmers and ranchers who donate their land's development rights to local land trusts, creating a conservation easement. The currently available tax deduction for conservation easements, which expires at the end of the year, has been extremely successful at encouraging landowners to preserve their land's agricultural purpose rather than sell it to developers. The conservation easement tax provision encourages landowners to protect their land from development by giving them a tax deduction equal to the land's development value. Once placed under a conservation easement, the land cannot be developed at any time in the future, even if the land is sold. However, the landowner and all future owners can continue to farm the land. Specifically, the provision provides a tax deduction equal to the land's development value up to 50 percent of the land donor's income for all individuals except ranchers and farmers, who are capped at 100 percent of the donor's income. The deduction can be carried forward for 15 years....
Senators Say Timber Payments Extended Payments to rural counties hurt by cutbacks in federal logging would continue for five more years under a deal announced Tuesday by Senate Democrats. The deal, said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other Western senators, would authorize about $2.8 billion to extend the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act through 2011. Another $1.9 billion would be directed to rural states through a proposal to fully fund the Payments in Lieu of Taxes program, which reimburses state and local governments for federally owned property. Details were still being finalized, but lawmakers said the plan would allocate $526 million in emergency spending to extend the law for one year. The so-called county payments program helps pay for schools, roads and public safety in 700 rural counties in 39 states, with most of the money going to the West....
Manhattan Beach Makes Amends The California town of Manhattan Beach is hoping to make amends for using its powers of eminent domain to take land from black families more than 80 years ago. The city council voted to rename the two block neighborhood it turned into a public park after the African-American couple that bought the land overlooking the Pacific Ocean in 1912, The Los Angeles Times reported. Charles and Willa Bruce had created one of the few places in Southern California where black families could swim. In 1924, city leaders decided the land should be turned into a public park and they condemned a two-block area that was home to several minority families in addition to the Bruce's resort. Three decades went by before a park was built on the land....
Navajo seek official's ouster Utah's Navajo tribal leaders are ratcheting up the pressure on the state's top public lands official. After a former Navajo tribal councilman went public in January with complaints about Lynn Stevens - who heads Utah's Public Lands Policy Coordination Office - members of the Navajo Utah Commission asked Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to remove Stevens from his state post and his seat on the board of trustees for the Utah Navajo Trust Fund, which administers oil and gas royalties from energy development on tribal lands. In a pair of Feb. 26 letters to Huntsman, Navajo Utah Commission Chair Lena Manheimer says that Stevens has failed to follow proper procedures in the allocation of trust fund monies, and has a conflict of interest because he also serves as a member of the San Juan County Commission. Manheimer also says Stevens has failed to heed tribal concerns over the road in Arch Canyon, currently the scene of a battle over off-highway vehicle use. The county commission claims the road as a county right-of-way; tribal leaders want the road closed to OHV traffic because of American Indian artifacts in the canyon....
Mystery Foam Discovered Floating Down Green River What's causing foul-smelling foam on the Green River in Utah? Government agencies want to solve the mystery. Is it illegal pollution or just one of nature's tricks? There's a good chance the foam, which ran more than 50 miles down the Green River, is a natural phenomenon triggered by our unusual weather; but there are puzzling, unusual aspects. Most agencies started scrambling yesterday and today, even though the foam was reported more than a week ago. Chopper Five caught up with the mystery foam late in the game. It was nearly gone, a 50-foot span of foam disintegrating in the rapids of Desolation Canyon. Trailing behind was a sheen of unknown origin....
Off-road trails closed at Nevada dunes to help rare butterfly Federal land managers working to keep a rare Nevada butterfly off the list of endangered species have closed scores of off-road vehicle trails at one of the biggest, most popular sand dunes in the West. The closure affects about six square miles of public land where an ancient lake once existed. The emergency order replaces a voluntary measure the U.S. Bureau of Land Management imposed two years ago on a portion of up to 200 miles of trails that run through shrubs and other vegetation that is home to the Sand Mountain Blue Butterfly, the BLM said. Agency officials could not say how many miles of trails were closed but said the main sand dunes at Sand Mountain where most motorized use occurs will remain open. An estimated 50,000 outdoor enthusiasts in dune buggies, motorcycles and other off-road vehicles annually traverse the 600-foot tall, two-mile long dunes about 75 miles east of Reno....
Taking another walk in space Buzz Aldrin - a retired astronaut who is used to taking historic first steps in desolate terrain - took the ceremonial walk to open Grand Canyon West's glass-bottomed Skywalk bridge Tuesday. During his famed 1969 moon walk, he was the second man to descend from a state-of-the-art lunar lander onto a dusty landscape. This time around, Aldrin stepped across desert terrain onto another feat of engineering, a $30 million structure that juts 70 feet over the Grand Canyon's edge. Aldrin, speaking on the bridge while standing next to other dignitaries, said the Skywalk offers "a future of hope" for the Hualapai people. Unlike the moon, which hasn't seen a visitor in decades, the Hualapai Nation is betting thousands will follow in Aldrin's footsteps at Grand Canyon West. John Herrington, the first American Indian astronaut to fly in space, took the ceremonial first steps from the other end of the U-shaped Skywalk....
Oxnard to give coyotes an earful Oxnard's code compliance manager has purchased 1,000 hand-held boat horns to help residents scare off coyotes and other stray animals. Dirk Voss said he bought the horns early last month after residents in the city's River Ridge neighborhood complained that coyotes likely killed several domestic pets. At least three cats disappeared from the neighborhood around November. Residents at the time reported hearing packs of coyotes yipping at night, while sightings of the animals and their droppings at the nearby River Ridge Golf Course grew more frequent.
Experts blame dry weather for a sudden uptick in urban sightings of coyotes, including parts of Los Angeles....
Climber Potter, Patagonia agree to split the synchilla Dean Potter and his wife, Steph Davis, two of the most accomplished mountaineers in the world, will no longer be rock climbing ambassadors for the Patagonia outdoors clothing company, Potter said this week in Jackson. The split between the famous couple and the well-known company comes almost a year after Potter made a controversial ascent of Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, Utah, last spring. The latest development in Potter’s high-profile career, which moved into dicey terrain following the arch ascent, will put him at arm’s length from a company that has pioneered environmentalism around the globe in a fashion never before seen. Potter, a superb alpinist, rock climber, slackline walker, BASE jumper and aerialist, is breaking such new ground in the mountain scene that Alpinist Film Festival organizer Christian Beckwith labeled him a “climbing provocateur.” In Jackson to attend that gathering last weekend, Potter said in an interview that he and Davis would end their relationship with the Ventura, Calif., firm, owned by Jackson Hole homeowners Yvon and Malinda Chouinard....
Nature Conservancy Applauds House Commitment to Preserve National Parks Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 658, the Natural Resource Protection Cooperative Agreement Act, by an overwhelming margin of 390-10. The Nature Conservancy applauds this legislation, spearheaded by Congressman Jon Porter (R-NV). The measure additionally received the strong support of Natural Resources Committee for National Parks and Forests, Public Lands Subcommittee Chairman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), and Ranking Member Robert Bishop (R-UT). If passed, this bill would authorize the Secretary of the Interior to enter into cooperative agreements to protect natural resources within the National Park System. This would allow the National Park Service to work in collaboration with a broader range of partners, both inside and outside the boundaries of park units, to protect important lands – especially from invasive species. For example, the Park service could more efficiently collaborate with partners to control or eradicate invasive species before they cause harm within a National Park....
Air, Water Powerful Partners in Northwest Like mail-order brides, thousands of long-limbed wind turbines are coming to the empty outback of Washington and Oregon, where they are being married off, via the electrical grid, to hulking old hydroelectric dams. These are arranged weddings for a warming world -- designed never to give birth to greenhouse gases. The Pacific Northwest is hardly alone as it chases the wind for clean power. Anxiety about climate change and surging demand for electricity have triggered a wind-power frenzy in much of the United States, making it the fastest growing wind-energy market in the world. Power-generating capacity from wind jumped 27 percent last year and is expected to do the same this year. But it is in the Northwest where wind power, an often capricious source of electricity, meshes most seamlessly with the existing electricity grid, which relies heavily on hydroelectric dams, power managers say. This meshing of power sources is done in a way that maximizes power reliability while minimizing the grid's need for energy from fossil fuels, which release the greenhouses gases that cause global warming....
Congress Looks at Solutions to Yellowstone Bison Debate Congressman, Denny Rehberg raised his voice Tuesday at a Congressional oversight hearing about the bison in Yellowstone National Park, the feared transmission of calf-aborting brucellosis from bison to Montana’s cattle, and the resulting years of killing and hazing thousands of bison that wandered out of the park in search of food. “I have an answer,” Rehberg thundered in his leadoff statement to the House Natural Resources Committee panel that oversees national parks. “Why don’t you fix your herd?” Fixing the herd—by stamping out brucellosis entirely—was central in the discussions toward solving the Yellowstone bison standoff. The hearing of the National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands Subcommittee, now chaired by Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, was the first ever to address the issue. Also new for the new Congress was testimony from the Buffalo Field Campaign, which advocates giving buffalo full access to all suitable habitat in Montana within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and managing cattle grazing in the area to keep them brucellosis-free....
Editorial - Park bison dispute migrates to Congress Migration of Yellowstone bison and federal rules on bovine health were the focus of a U.S. House subcommittee hearing Tuesday in Washington, D.C. The hearing plowed the same ground the bison debate has occupied for too many years. On Aug. 31, 1999, U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit, Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus and representatives of the Church Universal and Triumphant were among 250 people attending a ceremony at Corwin Springs to herald the preservation of thousands of acres of land just outside Yellowstone's northern boundary. U.S. taxpayers purchased about 8,000 acres from the church for $13 million. "This valley is to be available for bison," Babbitt said that day. "We need to reach an agreement about a common management plan." The bison management plan remains in "step 1" because cattle from the church's Royal Teton Ranch still graze near the park's north boundary in winter, Robin Nazzaro, of the General Accountability Office said. When the money was spent, the participating federal and state agencies expected to obtain grazing rights by the winter of 2002-03. "The value of this acquisition for the bison herd is minimal" without the winter grazing rights, Nazzaro testified....
Democrats in Congress want to stop bison slaughter Montana officials clashed with members of the House Natural Resources Committee Tuesday as the panel’s chairman said he is adamantly opposed to the “murder” of Yellowstone National Park bison. West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, the Democrat who took charge of the committee in January, has long opposed slaughtering bison that wander outside the park and has in the past tried to stop it. He hinted at a House subcommittee hearing on the issue that he may try again. “Slaughter is not management,” Rahall said. “It is an approach from a bygone era and has no place in time of rapid and scientific and economic progress. We are capable of more ingenuity and more compassion if we are willing to try.” Rahall noted that he offered an amendment in 2003 that would have stopped the slaughter of all Yellowstone bison. The amendment was defeated, 220-199. “That vote was a harbinger of what will come, that the status quo is no longer sufficient.” Rahall said.....
DU fights for land reserves Did you know that the U.S. government pays American farmers and ranchers to set aside land, let it rest and not use it to grow crops? The program is known as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which to the uninitiated appears to be a waste of taxpayer money, but that isn't necessarily so. The CRPs all across this nation, according to the Ducks Unlimited conservation organization, have proved valuable for waterfowl and wildlife production, particularly in the Prairie Pothole Region, which is believed to be the best waterfowl breeding area in the world. With that in mind, a number of DU representatives last week met with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner and officials of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality to discuss what DU believes are problems facing the land conservation programs. The fear is that during the current energy crisis, farmers will be urged to grow crops to be converted into biofuels, at the same time driving up land prices and forcing farmers to weigh the dollar amount offered for a CRP vs. the money that could be made if they jumped into the biofuel pool....
Congress Braces For Global Warming Onslaught A one-two punch in favor of global warming legislation will land on Capitol Hill this week, as former Vice President Al Gore testifies before House and Senate committees following an "action day" involving thousands of environmental activists. Gore is scheduled to testify before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce early Wednesday. The hearing entitled "Perspectives on Climate Change" will also feature Gore critic, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Denmark and author of the controversial book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." Later in the day, the former vice president will testify again, this time before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. No additional witnesses have yet been scheduled to testify....
Al Gore Continues to Demand Special Treatment Former Vice President Al Gore, despite being given major preferential treatment, has violated the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee’s (EPW) hearing rules. Gore first demanded to be granted an unprecedented 30 minute opening statement to the Senate EPW Committee for Wednesday’s (March 21) global warming hearing scheduled for 2:30 pm ET. The GOP minority on the EPW committee agreed to the 30 minute opening statement. But then Gore demanded a waiver of the EPW committee’s 48 hour rule that requires all witnesses before EPW to submit their testimony in advance. The GOP minority on the EPW committee then agreed to waive the 48 hour rule in favor of allowing Gore to submit his testimony 24 hours before the hearing. But in a breaking news development on Capitol Hill -- the former Vice President has violated the new 24 hour deadline extension by failing to submit his testimony – even with the new time extension granted to Gore....
Climate scientist sees cover-up A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he'd done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years. James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who argues global warming could be catastrophic, said NASA staffers denied his request to do a National Public Radio interview because they didn't want his message to get out. But Republicans told him the hundreds of other interviews he did belie his broad claim he was being silenced. "We have over 1,400 opportunities that you've availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled," said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican. Mr. Hansen responded: "For the sake of the taxpayers, they should be availed of my expertise. I shouldn't be required to parrot some company line."....
Bill introduced to conserve America's open spaces and farmland California U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (D) and Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) have introduced a bill to help landowners conserve our country's precious agricultural land and open spaces. The bill would permanently extend an important tax incentive for farmers and ranchers who donate their land's development rights to local land trusts, creating a conservation easement. The currently available tax deduction for conservation easements, which expires at the end of the year, has been extremely successful at encouraging landowners to preserve their land's agricultural purpose rather than sell it to developers. The conservation easement tax provision encourages landowners to protect their land from development by giving them a tax deduction equal to the land's development value. Once placed under a conservation easement, the land cannot be developed at any time in the future, even if the land is sold. However, the landowner and all future owners can continue to farm the land. Specifically, the provision provides a tax deduction equal to the land's development value up to 50 percent of the land donor's income for all individuals except ranchers and farmers, who are capped at 100 percent of the donor's income. The deduction can be carried forward for 15 years....
Senators Say Timber Payments Extended Payments to rural counties hurt by cutbacks in federal logging would continue for five more years under a deal announced Tuesday by Senate Democrats. The deal, said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other Western senators, would authorize about $2.8 billion to extend the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act through 2011. Another $1.9 billion would be directed to rural states through a proposal to fully fund the Payments in Lieu of Taxes program, which reimburses state and local governments for federally owned property. Details were still being finalized, but lawmakers said the plan would allocate $526 million in emergency spending to extend the law for one year. The so-called county payments program helps pay for schools, roads and public safety in 700 rural counties in 39 states, with most of the money going to the West....
Manhattan Beach Makes Amends The California town of Manhattan Beach is hoping to make amends for using its powers of eminent domain to take land from black families more than 80 years ago. The city council voted to rename the two block neighborhood it turned into a public park after the African-American couple that bought the land overlooking the Pacific Ocean in 1912, The Los Angeles Times reported. Charles and Willa Bruce had created one of the few places in Southern California where black families could swim. In 1924, city leaders decided the land should be turned into a public park and they condemned a two-block area that was home to several minority families in addition to the Bruce's resort. Three decades went by before a park was built on the land....
Navajo seek official's ouster Utah's Navajo tribal leaders are ratcheting up the pressure on the state's top public lands official. After a former Navajo tribal councilman went public in January with complaints about Lynn Stevens - who heads Utah's Public Lands Policy Coordination Office - members of the Navajo Utah Commission asked Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to remove Stevens from his state post and his seat on the board of trustees for the Utah Navajo Trust Fund, which administers oil and gas royalties from energy development on tribal lands. In a pair of Feb. 26 letters to Huntsman, Navajo Utah Commission Chair Lena Manheimer says that Stevens has failed to follow proper procedures in the allocation of trust fund monies, and has a conflict of interest because he also serves as a member of the San Juan County Commission. Manheimer also says Stevens has failed to heed tribal concerns over the road in Arch Canyon, currently the scene of a battle over off-highway vehicle use. The county commission claims the road as a county right-of-way; tribal leaders want the road closed to OHV traffic because of American Indian artifacts in the canyon....
Mystery Foam Discovered Floating Down Green River What's causing foul-smelling foam on the Green River in Utah? Government agencies want to solve the mystery. Is it illegal pollution or just one of nature's tricks? There's a good chance the foam, which ran more than 50 miles down the Green River, is a natural phenomenon triggered by our unusual weather; but there are puzzling, unusual aspects. Most agencies started scrambling yesterday and today, even though the foam was reported more than a week ago. Chopper Five caught up with the mystery foam late in the game. It was nearly gone, a 50-foot span of foam disintegrating in the rapids of Desolation Canyon. Trailing behind was a sheen of unknown origin....
Off-road trails closed at Nevada dunes to help rare butterfly Federal land managers working to keep a rare Nevada butterfly off the list of endangered species have closed scores of off-road vehicle trails at one of the biggest, most popular sand dunes in the West. The closure affects about six square miles of public land where an ancient lake once existed. The emergency order replaces a voluntary measure the U.S. Bureau of Land Management imposed two years ago on a portion of up to 200 miles of trails that run through shrubs and other vegetation that is home to the Sand Mountain Blue Butterfly, the BLM said. Agency officials could not say how many miles of trails were closed but said the main sand dunes at Sand Mountain where most motorized use occurs will remain open. An estimated 50,000 outdoor enthusiasts in dune buggies, motorcycles and other off-road vehicles annually traverse the 600-foot tall, two-mile long dunes about 75 miles east of Reno....
Taking another walk in space Buzz Aldrin - a retired astronaut who is used to taking historic first steps in desolate terrain - took the ceremonial walk to open Grand Canyon West's glass-bottomed Skywalk bridge Tuesday. During his famed 1969 moon walk, he was the second man to descend from a state-of-the-art lunar lander onto a dusty landscape. This time around, Aldrin stepped across desert terrain onto another feat of engineering, a $30 million structure that juts 70 feet over the Grand Canyon's edge. Aldrin, speaking on the bridge while standing next to other dignitaries, said the Skywalk offers "a future of hope" for the Hualapai people. Unlike the moon, which hasn't seen a visitor in decades, the Hualapai Nation is betting thousands will follow in Aldrin's footsteps at Grand Canyon West. John Herrington, the first American Indian astronaut to fly in space, took the ceremonial first steps from the other end of the U-shaped Skywalk....
Oxnard to give coyotes an earful Oxnard's code compliance manager has purchased 1,000 hand-held boat horns to help residents scare off coyotes and other stray animals. Dirk Voss said he bought the horns early last month after residents in the city's River Ridge neighborhood complained that coyotes likely killed several domestic pets. At least three cats disappeared from the neighborhood around November. Residents at the time reported hearing packs of coyotes yipping at night, while sightings of the animals and their droppings at the nearby River Ridge Golf Course grew more frequent.
Experts blame dry weather for a sudden uptick in urban sightings of coyotes, including parts of Los Angeles....
Climber Potter, Patagonia agree to split the synchilla Dean Potter and his wife, Steph Davis, two of the most accomplished mountaineers in the world, will no longer be rock climbing ambassadors for the Patagonia outdoors clothing company, Potter said this week in Jackson. The split between the famous couple and the well-known company comes almost a year after Potter made a controversial ascent of Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, Utah, last spring. The latest development in Potter’s high-profile career, which moved into dicey terrain following the arch ascent, will put him at arm’s length from a company that has pioneered environmentalism around the globe in a fashion never before seen. Potter, a superb alpinist, rock climber, slackline walker, BASE jumper and aerialist, is breaking such new ground in the mountain scene that Alpinist Film Festival organizer Christian Beckwith labeled him a “climbing provocateur.” In Jackson to attend that gathering last weekend, Potter said in an interview that he and Davis would end their relationship with the Ventura, Calif., firm, owned by Jackson Hole homeowners Yvon and Malinda Chouinard....
Nature Conservancy Applauds House Commitment to Preserve National Parks Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 658, the Natural Resource Protection Cooperative Agreement Act, by an overwhelming margin of 390-10. The Nature Conservancy applauds this legislation, spearheaded by Congressman Jon Porter (R-NV). The measure additionally received the strong support of Natural Resources Committee for National Parks and Forests, Public Lands Subcommittee Chairman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), and Ranking Member Robert Bishop (R-UT). If passed, this bill would authorize the Secretary of the Interior to enter into cooperative agreements to protect natural resources within the National Park System. This would allow the National Park Service to work in collaboration with a broader range of partners, both inside and outside the boundaries of park units, to protect important lands – especially from invasive species. For example, the Park service could more efficiently collaborate with partners to control or eradicate invasive species before they cause harm within a National Park....
Air, Water Powerful Partners in Northwest Like mail-order brides, thousands of long-limbed wind turbines are coming to the empty outback of Washington and Oregon, where they are being married off, via the electrical grid, to hulking old hydroelectric dams. These are arranged weddings for a warming world -- designed never to give birth to greenhouse gases. The Pacific Northwest is hardly alone as it chases the wind for clean power. Anxiety about climate change and surging demand for electricity have triggered a wind-power frenzy in much of the United States, making it the fastest growing wind-energy market in the world. Power-generating capacity from wind jumped 27 percent last year and is expected to do the same this year. But it is in the Northwest where wind power, an often capricious source of electricity, meshes most seamlessly with the existing electricity grid, which relies heavily on hydroelectric dams, power managers say. This meshing of power sources is done in a way that maximizes power reliability while minimizing the grid's need for energy from fossil fuels, which release the greenhouses gases that cause global warming....
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
GAO
Yellowstone National Park: Preliminary Observations on the Implementation of the Interagency Bison Management Plan, by Robin M. Nazzaro, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, House Committee on Natural Resources. GAO-07-638T, March 20.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-638T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07638thigh.pdf
Yellowstone National Park: Preliminary Observations on the Implementation of the Interagency Bison Management Plan, by Robin M. Nazzaro, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, House Committee on Natural Resources. GAO-07-638T, March 20.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-638T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07638thigh.pdf
NEWS ROUNDUP
Law Prof Takes Case to the Supreme Court Yesterday, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John G. Roberts ’76, a graduate of Harvard Law School, got to turn the tables on one of his former instructors. In his first Supreme Court appearance since December 2004, Loeb University Professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 argued that the property rights of Harvey F. Robbins, the Wyoming rancher he was representing, were violated when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) took retaliatory action against him for failing to give the government access to a road. “They ransacked his cabin, they got a neighbor to run a truck into him when he was on horseback, they fabricated felony charges against him,” Tribe said. “All because he wouldn’t bow to their demands.” The Supreme Court has to determine if plaintiffs can sue government officials personally under federal racketeering laws; Robbins is trying to sue BLM employees. In his argument, Tribe claimed that the Fifth Amendment protects citizens from facing retaliation from the government for excluding the government from private property. “In my view, the Fifth Amendment protects you not only from having your property taken without just compensation, but it also protects you from being subject to government retaliation,” Tribe said in a phone interview from Washington after his appearance before the court. “That’s the case here.” While Tribe said he sensed the justices were sympathetic to his Fifth Amendment argument, they were wary of creating new ways to sue government employees. “There is a considerable amount of hostility for the possibility of opening up the floodgates of litigation against government officials,” Tribe said....
Dispute with BLM heard by top court A Wyoming rancher should be allowed to sue individual federal workers for harassment and retaliation under federal racketeering law, the rancher's lawyer told the U.S. Supreme Court Monday. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe argued the case for Robbins, saying there should be a constitutional avenue for private citizens to sue government employees for continued harassment, instead of having to sue for individual retaliatory actions. The Bureau of Land Management, represented by the Department of Justice, argued that there is no precedent for such lawsuits under current law and thus their employees are immune from them. The justices questioned whether Robbins' lawsuit was an appropriate response to the BLM employees' actions and whether allowing it to proceed would flood the legal system with similar lawsuits....Go here (pdf) for a transcript of the oral arguments.
Bush administration reinterprets species law Tired of losing lawsuits brought by conservation groups, the Bush administration issued a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that would allow it to protect plants and animals only in areas where they are struggling to survive, while ignoring places they are healthy or have already died out. The opinion by U.S. Department of Interior Solicitor David Bernhardt was posted with no formal announcement on the department's Web site on Friday. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall, contacted in Washington, D.C., said the new policy would allow them to focus on protecting species in areas where they are in trouble, rather than having to list a species over its entire range. That would make it easier to take the gray wolf off the federal threatened species list in Montana and Idaho, leaving it to the states to manage. And it would leave it listed in Wyoming, where the state has yet to adopt a protection plan that satisfies the federal government, Hall said....Go here (pdf) to read the opinion.
WWF's Top 10 Rivers at Risk, Rio Grande Makes List The Rio Grande is among the world's top ten rivers at risk, according to a report by the same name released today by World Wildlife Fund. The WWF report, World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk, names the world's rivers that are facing widespread degradation while millions of people depend on them for survival. The Rio Grande (Rio Bravo in Mexico), along the U.S.-Mexico border, made the Top 10 list because the river is severely threatened by water diversions, widespread alteration of the floodplain, dams and pollution. Although the Rio Grande and its tributaries run through the arid Chihuahuan Desert it is home to a spectacular array of freshwater species. The river is also the lifeblood of the region's economy, providing water to some of the fastest-growing urban areas in the country and thousands of farms and ranches. Irrigation accounts for more than 80 percent of all water diversions from the river....
Court declines to referee logging dispute in scorched forest The Supreme Court declined to step into a fight Monday between the Bush administration and environmental groups who are trying to stop logging in a national forest that was damaged by wildfires. The justices refused to review an appeals court decision that temporarily blocked logging in two sections of the Eldorado National Forest, near Sacramento, Calif., while the Earth Island Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity pursue a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service. Fires burned nearly 19,000 acres of the forest in 2004. At issue is whether the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals applied the proper legal standard in granting a preliminary injunction against the logging....
Mexican gray wolf killed by recovery team An endangered Mexican gray wolf that was involved in killing three cows in southwestern New Mexico was fatally shot Friday by a member of the wolf interagency field team. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued an order to permanently remove the male wolf, a member of the Saddle Pack, from the Arizona-New Mexico border in February. At the time, the agency said the team would make every effort to capture the wolf. But the Center for Biological Diversity criticized the kill, saying no such efforts were made....
Wolf numbers top 1,300 in region There are now at least 1,300 wolves prowling Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, far more than anyone imagined when the species was reintroduced in the Northern Rockies 12 years ago. The wolf population has, on average, grown by about 26 percent a year for the past decade. The latest estimates, which summarize counts completed at the end of 2006, show they aren't slowing down. "I keep thinking we're at the top end of the bubble," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "I can't see that there's room for any more, but we'll see." As the wolf population has grown, so have the reports of cattle, sheep and other livestock being killed. In response, wildlife officials last year killed a record number of wolves after livestock attacks....
Conservation groups prepare to sue over wolf ordinance Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians joined three other conservation groups Monday in sending Catron County commissioners notice of their intent to file a lawsuit over a new county wolf-killing ordinance. Catron County recently approved an ordinance allowing livestock producers to kill wolves that might be a danger to humans. The conservation groups say the killing of wolves to protect humans is already covered under the Endangered Species Act. The ordinance “unlawfully undermines federal wolf management.” Forest Guardians was joined in the notice by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Rewilding Insitute and Sinapu....
Clashing over Utah's trust lands: Selling the land vs. saving the land It controls 3.4 million acres of Utah land, has amassed some $700 million and is a major power broker from one end of the state to the other. Although its name carries the kind of bureaucratic freight that makes people's eyes glaze over, its actions often raise hackles. The Utah School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration is the state's gorilla. SITLA is backed up by statutory might that allows the agency to rule with an iron hand - when it wants to. White-hot topics like the trust-lands agency's desire to auction off 365 scenic acres near Little Hole, the blue-ribbon trout fishery on the Green River, have wildlife enthusiasts biting their lips. Developers want to build an upscale lodge and cabins on the land. And recently, the agency turned up its nose at a $40 million offer from the state Department of Natural Resources for 28,000 acres on Tabby Mountain on the south slope of the Uinta Mountains. It's a favorite for hunters, but trust-lands officials say they can get a better offer in the future, most likely from the private sector....
Suit targets tar-sand oil development Environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the government Wednesday to try to stop leases that could lead to an unusual style of oil extraction on federal land in southern Utah. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and others claim the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had no authority to approve ''tar sand'' leases on 38,000 acres in Garfield County. Tar sand is like black tar melded with sand, clay or stone, a concoction that looks like coffee grounds. The oil is extracted after the material is mined. ''It's extremely destructive on the surface,'' said Stephen Bloch, attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Salt Lake City. No extraction is imminent. The land is in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, not far from Capitol Reef National Park, and wilderness study areas....
Helping dragonfly would cost millions Federal efforts to conserve the endangered Hine's emerald dragonfly along the Des Plaines River Valley could cost $14.6 million to $43.9 million over the next 20 years, according to an analysis released Friday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The estimates come as the service is considering whether to designate as a critical habitat 27,836 acres in the four Midwest states where the metallic green insect with a 3-inch wingspan and emerald-colored eyes remains. Such a designation limits development and other activities, but it protects features necessary for the species' recovery, such as water or food. Environmentalists argue that protecting the habitat of the rare dragonflies--whose only Illinois range is in slivers of Cook, DuPage and Will Counties--is important because they are indicators of the quality of groundwater in a region where it's under pressure from development. Caused mostly by the destruction of their habitats, biologists estimate there are fewer than 500 adult Hine's emerald dragonflies in the state....
Bureaucrats or anglers: who can save the Verde trout? Fishing in Central Arizona could be in big trouble if a lawsuit to list the Verde trout is successful. If that happens, all stockings of non-native fish—trout, bass, catfish and panfish—will likely stop for at least a year while biologists conduct a study to determine how such stockings impact the Verde trout. They could find that stockings of non-native fish must stop permanently. And, ironically, the lawsuit to protect the Verde trout could kill it. Oddly enough, the Center for Biological Diversity filed the suit the very same week I approached Arizona Game & Fish Department with my own Verde Trout Recovery Project. The CBD is as concerned about the fish as I am, but we're approaching the problem from two different directions; unfortunately, they're mutually exclusive. Consider tossing in your own two cents' worth after I give you some background....
Texas dolphin die-off puzzles scientists The stranding deaths of about 60 bottlenose dolphins on Texas beaches over the past three weeks has puzzled researchers and is a cause for concern during the calving season, a senior scientist said on Monday. "This is the calving season so we often have strandings at this time of the year. It's tough to be an air-breather born in the water," said Dr. Daniel F. Cowan, professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and director of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network. "But over the last few weeks we have had about 3 to 4 times the usual mortality," he told Reuters. Most of the carcasses were in an advanced state of decomposition, suggesting that they were carried to Texas beaches from areas further off or up the shore....
All Creatures Great, Small ... and Endangered AFTER completing the nature documentary “The Blue Planet” — a $10 million, eight-part BBC series that took 20 camera teams five years to shoot, spawned an international concert tour based on its Emmy-winning score and eventually was shown in more than 50 countries — its producer, Alastair Fothergill, could have taken a well-deserved break. Instead, immediately following “Blue Planet’s” September 2001 debut, Mr. Fothergill, a longtime BBC producer, began work on another ambitious project. His new series, “Planet Earth,” “is trying to do for the whole planet what ‘Blue Planet’ had done for the oceans,” Mr. Fothergill said in a telephone interview. “To be honest, that’s a pretty tall order.” The new 11-part series, shown last summer in Britain, will have its United States premiere on March 25 on the Discovery Channel. To help him up the ante, the BBC, which says “Planet Earth” is its most ambitious documentary project to date, laid out up to $2 million per episode, and Mr. Fothergill didn’t waste a cent. “Until we started ‘Planet Earth’ the only aerials you could film in nature documentaries were wide angles because if you flew close enough to get a tighter shot you’d frighten the animals,” Mr. Fothergill said. Among the various photography systems employed by his vagabonding camera crew — 70 men and women who traveled to more than 200 locations on five continents — during their five years traveling the globe, the Cineflex heligimble was by far the most revolutionary. The gyroscopic stabilizing mechanism, once reserved for Hollywood studios, can support a lens four times more powerful than any previously used in nature photography....
Snowflakes as Big as Frisbees? Since at least the 19th century, people have periodically claimed to see giant snowflakes falling from the sky — big ones the size of saucers and plates or even larger, their edges turned up, their heaviness making them descend faster than small flakes. But the evidence was always sketchy and, because of the fragile nature of snowflakes, fleeting. The giant flakes were not quite in the category of sea monsters or U.F.O.’s. Even so, skeptics noted the human fondness for exaggeration, as well as the lack of convincing photographs. And the organizations that compile weather records never made tracking big flakes an observational requirement. So the giants languished in a twilight world of science, their existence claimed but seldom documented. Now, theorists, weather historians and field observers are concluding that most of the reports are true and that unusually large snowflakes two to six inches wide and perhaps wider fall regularly around the globe, surprisingly big and fluffy, if seldom witnessed or celebrated. Guinness World Records lists the largest snowflakes as having fallen during a storm in January 1887 at Fort Keogh, in Montana. A rancher nearby, the book says, called them “larger than milk pans” and measured one at 15 inches wide. But no corroborating evidence supports the claim....
Idaho's first gold rush attracted Irish immigrants Capt. Elias D. Pierce, a Californian at the head of a party of six prospectors, discovered gold on Orofino Creek in North Idaho on Sept. 30, 1860. In the spring of 1861 a gold rush of major proportions was on. Many Irish refugees from the great potato famine of the 1840s went to California during the gold rush of the 1850s. In the 1860s, many found their way to Pierce, Idaho. Most of these Irish adventurers had been too late to find much gold in California. When news of Pierce's strike reached them, they headed for the wilds of Idaho. Their biographies, collected years later, tell us of adventure, hard work, and pride in their accomplishments. Here are the stories of a few who traveled to the little mining town of Pierce in the early ‘60s....
Baxter Black : Horse sets barn ablaze I wrote a book titled "Blazin' Bloats and Cows on Fire!" It referred to the flammability of rumen gasses and the spectacular but rarely harmful occasions when they are ignited. I assumed that the predilection for ignition was confined to ruminants, but, as is often the case, I was thinking too small. Dr. Charlie broadened my horizons. He and his esteemed equine veterinary colleague, Marvelous Marv, were on a house call to examine a 4-year-old colt with colic. Although the horse was a fine looking chestnut, the facilities were not up to par. It was raining a steady drizzle and the horse pen was abloom in late spring Colorado mud. Marvelous Marv was not necessarily fastidious, but he made a point to dress professionally. A Windsor knotted tie, Pendleton wool sport coat and checkered English hunting cap set him apart from Dr. Charlie who wore more practical coverall garb. When they arrived together, most assumed Marvelous Marv was the man-in-charge and Dr. Charlie was his valet. They soon determined from the history of the patient being fed a garbage can full of lawn clippings and the swollen tight high right flank, that a gaseous cecum was the problem. The lady owner fretted. She led the horse from the muddy pen into a small very old wooden storage shed. The doctors proceeded with their examination and concluded that the cecum would have to be punctured to relieve the pressure....
Law Prof Takes Case to the Supreme Court Yesterday, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John G. Roberts ’76, a graduate of Harvard Law School, got to turn the tables on one of his former instructors. In his first Supreme Court appearance since December 2004, Loeb University Professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 argued that the property rights of Harvey F. Robbins, the Wyoming rancher he was representing, were violated when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) took retaliatory action against him for failing to give the government access to a road. “They ransacked his cabin, they got a neighbor to run a truck into him when he was on horseback, they fabricated felony charges against him,” Tribe said. “All because he wouldn’t bow to their demands.” The Supreme Court has to determine if plaintiffs can sue government officials personally under federal racketeering laws; Robbins is trying to sue BLM employees. In his argument, Tribe claimed that the Fifth Amendment protects citizens from facing retaliation from the government for excluding the government from private property. “In my view, the Fifth Amendment protects you not only from having your property taken without just compensation, but it also protects you from being subject to government retaliation,” Tribe said in a phone interview from Washington after his appearance before the court. “That’s the case here.” While Tribe said he sensed the justices were sympathetic to his Fifth Amendment argument, they were wary of creating new ways to sue government employees. “There is a considerable amount of hostility for the possibility of opening up the floodgates of litigation against government officials,” Tribe said....
Dispute with BLM heard by top court A Wyoming rancher should be allowed to sue individual federal workers for harassment and retaliation under federal racketeering law, the rancher's lawyer told the U.S. Supreme Court Monday. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe argued the case for Robbins, saying there should be a constitutional avenue for private citizens to sue government employees for continued harassment, instead of having to sue for individual retaliatory actions. The Bureau of Land Management, represented by the Department of Justice, argued that there is no precedent for such lawsuits under current law and thus their employees are immune from them. The justices questioned whether Robbins' lawsuit was an appropriate response to the BLM employees' actions and whether allowing it to proceed would flood the legal system with similar lawsuits....Go here (pdf) for a transcript of the oral arguments.
Bush administration reinterprets species law Tired of losing lawsuits brought by conservation groups, the Bush administration issued a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that would allow it to protect plants and animals only in areas where they are struggling to survive, while ignoring places they are healthy or have already died out. The opinion by U.S. Department of Interior Solicitor David Bernhardt was posted with no formal announcement on the department's Web site on Friday. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall, contacted in Washington, D.C., said the new policy would allow them to focus on protecting species in areas where they are in trouble, rather than having to list a species over its entire range. That would make it easier to take the gray wolf off the federal threatened species list in Montana and Idaho, leaving it to the states to manage. And it would leave it listed in Wyoming, where the state has yet to adopt a protection plan that satisfies the federal government, Hall said....Go here (pdf) to read the opinion.
WWF's Top 10 Rivers at Risk, Rio Grande Makes List The Rio Grande is among the world's top ten rivers at risk, according to a report by the same name released today by World Wildlife Fund. The WWF report, World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk, names the world's rivers that are facing widespread degradation while millions of people depend on them for survival. The Rio Grande (Rio Bravo in Mexico), along the U.S.-Mexico border, made the Top 10 list because the river is severely threatened by water diversions, widespread alteration of the floodplain, dams and pollution. Although the Rio Grande and its tributaries run through the arid Chihuahuan Desert it is home to a spectacular array of freshwater species. The river is also the lifeblood of the region's economy, providing water to some of the fastest-growing urban areas in the country and thousands of farms and ranches. Irrigation accounts for more than 80 percent of all water diversions from the river....
Court declines to referee logging dispute in scorched forest The Supreme Court declined to step into a fight Monday between the Bush administration and environmental groups who are trying to stop logging in a national forest that was damaged by wildfires. The justices refused to review an appeals court decision that temporarily blocked logging in two sections of the Eldorado National Forest, near Sacramento, Calif., while the Earth Island Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity pursue a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service. Fires burned nearly 19,000 acres of the forest in 2004. At issue is whether the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals applied the proper legal standard in granting a preliminary injunction against the logging....
Mexican gray wolf killed by recovery team An endangered Mexican gray wolf that was involved in killing three cows in southwestern New Mexico was fatally shot Friday by a member of the wolf interagency field team. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued an order to permanently remove the male wolf, a member of the Saddle Pack, from the Arizona-New Mexico border in February. At the time, the agency said the team would make every effort to capture the wolf. But the Center for Biological Diversity criticized the kill, saying no such efforts were made....
Wolf numbers top 1,300 in region There are now at least 1,300 wolves prowling Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, far more than anyone imagined when the species was reintroduced in the Northern Rockies 12 years ago. The wolf population has, on average, grown by about 26 percent a year for the past decade. The latest estimates, which summarize counts completed at the end of 2006, show they aren't slowing down. "I keep thinking we're at the top end of the bubble," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "I can't see that there's room for any more, but we'll see." As the wolf population has grown, so have the reports of cattle, sheep and other livestock being killed. In response, wildlife officials last year killed a record number of wolves after livestock attacks....
Conservation groups prepare to sue over wolf ordinance Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians joined three other conservation groups Monday in sending Catron County commissioners notice of their intent to file a lawsuit over a new county wolf-killing ordinance. Catron County recently approved an ordinance allowing livestock producers to kill wolves that might be a danger to humans. The conservation groups say the killing of wolves to protect humans is already covered under the Endangered Species Act. The ordinance “unlawfully undermines federal wolf management.” Forest Guardians was joined in the notice by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Rewilding Insitute and Sinapu....
Clashing over Utah's trust lands: Selling the land vs. saving the land It controls 3.4 million acres of Utah land, has amassed some $700 million and is a major power broker from one end of the state to the other. Although its name carries the kind of bureaucratic freight that makes people's eyes glaze over, its actions often raise hackles. The Utah School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration is the state's gorilla. SITLA is backed up by statutory might that allows the agency to rule with an iron hand - when it wants to. White-hot topics like the trust-lands agency's desire to auction off 365 scenic acres near Little Hole, the blue-ribbon trout fishery on the Green River, have wildlife enthusiasts biting their lips. Developers want to build an upscale lodge and cabins on the land. And recently, the agency turned up its nose at a $40 million offer from the state Department of Natural Resources for 28,000 acres on Tabby Mountain on the south slope of the Uinta Mountains. It's a favorite for hunters, but trust-lands officials say they can get a better offer in the future, most likely from the private sector....
Suit targets tar-sand oil development Environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the government Wednesday to try to stop leases that could lead to an unusual style of oil extraction on federal land in southern Utah. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and others claim the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had no authority to approve ''tar sand'' leases on 38,000 acres in Garfield County. Tar sand is like black tar melded with sand, clay or stone, a concoction that looks like coffee grounds. The oil is extracted after the material is mined. ''It's extremely destructive on the surface,'' said Stephen Bloch, attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Salt Lake City. No extraction is imminent. The land is in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, not far from Capitol Reef National Park, and wilderness study areas....
Helping dragonfly would cost millions Federal efforts to conserve the endangered Hine's emerald dragonfly along the Des Plaines River Valley could cost $14.6 million to $43.9 million over the next 20 years, according to an analysis released Friday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The estimates come as the service is considering whether to designate as a critical habitat 27,836 acres in the four Midwest states where the metallic green insect with a 3-inch wingspan and emerald-colored eyes remains. Such a designation limits development and other activities, but it protects features necessary for the species' recovery, such as water or food. Environmentalists argue that protecting the habitat of the rare dragonflies--whose only Illinois range is in slivers of Cook, DuPage and Will Counties--is important because they are indicators of the quality of groundwater in a region where it's under pressure from development. Caused mostly by the destruction of their habitats, biologists estimate there are fewer than 500 adult Hine's emerald dragonflies in the state....
Bureaucrats or anglers: who can save the Verde trout? Fishing in Central Arizona could be in big trouble if a lawsuit to list the Verde trout is successful. If that happens, all stockings of non-native fish—trout, bass, catfish and panfish—will likely stop for at least a year while biologists conduct a study to determine how such stockings impact the Verde trout. They could find that stockings of non-native fish must stop permanently. And, ironically, the lawsuit to protect the Verde trout could kill it. Oddly enough, the Center for Biological Diversity filed the suit the very same week I approached Arizona Game & Fish Department with my own Verde Trout Recovery Project. The CBD is as concerned about the fish as I am, but we're approaching the problem from two different directions; unfortunately, they're mutually exclusive. Consider tossing in your own two cents' worth after I give you some background....
Texas dolphin die-off puzzles scientists The stranding deaths of about 60 bottlenose dolphins on Texas beaches over the past three weeks has puzzled researchers and is a cause for concern during the calving season, a senior scientist said on Monday. "This is the calving season so we often have strandings at this time of the year. It's tough to be an air-breather born in the water," said Dr. Daniel F. Cowan, professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and director of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network. "But over the last few weeks we have had about 3 to 4 times the usual mortality," he told Reuters. Most of the carcasses were in an advanced state of decomposition, suggesting that they were carried to Texas beaches from areas further off or up the shore....
All Creatures Great, Small ... and Endangered AFTER completing the nature documentary “The Blue Planet” — a $10 million, eight-part BBC series that took 20 camera teams five years to shoot, spawned an international concert tour based on its Emmy-winning score and eventually was shown in more than 50 countries — its producer, Alastair Fothergill, could have taken a well-deserved break. Instead, immediately following “Blue Planet’s” September 2001 debut, Mr. Fothergill, a longtime BBC producer, began work on another ambitious project. His new series, “Planet Earth,” “is trying to do for the whole planet what ‘Blue Planet’ had done for the oceans,” Mr. Fothergill said in a telephone interview. “To be honest, that’s a pretty tall order.” The new 11-part series, shown last summer in Britain, will have its United States premiere on March 25 on the Discovery Channel. To help him up the ante, the BBC, which says “Planet Earth” is its most ambitious documentary project to date, laid out up to $2 million per episode, and Mr. Fothergill didn’t waste a cent. “Until we started ‘Planet Earth’ the only aerials you could film in nature documentaries were wide angles because if you flew close enough to get a tighter shot you’d frighten the animals,” Mr. Fothergill said. Among the various photography systems employed by his vagabonding camera crew — 70 men and women who traveled to more than 200 locations on five continents — during their five years traveling the globe, the Cineflex heligimble was by far the most revolutionary. The gyroscopic stabilizing mechanism, once reserved for Hollywood studios, can support a lens four times more powerful than any previously used in nature photography....
Snowflakes as Big as Frisbees? Since at least the 19th century, people have periodically claimed to see giant snowflakes falling from the sky — big ones the size of saucers and plates or even larger, their edges turned up, their heaviness making them descend faster than small flakes. But the evidence was always sketchy and, because of the fragile nature of snowflakes, fleeting. The giant flakes were not quite in the category of sea monsters or U.F.O.’s. Even so, skeptics noted the human fondness for exaggeration, as well as the lack of convincing photographs. And the organizations that compile weather records never made tracking big flakes an observational requirement. So the giants languished in a twilight world of science, their existence claimed but seldom documented. Now, theorists, weather historians and field observers are concluding that most of the reports are true and that unusually large snowflakes two to six inches wide and perhaps wider fall regularly around the globe, surprisingly big and fluffy, if seldom witnessed or celebrated. Guinness World Records lists the largest snowflakes as having fallen during a storm in January 1887 at Fort Keogh, in Montana. A rancher nearby, the book says, called them “larger than milk pans” and measured one at 15 inches wide. But no corroborating evidence supports the claim....
Idaho's first gold rush attracted Irish immigrants Capt. Elias D. Pierce, a Californian at the head of a party of six prospectors, discovered gold on Orofino Creek in North Idaho on Sept. 30, 1860. In the spring of 1861 a gold rush of major proportions was on. Many Irish refugees from the great potato famine of the 1840s went to California during the gold rush of the 1850s. In the 1860s, many found their way to Pierce, Idaho. Most of these Irish adventurers had been too late to find much gold in California. When news of Pierce's strike reached them, they headed for the wilds of Idaho. Their biographies, collected years later, tell us of adventure, hard work, and pride in their accomplishments. Here are the stories of a few who traveled to the little mining town of Pierce in the early ‘60s....
Baxter Black : Horse sets barn ablaze I wrote a book titled "Blazin' Bloats and Cows on Fire!" It referred to the flammability of rumen gasses and the spectacular but rarely harmful occasions when they are ignited. I assumed that the predilection for ignition was confined to ruminants, but, as is often the case, I was thinking too small. Dr. Charlie broadened my horizons. He and his esteemed equine veterinary colleague, Marvelous Marv, were on a house call to examine a 4-year-old colt with colic. Although the horse was a fine looking chestnut, the facilities were not up to par. It was raining a steady drizzle and the horse pen was abloom in late spring Colorado mud. Marvelous Marv was not necessarily fastidious, but he made a point to dress professionally. A Windsor knotted tie, Pendleton wool sport coat and checkered English hunting cap set him apart from Dr. Charlie who wore more practical coverall garb. When they arrived together, most assumed Marvelous Marv was the man-in-charge and Dr. Charlie was his valet. They soon determined from the history of the patient being fed a garbage can full of lawn clippings and the swollen tight high right flank, that a gaseous cecum was the problem. The lady owner fretted. She led the horse from the muddy pen into a small very old wooden storage shed. The doctors proceeded with their examination and concluded that the cecum would have to be punctured to relieve the pressure....
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