GONE FOR AWHILE
As some of you know, I have multiple sclerosis.
Today I will enter a rehab hospital, and won't know how long I will be there until they complete their evaluation.
The RN who called me last night didn't know if I would have internet access from my room.
So check back, I may be able to continue while there.
Frank
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
The Daylight Saving change: no savings, no point The US government's plan to boost energy savings by moving Daylight Saving Time forward by three weeks was apparently a waste of time and effort, as the technological foibles Americans experienced failed to give way to any measurable energy savings. While the change caused no major infrastructure problems in the country, plenty of electronics and computer systems that were designed with the original DST switchover date (first Sunday in April) failed to update. The inconvenience was minor, and the potential savings were great. Or so we were told by the politicians behind the move. As it turns out, the US Department of Energy (and almost everyone else except members of Congress) was correct when they predicted that there would be little energy savings. This echoed concerns voiced after a similar experiment was attempted in Australia. Critics pointed out a basic fact: the gains in the morning will be offset by the losses at night, and vice-versa, at both ends of the switch. That appears to be exactly what happened. Reuters spoke with Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co. power, who said it plainly: "We haven't seen any measurable impact." New Jersey's Public Service Enterprise Group said the same thing: "no impact" on their business....
If we want to save the planet, we need a five-year freeze on biofuels It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless. In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow - it is released again when the fuel is burned. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be "decarbonising" our transport networks. So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. Since the beginning of last year, the price of maize has doubled. The price of wheat has also reached a 10-year high, while global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year lows. Already there have been food riots in Mexico and reports that the poor are feeling the strain all over the world. The US department of agriculture warns that "if we have a drought or a very poor harvest, we could see the sort of volatility we saw in the 1970s, and if it does not happen this year, we are also forecasting lower stockpiles next year". According to the UN food and agriculture organisation, the main reason is the demand for ethanol: the alcohol used for motor fuel, which can be made from maize and wheat. Already we know that biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. The UN has just published a report suggesting that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia will be degraded or gone by 2022. Just five years ago, the same agencies predicted that this wouldn't happen until 2032. But they reckoned without the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main cause of deforestation there and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang-utan in the wild. But it gets worse. As the forests are burned, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes 10 times as much climate change as ordinary diesel....
Increased timber harvests urged as budgetary solution A local property-rights group thinks the time has come to increase timber harvests on federal forest land to end Jackson County's budget crisis. "Let's end the environmental lawsuits and get everybody together," said Bryan Baumgartner, president of the Jackson County chapter of the People for the U.S.A. Grange. The organization will hold a rally in front of Medford's Central Library at noon Friday, just hours before all 15 of the county's library branches are forced to close because of Jackson County's $23 million budget shortfall. Baumgartner, a Central Point rancher, says years of environmental lawsuits dramatically have reduced timber harvests on what are known as "O&C lands" — millions of acres of forest land originally given to the Oregon and California Railroad that reverted to public ownership when the railroad went bankrupt. The O&C lands, now managed by the Bureau of Land Management, amount to 2.6 million acres in Oregon. Congress passed a law in 1937 directing the land be managed for timber production to earn money for the counties to compensate for lost property tax revenues....
Rancher shoots wolf in Picabo area A Picabo-area rancher shot and killed one of three wolves seen harassing his cattle in late March, an Idaho Department of Fish and Game official has confirmed. "The wolves had been in the cattle for a few days," IDFG Large Carnivore Manager Steve Nadeau said Tuesday. "They had been chasing the cattle and he shot one." The wolf, shot by the unnamed rancher on March 19, was an approximately 80- to 90-pound female, Nadeau said. After the wolf was killed, Fish and Game officials worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to investigate the incident. The investigation determined that the wolf was legally killed, Nadeau said. "They (the USFWS) cleared the rancher of any wrongdoing," he said....
No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action A Western drought that began in 1999 has continued after the respite of a couple of wet years that now feel like a cruel tease. But this time people in the driest states are not just scanning the skies and hoping for rescue. Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico. In Yuma, Ariz., federal officials have restarted an idled desalination plant, long seen as a white elephant from a bygone era, partly in the hope of purifying salty underground water for neighboring towns. The scramble for water is driven by the realities of population growth, political pressure and the hard truth that the Colorado River, a 1,400-mile-long silver thread of snowmelt and a lifeline for more than 20 million people in seven states, is providing much less water than it had....
Water crisis possible here within 3 years Tucson businesses, apartment complexes and industries may face water-use restrictions by 2010 because of the relentless drought, the city's water chief said Tuesday. Tucson Water Director David Modeer's prediction came after a warning from federal officials that this spring's runoff into Lake Powell — which stores Colorado River water — will be barely 50 percent of normal. Because spring runoff into Powell has been below normal for nine of the past 11 years, a state water official said Tuesday that the Central Arizona Project could have its first shortage as early as three years from now. That would trigger restrictions for many Tucson Water customers, although not homeowners....
Denial in the Desert Some climatologists have not hesitated to call this a "mega-drought," even the "worst in 500 years." Others have been more cautious, not yet sure whether the current aridity in the West has surpassed the notorious thresholds of the 1930s (the Dust Bowl in the southern Plains) or 1950s (devastating drought in the Southwest). But the debate is possibly beside the point: The most recent and authoritative research finds that the "evening redness in the West" (to invoke the portentous subtitle of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian) is not simply episodic drought but the region's new "normal weather." In startling testimony before the National Research Council last December, Richard Seager, a senior geophysicist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, warned that the world's leading climate modelers were cranking out the same result from their super-computers: "According to the models, in the Southwest a climate akin to the 1950s drought becomes the new climate within the next few years to decades." This extraordinary forecast--"the imminent drying of the U.S. southwest"--is a byproduct of the monumental computational effort that has been mounted by nineteen separate climate models (including the flagship outfits at Boulder, Princeton, Exeter and Hamburg) for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPPC, of course, is the supreme court of climate science, established by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization in 1988 to assess research on global warming and its impacts. Although President Bush now grudgingly accepts the IPCC warning that the Arctic is rapidly melting, he has probably not yet registered the possibility that his ranch in Crawford might someday become a sand dune....
State recruits public to eye water Public involvement is key to solving Colorado's looming water crisis, a senior Ritter administration official said Friday. Harris Sherman, director of the Department of Natural Resources, threw his support behind a system of roundtables that brings together people in each major river basin. The Ritter administration is committed to the new process, Sherman told members of the Interbasin Compact Committee. The committee eventually is supposed to reach an agreement among the river basins for planning Colorado's water future. Colorado cities and towns face a 20 percent water shortage in the next 25 years. Population pressures are greatest on the Front Range, but even the relatively wetter Western Slope is expected to have problems finding enough water for newcomers. Farmers and ranchers will come under increasing pressure to turn over their water to cities....
Nevada bill targets federal protests of water applications A rural Nevada lawmaker wants Cabinet-level approval of what he considers frivolous government protests to certain water rights applications, a move he said would protect water that belongs to people of the state. Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, R-Amargosa Valley, told the Assembly Government Affairs Committee on Tuesday that his AB425 is a response to many protests by the National Park Service and federal Bureau of Land Management to water rights applications in southern Nye County. "It's having a devastating impact on the rural communities who do depend upon the lawful, legal use of their appropriation of groundwater that I believe belongs to the people of the state of Nevada," Goedhart said. "One of the most important things we can do is preserve citizens' rights to their property." AB425 prohibits the state water engineer from considering a protest filed by any government agency unless it's signed by the head of that agency, including the Interior secretary, who oversees the BLM, Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Agriculture secretary, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service....
Trails on private property to remain on map Despite opposition from farmers and environmental leaders, the Marin Planning Commission on Monday refused to remove maps of proposed hiking trails across private property from the countywide plan. Property owners, including many West Marin farmers and ranchers, object to the map, which they say encourages hikers to trespass on their property. Some environmental leaders have agreed, saying the county already has enough trails through its wildest areas. "We have a lot of trails in Marin County," said Barbara Salzman, president of the Marin Audubon Society. "We don't have to go across privately owned land."....
Editorial - High court seduced by global warming hysteria The most potent argument against judicial activism is that parties who have failed to achieve their political objectives through the legislative process, or by petitioning administrative or regulatory agencies, turn to sympathetic or malleable judges to try to get what they have failed to get through the political process. Unfortunately, in Massachusetts et. al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et. al., a majority on a divided Supreme Court engaged in precisely the kind of judicial activism that people on all sides of the ideological spectrum correctly deplore. In short, the popular passions around global warming carried the day, rather than calm legal precedent and thought. The Clean Air Act of 1970, as amended most recently in 1990, says that the EPA administrator “shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) . . . standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant . . . which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution” coming from new cars. Despite the trendiness of concern about global warming, the EPA has so far declined to regulate carbon dioxide, a “greenhouse gas” coming from automobile tailpipes. Its reasons have not been trivial. The science on how much human-produced greenhouse gases contribute to global warming is unsettled, and U.S. motor vehicle emissions contribute about 6 percent of global carbon dioxide, with new cars contributing only a fraction of that. So the EPA administrator, “in his judgment,” has decided that setting standards for new-car CO2 emissions is neither required by law nor a policy likely to help much. The fact that Congress has not passed legislation mandating regulation of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and that the Senate never ratified the Kyoto treaty, provide some underpinning for this judgment....
Editorial - Saving the ranchlands Arizona's cowboy-and-cattle heritage is vanishing as subdivisions and "ranchettes" take over grazing land. Fortunately, there's a growing push to save some remnant of ranching. And a growing understanding that this open space is more than a picturesque backdrop. The grasslands are vital to maintaining our wildlife habitat and water supplies. Sunset magazine recently included Pima County and Arizona Open Land Trust among its "champions of the West," an annual environmental award, for their work in preserving a pair of ranches. The non-profit land trust helped in negotiations with the family that owned the Santa Lucia Ranch and Rancho Seco, which lie southwest of Tucson in the mesquite-dotted Altar Valley. Pima County supervisors in 2005 approved $18.5 million to buy 9,500 acres at the ranches, plus acquire grazing rights on 27,000 acres of federal and state trust land. Family members have a lease to continue running cattle there, while the county will monitor the health of the rangeland. What's the alternative? Consider the nearby Sopori Ranch. It was sold just a year earlier - to Phoenix-based First United Realty, which is now selling lots in a subdivision there....
New USDA initiative will help ducks in the Prairie Pothole Region Ducks Unlimited (DU) says a new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) initiative will help restore critical duck habitat in the Prairie Pothole Region. The region is known as the nation’s “duck factory.” According to the Farm Service Agency (FSA), the new initiative is part of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The initiative is called State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement. It allows state FSA offices to address local wildlife conservation needs in conjunction with the needs of farmers and ranchers. "This new practice will allow states to focus CRP on wildlife concerns specific to their state, whether it is a game species, such as ducks or pheasants, or an at-risk species, such as the sage grouse” said John Johnson, deputy administrator for farm programs, for FSA. Johnson says the initiative is the latest in a series of steps to refine and target CRP, so it achieves specific and measurable environmental objectives....
Study: Reforestation Rich After Fires Scientists looking at the aftermath of wildfires in the forests of southwestern Oregon and Northern California found that after five to ten years even the most severely burned areas had sprouted plentiful seedlings without any help from man. Though natural regeneration generally took longer to produce pines and firs, it created a more varied forest, even after brush had become established, which is likely to benefit wildlife, concluded to the study by scientists from Oregon State University appearing in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of Forestry. "When time is not a factor in achieving the goals, then natural regeneration appears to be a very good approach to reforestation," said David Hibbs, a professor of ecology and silviculture at Oregon State University who took part in the study. The study is the latest to address the contentious issue of whether to harvest trees killed by wildfires on national forests and replant, or let them regenerate on their own....
Gila trout back, cutthroat coming The state Department of Game and Fish will work with partners starting this summer on a project to restore pure-strain native Rio Grande cutthroat trout. The goal of the 10-15-year project will be to restore Rio Grande cutthroats to about 125 miles of streams and 20 lakes in the species' historic range in northern New Mexico. Work on Comanche Creek and its feeder streams is scheduled for this summer and fall. The Rio Costilla restoration project also includes the U.S. Forest Service, the New Mexico chapter of Trout Unlimited and private landowners next to the Valle Vidal unit of the Carson National Forest. The state will offer limited fishing for Gila trout starting July 1 in some southwestern New Mexico streams that have been closed to fishing since 1966. The Gila trout was listed as a federal endangered species in 1966. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently designated the fish as threatened rather than endangered. The state Game Commission has approved fishing changes based on that decision. The new regulations allow the state Department of Game and Fish to open angling for Gila trout in certain streams that had been closed to all fishing.
Jonah Field appeal rejected The federal government has rejected an appeal from conservationists who say a planned expansion of the Jonah Field would degrade air quality and hurt wildlife. The U.S. Department of Interior's Interior Board of Land Appeals on Friday ruled that it would not overturn a previous order denying a petition to halt the project. Several conservation groups had petitioned to stop an "infill" drilling project at the 30,000-acre field, about 32 miles southeast of Pinedale. The appeals board rejected the conservation groups' contention that new information showed deficiencies in the federal analysis of the project's effect on air quality. The infill plan, approved by federal regulators last year, calls for drilling an additional 3,100 wells over 76 years. The plan calls for allowing up to 128 wells per square mile. The Wyoming Outdoor Council, Upper Green River Valley Coalition, The Wilderness Society and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition filed an appeal early last year of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's approval of the infill project....
Conservation groups plan to challenge grizzly move Conservation groups on Tuesday challenged the federal government's plan to remove Yellowstone-area grizzly bears from protection under the Endangered Species Act. In March, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the removal of the grizzlies from the list of "threatened" animals effective April 30, capping what officials described as a successful three-decade effort to recover the animal from near-extinction. The change would remove some federal protections and open the door to future public hunting of grizzlies for the first time in decades. On Tuesday, eight groups notified the Fish and Wildlife Service that they intend to file a lawsuit in 60 days if the delisting is not reversed. The groups argue that the 500 bears now living in and around Yellowstone National Park are too few to guarantee long-term survival of the population in the face of global warming, habitat loss and other pressures....
Editorial - Land's End The federal government is making a novel argument in the Supreme Court in a Fifth Amendment case. If the justices buy it, then the state will be granted the powers of trespass and intimidation. The Court likely won't issue a ruling until early summer, but what it heard in the March arguments in Wilkie v. Robbins is enough to boil the blood of any property rights advocate. Robbins' lawsuit against Charles Wilkie and other BLM agents on Fifth Amendment grounds, and racketeering and organized crime law, has not yet been to trial because the government has been tied up in appeals seeking a dismissal. So it's difficult to separate the facts from the accusations made by both sides. But this much we do know, and it is disturbing: In representing the government, Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote a brief that includes the heading: "There Is No Fifth Amendment Right Against Retaliation For The Exercise Of Property Rights." Or, in less legalistic terms used by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe when arguing on Robbins' behalf before the Supreme Court, "The position of the government here is that there is no constitutional limit on the kind of retaliation they can engage in." Last June, the Supreme Court gravely erred when it ruled in Kelo v. New London that governments are free to seize private land and sell it to private developers. If it strays from the Constitution yet again by taking the government's position, it will have done more to erode property rights in the last 24 months than had been done in the previous 200 years. We hope this time there are more justices than jesters on this court....
Gov: No wolf plan by May 1 Gov. Dave Freudenthal wrote to the regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday saying it would be virtually impossible for the state to adopt a new wolf management plan by May 1. Federal officials, meanwhile, say it's critical for Wyoming to submit a wolf management plan soon if the state is to be included in federal regulations scheduled to be released next year spelling out how the wolves will be removed from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Freudenthal, in his letter to Fish and Wildlife Service Regional Director Mitch King in Denver, wrote that the state's wolf management statutes won't change until the federal agency meets requirements spelled out in a bill the Legislature passed and the governor signed last month. The legislation that Freudenthal signed gives his administration authority to negotiate with the federal government the boundaries of a permanent wolf management area in northwest Wyoming. The state legislation will expire next February if the federal government hasn't by then removed wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act and given Wyoming the authority to manage wolves in the state....
Ala. Woman on Horseback Charged With DUI A woman who went for a horseback ride through town at midnight and allegedly used the horse to ram a police car was charged with driving under the influence and drug offenses, police said Tuesday. "Cars were passing by having to avoid it, and almost hitting the horse," said Police Chief Brad Gregg. He said DUI charges can apply even when the vehicle has four legs instead of wheels. Police in the northeast Alabama town received a call around midnight Saturday about someone riding a horse on a city street, Gregg said. Officer John Seals found Melissa Byrum York, 40, of Henagar on horseback on a nearby road and attempted to stop her. Seals asked the woman repeatedly to get off the horse, but she kept trying to kick the animal to make it run, the chief said. "She wouldn't stop. She kept riding the horse and going on," Gregg said. After ramming the police car with the horse and riding away, the woman tried to jump off but caught her foot in a stirrup, Gregg said....
Five cowboy poets invite us into their world Cowboy poetry? Is that an oxymoron? Not at all, says poet Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and a BBC commentator. "I think it's terrific." Gioia, author of the controversial book Can Poetry Matter?, contends that cowboy poetry — along with hip-hop and poetry slams — propels poetry into mainstream culture, out of the musty world of academics. "That's not to say (best-selling cowboy poet and National Pubic Radio commentator) Baxter Black is W.B. Yeats," Gioia said. But he notes approvingly that cowboy poetry typically includes rhyme, meter and narrative — traditional poetic devices out of fashion in other literary circles. But those traditions were squarely in evidence at the recent Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, where cowpunchers recited poems, played music and told far-fetched stories. This year's gathering attracted an estimated 1,000 people, a record for the event. The Alpine festival is only one of an estimated 200 U.S. cowboy poetry gatherings held each year. For such a traditional-seeming form, the gatherings are relatively new: The first was held in 1985, when the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nev., launched the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering....
The Daylight Saving change: no savings, no point The US government's plan to boost energy savings by moving Daylight Saving Time forward by three weeks was apparently a waste of time and effort, as the technological foibles Americans experienced failed to give way to any measurable energy savings. While the change caused no major infrastructure problems in the country, plenty of electronics and computer systems that were designed with the original DST switchover date (first Sunday in April) failed to update. The inconvenience was minor, and the potential savings were great. Or so we were told by the politicians behind the move. As it turns out, the US Department of Energy (and almost everyone else except members of Congress) was correct when they predicted that there would be little energy savings. This echoed concerns voiced after a similar experiment was attempted in Australia. Critics pointed out a basic fact: the gains in the morning will be offset by the losses at night, and vice-versa, at both ends of the switch. That appears to be exactly what happened. Reuters spoke with Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co. power, who said it plainly: "We haven't seen any measurable impact." New Jersey's Public Service Enterprise Group said the same thing: "no impact" on their business....
If we want to save the planet, we need a five-year freeze on biofuels It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless. In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow - it is released again when the fuel is burned. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be "decarbonising" our transport networks. So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. Since the beginning of last year, the price of maize has doubled. The price of wheat has also reached a 10-year high, while global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year lows. Already there have been food riots in Mexico and reports that the poor are feeling the strain all over the world. The US department of agriculture warns that "if we have a drought or a very poor harvest, we could see the sort of volatility we saw in the 1970s, and if it does not happen this year, we are also forecasting lower stockpiles next year". According to the UN food and agriculture organisation, the main reason is the demand for ethanol: the alcohol used for motor fuel, which can be made from maize and wheat. Already we know that biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. The UN has just published a report suggesting that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia will be degraded or gone by 2022. Just five years ago, the same agencies predicted that this wouldn't happen until 2032. But they reckoned without the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main cause of deforestation there and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang-utan in the wild. But it gets worse. As the forests are burned, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes 10 times as much climate change as ordinary diesel....
Increased timber harvests urged as budgetary solution A local property-rights group thinks the time has come to increase timber harvests on federal forest land to end Jackson County's budget crisis. "Let's end the environmental lawsuits and get everybody together," said Bryan Baumgartner, president of the Jackson County chapter of the People for the U.S.A. Grange. The organization will hold a rally in front of Medford's Central Library at noon Friday, just hours before all 15 of the county's library branches are forced to close because of Jackson County's $23 million budget shortfall. Baumgartner, a Central Point rancher, says years of environmental lawsuits dramatically have reduced timber harvests on what are known as "O&C lands" — millions of acres of forest land originally given to the Oregon and California Railroad that reverted to public ownership when the railroad went bankrupt. The O&C lands, now managed by the Bureau of Land Management, amount to 2.6 million acres in Oregon. Congress passed a law in 1937 directing the land be managed for timber production to earn money for the counties to compensate for lost property tax revenues....
Rancher shoots wolf in Picabo area A Picabo-area rancher shot and killed one of three wolves seen harassing his cattle in late March, an Idaho Department of Fish and Game official has confirmed. "The wolves had been in the cattle for a few days," IDFG Large Carnivore Manager Steve Nadeau said Tuesday. "They had been chasing the cattle and he shot one." The wolf, shot by the unnamed rancher on March 19, was an approximately 80- to 90-pound female, Nadeau said. After the wolf was killed, Fish and Game officials worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to investigate the incident. The investigation determined that the wolf was legally killed, Nadeau said. "They (the USFWS) cleared the rancher of any wrongdoing," he said....
No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action A Western drought that began in 1999 has continued after the respite of a couple of wet years that now feel like a cruel tease. But this time people in the driest states are not just scanning the skies and hoping for rescue. Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico. In Yuma, Ariz., federal officials have restarted an idled desalination plant, long seen as a white elephant from a bygone era, partly in the hope of purifying salty underground water for neighboring towns. The scramble for water is driven by the realities of population growth, political pressure and the hard truth that the Colorado River, a 1,400-mile-long silver thread of snowmelt and a lifeline for more than 20 million people in seven states, is providing much less water than it had....
Water crisis possible here within 3 years Tucson businesses, apartment complexes and industries may face water-use restrictions by 2010 because of the relentless drought, the city's water chief said Tuesday. Tucson Water Director David Modeer's prediction came after a warning from federal officials that this spring's runoff into Lake Powell — which stores Colorado River water — will be barely 50 percent of normal. Because spring runoff into Powell has been below normal for nine of the past 11 years, a state water official said Tuesday that the Central Arizona Project could have its first shortage as early as three years from now. That would trigger restrictions for many Tucson Water customers, although not homeowners....
Denial in the Desert Some climatologists have not hesitated to call this a "mega-drought," even the "worst in 500 years." Others have been more cautious, not yet sure whether the current aridity in the West has surpassed the notorious thresholds of the 1930s (the Dust Bowl in the southern Plains) or 1950s (devastating drought in the Southwest). But the debate is possibly beside the point: The most recent and authoritative research finds that the "evening redness in the West" (to invoke the portentous subtitle of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian) is not simply episodic drought but the region's new "normal weather." In startling testimony before the National Research Council last December, Richard Seager, a senior geophysicist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, warned that the world's leading climate modelers were cranking out the same result from their super-computers: "According to the models, in the Southwest a climate akin to the 1950s drought becomes the new climate within the next few years to decades." This extraordinary forecast--"the imminent drying of the U.S. southwest"--is a byproduct of the monumental computational effort that has been mounted by nineteen separate climate models (including the flagship outfits at Boulder, Princeton, Exeter and Hamburg) for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPPC, of course, is the supreme court of climate science, established by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization in 1988 to assess research on global warming and its impacts. Although President Bush now grudgingly accepts the IPCC warning that the Arctic is rapidly melting, he has probably not yet registered the possibility that his ranch in Crawford might someday become a sand dune....
State recruits public to eye water Public involvement is key to solving Colorado's looming water crisis, a senior Ritter administration official said Friday. Harris Sherman, director of the Department of Natural Resources, threw his support behind a system of roundtables that brings together people in each major river basin. The Ritter administration is committed to the new process, Sherman told members of the Interbasin Compact Committee. The committee eventually is supposed to reach an agreement among the river basins for planning Colorado's water future. Colorado cities and towns face a 20 percent water shortage in the next 25 years. Population pressures are greatest on the Front Range, but even the relatively wetter Western Slope is expected to have problems finding enough water for newcomers. Farmers and ranchers will come under increasing pressure to turn over their water to cities....
Nevada bill targets federal protests of water applications A rural Nevada lawmaker wants Cabinet-level approval of what he considers frivolous government protests to certain water rights applications, a move he said would protect water that belongs to people of the state. Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, R-Amargosa Valley, told the Assembly Government Affairs Committee on Tuesday that his AB425 is a response to many protests by the National Park Service and federal Bureau of Land Management to water rights applications in southern Nye County. "It's having a devastating impact on the rural communities who do depend upon the lawful, legal use of their appropriation of groundwater that I believe belongs to the people of the state of Nevada," Goedhart said. "One of the most important things we can do is preserve citizens' rights to their property." AB425 prohibits the state water engineer from considering a protest filed by any government agency unless it's signed by the head of that agency, including the Interior secretary, who oversees the BLM, Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Agriculture secretary, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service....
Trails on private property to remain on map Despite opposition from farmers and environmental leaders, the Marin Planning Commission on Monday refused to remove maps of proposed hiking trails across private property from the countywide plan. Property owners, including many West Marin farmers and ranchers, object to the map, which they say encourages hikers to trespass on their property. Some environmental leaders have agreed, saying the county already has enough trails through its wildest areas. "We have a lot of trails in Marin County," said Barbara Salzman, president of the Marin Audubon Society. "We don't have to go across privately owned land."....
Editorial - High court seduced by global warming hysteria The most potent argument against judicial activism is that parties who have failed to achieve their political objectives through the legislative process, or by petitioning administrative or regulatory agencies, turn to sympathetic or malleable judges to try to get what they have failed to get through the political process. Unfortunately, in Massachusetts et. al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et. al., a majority on a divided Supreme Court engaged in precisely the kind of judicial activism that people on all sides of the ideological spectrum correctly deplore. In short, the popular passions around global warming carried the day, rather than calm legal precedent and thought. The Clean Air Act of 1970, as amended most recently in 1990, says that the EPA administrator “shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) . . . standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant . . . which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution” coming from new cars. Despite the trendiness of concern about global warming, the EPA has so far declined to regulate carbon dioxide, a “greenhouse gas” coming from automobile tailpipes. Its reasons have not been trivial. The science on how much human-produced greenhouse gases contribute to global warming is unsettled, and U.S. motor vehicle emissions contribute about 6 percent of global carbon dioxide, with new cars contributing only a fraction of that. So the EPA administrator, “in his judgment,” has decided that setting standards for new-car CO2 emissions is neither required by law nor a policy likely to help much. The fact that Congress has not passed legislation mandating regulation of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and that the Senate never ratified the Kyoto treaty, provide some underpinning for this judgment....
Editorial - Saving the ranchlands Arizona's cowboy-and-cattle heritage is vanishing as subdivisions and "ranchettes" take over grazing land. Fortunately, there's a growing push to save some remnant of ranching. And a growing understanding that this open space is more than a picturesque backdrop. The grasslands are vital to maintaining our wildlife habitat and water supplies. Sunset magazine recently included Pima County and Arizona Open Land Trust among its "champions of the West," an annual environmental award, for their work in preserving a pair of ranches. The non-profit land trust helped in negotiations with the family that owned the Santa Lucia Ranch and Rancho Seco, which lie southwest of Tucson in the mesquite-dotted Altar Valley. Pima County supervisors in 2005 approved $18.5 million to buy 9,500 acres at the ranches, plus acquire grazing rights on 27,000 acres of federal and state trust land. Family members have a lease to continue running cattle there, while the county will monitor the health of the rangeland. What's the alternative? Consider the nearby Sopori Ranch. It was sold just a year earlier - to Phoenix-based First United Realty, which is now selling lots in a subdivision there....
New USDA initiative will help ducks in the Prairie Pothole Region Ducks Unlimited (DU) says a new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) initiative will help restore critical duck habitat in the Prairie Pothole Region. The region is known as the nation’s “duck factory.” According to the Farm Service Agency (FSA), the new initiative is part of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The initiative is called State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement. It allows state FSA offices to address local wildlife conservation needs in conjunction with the needs of farmers and ranchers. "This new practice will allow states to focus CRP on wildlife concerns specific to their state, whether it is a game species, such as ducks or pheasants, or an at-risk species, such as the sage grouse” said John Johnson, deputy administrator for farm programs, for FSA. Johnson says the initiative is the latest in a series of steps to refine and target CRP, so it achieves specific and measurable environmental objectives....
Study: Reforestation Rich After Fires Scientists looking at the aftermath of wildfires in the forests of southwestern Oregon and Northern California found that after five to ten years even the most severely burned areas had sprouted plentiful seedlings without any help from man. Though natural regeneration generally took longer to produce pines and firs, it created a more varied forest, even after brush had become established, which is likely to benefit wildlife, concluded to the study by scientists from Oregon State University appearing in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of Forestry. "When time is not a factor in achieving the goals, then natural regeneration appears to be a very good approach to reforestation," said David Hibbs, a professor of ecology and silviculture at Oregon State University who took part in the study. The study is the latest to address the contentious issue of whether to harvest trees killed by wildfires on national forests and replant, or let them regenerate on their own....
Gila trout back, cutthroat coming The state Department of Game and Fish will work with partners starting this summer on a project to restore pure-strain native Rio Grande cutthroat trout. The goal of the 10-15-year project will be to restore Rio Grande cutthroats to about 125 miles of streams and 20 lakes in the species' historic range in northern New Mexico. Work on Comanche Creek and its feeder streams is scheduled for this summer and fall. The Rio Costilla restoration project also includes the U.S. Forest Service, the New Mexico chapter of Trout Unlimited and private landowners next to the Valle Vidal unit of the Carson National Forest. The state will offer limited fishing for Gila trout starting July 1 in some southwestern New Mexico streams that have been closed to fishing since 1966. The Gila trout was listed as a federal endangered species in 1966. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently designated the fish as threatened rather than endangered. The state Game Commission has approved fishing changes based on that decision. The new regulations allow the state Department of Game and Fish to open angling for Gila trout in certain streams that had been closed to all fishing.
Jonah Field appeal rejected The federal government has rejected an appeal from conservationists who say a planned expansion of the Jonah Field would degrade air quality and hurt wildlife. The U.S. Department of Interior's Interior Board of Land Appeals on Friday ruled that it would not overturn a previous order denying a petition to halt the project. Several conservation groups had petitioned to stop an "infill" drilling project at the 30,000-acre field, about 32 miles southeast of Pinedale. The appeals board rejected the conservation groups' contention that new information showed deficiencies in the federal analysis of the project's effect on air quality. The infill plan, approved by federal regulators last year, calls for drilling an additional 3,100 wells over 76 years. The plan calls for allowing up to 128 wells per square mile. The Wyoming Outdoor Council, Upper Green River Valley Coalition, The Wilderness Society and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition filed an appeal early last year of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's approval of the infill project....
Conservation groups plan to challenge grizzly move Conservation groups on Tuesday challenged the federal government's plan to remove Yellowstone-area grizzly bears from protection under the Endangered Species Act. In March, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the removal of the grizzlies from the list of "threatened" animals effective April 30, capping what officials described as a successful three-decade effort to recover the animal from near-extinction. The change would remove some federal protections and open the door to future public hunting of grizzlies for the first time in decades. On Tuesday, eight groups notified the Fish and Wildlife Service that they intend to file a lawsuit in 60 days if the delisting is not reversed. The groups argue that the 500 bears now living in and around Yellowstone National Park are too few to guarantee long-term survival of the population in the face of global warming, habitat loss and other pressures....
Editorial - Land's End The federal government is making a novel argument in the Supreme Court in a Fifth Amendment case. If the justices buy it, then the state will be granted the powers of trespass and intimidation. The Court likely won't issue a ruling until early summer, but what it heard in the March arguments in Wilkie v. Robbins is enough to boil the blood of any property rights advocate. Robbins' lawsuit against Charles Wilkie and other BLM agents on Fifth Amendment grounds, and racketeering and organized crime law, has not yet been to trial because the government has been tied up in appeals seeking a dismissal. So it's difficult to separate the facts from the accusations made by both sides. But this much we do know, and it is disturbing: In representing the government, Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote a brief that includes the heading: "There Is No Fifth Amendment Right Against Retaliation For The Exercise Of Property Rights." Or, in less legalistic terms used by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe when arguing on Robbins' behalf before the Supreme Court, "The position of the government here is that there is no constitutional limit on the kind of retaliation they can engage in." Last June, the Supreme Court gravely erred when it ruled in Kelo v. New London that governments are free to seize private land and sell it to private developers. If it strays from the Constitution yet again by taking the government's position, it will have done more to erode property rights in the last 24 months than had been done in the previous 200 years. We hope this time there are more justices than jesters on this court....
Gov: No wolf plan by May 1 Gov. Dave Freudenthal wrote to the regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday saying it would be virtually impossible for the state to adopt a new wolf management plan by May 1. Federal officials, meanwhile, say it's critical for Wyoming to submit a wolf management plan soon if the state is to be included in federal regulations scheduled to be released next year spelling out how the wolves will be removed from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Freudenthal, in his letter to Fish and Wildlife Service Regional Director Mitch King in Denver, wrote that the state's wolf management statutes won't change until the federal agency meets requirements spelled out in a bill the Legislature passed and the governor signed last month. The legislation that Freudenthal signed gives his administration authority to negotiate with the federal government the boundaries of a permanent wolf management area in northwest Wyoming. The state legislation will expire next February if the federal government hasn't by then removed wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act and given Wyoming the authority to manage wolves in the state....
Ala. Woman on Horseback Charged With DUI A woman who went for a horseback ride through town at midnight and allegedly used the horse to ram a police car was charged with driving under the influence and drug offenses, police said Tuesday. "Cars were passing by having to avoid it, and almost hitting the horse," said Police Chief Brad Gregg. He said DUI charges can apply even when the vehicle has four legs instead of wheels. Police in the northeast Alabama town received a call around midnight Saturday about someone riding a horse on a city street, Gregg said. Officer John Seals found Melissa Byrum York, 40, of Henagar on horseback on a nearby road and attempted to stop her. Seals asked the woman repeatedly to get off the horse, but she kept trying to kick the animal to make it run, the chief said. "She wouldn't stop. She kept riding the horse and going on," Gregg said. After ramming the police car with the horse and riding away, the woman tried to jump off but caught her foot in a stirrup, Gregg said....
Five cowboy poets invite us into their world Cowboy poetry? Is that an oxymoron? Not at all, says poet Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and a BBC commentator. "I think it's terrific." Gioia, author of the controversial book Can Poetry Matter?, contends that cowboy poetry — along with hip-hop and poetry slams — propels poetry into mainstream culture, out of the musty world of academics. "That's not to say (best-selling cowboy poet and National Pubic Radio commentator) Baxter Black is W.B. Yeats," Gioia said. But he notes approvingly that cowboy poetry typically includes rhyme, meter and narrative — traditional poetic devices out of fashion in other literary circles. But those traditions were squarely in evidence at the recent Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, where cowpunchers recited poems, played music and told far-fetched stories. This year's gathering attracted an estimated 1,000 people, a record for the event. The Alpine festival is only one of an estimated 200 U.S. cowboy poetry gatherings held each year. For such a traditional-seeming form, the gatherings are relatively new: The first was held in 1985, when the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nev., launched the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering....
Wilkie v. Robbins
For those interested in this important case before the Supreme Court, here are the links to the various briefs:
Petioner
Petioner's Brief
National Wildlife Federation, et. al.
Respondent
Respondent's Brief
Brooks Realty and Burgett Geothermal Greenhouses, Inc.
Mountain States Legal Foundation
New Mexico Cattle Growers' Assoc., et al.
Oregon Cattlemen's Assoc. and Nevada N-6 Grazing Board
Pacific Legal Foundation, et al.
Paragon Foundation, Inc.
Public Lands Council, et al.
Go here for the decision of the 10th Circuit.
For those interested in this important case before the Supreme Court, here are the links to the various briefs:
Petioner
Petioner's Brief
National Wildlife Federation, et. al.
Respondent
Respondent's Brief
Brooks Realty and Burgett Geothermal Greenhouses, Inc.
Mountain States Legal Foundation
New Mexico Cattle Growers' Assoc., et al.
Oregon Cattlemen's Assoc. and Nevada N-6 Grazing Board
Pacific Legal Foundation, et al.
Paragon Foundation, Inc.
Public Lands Council, et al.
Go here for the decision of the 10th Circuit.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
U.S. Supreme Court rebukes Bush administration on greenhouse gas emissions The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming. In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars. Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion. The court's four conservative justices - Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas - dissented. The court had three questions before it. -Do states have the right to sue the EPA to challenge its decision? -Does the Clean Air Act give EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases? -Does EPA have the discretion not to regulate those emissions? The court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions. The court said the agency has so far provided a "laundry list" of reasons that include foreign policy considerations....Go here to read the opinion.
Ruling Undermines Lawsuits Opposing Emissions Controls Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on carbon dioxide emissions largely shredded the underpinning of other lawsuits trying to block regulation of the emissions and gave new momentum to Congressional efforts to control heat-trapping gases linked to climate change. The arguments rejected by the court have been invoked in other legal challenges, including a case pending in California in which auto industry trade groups argue against that state’s law controlling carbon-dioxide emissions from cars, and one in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where electric utilities are fighting the E.P.A.’s authority to regulate their emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. Both cases had been stayed awaiting yesterday’s ruling. “This flips the debate from an environment in which Congress must act if there is to be federal action,” said Tim Profeta, the director of the Nicholas Institute for the Environment at Duke University, “to one in which the E.P.A. can act as soon as an administration friendly to the concept is in power.” “If there is a President Clinton or President McCain,” Mr. Profeta added, “he or she doesn’t have to go to Congress to get action.”....
Editorial - Jolly Green Justices(subscription) The current Supreme Court is a talented group of jurists, but until yesterday we didn't think their expertise ran to climatology. The Justices would have done better in their big global warming decision if they'd stuck more closely to the law. They showed no such modesty. In Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, a narrow majority managed to diminish the rules of judicial standing, rewrite the definition of "pollutant" under the Clean Air Act, and dramatically curtail the decision-making authority of the executive branch. And judging from Justice John Paul Stevens's 5-4 majority decision, they did so because the five Justices are personally anxious about rising temperatures. As Justice Antonin Scalia noted in dissent, the "Court's alarm over global warming" has led it to substitute "its own desired outcome" for the EPA's judgment. The five Supreme climatologists granted Al Gore's fondest wish by declaring that "the harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized." The majority warned about a "precipitous rise in sea levels," "severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems" and "increases in the spread of disease." The Court used all of this not-so-inadvertent opining to justify its conclusion that CO2 is indeed a "pollutant." The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate "any air pollutant" from cars that might "endanger public health or welfare," though the majority took the widest view that the definition includes any "physical, chemical" substance that goes in the air. (Next up: oxygen.) Justice Scalia poked fun at this reasoning, noting Webster's definition of "pollute" is "to make or render impure or unclean" -- which might apply to sulfur dioxide or other dirty gases but not a product of human respiration that resides in the upper atmosphere. In any case, isn't this something for Congress to decide?....
Ethanol-blend auto emissions no greener than gasoline: study An unpublished federal report appears to undermine the belief that commercially available ethanol-blended fuel produces cleaner emissions than regular gasoline. Many Canadians believe filling up with ethanol-blended gasoline reduces the emission of greenhouse gases that damage the environment. Advertising sponsored by the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association encourages the idea, telling Canadians renewable fuels are "good for the environment," and even some provincial governments, including Manitoba and Saskatchewan, say the fuel "burns cleaner" than gasoline. Scientists at Environment Canada studied four vehicles of recent makes, testing their emissions in a range for driving conditions and temperatures. "Looking at tailpipe emissions, from a greenhouse gas perspective, there really isn't much difference between ethanol and gasoline," said Greg Rideout, head of Environment Canada's toxic emissions research. "Our results seemed to indicate that with today's vehicles, there's not a lot of difference at the tailpipe with greenhouse gas emissions." The study found no statistical difference between the greenhouse gas emissions of regular unleaded fuel and 10 per cent ethanol blended fuel. Although the study found a reduction in carbon monoxide, a pollutant that forms smog, emissions of some other gases, such as hydrocarbons, actually increased under certain conditions....
Flame-plagued summers in forecast Fiery summers will likely become common in Colorado as the planet warms, according to researchers preparing the latest chapter of an international climate change assessment. The chapter - detailing the observed and forecast effects of climate change worldwide - is scheduled to be released by the United Nations on Friday. Blazing Western wildfires, a consequence of warming drying the region, could be one of the costliest impacts here, climate experts said in a telephone press conference Monday. "The U.S. Forest Service last year spent $1 billion on fire, on fire response," said Anthony Janetos, director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute, at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland. Fire seasons today are two months longer than they were in the 1970s, according to 2006 research, and wildfires destroy 6.5 times as much land....Looks like we are being set up. A bad fire season will be because of global warming, and not because of Forest Service management, or non-management of the resource.
Forest plan's critics suppressed, judge rules The Bush administration illegally suppressed and misrepresented the views of dissenting scientists when it eased logging restrictions under the Northwest Forest Plan, a federal judge in Seattle has ruled. In his ruling late Friday, U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez struck down the administration's change to the forest plan, which governs logging on 24 million acres of federal lands in Washington, Oregon and Northern California. "Here, the dissenting views of responsible scientists were neither set forth in substance, nor their import discussed," as required by the National Environmental Policy Act, Martinez wrote. Under the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan's Aquatic Conservation Strategy, before federal agencies could approve logging, road building or other projects, they had to determine that the projects would not harm watersheds. That wording, designed to protect salmon, had held up timber activities on 4 million acres designated for logging. In March 2004, the Bush administration dropped the wording at the request of the timber industry....
Editorial - Value of a forest: Federal ruling is a victory for conservation Trees are renewable by human cultivation in a relatively short time. But forests, especially old-growth forests, are not. Once a forest is degraded or destroyed by logging, drilling, mining or grazing, it could take many decades, even centuries, for nature to restore its beauty, its ecosystems and its value as a watershed. That is if nature were ever again allowed to take its own course. Worse, the extinction of plant and animal species is irreversible. That's why any American who has stood quietly in a forest and felt the power of its sensuous and spiritual pull should be delighted at a ruling by a federal district court. The ruling overturns the Bush administration's misbegotten forest rules that cut back on environmental reviews and protection of wildlife. The Bush rules, issued two years ago, also would wrongly limit public participation in forest management plans. The pro-business Bush environmental rules are an attempt to dismantle a policy for national forests and grasslands dating to the Reagan administration. Those long-standing rules require government agencies to maintain viable numbers of plants and wildlife, particularly endangered species. They also demand careful analysis of the impact of any commercial use of public forests and grassland....
How fast on the Anticline? Scientists and environmental groups' consultants say a proposal to dramatically increase natural gas drilling on the Pinedale Anticline is rushed and lacks assurances the environment will be protected. Industry representatives, meanwhile, say the intense, year-round development would allow extraction of gas to be over more quickly, meaning areas could be reclaimed faster. They also say their plans call for use of technologies and practices intended to reduce impact to the environment. The nearly 200,000-acre Pinedale Anticline is one of the biggest natural gas resources in the country, holding about 25 trillion cubic feet of gas -- enough to heat 10 million homes for 30 years. The area also contains prime habitat for wildlife....
Professor Emeritus: Have We ‘Nuked’ Pinedale’s Big Game Herds? Here we are, 30-plus years later, still trying to extort energy from the gas-bearing formation known as the Pinedale Anticline, or locally the Mesa, an area of approximately 200,000 acres. I recently analyzed the Bureau of Land Management’s plans for energy development on the Mesa. The Mesa is home to a number of sagebrush-dependent wildlife species and provides crucial winter range for mule deer and pronghorn. During the last five years, several hundred wells have been developed on the Anticline causing direct loss of more than two percent of these winter ranges. Although two percent seems like a relatively small number, scientifically credible studies have documented major shifts in mule deer distributions and a 46 percent reduction in deer numbers. Researchers attribute much of this decline to wellfield activities, direct impacts to the very best habitat and indirect effects from animals avoiding areas near development. We have less data for pronghorn but studies do indicate that survival rates are lower for pronghorn exposed to energy development activities compared to those not exposed. Based on my own research, I believe impacts to pronghorn are probably as great if not greater than those reported for mule deer. Yet, even in the face of this evidence, the BLM is proposing to expand drilling activities on crucial winter ranges with an additional 4,000 wells....
Ariz. Cactus to Remain on Species List A cactus that has been a thorn in the side of southern Arizona developers for more than a decade will remain under federal protection after a review of the plant's status. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's recent decision to keep the Pima pineapple cactus on the federal endangered species list means that new developments will have to save open space for it in fast-growing Tucson suburbs. Some private biologists had argued that the Pima pineapple cactus is far more common than previously estimated and should be lumped with other, more common pineapple cacti varieties. But wildlife service officials said two studies from a private consulting firm questioning the listing were faulted by the federal agency's scientists and all but one of 14 outside scientists. For one, the service said, the consultants used cactus survey methods that would tend to "bias" the survey data toward making the population seem more abundant than it is. The species lives only in southern and southeastern Arizona and in part of Mexico....
Alaska Senate opposes polar bear listing The state Senate is on record opposing the federal listing of polar bears as a threatened species. The Senate Friday voted 12 to 5 in favor of the resolution, which was introduced the same day. A similar resolution is pending in the House. Fairbanks Republican Gary Wilken says he is concerned that the listing does not have the proper scientific backing. And he says it could be used to halt subsistence activities and resource development in the state. The Palin and Murkowski administrations are also on record opposing the listing. The Fish and Wildlife Service's review comes amid concerns that global warming is melting away the sea ice where the animals live. In December, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proposed listing polar bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. A final decision on the listing is due by January 2008....
Rare bearpoppy gains protection in patch at Nellis Air Force Base Nellis Air Force Base is setting aside more than 230 acres as protected habitat for the rare Las Vegas bearpoppy, a fuzzy-leafed plant with yellow flowers that grows only in gypsum soils primarily in Clark County. The bearpoppy, which depends on a ground-dwelling bee for pollination, is considered a critically endangered species in Nevada and is on the state's list of protected species, said Jim Morefield, a botanist with the Nevada Natural Heritage Program. The plant is not on federal threatened or endangered species lists because Nevada has taken steps to protect habitat where it grows at Nellis, North Las Vegas Airport and Springs Preserve. Morefield told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The base set-aside is under a permit from the Nevada Division of Forestry that allows Nellis to develop other property on the base for military housing and flood detention basins....
Support Eroding for Rep. Frank Wolf's Journey Through Hallowed Ground Heritage Area Support for Congressman Frank Wolf's controversial Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act (H.R. 319) continues to erode, reports The National Center for Public Policy Research. Two Congressmen are cosponsoring an alternative measure that, unlike Wolf's bill, would protect property owners. Congressman Virgil Goode (R-VA), who had cosponsored the Wolf initiative in the previous Congress, has chosen not to do so in the current Congress. Both Rep. Goode and Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) recently decided to cosponsor an alternative Heritage Area proposal put forth by Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD). Bartlett's bill (H.R. 1270) promises to protect property rights and limited local government where the Wolf bill would endanger both. Specifically, Rep. Wolf's legislation would create a 175-mile long preservation zone, stretching from central Virginia (Rep. Goode's district) through Maryland (Rep. Bartlett's district) to southern Pennsylvania (Rep. Bill Shuster's district), where land use and property rights could be restricted. The bill would give the National Park Service and preservation interest groups, many with a history of hostility towards property rights, substantial influence over land use planning in the region. The interest groups and the Park Service would create a land use "management plan" for the area, and then disburse federal moneys to local governments to promote the plan. Congressman Bartlett's measure would also create a National Heritage Area. However, it would focus more on bestowing special recognition upon the area and promoting historic education and tourism within the region. Unlike the Wolf bill, the Bartlett plan would not earmark millions of dollars for wealthy special interests, nor give those interests undue influence over local land use decisions....
GIS technology maps people and planet Aerial mapping is not new, but it wasn't until we acquired the vertical distance of orbital satellites that we could get a true overview of the terrain. Over here, for example, the entire length of the Missouri River, tributaries like roots of a tree; there, the whole meandering line of knuckled humps that is the Blue Ridge Mountains. GIS combines these overhead views with digitized data sets based on what's happening in a place. Think of taking a high-altitude photograph of the ground, then laying on it a series of transparent sheets, each scattered with differently-colored dots or shadings that signify a certain amount or quality of something. As the layers add up, a mosaic emerges, with patterns that reveal a great deal. If you're modeling a river system, you might sample various aspects of the waterway at many points and assemble a multi-dimensional portrait of river depth, fish populations, human activities along the banks, and pollutant presence. Adding the first data overlay, you might discover that where there are lots of red dots signifying pollution, there aren't many green dots signifying fish. Another layer, with black dots for industrial plants and yellow dots for apple orchards, reveals a surprise: The red pollution dots concentrate near the apple orchards. Deduction: The pollutants aren't of industrial origin but are, say, pesticide runoff from agriculture. Solution: Determine how to help fish and apples coexist. GIS can also go into the air to build spatial models that include weather patterns, air pollution, and bird migration routes. And with information from borings and ground-penetrating radar, it can depict what's beneath the surface, mapping water table contours, soil depth, mineral content, or the "plumes" of contaminants spreading from a pollution source....
Montana Legislature Faces End Game for Groundwater Solutions House Bill 844 by Rep. Debby Barrett, R-Dillon, failed a House vote Monday, 47 to 53, with 4 Republicans and all Democrats opposed. In the Montana Legislature’s waning weeks, the fight for the state’s most precious resource – water – is just ramping up. The question of who gets the rights to the groundwater in Montana’s fastest-growing valleys has the potential to profoundly affect the economic, agricultural and recreational future of the state. Without the ability to dig new wells to service growing towns and subdivisions, Montana’s economic growth will stagnate, developers say. But farmers and ranchers argue that their seniority must be protected from municipal development while still allowing them the flexibility to dig new wells for irrigation....
Goat rancher legally kills mountain lion A Ventura goat rancher shot and killed a mountain lion last week after getting a special state permit to do so because it had slaughtered eight of his animals. The rancher, whom California Department of Fish and Game officials declined to identify, reported Wednesday that a mountain lion had killed eight of his young goats on the two previous nights, said Chris Long, Ventura County patrol lieutenant for the state department. After visiting the ranch on Camp Chaffee Road near Foster Park, Long said, he determined a mountain lion was responsible and issued the rancher a depredation permit. Though mountain lions are defined under California law as a protected species, depredation permits allow people to kill lions that have destroyed livestock or domestic animals in certain circumstances. That night, an approximately 130-pound male mountain lion came to the ranch and the rancher shot and killed it, Long said....
Underpass aims to help wildlife Government, environmental groups and private landowners are working together on an experimental project to reduce road kill as animals travel between the Greater Yellowstone area and protected lands to the north. When the Montana Department of Transportation needed to replace two bridges on Interstate 90 east of Bozeman because they did not meet earthquake standards, they also decided to try to reduce the amount of roadkill in the area. The new bridge project includes 8-foot-high, woven-wire fences, which will stretch for about a mile on either side of the road, meant to funnel wildlife toward the underpasses and away from the busy highway. Animals using the underpass will still have to cross railroad tracks that carry 20 to 24 trains per day, traveling at 35 mph, but that's easier than trying to avoid 20,000 cars and trucks traveling 70 mph, said DOT biologist Deb Wambach....
Judge allows private testing for mad cow The federal government must allow meatpackers to test their animals for mad cow disease, a federal judge ruled Thursday. Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a meatpacker based in Arkansas City, Kan., wants to test all of its cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. Larger meat companies feared that move because if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they could be forced to do the expensive test, too. The Agriculture Department currently regulates the test and administers it to less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows. The department threatened Creekstone with prosecution if it tested all its animals. U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled that the government does not have the authority to regulate the test. Robertson put his order on hold until the government can appeal. If the government does not appeal by June 1, he said the ruling would take effect....
Supreme Court Won't Take Up Farm Ban Nebraska's 25-year-old corporate farming ban, considered one of the most restrictive of its kind in the country, was dealt a fatal blow Monday. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review an appellate court's decision last year that ruled the ban violated the U.S. Constitution's commerce clause, which prevents states from enacting laws that disrupt interstate commerce. "This is very much the final nail in the coffin," said David Bracht, an attorney who represents opponents of the ban. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said, "We are mourning the end of an era today." Voters passed the ban in 1982. It generally prohibited corporations and certain other business entities from owning farmland or engaging in agricultural activity in the state....
Fighting for subsidies Spinach might not seem to have anything to do with military operations. But there it is, in an emergency supplemental bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: $25 million for California spinach growers, whose vigorous, martiallike spinach-growing had heretofore not been seen as part of the war effort. The war bill illustrates the axiom that guides the nation's agricultural policy: namely, that any principles of good government, common sense and fiscal sanity must always be abandoned in the cause of shoveling federal dollars at American farmers. Its $4 billion for disaster relief, together with millions for peanut storage, sugar-beet production and the Milk Income Loss Contract Program, isn't unusual, except for the fact that it was used to buy votes for a pullout from Iraq. For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, apparently, all geopolitics is local, and some of her members are happy to lose a war if they can win a subsidy. Otherwise, the ag spending is unremarkable, part of the perpetual bi-partisan, farm-spending gross-out....
Baker County ballet features saddles rather than skirts A garracho is a 13-foot-long pole that Spanish bullfighters have used for centuries to trip bulls in order to make their four-legged opponents snorting mad. But in the hands of Alice Trindle, a garracho is one of two implements used in an elegant dance. The other is her horse, Tilly. Trindle, who calls herself an "aspiring horseman" in the same way Tiger Woods aspires to be a really great golfer, showed a large crowd at Saturday's "Celebrate the Horse" event just what a ballet on horseback might look like. With mood-setting Spanish guitar music filling the arena at the T&T Ranch she shares with event organizer Susan Triplett, Trindle maneuvered the long pole and her horse through an elegant human/equine pas de deux — with her horse cantering the circumference of a 6-foot circle....
U.S. Supreme Court rebukes Bush administration on greenhouse gas emissions The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming. In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars. Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion. The court's four conservative justices - Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas - dissented. The court had three questions before it. -Do states have the right to sue the EPA to challenge its decision? -Does the Clean Air Act give EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases? -Does EPA have the discretion not to regulate those emissions? The court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions. The court said the agency has so far provided a "laundry list" of reasons that include foreign policy considerations....Go here to read the opinion.
Ruling Undermines Lawsuits Opposing Emissions Controls Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on carbon dioxide emissions largely shredded the underpinning of other lawsuits trying to block regulation of the emissions and gave new momentum to Congressional efforts to control heat-trapping gases linked to climate change. The arguments rejected by the court have been invoked in other legal challenges, including a case pending in California in which auto industry trade groups argue against that state’s law controlling carbon-dioxide emissions from cars, and one in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where electric utilities are fighting the E.P.A.’s authority to regulate their emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. Both cases had been stayed awaiting yesterday’s ruling. “This flips the debate from an environment in which Congress must act if there is to be federal action,” said Tim Profeta, the director of the Nicholas Institute for the Environment at Duke University, “to one in which the E.P.A. can act as soon as an administration friendly to the concept is in power.” “If there is a President Clinton or President McCain,” Mr. Profeta added, “he or she doesn’t have to go to Congress to get action.”....
Editorial - Jolly Green Justices(subscription) The current Supreme Court is a talented group of jurists, but until yesterday we didn't think their expertise ran to climatology. The Justices would have done better in their big global warming decision if they'd stuck more closely to the law. They showed no such modesty. In Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, a narrow majority managed to diminish the rules of judicial standing, rewrite the definition of "pollutant" under the Clean Air Act, and dramatically curtail the decision-making authority of the executive branch. And judging from Justice John Paul Stevens's 5-4 majority decision, they did so because the five Justices are personally anxious about rising temperatures. As Justice Antonin Scalia noted in dissent, the "Court's alarm over global warming" has led it to substitute "its own desired outcome" for the EPA's judgment. The five Supreme climatologists granted Al Gore's fondest wish by declaring that "the harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized." The majority warned about a "precipitous rise in sea levels," "severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems" and "increases in the spread of disease." The Court used all of this not-so-inadvertent opining to justify its conclusion that CO2 is indeed a "pollutant." The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate "any air pollutant" from cars that might "endanger public health or welfare," though the majority took the widest view that the definition includes any "physical, chemical" substance that goes in the air. (Next up: oxygen.) Justice Scalia poked fun at this reasoning, noting Webster's definition of "pollute" is "to make or render impure or unclean" -- which might apply to sulfur dioxide or other dirty gases but not a product of human respiration that resides in the upper atmosphere. In any case, isn't this something for Congress to decide?....
Ethanol-blend auto emissions no greener than gasoline: study An unpublished federal report appears to undermine the belief that commercially available ethanol-blended fuel produces cleaner emissions than regular gasoline. Many Canadians believe filling up with ethanol-blended gasoline reduces the emission of greenhouse gases that damage the environment. Advertising sponsored by the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association encourages the idea, telling Canadians renewable fuels are "good for the environment," and even some provincial governments, including Manitoba and Saskatchewan, say the fuel "burns cleaner" than gasoline. Scientists at Environment Canada studied four vehicles of recent makes, testing their emissions in a range for driving conditions and temperatures. "Looking at tailpipe emissions, from a greenhouse gas perspective, there really isn't much difference between ethanol and gasoline," said Greg Rideout, head of Environment Canada's toxic emissions research. "Our results seemed to indicate that with today's vehicles, there's not a lot of difference at the tailpipe with greenhouse gas emissions." The study found no statistical difference between the greenhouse gas emissions of regular unleaded fuel and 10 per cent ethanol blended fuel. Although the study found a reduction in carbon monoxide, a pollutant that forms smog, emissions of some other gases, such as hydrocarbons, actually increased under certain conditions....
Flame-plagued summers in forecast Fiery summers will likely become common in Colorado as the planet warms, according to researchers preparing the latest chapter of an international climate change assessment. The chapter - detailing the observed and forecast effects of climate change worldwide - is scheduled to be released by the United Nations on Friday. Blazing Western wildfires, a consequence of warming drying the region, could be one of the costliest impacts here, climate experts said in a telephone press conference Monday. "The U.S. Forest Service last year spent $1 billion on fire, on fire response," said Anthony Janetos, director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute, at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland. Fire seasons today are two months longer than they were in the 1970s, according to 2006 research, and wildfires destroy 6.5 times as much land....Looks like we are being set up. A bad fire season will be because of global warming, and not because of Forest Service management, or non-management of the resource.
Forest plan's critics suppressed, judge rules The Bush administration illegally suppressed and misrepresented the views of dissenting scientists when it eased logging restrictions under the Northwest Forest Plan, a federal judge in Seattle has ruled. In his ruling late Friday, U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez struck down the administration's change to the forest plan, which governs logging on 24 million acres of federal lands in Washington, Oregon and Northern California. "Here, the dissenting views of responsible scientists were neither set forth in substance, nor their import discussed," as required by the National Environmental Policy Act, Martinez wrote. Under the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan's Aquatic Conservation Strategy, before federal agencies could approve logging, road building or other projects, they had to determine that the projects would not harm watersheds. That wording, designed to protect salmon, had held up timber activities on 4 million acres designated for logging. In March 2004, the Bush administration dropped the wording at the request of the timber industry....
Editorial - Value of a forest: Federal ruling is a victory for conservation Trees are renewable by human cultivation in a relatively short time. But forests, especially old-growth forests, are not. Once a forest is degraded or destroyed by logging, drilling, mining or grazing, it could take many decades, even centuries, for nature to restore its beauty, its ecosystems and its value as a watershed. That is if nature were ever again allowed to take its own course. Worse, the extinction of plant and animal species is irreversible. That's why any American who has stood quietly in a forest and felt the power of its sensuous and spiritual pull should be delighted at a ruling by a federal district court. The ruling overturns the Bush administration's misbegotten forest rules that cut back on environmental reviews and protection of wildlife. The Bush rules, issued two years ago, also would wrongly limit public participation in forest management plans. The pro-business Bush environmental rules are an attempt to dismantle a policy for national forests and grasslands dating to the Reagan administration. Those long-standing rules require government agencies to maintain viable numbers of plants and wildlife, particularly endangered species. They also demand careful analysis of the impact of any commercial use of public forests and grassland....
How fast on the Anticline? Scientists and environmental groups' consultants say a proposal to dramatically increase natural gas drilling on the Pinedale Anticline is rushed and lacks assurances the environment will be protected. Industry representatives, meanwhile, say the intense, year-round development would allow extraction of gas to be over more quickly, meaning areas could be reclaimed faster. They also say their plans call for use of technologies and practices intended to reduce impact to the environment. The nearly 200,000-acre Pinedale Anticline is one of the biggest natural gas resources in the country, holding about 25 trillion cubic feet of gas -- enough to heat 10 million homes for 30 years. The area also contains prime habitat for wildlife....
Professor Emeritus: Have We ‘Nuked’ Pinedale’s Big Game Herds? Here we are, 30-plus years later, still trying to extort energy from the gas-bearing formation known as the Pinedale Anticline, or locally the Mesa, an area of approximately 200,000 acres. I recently analyzed the Bureau of Land Management’s plans for energy development on the Mesa. The Mesa is home to a number of sagebrush-dependent wildlife species and provides crucial winter range for mule deer and pronghorn. During the last five years, several hundred wells have been developed on the Anticline causing direct loss of more than two percent of these winter ranges. Although two percent seems like a relatively small number, scientifically credible studies have documented major shifts in mule deer distributions and a 46 percent reduction in deer numbers. Researchers attribute much of this decline to wellfield activities, direct impacts to the very best habitat and indirect effects from animals avoiding areas near development. We have less data for pronghorn but studies do indicate that survival rates are lower for pronghorn exposed to energy development activities compared to those not exposed. Based on my own research, I believe impacts to pronghorn are probably as great if not greater than those reported for mule deer. Yet, even in the face of this evidence, the BLM is proposing to expand drilling activities on crucial winter ranges with an additional 4,000 wells....
Ariz. Cactus to Remain on Species List A cactus that has been a thorn in the side of southern Arizona developers for more than a decade will remain under federal protection after a review of the plant's status. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's recent decision to keep the Pima pineapple cactus on the federal endangered species list means that new developments will have to save open space for it in fast-growing Tucson suburbs. Some private biologists had argued that the Pima pineapple cactus is far more common than previously estimated and should be lumped with other, more common pineapple cacti varieties. But wildlife service officials said two studies from a private consulting firm questioning the listing were faulted by the federal agency's scientists and all but one of 14 outside scientists. For one, the service said, the consultants used cactus survey methods that would tend to "bias" the survey data toward making the population seem more abundant than it is. The species lives only in southern and southeastern Arizona and in part of Mexico....
Alaska Senate opposes polar bear listing The state Senate is on record opposing the federal listing of polar bears as a threatened species. The Senate Friday voted 12 to 5 in favor of the resolution, which was introduced the same day. A similar resolution is pending in the House. Fairbanks Republican Gary Wilken says he is concerned that the listing does not have the proper scientific backing. And he says it could be used to halt subsistence activities and resource development in the state. The Palin and Murkowski administrations are also on record opposing the listing. The Fish and Wildlife Service's review comes amid concerns that global warming is melting away the sea ice where the animals live. In December, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proposed listing polar bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. A final decision on the listing is due by January 2008....
Rare bearpoppy gains protection in patch at Nellis Air Force Base Nellis Air Force Base is setting aside more than 230 acres as protected habitat for the rare Las Vegas bearpoppy, a fuzzy-leafed plant with yellow flowers that grows only in gypsum soils primarily in Clark County. The bearpoppy, which depends on a ground-dwelling bee for pollination, is considered a critically endangered species in Nevada and is on the state's list of protected species, said Jim Morefield, a botanist with the Nevada Natural Heritage Program. The plant is not on federal threatened or endangered species lists because Nevada has taken steps to protect habitat where it grows at Nellis, North Las Vegas Airport and Springs Preserve. Morefield told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The base set-aside is under a permit from the Nevada Division of Forestry that allows Nellis to develop other property on the base for military housing and flood detention basins....
Support Eroding for Rep. Frank Wolf's Journey Through Hallowed Ground Heritage Area Support for Congressman Frank Wolf's controversial Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act (H.R. 319) continues to erode, reports The National Center for Public Policy Research. Two Congressmen are cosponsoring an alternative measure that, unlike Wolf's bill, would protect property owners. Congressman Virgil Goode (R-VA), who had cosponsored the Wolf initiative in the previous Congress, has chosen not to do so in the current Congress. Both Rep. Goode and Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) recently decided to cosponsor an alternative Heritage Area proposal put forth by Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD). Bartlett's bill (H.R. 1270) promises to protect property rights and limited local government where the Wolf bill would endanger both. Specifically, Rep. Wolf's legislation would create a 175-mile long preservation zone, stretching from central Virginia (Rep. Goode's district) through Maryland (Rep. Bartlett's district) to southern Pennsylvania (Rep. Bill Shuster's district), where land use and property rights could be restricted. The bill would give the National Park Service and preservation interest groups, many with a history of hostility towards property rights, substantial influence over land use planning in the region. The interest groups and the Park Service would create a land use "management plan" for the area, and then disburse federal moneys to local governments to promote the plan. Congressman Bartlett's measure would also create a National Heritage Area. However, it would focus more on bestowing special recognition upon the area and promoting historic education and tourism within the region. Unlike the Wolf bill, the Bartlett plan would not earmark millions of dollars for wealthy special interests, nor give those interests undue influence over local land use decisions....
GIS technology maps people and planet Aerial mapping is not new, but it wasn't until we acquired the vertical distance of orbital satellites that we could get a true overview of the terrain. Over here, for example, the entire length of the Missouri River, tributaries like roots of a tree; there, the whole meandering line of knuckled humps that is the Blue Ridge Mountains. GIS combines these overhead views with digitized data sets based on what's happening in a place. Think of taking a high-altitude photograph of the ground, then laying on it a series of transparent sheets, each scattered with differently-colored dots or shadings that signify a certain amount or quality of something. As the layers add up, a mosaic emerges, with patterns that reveal a great deal. If you're modeling a river system, you might sample various aspects of the waterway at many points and assemble a multi-dimensional portrait of river depth, fish populations, human activities along the banks, and pollutant presence. Adding the first data overlay, you might discover that where there are lots of red dots signifying pollution, there aren't many green dots signifying fish. Another layer, with black dots for industrial plants and yellow dots for apple orchards, reveals a surprise: The red pollution dots concentrate near the apple orchards. Deduction: The pollutants aren't of industrial origin but are, say, pesticide runoff from agriculture. Solution: Determine how to help fish and apples coexist. GIS can also go into the air to build spatial models that include weather patterns, air pollution, and bird migration routes. And with information from borings and ground-penetrating radar, it can depict what's beneath the surface, mapping water table contours, soil depth, mineral content, or the "plumes" of contaminants spreading from a pollution source....
Montana Legislature Faces End Game for Groundwater Solutions House Bill 844 by Rep. Debby Barrett, R-Dillon, failed a House vote Monday, 47 to 53, with 4 Republicans and all Democrats opposed. In the Montana Legislature’s waning weeks, the fight for the state’s most precious resource – water – is just ramping up. The question of who gets the rights to the groundwater in Montana’s fastest-growing valleys has the potential to profoundly affect the economic, agricultural and recreational future of the state. Without the ability to dig new wells to service growing towns and subdivisions, Montana’s economic growth will stagnate, developers say. But farmers and ranchers argue that their seniority must be protected from municipal development while still allowing them the flexibility to dig new wells for irrigation....
Goat rancher legally kills mountain lion A Ventura goat rancher shot and killed a mountain lion last week after getting a special state permit to do so because it had slaughtered eight of his animals. The rancher, whom California Department of Fish and Game officials declined to identify, reported Wednesday that a mountain lion had killed eight of his young goats on the two previous nights, said Chris Long, Ventura County patrol lieutenant for the state department. After visiting the ranch on Camp Chaffee Road near Foster Park, Long said, he determined a mountain lion was responsible and issued the rancher a depredation permit. Though mountain lions are defined under California law as a protected species, depredation permits allow people to kill lions that have destroyed livestock or domestic animals in certain circumstances. That night, an approximately 130-pound male mountain lion came to the ranch and the rancher shot and killed it, Long said....
Underpass aims to help wildlife Government, environmental groups and private landowners are working together on an experimental project to reduce road kill as animals travel between the Greater Yellowstone area and protected lands to the north. When the Montana Department of Transportation needed to replace two bridges on Interstate 90 east of Bozeman because they did not meet earthquake standards, they also decided to try to reduce the amount of roadkill in the area. The new bridge project includes 8-foot-high, woven-wire fences, which will stretch for about a mile on either side of the road, meant to funnel wildlife toward the underpasses and away from the busy highway. Animals using the underpass will still have to cross railroad tracks that carry 20 to 24 trains per day, traveling at 35 mph, but that's easier than trying to avoid 20,000 cars and trucks traveling 70 mph, said DOT biologist Deb Wambach....
Judge allows private testing for mad cow The federal government must allow meatpackers to test their animals for mad cow disease, a federal judge ruled Thursday. Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a meatpacker based in Arkansas City, Kan., wants to test all of its cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. Larger meat companies feared that move because if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they could be forced to do the expensive test, too. The Agriculture Department currently regulates the test and administers it to less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows. The department threatened Creekstone with prosecution if it tested all its animals. U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled that the government does not have the authority to regulate the test. Robertson put his order on hold until the government can appeal. If the government does not appeal by June 1, he said the ruling would take effect....
Supreme Court Won't Take Up Farm Ban Nebraska's 25-year-old corporate farming ban, considered one of the most restrictive of its kind in the country, was dealt a fatal blow Monday. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review an appellate court's decision last year that ruled the ban violated the U.S. Constitution's commerce clause, which prevents states from enacting laws that disrupt interstate commerce. "This is very much the final nail in the coffin," said David Bracht, an attorney who represents opponents of the ban. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said, "We are mourning the end of an era today." Voters passed the ban in 1982. It generally prohibited corporations and certain other business entities from owning farmland or engaging in agricultural activity in the state....
Fighting for subsidies Spinach might not seem to have anything to do with military operations. But there it is, in an emergency supplemental bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: $25 million for California spinach growers, whose vigorous, martiallike spinach-growing had heretofore not been seen as part of the war effort. The war bill illustrates the axiom that guides the nation's agricultural policy: namely, that any principles of good government, common sense and fiscal sanity must always be abandoned in the cause of shoveling federal dollars at American farmers. Its $4 billion for disaster relief, together with millions for peanut storage, sugar-beet production and the Milk Income Loss Contract Program, isn't unusual, except for the fact that it was used to buy votes for a pullout from Iraq. For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, apparently, all geopolitics is local, and some of her members are happy to lose a war if they can win a subsidy. Otherwise, the ag spending is unremarkable, part of the perpetual bi-partisan, farm-spending gross-out....
Baker County ballet features saddles rather than skirts A garracho is a 13-foot-long pole that Spanish bullfighters have used for centuries to trip bulls in order to make their four-legged opponents snorting mad. But in the hands of Alice Trindle, a garracho is one of two implements used in an elegant dance. The other is her horse, Tilly. Trindle, who calls herself an "aspiring horseman" in the same way Tiger Woods aspires to be a really great golfer, showed a large crowd at Saturday's "Celebrate the Horse" event just what a ballet on horseback might look like. With mood-setting Spanish guitar music filling the arena at the T&T Ranch she shares with event organizer Susan Triplett, Trindle maneuvered the long pole and her horse through an elegant human/equine pas de deux — with her horse cantering the circumference of a 6-foot circle....
FLE
Smuggled aliens to sue Texas deputy Two illegal aliens plan a multimillion-dollar civil rights lawsuit against a Texas deputy who was sentenced to prison over an April 2005 incident in which the lawman shot at an alien-smuggling vehicle that he said had just tried to run him down. Edwards County Deputy Sheriff Guillermo F. Hernandez, along with his boss, Sheriff Donald G. Letsinger, have been targeted in a pending lawsuit by Maricela Rodriguez-Garcia and Candido Garcia-Perez, two Mexicans who were being smuggled into the U.S. when they were injured by fragments of the lawman's bullets. Mrs. Rodriguez-Garcia, struck by bullet fragments in the cheek and mouth, and Mr. Garcia-Perez, injured when fragments hit him in the arm, will seek damages from the two lawmen when the lawsuit is filed in U.S. District Court in Del Rio, Texas. Court records show Mrs. Rodriguez-Garcia and Mr. Garcia-Perez told investigators that they paid $2,000 each to be taken across the Rio Grande from Acuna, Mexico. They said they later met the vehicle's driver and a guide, who were to take them to Austin and Dallas. Both Mexican nationals are thought to be in the U.S. and have filed notice that they intend to sue. A legally required mediation hearing, where disputing parties meet with a neutral third party to try to resolve a dispute without going to court, is scheduled for today in Austin....
Undercover agents slip bombs past DIA screeners Checkpoint security screeners at Denver International Airport last month failed to find liquid explosives packed in carry-on luggage and also improvised explosive devices, or IED's, worn by undercover agents sources told 9NEWS. "It really is concerning considering that we're paying millions of dollars out of our budget to be secure in the airline industry," said passenger Mark Butler who has had two Army Swiss knives confiscated by screeners in the past. "Yet, we're not any safer than we were before 9/11, in my opinion." The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners failed most of the covert tests because of human error, sources told 9NEWS. Alarms went off on the machines, but sources said screeners violated TSA standard operating procedures and did not hand-search suspicious luggage, wand, or pat down the undercover agents....
Chertoff to meet with border sheriffs Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff will meet next month with members of the Southwestern Border Sheriff's Coalition, who have vigorously called on the federal government to include state and local law-enforcement authorities in efforts to secure the border. Representing 28 counties along the 1,951-mile border from Texas to California, the coalition has asked for federal help in combating rising illegal entry and drug smuggling, saying the federal government's failure to control the border has put the lives of border residents and law-enforcement officials at risk. Sheriff Ogden, whose 5,520-square-mile county has become a popular alien-smuggling corridor with more than a 50 percent jump in apprehensions last year, has argued that law-enforcement agencies along the border face not only immigration issues but border-security concerns. The coalition has urged the federal government to work with state and local law-enforcement authorities to address the issue of border security, saying that while federal officials have been "doing a lot of talking" about securing the nation's borders, the Southwest continues to be overrun by illegal aliens, illicit drugs and rising violence....
Papers show Census role in WWII camps The Census Bureau turned over confidential information including names and addresses to help the Justice Department, Secret Service and other agencies identify Japanese-Americans during World War II, according to government documents released today. Documents found by two historians in Commerce Department archives and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library confirm for the first time that the bureau shared details about individual Japanese-Americans after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The Census Bureau played a role in the confinement of more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent who were rounded up and held in internment camps, many until the war ended in 1945. In 1942, the Census turned over general statistics about where Japanese-Americans lived to the War Department. It was acting legally under the Second War Powers Act, which allowed the sharing of information for national security. The newly released documents show that in 1943, the Census complied with a request by the Treasury Department to turn over names of individuals of Japanese ancestry in the Washington, D.C., area because of an unspecified threat against President Franklin Roosevelt. The list contained names, addresses and data on the age, sex, citizenship status and occupation of Japanese-Americans in the area....
Bill Passes, Tennesseans Can Keep Guns In Emergencies Tennesseans will get to keep their weapons to defend themselves in future disasters and emergencies. Tennessee lawmakers shot down a standing law allowing the governor to confiscate guns. Republican Senator Mark Norris proposed the bill that bans local officials from taking weapons He said, “You can't complain about a vote of 32 to nothing, I’d say the state supports our Second Amendment rights, our right to bear arms, and that's important at all times, especially in times of a state emergency."....
You may already be a terrorist If your name -- or any monicker close to your name -- appears on a lengthy list of "specially designated nationals" maintained by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, you may be unable to get a mortgage, buy insurance or purchase a car. That's because the federal government makes it illegal for businesses, under threat of both civil and criminal penalties, to have anything to do with individuals and organizations whose names appear on the list. Not surprisingly, many businesses choose to err on the side of caution rather than risk fines and jail time -- with civil penalties accruing for even inadvertent transgressions. The result is that innocent people have found themselves turned away for loans, purchases and insurance with little recourse except a drawn-out and potentially expensive effort to prove that they are not the same person as a sometimes vaguely identified terrorist on the watch list. It's not a theoretical problem. The report, compiled by Shirin Sinnar, contains chilling anecdotes about normal people with common names turned away by mortgage brokers, car dealers and name-brand businesses like Western Union and PayPal. In fact, the problem might be even worse except that many businesses aren't obeying the requirement that every potential customer be screened for terrorist connections. Many don't know about the law; others find the cost of compliance daunting, even in light of the penalties involved....
Smuggled aliens to sue Texas deputy Two illegal aliens plan a multimillion-dollar civil rights lawsuit against a Texas deputy who was sentenced to prison over an April 2005 incident in which the lawman shot at an alien-smuggling vehicle that he said had just tried to run him down. Edwards County Deputy Sheriff Guillermo F. Hernandez, along with his boss, Sheriff Donald G. Letsinger, have been targeted in a pending lawsuit by Maricela Rodriguez-Garcia and Candido Garcia-Perez, two Mexicans who were being smuggled into the U.S. when they were injured by fragments of the lawman's bullets. Mrs. Rodriguez-Garcia, struck by bullet fragments in the cheek and mouth, and Mr. Garcia-Perez, injured when fragments hit him in the arm, will seek damages from the two lawmen when the lawsuit is filed in U.S. District Court in Del Rio, Texas. Court records show Mrs. Rodriguez-Garcia and Mr. Garcia-Perez told investigators that they paid $2,000 each to be taken across the Rio Grande from Acuna, Mexico. They said they later met the vehicle's driver and a guide, who were to take them to Austin and Dallas. Both Mexican nationals are thought to be in the U.S. and have filed notice that they intend to sue. A legally required mediation hearing, where disputing parties meet with a neutral third party to try to resolve a dispute without going to court, is scheduled for today in Austin....
Undercover agents slip bombs past DIA screeners Checkpoint security screeners at Denver International Airport last month failed to find liquid explosives packed in carry-on luggage and also improvised explosive devices, or IED's, worn by undercover agents sources told 9NEWS. "It really is concerning considering that we're paying millions of dollars out of our budget to be secure in the airline industry," said passenger Mark Butler who has had two Army Swiss knives confiscated by screeners in the past. "Yet, we're not any safer than we were before 9/11, in my opinion." The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners failed most of the covert tests because of human error, sources told 9NEWS. Alarms went off on the machines, but sources said screeners violated TSA standard operating procedures and did not hand-search suspicious luggage, wand, or pat down the undercover agents....
Chertoff to meet with border sheriffs Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff will meet next month with members of the Southwestern Border Sheriff's Coalition, who have vigorously called on the federal government to include state and local law-enforcement authorities in efforts to secure the border. Representing 28 counties along the 1,951-mile border from Texas to California, the coalition has asked for federal help in combating rising illegal entry and drug smuggling, saying the federal government's failure to control the border has put the lives of border residents and law-enforcement officials at risk. Sheriff Ogden, whose 5,520-square-mile county has become a popular alien-smuggling corridor with more than a 50 percent jump in apprehensions last year, has argued that law-enforcement agencies along the border face not only immigration issues but border-security concerns. The coalition has urged the federal government to work with state and local law-enforcement authorities to address the issue of border security, saying that while federal officials have been "doing a lot of talking" about securing the nation's borders, the Southwest continues to be overrun by illegal aliens, illicit drugs and rising violence....
Papers show Census role in WWII camps The Census Bureau turned over confidential information including names and addresses to help the Justice Department, Secret Service and other agencies identify Japanese-Americans during World War II, according to government documents released today. Documents found by two historians in Commerce Department archives and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library confirm for the first time that the bureau shared details about individual Japanese-Americans after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The Census Bureau played a role in the confinement of more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent who were rounded up and held in internment camps, many until the war ended in 1945. In 1942, the Census turned over general statistics about where Japanese-Americans lived to the War Department. It was acting legally under the Second War Powers Act, which allowed the sharing of information for national security. The newly released documents show that in 1943, the Census complied with a request by the Treasury Department to turn over names of individuals of Japanese ancestry in the Washington, D.C., area because of an unspecified threat against President Franklin Roosevelt. The list contained names, addresses and data on the age, sex, citizenship status and occupation of Japanese-Americans in the area....
Bill Passes, Tennesseans Can Keep Guns In Emergencies Tennesseans will get to keep their weapons to defend themselves in future disasters and emergencies. Tennessee lawmakers shot down a standing law allowing the governor to confiscate guns. Republican Senator Mark Norris proposed the bill that bans local officials from taking weapons He said, “You can't complain about a vote of 32 to nothing, I’d say the state supports our Second Amendment rights, our right to bear arms, and that's important at all times, especially in times of a state emergency."....
You may already be a terrorist If your name -- or any monicker close to your name -- appears on a lengthy list of "specially designated nationals" maintained by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, you may be unable to get a mortgage, buy insurance or purchase a car. That's because the federal government makes it illegal for businesses, under threat of both civil and criminal penalties, to have anything to do with individuals and organizations whose names appear on the list. Not surprisingly, many businesses choose to err on the side of caution rather than risk fines and jail time -- with civil penalties accruing for even inadvertent transgressions. The result is that innocent people have found themselves turned away for loans, purchases and insurance with little recourse except a drawn-out and potentially expensive effort to prove that they are not the same person as a sometimes vaguely identified terrorist on the watch list. It's not a theoretical problem. The report, compiled by Shirin Sinnar, contains chilling anecdotes about normal people with common names turned away by mortgage brokers, car dealers and name-brand businesses like Western Union and PayPal. In fact, the problem might be even worse except that many businesses aren't obeying the requirement that every potential customer be screened for terrorist connections. Many don't know about the law; others find the cost of compliance daunting, even in light of the penalties involved....
Monday, April 02, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
Scientists Gather for Climate Conference Climate change could threaten the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the decades to come, according to a draft of a major report being released this week. Changing weather patterns have already reshaped the world, but they will accelerate in the decades to come, says the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of 2,000 scientists. Severe drought and devastating floods are among some of the threats to mankind unless action is taken to curb global warming. "We are going into a realm the Earth has not seen for a very long time ... over the past 800,000 years," said Camille Parmesan, a University of Texas biologist who reviewed the upcoming report. About 285 delegates from 124 countries are meeting in Brussels with more than 50 of the scientists who compiled the report. As governments will use the report to set policy, the final wording must be adopted by consensus among the diplomats, with the approval of the scientists. The report will be the second volume of a four-volume authoritative assessment of Earth's climate released this year. The first in February updated the science of climate change, concluding with near certainty that global warming is caused by human behavior....
Panel identifies species impacted by climate change From the micro to the macro, from plankton in the oceans to polar bears in the far north and seals in the far south, global warming has begun changing life on Earth, international scientists will report next Friday. "Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent," says a draft obtained by The Associated Press of a report on warming's impacts, to be issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the authoritative U.N. network of 2,000 scientists and more than 100 governments. In February the panel declared it "very likely" most global warming has been caused by manmade emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Animal and plant life in the Arctic and Antarctic is undergoing substantial change, scientists say. Rising sea levels elsewhere are damaging coastal wetlands. Warmer waters are bleaching and killing coral reefs, pushing marine species toward the poles, reducing fish populations in African lakes, research finds. "Hundreds of species have already changed their ranges, and ecosystems are being disrupted," said University of Michigan ecologist Rosina Bierbaum, former head of the U.S. IPCC delegation. "It is clear that a number of species are going to be lost."....
It Was A Snow Job Either Way If there's any agreement in Arizona about the ruling of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals prohibiting Flagstaff's Arizona Snowbowl from making artificial snow, it's that it was a snow job. It just depends on which side of the snow gun you are on. Today, there is no snowmaking on these enticing slopes, which makes for very iffy skiing and lousy economics in good or bad years. The Circuit Court sided with Native American tribes who claimed the use of reclaimed water (er, effluent) to manufacture snow on Snow Bowl's San Francisco Peaks violates the tribes' (Navajo and Hopi) rights under the 1933 Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed by Congress. The new Circuit Court ruling overturned a District Court decision last year that reaffirmed the public use doctrine on public (read: Forest Service) land. The District Court said that the tribes failed to present any "objective evidence that their exercises of religion will be impacted by Snowbowl upgrades, nor would snowmaking "substantially burden the tribes' exercise of religion." The whole thing has sparked debate among skiers, media, tribe members, and anyone else with an opinion. The Arizona media has squared off with two sharply differing points of view:....
Sawmills could fuel vehicles, experts say Once upon a time, logs were used for making houses and paper. Now, they're being looked at as one of the most promising tools for helping the United States grow its way to energy independence. Bioenergy from forest products was the buzz at a convention last week of foresters and logging operators in Coeur d'Alene. Sawmills and loggers have access to a seemingly endless mountain of sawdust, mill shavings and bark that can be fairly easily transformed into a sustainable form of energy, said Phil Latos, who oversees research and development for softwood lumber technology for Weyerhaeuser. "We can also think of ourselves as oil companies," Latos told the audience of the Small Log Conference....
Protesters want Lost Ox Trail to be a lost cause If you build it, they will come -- to protest. Ranchers and private landowners turned out in full force at Wednesday's White Pine County Commission meeting to protest the Bureau of Land Management's plans for an Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) trail system near Ely. Opponents of the Lost Ox OHV Trail System worry that the 186-mile network of roads and trails would fragment wildlife habitat and degrade watersheds in the South Egan Range. In addition, they question whether the trail system would effect local landowners and ranchers whose livestock graze in the immediate area. “I don't think that we want to become an ATV destination area,” said Wade Robison, a member of the White Pine Coordinated Resource Management Steering Committee....
Hybrid skiing on Vail Pass gains popularity There are no ski lifts on the Vail Pass Recreation Area. But there is a quick and easy way to access acres of untracked snow. Welcome to the world of hybrid skiing. At the White River National Forest Area, the ski lifts come in the form of snowmobiles towing skiers. Among the 55,000 acres of land at Vail Pass (which stretches from Copper Mountain to Vail, across Interstate 70 to Highway 24), 3,300 acres are motorized-assisted ski terrain. And with some fresh figure eight tracks as proof last Thursday, the hybrid zone is getting plenty of use. "That's the area we've seen the most growth over the past 10 years," said Don Dressler, a Snow Ranger with the Forest Service....
Judge halts "bounty" on wolves A judge on Friday halted Alaska's $150 payments for each wolf killed under its predator-control program. Conservation groups lauded the decision by state Superior Court Judge William Morse granting their request for a temporary stop to what they called an illegal bounty. Plaintiffs are suing the state to terminate the predator-control program altogether but said Friday's ruling was significant. "If our goal is to offer as much resistance as possible, we have done that with abundance," said Priscilla Feral, president of Darien, Conn.-based Friends of Animals. "As for torpedoing the entire Draconian wolf-control program, that's the litigation that continues." Her group and other plaintiffs, including Defenders of Wildlife and the Alaska chapter of the Sierra Club, asked the court Tuesday to stop the payments. They cited a decision by the Alaska Legislature more than two decades ago that revoked any authority the state Department of Fish and Game had to pay bounties to hunters....
Bush's rules for forests tossed A federal judge tossed out Bush administration rules Friday that gave national forest managers more discretion to approve logging and other commercial projects without lengthy environmental reviews. U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled that the administration failed to adequately consider the environmental effects the new rules would have and neglected to properly gather public comment on the issue. Hamilton said in her written ruling that the government “appears to have charted a new path and adopted a new policy approach regarding programmatic changes to environmental regulations.” Hamilton ruled that the government couldn't institute the new rules until proper environmental reviews were conducted, but she declined to specify how the nation's 155 national forests should be managed until then....Go here to read the opinion.
Forest management gets mixed grades The first independent report card on Uncle Sam's use of prescribed burns and forest thinning to reduce the threat of wildfire in the urban interface gives the federal government mixed grades. Overall, the federal government needs to improve its record keeping and increase public participation in planning fuel reduction treatments, according to the analysis by the Forest Guild, a nonprofit national organization of natural resource professionals. The 31-page study focused on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Medford District and the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest but also paired the in-depth regional study with a national overview of the legal and administrative hurdles facing fuel reduction projects. The initiative came two years after Congress had approved the National Fire Plan, a document detailing the needs and the budget to improve firefighting capabilities and forest health nationwide through thinning and removal of debris....Go here to view the report.
Firefighting sheep to start arriving Sunday Sheep will be brought into Carson City's western hills starting this weekend to help make the area less prone to wildfire. Two flocks of sheep, approximately 1,600 total, will eliminate cheatgrass, perennial grasses and forbs - a herbaceous plant that's not a grass. The first flock is expected to arrive Sunday morning by truck, and be released behind Greenhouse Garden Center on South Curry Street to eat along C Hill. The second will be walked in from Washoe County early Wednesday, and focus on the Timberline-Lakeview area. "Sheep are nomadic, they have to move," said Ann Bollinger, the city's open space assistant. The sheep are expected to graze up to 2,500 acres on the west side during the next 30 to 45 days, she said. Cheatgrass grows and dries out faster than other vegetation in the area, but it has been a dry year so growth in wild areas across the state is flammable. "The sheep are fantastic, said Pete Anderson, state forester. "They're an excellent tool to take that fine fuel and crop it off. It makes a huge difference."....
Should they stay or should they go? After the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service granted permits for the Cedar Ridge Golf Course and Paiute Tribe of Utah to move Utah prairie dogs from their property, biologists are searching for a place to put them. Elise Boeke, USFWS ecologist, said the service was working with the Bureau of Land Management to prepare two sites for dog relocation, but their efforts to establish proper vegetation failed. "It doesn't look like the seeding took very well due to the drought," Boeke said. Division of Wildlife Resources Wildlife Biologist Neil Perry, who will oversee relocation efforts this year, is excited about the Berry Springs site located in the Paunsaugunt Plateau of Garfield County, just north of Bryce Canyon National Park. However, he doesn't have the funding to relocate the dogs to that property, which is more than an hour's drive from Cedar City....
Editorial - Don't take the delta for granted WATER SHOULDN'T be taken for granted in California, a state where billions of gallons are conveyed over thousands of miles to millions of customers. And yet it is. Turn a faucet and, abracadabra, the stuff flows. Most of us don't know where it comes from, how it gets here or where it's stored. Politicians often ignore it too, preferring to focus on (what seem like) more pressing crises. But a recent ruling by the Alameda County Superior Court is a reminder that this shouldn't be the case. The decision says that California's State Water Project, which moves water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state, is in violation of the Endangered Species Act because its enormous pumps kill endangered fish. The judge gave the state 60 days to get a waiver or he will shut the pumps down. That probably won't happen. But make no mistake: The state's water system is in trouble. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta provides water for 25 million Californians — including 60% of Southern California's supply — and supports $400 billion of economic activity, including fishing and farming. And demands on it will only grow. California's population is expected to jump 30% in the next 20 years, while global warming could reduce the state's snowpack (and the water flows it creates) by the end of the century. Even without these challenges, the delta faces problems....
Los Angeles suffers longest dry spell in 130 years Los Angeles is going through its longest dry spell in at least 130 years, the National Weather Service said Sunday, fueling fears of rampant wildfires which have plagued the US west coast in recent years. "The rain season is currently the driest to date in downtown Los Angeles since records began in 1877," the weather service said in a statement. It said the southern California city had received just 2.47 inches (6.27 centimeters) of rain since July 1, 2006, far from the normal precipitation of 13.94 inches (35.4 centimeters) in the same period. "If downtown Los Angeles receives less than 1.95 inches of rain from now through June 30th this will become the driest rain season ever," it said. The record-holder is the 2001-2002 season which saw just 4.42 inches (11.22 centimeters) of rain. Southern California is repeatedly the victim of wildfires, some of them of criminal origin like the arson-caused inferno that blazed Friday near the famed Hollywood sign in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, destroying some 150 acres (60 hectares) of brush....
South Korea, U.S. Reach Free Trade Deal The United States and South Korea concluded a landmark free trade agreement Monday, a U.S. official said, culminating 10 months of negotiations in a final week of intense haggling that just beat a key U.S. legislative deadline. The deal, which requires approval by lawmakers in both countries, is the biggest for the United States since the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1992 and ratified in 1993. It is the biggest ever for South Korea. Another key issue was U.S. beef, which has remained absent from South Korean markets for over three years after mad cow disease was discovered in the United States in 2003. The U.S. said a deal could never be approved by Congress unless that issues was resolved. It was not immediately known what compromises were made to reach the agreement....
Bush tells Congress he will sign Panama trade pact President Bush notified Congress on Friday his administration plans to sign a free trade agreement with Panama before the White House's fast-track trade authority expires at the end of June. The pact tears down tariffs and other trade barriers between the two countries in manufacturing, services and other sectors. Over 88 percent of U.S. exports of consumer and industrial goods to Panama will become duty-free immediately, with remaining tariffs to be phased out over 10 years....
Internal strife leaves cattle group vulnerable to opposition Cattle producers have always been an independent lot, including when they're trying to get together on public policy. Still, the spectacle surrounding one of the industry's biggest interest groups, R-CALF USA, has been something to behold. Consider what's happened since the beginning of the year at the organization, formally known as the Ranchers-Cattlemen Legal Action Fund, United Stockgrowers of America. The group's then-president, Chuck Kiker, wrote a letter to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns in early January, disavowing a more strongly worded letter sent to Johanns only the day before by the group's chief executive, Bill Bullard. Later in the month, two Washington-based consultants, including a former undersecretary of agriculture, quit working for R-CALF. Shortly thereafter, Kiker was ousted as president by a majority of the board that wanted to take a harder line with the U.S. Department of Agriculture than he did. Three more board members who were allies of Kiker, including founder Leo McDonnell, subsequently left, as did the organization's Washington staff....
Holly Tornado Forces Rancher To Sell While most tornado victims in Holly are dealing with the loss of their homes, one family is dealing with the loss of livelihood. In the 30 years Bill Lowe has been a cattle rancher in Holly, his feed lot has never suffered a blow quite like this one. “There was dead calves, wounded cows with two by fours in their side,” said Lowe. “The whole west end of the feed lot was completely gone,” said Lowe’s son-in-law Benny Kennedy. And it was the only feed lot in Prowers County to be damaged by the tornado, 52 cows were killed bringing the total number to around 300 this year alone. “It’s because of the loss we suffered from the tornado and the blizzard,” said Lowe. A tremendous loss of life for a small feed lot that could end up costing the Lowe family nearly 700-thousand dollars....
Utahn keeps store going — for 74 years If records were kept on the longevity of country storekeepers, Lillie Thomas, 92, would probably hold the Utah title. Except for three years during World War II, she's been waiting on customers in Sterling, a town of 300 located six miles south of Manti, continuously for 74 years. She keeps "a goin'," she says, because she needs the income and loves the work. Thomas Grocery, a white frame building with a single gas pump out front, is on the west side of U.S. 89 about a half mile into town. She lives in a white cottage next door. The store is open six days per week, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. during the winter, and 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. during summer when the farmers are working late. Thomas covers most of those hours. The country store of the 1940s and 1950s was stocked with 50-gallon kegs of vinegar, 50-pound sacks of flour and 40-pound boxes of bananas from the Pacific Fruit and Produce Co. Thomas Grocery got its eggs from local farmers in trade for groceries. "On the counter, we had a big, round cheese cutter," she says. "We'd get a big round block of cheese and put it on (the plate), and then we'd go for so many little notches, and we'd pull it (the cutter) down and cut it off, and that's the way we sold cheese." They sold baloney and bacon the same way....
It's All Trew: The barbed-wire revolution Many historians think one of the defining moments in the history of the West came when a small bunch of wild longhorn steers stopped and backed away from eight slender strands of twisted wire equipped with sharp barbs. This event happened in 1876 when John W. "Bet-a-Million" Gates erected an enclosure on the Plaza in San Antonio to demonstrate to gathered ranchers that newly invented barbed wire could securely contain wild livestock. From that moment, the West would never be the same. Post-war demands for beef here and abroad, new railroads available for livestock transportation and the invention of refrigeration spawned the greatest cattle boom in the new nation's history. The cattleman was king and his domain seemingly unending. However, the moment those longhorns stopped at the wire, the age of the pioneer, free-range cattleman was doomed. No one knew how drastically barbed wire eventually would transform western life at that time and into the future....
Scientists Gather for Climate Conference Climate change could threaten the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the decades to come, according to a draft of a major report being released this week. Changing weather patterns have already reshaped the world, but they will accelerate in the decades to come, says the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of 2,000 scientists. Severe drought and devastating floods are among some of the threats to mankind unless action is taken to curb global warming. "We are going into a realm the Earth has not seen for a very long time ... over the past 800,000 years," said Camille Parmesan, a University of Texas biologist who reviewed the upcoming report. About 285 delegates from 124 countries are meeting in Brussels with more than 50 of the scientists who compiled the report. As governments will use the report to set policy, the final wording must be adopted by consensus among the diplomats, with the approval of the scientists. The report will be the second volume of a four-volume authoritative assessment of Earth's climate released this year. The first in February updated the science of climate change, concluding with near certainty that global warming is caused by human behavior....
Panel identifies species impacted by climate change From the micro to the macro, from plankton in the oceans to polar bears in the far north and seals in the far south, global warming has begun changing life on Earth, international scientists will report next Friday. "Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent," says a draft obtained by The Associated Press of a report on warming's impacts, to be issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the authoritative U.N. network of 2,000 scientists and more than 100 governments. In February the panel declared it "very likely" most global warming has been caused by manmade emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Animal and plant life in the Arctic and Antarctic is undergoing substantial change, scientists say. Rising sea levels elsewhere are damaging coastal wetlands. Warmer waters are bleaching and killing coral reefs, pushing marine species toward the poles, reducing fish populations in African lakes, research finds. "Hundreds of species have already changed their ranges, and ecosystems are being disrupted," said University of Michigan ecologist Rosina Bierbaum, former head of the U.S. IPCC delegation. "It is clear that a number of species are going to be lost."....
It Was A Snow Job Either Way If there's any agreement in Arizona about the ruling of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals prohibiting Flagstaff's Arizona Snowbowl from making artificial snow, it's that it was a snow job. It just depends on which side of the snow gun you are on. Today, there is no snowmaking on these enticing slopes, which makes for very iffy skiing and lousy economics in good or bad years. The Circuit Court sided with Native American tribes who claimed the use of reclaimed water (er, effluent) to manufacture snow on Snow Bowl's San Francisco Peaks violates the tribes' (Navajo and Hopi) rights under the 1933 Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed by Congress. The new Circuit Court ruling overturned a District Court decision last year that reaffirmed the public use doctrine on public (read: Forest Service) land. The District Court said that the tribes failed to present any "objective evidence that their exercises of religion will be impacted by Snowbowl upgrades, nor would snowmaking "substantially burden the tribes' exercise of religion." The whole thing has sparked debate among skiers, media, tribe members, and anyone else with an opinion. The Arizona media has squared off with two sharply differing points of view:....
Sawmills could fuel vehicles, experts say Once upon a time, logs were used for making houses and paper. Now, they're being looked at as one of the most promising tools for helping the United States grow its way to energy independence. Bioenergy from forest products was the buzz at a convention last week of foresters and logging operators in Coeur d'Alene. Sawmills and loggers have access to a seemingly endless mountain of sawdust, mill shavings and bark that can be fairly easily transformed into a sustainable form of energy, said Phil Latos, who oversees research and development for softwood lumber technology for Weyerhaeuser. "We can also think of ourselves as oil companies," Latos told the audience of the Small Log Conference....
Protesters want Lost Ox Trail to be a lost cause If you build it, they will come -- to protest. Ranchers and private landowners turned out in full force at Wednesday's White Pine County Commission meeting to protest the Bureau of Land Management's plans for an Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) trail system near Ely. Opponents of the Lost Ox OHV Trail System worry that the 186-mile network of roads and trails would fragment wildlife habitat and degrade watersheds in the South Egan Range. In addition, they question whether the trail system would effect local landowners and ranchers whose livestock graze in the immediate area. “I don't think that we want to become an ATV destination area,” said Wade Robison, a member of the White Pine Coordinated Resource Management Steering Committee....
Hybrid skiing on Vail Pass gains popularity There are no ski lifts on the Vail Pass Recreation Area. But there is a quick and easy way to access acres of untracked snow. Welcome to the world of hybrid skiing. At the White River National Forest Area, the ski lifts come in the form of snowmobiles towing skiers. Among the 55,000 acres of land at Vail Pass (which stretches from Copper Mountain to Vail, across Interstate 70 to Highway 24), 3,300 acres are motorized-assisted ski terrain. And with some fresh figure eight tracks as proof last Thursday, the hybrid zone is getting plenty of use. "That's the area we've seen the most growth over the past 10 years," said Don Dressler, a Snow Ranger with the Forest Service....
Judge halts "bounty" on wolves A judge on Friday halted Alaska's $150 payments for each wolf killed under its predator-control program. Conservation groups lauded the decision by state Superior Court Judge William Morse granting their request for a temporary stop to what they called an illegal bounty. Plaintiffs are suing the state to terminate the predator-control program altogether but said Friday's ruling was significant. "If our goal is to offer as much resistance as possible, we have done that with abundance," said Priscilla Feral, president of Darien, Conn.-based Friends of Animals. "As for torpedoing the entire Draconian wolf-control program, that's the litigation that continues." Her group and other plaintiffs, including Defenders of Wildlife and the Alaska chapter of the Sierra Club, asked the court Tuesday to stop the payments. They cited a decision by the Alaska Legislature more than two decades ago that revoked any authority the state Department of Fish and Game had to pay bounties to hunters....
Bush's rules for forests tossed A federal judge tossed out Bush administration rules Friday that gave national forest managers more discretion to approve logging and other commercial projects without lengthy environmental reviews. U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled that the administration failed to adequately consider the environmental effects the new rules would have and neglected to properly gather public comment on the issue. Hamilton said in her written ruling that the government “appears to have charted a new path and adopted a new policy approach regarding programmatic changes to environmental regulations.” Hamilton ruled that the government couldn't institute the new rules until proper environmental reviews were conducted, but she declined to specify how the nation's 155 national forests should be managed until then....Go here to read the opinion.
Forest management gets mixed grades The first independent report card on Uncle Sam's use of prescribed burns and forest thinning to reduce the threat of wildfire in the urban interface gives the federal government mixed grades. Overall, the federal government needs to improve its record keeping and increase public participation in planning fuel reduction treatments, according to the analysis by the Forest Guild, a nonprofit national organization of natural resource professionals. The 31-page study focused on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Medford District and the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest but also paired the in-depth regional study with a national overview of the legal and administrative hurdles facing fuel reduction projects. The initiative came two years after Congress had approved the National Fire Plan, a document detailing the needs and the budget to improve firefighting capabilities and forest health nationwide through thinning and removal of debris....Go here to view the report.
Firefighting sheep to start arriving Sunday Sheep will be brought into Carson City's western hills starting this weekend to help make the area less prone to wildfire. Two flocks of sheep, approximately 1,600 total, will eliminate cheatgrass, perennial grasses and forbs - a herbaceous plant that's not a grass. The first flock is expected to arrive Sunday morning by truck, and be released behind Greenhouse Garden Center on South Curry Street to eat along C Hill. The second will be walked in from Washoe County early Wednesday, and focus on the Timberline-Lakeview area. "Sheep are nomadic, they have to move," said Ann Bollinger, the city's open space assistant. The sheep are expected to graze up to 2,500 acres on the west side during the next 30 to 45 days, she said. Cheatgrass grows and dries out faster than other vegetation in the area, but it has been a dry year so growth in wild areas across the state is flammable. "The sheep are fantastic, said Pete Anderson, state forester. "They're an excellent tool to take that fine fuel and crop it off. It makes a huge difference."....
Should they stay or should they go? After the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service granted permits for the Cedar Ridge Golf Course and Paiute Tribe of Utah to move Utah prairie dogs from their property, biologists are searching for a place to put them. Elise Boeke, USFWS ecologist, said the service was working with the Bureau of Land Management to prepare two sites for dog relocation, but their efforts to establish proper vegetation failed. "It doesn't look like the seeding took very well due to the drought," Boeke said. Division of Wildlife Resources Wildlife Biologist Neil Perry, who will oversee relocation efforts this year, is excited about the Berry Springs site located in the Paunsaugunt Plateau of Garfield County, just north of Bryce Canyon National Park. However, he doesn't have the funding to relocate the dogs to that property, which is more than an hour's drive from Cedar City....
Editorial - Don't take the delta for granted WATER SHOULDN'T be taken for granted in California, a state where billions of gallons are conveyed over thousands of miles to millions of customers. And yet it is. Turn a faucet and, abracadabra, the stuff flows. Most of us don't know where it comes from, how it gets here or where it's stored. Politicians often ignore it too, preferring to focus on (what seem like) more pressing crises. But a recent ruling by the Alameda County Superior Court is a reminder that this shouldn't be the case. The decision says that California's State Water Project, which moves water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state, is in violation of the Endangered Species Act because its enormous pumps kill endangered fish. The judge gave the state 60 days to get a waiver or he will shut the pumps down. That probably won't happen. But make no mistake: The state's water system is in trouble. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta provides water for 25 million Californians — including 60% of Southern California's supply — and supports $400 billion of economic activity, including fishing and farming. And demands on it will only grow. California's population is expected to jump 30% in the next 20 years, while global warming could reduce the state's snowpack (and the water flows it creates) by the end of the century. Even without these challenges, the delta faces problems....
Los Angeles suffers longest dry spell in 130 years Los Angeles is going through its longest dry spell in at least 130 years, the National Weather Service said Sunday, fueling fears of rampant wildfires which have plagued the US west coast in recent years. "The rain season is currently the driest to date in downtown Los Angeles since records began in 1877," the weather service said in a statement. It said the southern California city had received just 2.47 inches (6.27 centimeters) of rain since July 1, 2006, far from the normal precipitation of 13.94 inches (35.4 centimeters) in the same period. "If downtown Los Angeles receives less than 1.95 inches of rain from now through June 30th this will become the driest rain season ever," it said. The record-holder is the 2001-2002 season which saw just 4.42 inches (11.22 centimeters) of rain. Southern California is repeatedly the victim of wildfires, some of them of criminal origin like the arson-caused inferno that blazed Friday near the famed Hollywood sign in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, destroying some 150 acres (60 hectares) of brush....
South Korea, U.S. Reach Free Trade Deal The United States and South Korea concluded a landmark free trade agreement Monday, a U.S. official said, culminating 10 months of negotiations in a final week of intense haggling that just beat a key U.S. legislative deadline. The deal, which requires approval by lawmakers in both countries, is the biggest for the United States since the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1992 and ratified in 1993. It is the biggest ever for South Korea. Another key issue was U.S. beef, which has remained absent from South Korean markets for over three years after mad cow disease was discovered in the United States in 2003. The U.S. said a deal could never be approved by Congress unless that issues was resolved. It was not immediately known what compromises were made to reach the agreement....
Bush tells Congress he will sign Panama trade pact President Bush notified Congress on Friday his administration plans to sign a free trade agreement with Panama before the White House's fast-track trade authority expires at the end of June. The pact tears down tariffs and other trade barriers between the two countries in manufacturing, services and other sectors. Over 88 percent of U.S. exports of consumer and industrial goods to Panama will become duty-free immediately, with remaining tariffs to be phased out over 10 years....
Internal strife leaves cattle group vulnerable to opposition Cattle producers have always been an independent lot, including when they're trying to get together on public policy. Still, the spectacle surrounding one of the industry's biggest interest groups, R-CALF USA, has been something to behold. Consider what's happened since the beginning of the year at the organization, formally known as the Ranchers-Cattlemen Legal Action Fund, United Stockgrowers of America. The group's then-president, Chuck Kiker, wrote a letter to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns in early January, disavowing a more strongly worded letter sent to Johanns only the day before by the group's chief executive, Bill Bullard. Later in the month, two Washington-based consultants, including a former undersecretary of agriculture, quit working for R-CALF. Shortly thereafter, Kiker was ousted as president by a majority of the board that wanted to take a harder line with the U.S. Department of Agriculture than he did. Three more board members who were allies of Kiker, including founder Leo McDonnell, subsequently left, as did the organization's Washington staff....
Holly Tornado Forces Rancher To Sell While most tornado victims in Holly are dealing with the loss of their homes, one family is dealing with the loss of livelihood. In the 30 years Bill Lowe has been a cattle rancher in Holly, his feed lot has never suffered a blow quite like this one. “There was dead calves, wounded cows with two by fours in their side,” said Lowe. “The whole west end of the feed lot was completely gone,” said Lowe’s son-in-law Benny Kennedy. And it was the only feed lot in Prowers County to be damaged by the tornado, 52 cows were killed bringing the total number to around 300 this year alone. “It’s because of the loss we suffered from the tornado and the blizzard,” said Lowe. A tremendous loss of life for a small feed lot that could end up costing the Lowe family nearly 700-thousand dollars....
Utahn keeps store going — for 74 years If records were kept on the longevity of country storekeepers, Lillie Thomas, 92, would probably hold the Utah title. Except for three years during World War II, she's been waiting on customers in Sterling, a town of 300 located six miles south of Manti, continuously for 74 years. She keeps "a goin'," she says, because she needs the income and loves the work. Thomas Grocery, a white frame building with a single gas pump out front, is on the west side of U.S. 89 about a half mile into town. She lives in a white cottage next door. The store is open six days per week, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. during the winter, and 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. during summer when the farmers are working late. Thomas covers most of those hours. The country store of the 1940s and 1950s was stocked with 50-gallon kegs of vinegar, 50-pound sacks of flour and 40-pound boxes of bananas from the Pacific Fruit and Produce Co. Thomas Grocery got its eggs from local farmers in trade for groceries. "On the counter, we had a big, round cheese cutter," she says. "We'd get a big round block of cheese and put it on (the plate), and then we'd go for so many little notches, and we'd pull it (the cutter) down and cut it off, and that's the way we sold cheese." They sold baloney and bacon the same way....
It's All Trew: The barbed-wire revolution Many historians think one of the defining moments in the history of the West came when a small bunch of wild longhorn steers stopped and backed away from eight slender strands of twisted wire equipped with sharp barbs. This event happened in 1876 when John W. "Bet-a-Million" Gates erected an enclosure on the Plaza in San Antonio to demonstrate to gathered ranchers that newly invented barbed wire could securely contain wild livestock. From that moment, the West would never be the same. Post-war demands for beef here and abroad, new railroads available for livestock transportation and the invention of refrigeration spawned the greatest cattle boom in the new nation's history. The cattleman was king and his domain seemingly unending. However, the moment those longhorns stopped at the wire, the age of the pioneer, free-range cattleman was doomed. No one knew how drastically barbed wire eventually would transform western life at that time and into the future....
Sunday, April 01, 2007
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CASES
Note - You know have to register at Findlaw to be able to read the opinions.
U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, March 21, 2007
Utah Envtl. Congress v. Troyer, 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. Read more...
U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, March 21, 2007
Action Marine, Inc. v. Continental Carbon Inc., 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. Read more...
Note - You know have to register at Findlaw to be able to read the opinions.
U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, March 21, 2007
Utah Envtl. Congress v. Troyer, 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. Read more...
U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, March 21, 2007
Action Marine, Inc. v. Continental Carbon Inc., 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. Read more...
Dirt roads, rough hands and sweat-soaked Stetsons
Cowgirl Sass and Savvy - Julie Carter
Something wholesome radiates from a person who lives in the realm of cowboy.
Show a photo of a young rodeo hand or a seasoned veteran of the cow wars to a city-folk type and one of their first comments will be to point that out.
There are a number of things that promote the wholesome image of ranch and rural living. Some of them come with their own deeper meanings of life and have infinite depth beyond face value.
A few of those things are dirt roads, rough hands and sweat-soaked Stetsons.
Dirt roads lead to good things. They slow down life and often end at the open door of a welcoming neighbor.
They signify a way of life that has not yet fallen to the asphalt and concrete of a white-collar world.
I have lived down a dirt road most of my life. It is a world unto itself no matter what decade it is. Weeks are without weekends as everyday is the same.
Childhood memories are of endless summers with homemade ice cream, digging for fishing worms and camping along the creek.
When I turn down a dirt road headed to anywhere, I get a "right at home" kind of feeling knowing when I get to where I'm going, it'll be good. A dirt road drive is often a step back in time.
Rough hands of the men and women who work on the land command a deep respect. Those people come with a firm handshake and wisdom born in the sweat equity of life.
The calluses are badges of determination that tell a story matched by the lines around the eyes.
Years of physical work and suppressed worry leave their mark.
There are truly fine people attached to those hands that could sand a board smooth without sandpaper. Like their hands, they are hard as steel at first glance but found to have a gentle nature within. The burdens of life have been worked out through their hands.
And those sweat-soaked Stetsons - that band of dark dirty grime that builds up at the bottom of the crown and spreads out onto the brim - is a cowboy's emblem of never-ending toil.
My dad wore what was my first memory of that icon of the West. Some years after he passed away I wrote a poem about him and included mention of his hat that was so much part of who he was.
He lived in the days when a contract was a man's handshake.
Too far to town, so you made do with what you could make.
Denim shirts, bags of Bull Durham, and rollin' your own,
A sweat-soaked Stetson, shotgun chaps, and a saddle were home.
Those toil-marked hats come in many shapes, colors and sizes. When they have reached the sweat-soaked stage, they take on a common out-of-shape look. They have creases and curls where there should be none and they droop in places not intended for "style."
Often they have a hole or two rotted completely through the brim or the crown.
They wear a little windmill grease, manure and a few blood spatters from a long ago cow-in-the-chute incident.
As time goes by, the hat uncannily takes on an appearance that very much matches the personality of its owner.
Dirt roads, rough hands and sweat-soaked Stetsons - all things so very much more than just what they are.
© Julie Carter 2007
Cowgirl Sass and Savvy - Julie Carter
Something wholesome radiates from a person who lives in the realm of cowboy.
Show a photo of a young rodeo hand or a seasoned veteran of the cow wars to a city-folk type and one of their first comments will be to point that out.
There are a number of things that promote the wholesome image of ranch and rural living. Some of them come with their own deeper meanings of life and have infinite depth beyond face value.
A few of those things are dirt roads, rough hands and sweat-soaked Stetsons.
Dirt roads lead to good things. They slow down life and often end at the open door of a welcoming neighbor.
They signify a way of life that has not yet fallen to the asphalt and concrete of a white-collar world.
I have lived down a dirt road most of my life. It is a world unto itself no matter what decade it is. Weeks are without weekends as everyday is the same.
Childhood memories are of endless summers with homemade ice cream, digging for fishing worms and camping along the creek.
When I turn down a dirt road headed to anywhere, I get a "right at home" kind of feeling knowing when I get to where I'm going, it'll be good. A dirt road drive is often a step back in time.
Rough hands of the men and women who work on the land command a deep respect. Those people come with a firm handshake and wisdom born in the sweat equity of life.
The calluses are badges of determination that tell a story matched by the lines around the eyes.
Years of physical work and suppressed worry leave their mark.
There are truly fine people attached to those hands that could sand a board smooth without sandpaper. Like their hands, they are hard as steel at first glance but found to have a gentle nature within. The burdens of life have been worked out through their hands.
And those sweat-soaked Stetsons - that band of dark dirty grime that builds up at the bottom of the crown and spreads out onto the brim - is a cowboy's emblem of never-ending toil.
My dad wore what was my first memory of that icon of the West. Some years after he passed away I wrote a poem about him and included mention of his hat that was so much part of who he was.
He lived in the days when a contract was a man's handshake.
Too far to town, so you made do with what you could make.
Denim shirts, bags of Bull Durham, and rollin' your own,
A sweat-soaked Stetson, shotgun chaps, and a saddle were home.
Those toil-marked hats come in many shapes, colors and sizes. When they have reached the sweat-soaked stage, they take on a common out-of-shape look. They have creases and curls where there should be none and they droop in places not intended for "style."
Often they have a hole or two rotted completely through the brim or the crown.
They wear a little windmill grease, manure and a few blood spatters from a long ago cow-in-the-chute incident.
As time goes by, the hat uncannily takes on an appearance that very much matches the personality of its owner.
Dirt roads, rough hands and sweat-soaked Stetsons - all things so very much more than just what they are.
© Julie Carter 2007
OPINION/COMMENTARY
JUDGING THE FEDS: EVERY BENEFIT OF EVERY DOUBT
In May 1945, the United States asked Jesse Fox Cannon of Toole County, Utah, to sign a “Construction, Survey & Exploration Permit” to allow the Army upon 1,425 acres of mining claims Jesse Fox Cannon owned near the Army Dugway Proving Grounds in west-central Utah. Jesse Fox Cannon agreed; after all, a war was on; plus, the Army promised that, within 60 days of finishing, it would “leave the property in as good condition as it is on the date of the government’s entry.” In September 1945, Jesse Fox Cannon reentered his property and discovered that, instead of surveying and exploring the property, the Army had used it for “Project Sphinx,” under which it dropped tons of high explosives and bombs, and incendiary and chemical weapons on Cannon’s property. Notwithstanding the demands by Jesse Fox Cannon and later his son, Dr. J. Floyd Cannon, that the United States fulfill its legal obligation to clean up their property, the federal government refused. In 1980, Dr. Cannon died, leaving the property to his children, who took up the crusade to have their land reclaimed and restored. In 1993, nearly 50 years after the Army left the property, the United States began a paper shuffling exercise purportedly to determine something the Cannon family already knew: whether the Cannon land was a “formerly used defense site” that presented safety concerns for federal and state government agencies. In 1996, the federal government concluded that the Cannon property was one of the most contaminated sites in the country and would cost $12.7 million to reclaim. Then, the United States did nothing....
The World According to Gore
During a global warming hearing, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, presented Gore with a “Personal Energy Ethics Pledge.” That’s the type of pledge you would think that Gore would be eager to sign onto. However, the former Vice-President refused to take the pledge. In other words, he simply could not commit to consuming no more energy than the average American household. Senator Inhofe tried to appeal to Gore’s sense of environmental chivalry, telling him, “There are hundreds of thousands of people who adore you and would follow your example by reducing their energy usage if you did. Don’t give us the run-around on carbon offsets or the gimmicks the wealthy do.” The energy ethics pledge that Inhofe presented to Gore is quite straightforward. It states, “As a believer that human-caused global warming is a moral, ethical, and spiritual issue facing our survival; that home energy use is a key component of overall energy use; that reducing my fossil fuel-based home energy usage will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions; and that leaders on moral issues should lead by example; I pledge to consume no more energy for use in my residence than the average American household by March 21, 2008.” Inhofe did not ask Gore to be some kind of super-saver, besting the energy savings rate of typical Americans. He simply requested that Gore be average in his energy usage. Just average. And Gore declined the opportunity....
Problem of Evil Solved: Just Offset It
Some wealthy environmentalists who urge the world to reduce global-warming pollution are themselves using huge amounts of pollution-producing energy. They own houses which consume much more energy for heating and lighting than the average dwelling, have several large vehicles that spew out emissions, and ride on jets that pour out noxious fumes. Yet these rich greenies urge everybody else to change their lifestyles to reduce energy use and cut down on harmful emissions. How do they justify their energy binging? They say the are not doing any evil, because they have offset their bads with goods. They have bought “carbon offsets” that cancel out their own pollution. For example, they pay to plant trees in Africa. These trees take in carbon dioxide, which makes up for the greenies’ carbon emissions. In fact, several carbon-offset Internet sites show you how to offset your pollution using “carbon calculators.” You tell the calculator what kind of house you live in, how many residents there are, what kind of car you have and how much your drive, how much air travel you do, and what you eat, and presto! They tell you how much to donate to their organization. You can also buy a decal for your car’s bumper proudly telling the world that your car’s carbon emission have been balanced by sponsoring a clean-energy project. Now you are absolved of your environmental sins. You are now an environmental virgin. Go, and sin again, because all you need to do is donate again. During the Middle Ages in Europe, a rich guy could buy indulgences from the Catholic Church, which offset their sins. Repenting and sinning no more was for peasants. Now we have environmental indulgences, so that we don’t need pollution levies to reduce emissions. We can just buy absolution with an environmental indulgence. It’s even better than the religious indulgence, because the Catholic indulgence presumed that the sin was already forgiven, while the environmental indulgence itself forgives the sin of polluting. If carbon offsets are such a good idea, why not apply it to other areas of life? Are you gambling too much? Donate money to an organization opposed to gambling. Now you can gamble as much as you like, because you have offset it by reducing somebody else’s gambling. Did you embezzle money from the company you work for? No problem: just offset this with donations to a worthy cause. This nets out your theft. Are you cheating on your spouse? You can cleanse your guilt and offset this sin by donating money to an organization that promotes family values. The greater fidelity of others will offset your cheating....
Five Biggest Myths about Global Warming
With Al Gore getting so much mileage from his fame as both a former vice president and now Oscar winner to advance his ideological (if not personal) agenda of getting people to use less energy, it’s worth reviewing the global warming debate to clarify a few misconceptions. First, we are not in imminent danger of massive sea-level rises. In his movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” Gore warns of seas rising by 20 feet, and shows a dramatic image of lower Manhattan flooded by the swollen Hudson River. But this will only happen if the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets disappear overnight—a highly unlikely event. The collected scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose word climate alarmists preach as gospel when convenient, estimates only 17 inches of sea-level rise this century. Melting sufficient to flood New York would take millennia, never mind centuries. We should have plenty of time to build flood defenses. Second, if global warming is as big a threat as claimed, it will not be averted by minor steps like changing a few light bulbs, buying carbon offsets or driving hybrid cars. Gore himself has talked of a “wrenching transformation” in our lifestyles (I won’t mention his heated pool). That’s because everyone acknowledges that the Kyoto Protocol, even when fully and successfully implemented by all its parties, will avert a barely measurable 0.07°C of warming by 2050....
Global Warming Heresy
Most climatologists agree that the earth's temperature has increased about a degree over the last century. The debate is how much of it is due to mankind's activity. Britain's Channel 4 television has just produced "The Great Global Warming Swindle," a documentary that devastates most of the claims made by the environmentalist movement. The scientists interviewed include top climatologists from MIT and other prestigious universities around the world. The documentary hasn't aired in the U.S., but it's available on the Internet. Among the many findings that dispute environmentalists' claims are: Manmade carbon dioxide emissions are roughly 5 percent of the total; the rest are from natural sources such as volcanoes, dying vegetation and animals. Annually, volcanoes alone produce more carbon dioxide than all of mankind's activities. Oceans are responsible for most greenhouse gases. Contrary to environmentalists' claims, the higher the Earth's temperature, the higher the carbon dioxide levels. In other words, carbon dioxide levels are a product of climate change. Some of the documentary's scientists argue that the greatest influence on the Earth's temperature is our sun's sunspot activity. The bottom line is, the bulk of scientific evidence shows that what we've been told by environmentalists is pure bunk....
CAFE clash: Kiss your money and your safety goodbye
For a program that's more than 30 years old, the federal government's fuel economy standards for cars have become one hot topic. Global warming is now a 24/7 issue, and whenever politicians warn of global warming you can bet that tougher fuel standards are near the top of their to-do list. This is too bad, because when all is said and done, this program, known as CAFE (for corporate average fuel economy) has accomplished very little of benefit. CAFE, it is claimed, was responsible for doubling the miles per gallon of new vehicles during the 1980s, but it has allegedly stagnated in recent years. Fuel-hungry SUVs have boomed in popularity, and consumers have reverted to their supposedly bad habit of ignoring fuel economy in favor of larger size and more horsepower. The reins on automakers, we're told, need to be tightened. This might sound inspiring, until you realize that these reins really go around our own necks. Consumers have demonstrated, time and again, that when necessary they themselves do a far better job of saving fuel than government does. The increase in gas prices in the 1970s drove consumers to demand vehicles with greater fuel economy, and the auto industry responded far more quickly than anything required under CAFE....
Now for the Good News
Environmentalists and globalization foes are united in their fear that greater population and consumption of energy, materials, and chemicals accompanying economic growth, technological change and free trade—the mainstays of globalization—degrade human and environmental well-being. Indeed, the 20th century saw the United States’ population multiply by four, income by seven, carbon dioxide emissions by nine, use of materials by 27, and use of chemicals by more than 100. Yet life expectancy increased from 47 years to 77 years. Onset of major disease such as cancer, heart, and respiratory disease has been postponed between eight and eleven years in the past century. Heart disease and cancer rates have been in rapid decline over the last two decades, and total cancer deaths have actually declined the last two years, despite increases in population. Among the very young, infant mortality has declined from 100 deaths per 1,000 births in 1913 to just seven per 1,000 today. These improvements haven’t been restricted to the United States. Equally important, the world is more literate and better educated than ever. People are freer politically, economically, and socially to pursue their well-being as they see fit. More people choose their own rulers, and have freedom of expression. They are more likely to live under rule of law, and less likely to be arbitrarily deprived of life, limb, and property....
'Smoke-easys' ignore the tobacco ban
I'M SIPPING A Blue Moon ale in a Philadelphia bar, Janis Joplin is wailing about Bobby McGee and I'm thinking a smoke would go great about now. I take out one of Baby Cakes' Parliament Lights and fire it up. I'm smoking in a bar in Philadelphia and nobody says, "Boo!" There are 20 other people, smokers and nonsmokers, hanging out, enjoying themselves, not doing any harm to anyone (except maybe themselves). The bar is spacious, the NCAA is on the TV screens, beer pennants hang from the ceiling, and through the large windows I see rain falling. The owner is sitting at the bar chewing nicotine gum. He's a former smoker. Also a former cop. "I'm an irresponsible bar-owner," he says with a smile. Despite the smoking ban - because of it, actually - Philadelphia now has "smoke-easies," a play on "speakeasies" that came to us with the Prohibition of alcohol. Prohibition was enacted in 1920, repealed in 1933 and largely ignored in between. I'm surprised at how many Americans meekly obey smoking bans. This is about Philadelphians who don't....
JUDGING THE FEDS: EVERY BENEFIT OF EVERY DOUBT
In May 1945, the United States asked Jesse Fox Cannon of Toole County, Utah, to sign a “Construction, Survey & Exploration Permit” to allow the Army upon 1,425 acres of mining claims Jesse Fox Cannon owned near the Army Dugway Proving Grounds in west-central Utah. Jesse Fox Cannon agreed; after all, a war was on; plus, the Army promised that, within 60 days of finishing, it would “leave the property in as good condition as it is on the date of the government’s entry.” In September 1945, Jesse Fox Cannon reentered his property and discovered that, instead of surveying and exploring the property, the Army had used it for “Project Sphinx,” under which it dropped tons of high explosives and bombs, and incendiary and chemical weapons on Cannon’s property. Notwithstanding the demands by Jesse Fox Cannon and later his son, Dr. J. Floyd Cannon, that the United States fulfill its legal obligation to clean up their property, the federal government refused. In 1980, Dr. Cannon died, leaving the property to his children, who took up the crusade to have their land reclaimed and restored. In 1993, nearly 50 years after the Army left the property, the United States began a paper shuffling exercise purportedly to determine something the Cannon family already knew: whether the Cannon land was a “formerly used defense site” that presented safety concerns for federal and state government agencies. In 1996, the federal government concluded that the Cannon property was one of the most contaminated sites in the country and would cost $12.7 million to reclaim. Then, the United States did nothing....
The World According to Gore
During a global warming hearing, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, presented Gore with a “Personal Energy Ethics Pledge.” That’s the type of pledge you would think that Gore would be eager to sign onto. However, the former Vice-President refused to take the pledge. In other words, he simply could not commit to consuming no more energy than the average American household. Senator Inhofe tried to appeal to Gore’s sense of environmental chivalry, telling him, “There are hundreds of thousands of people who adore you and would follow your example by reducing their energy usage if you did. Don’t give us the run-around on carbon offsets or the gimmicks the wealthy do.” The energy ethics pledge that Inhofe presented to Gore is quite straightforward. It states, “As a believer that human-caused global warming is a moral, ethical, and spiritual issue facing our survival; that home energy use is a key component of overall energy use; that reducing my fossil fuel-based home energy usage will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions; and that leaders on moral issues should lead by example; I pledge to consume no more energy for use in my residence than the average American household by March 21, 2008.” Inhofe did not ask Gore to be some kind of super-saver, besting the energy savings rate of typical Americans. He simply requested that Gore be average in his energy usage. Just average. And Gore declined the opportunity....
Problem of Evil Solved: Just Offset It
Some wealthy environmentalists who urge the world to reduce global-warming pollution are themselves using huge amounts of pollution-producing energy. They own houses which consume much more energy for heating and lighting than the average dwelling, have several large vehicles that spew out emissions, and ride on jets that pour out noxious fumes. Yet these rich greenies urge everybody else to change their lifestyles to reduce energy use and cut down on harmful emissions. How do they justify their energy binging? They say the are not doing any evil, because they have offset their bads with goods. They have bought “carbon offsets” that cancel out their own pollution. For example, they pay to plant trees in Africa. These trees take in carbon dioxide, which makes up for the greenies’ carbon emissions. In fact, several carbon-offset Internet sites show you how to offset your pollution using “carbon calculators.” You tell the calculator what kind of house you live in, how many residents there are, what kind of car you have and how much your drive, how much air travel you do, and what you eat, and presto! They tell you how much to donate to their organization. You can also buy a decal for your car’s bumper proudly telling the world that your car’s carbon emission have been balanced by sponsoring a clean-energy project. Now you are absolved of your environmental sins. You are now an environmental virgin. Go, and sin again, because all you need to do is donate again. During the Middle Ages in Europe, a rich guy could buy indulgences from the Catholic Church, which offset their sins. Repenting and sinning no more was for peasants. Now we have environmental indulgences, so that we don’t need pollution levies to reduce emissions. We can just buy absolution with an environmental indulgence. It’s even better than the religious indulgence, because the Catholic indulgence presumed that the sin was already forgiven, while the environmental indulgence itself forgives the sin of polluting. If carbon offsets are such a good idea, why not apply it to other areas of life? Are you gambling too much? Donate money to an organization opposed to gambling. Now you can gamble as much as you like, because you have offset it by reducing somebody else’s gambling. Did you embezzle money from the company you work for? No problem: just offset this with donations to a worthy cause. This nets out your theft. Are you cheating on your spouse? You can cleanse your guilt and offset this sin by donating money to an organization that promotes family values. The greater fidelity of others will offset your cheating....
Five Biggest Myths about Global Warming
With Al Gore getting so much mileage from his fame as both a former vice president and now Oscar winner to advance his ideological (if not personal) agenda of getting people to use less energy, it’s worth reviewing the global warming debate to clarify a few misconceptions. First, we are not in imminent danger of massive sea-level rises. In his movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” Gore warns of seas rising by 20 feet, and shows a dramatic image of lower Manhattan flooded by the swollen Hudson River. But this will only happen if the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets disappear overnight—a highly unlikely event. The collected scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose word climate alarmists preach as gospel when convenient, estimates only 17 inches of sea-level rise this century. Melting sufficient to flood New York would take millennia, never mind centuries. We should have plenty of time to build flood defenses. Second, if global warming is as big a threat as claimed, it will not be averted by minor steps like changing a few light bulbs, buying carbon offsets or driving hybrid cars. Gore himself has talked of a “wrenching transformation” in our lifestyles (I won’t mention his heated pool). That’s because everyone acknowledges that the Kyoto Protocol, even when fully and successfully implemented by all its parties, will avert a barely measurable 0.07°C of warming by 2050....
Global Warming Heresy
Most climatologists agree that the earth's temperature has increased about a degree over the last century. The debate is how much of it is due to mankind's activity. Britain's Channel 4 television has just produced "The Great Global Warming Swindle," a documentary that devastates most of the claims made by the environmentalist movement. The scientists interviewed include top climatologists from MIT and other prestigious universities around the world. The documentary hasn't aired in the U.S., but it's available on the Internet. Among the many findings that dispute environmentalists' claims are: Manmade carbon dioxide emissions are roughly 5 percent of the total; the rest are from natural sources such as volcanoes, dying vegetation and animals. Annually, volcanoes alone produce more carbon dioxide than all of mankind's activities. Oceans are responsible for most greenhouse gases. Contrary to environmentalists' claims, the higher the Earth's temperature, the higher the carbon dioxide levels. In other words, carbon dioxide levels are a product of climate change. Some of the documentary's scientists argue that the greatest influence on the Earth's temperature is our sun's sunspot activity. The bottom line is, the bulk of scientific evidence shows that what we've been told by environmentalists is pure bunk....
CAFE clash: Kiss your money and your safety goodbye
For a program that's more than 30 years old, the federal government's fuel economy standards for cars have become one hot topic. Global warming is now a 24/7 issue, and whenever politicians warn of global warming you can bet that tougher fuel standards are near the top of their to-do list. This is too bad, because when all is said and done, this program, known as CAFE (for corporate average fuel economy) has accomplished very little of benefit. CAFE, it is claimed, was responsible for doubling the miles per gallon of new vehicles during the 1980s, but it has allegedly stagnated in recent years. Fuel-hungry SUVs have boomed in popularity, and consumers have reverted to their supposedly bad habit of ignoring fuel economy in favor of larger size and more horsepower. The reins on automakers, we're told, need to be tightened. This might sound inspiring, until you realize that these reins really go around our own necks. Consumers have demonstrated, time and again, that when necessary they themselves do a far better job of saving fuel than government does. The increase in gas prices in the 1970s drove consumers to demand vehicles with greater fuel economy, and the auto industry responded far more quickly than anything required under CAFE....
Now for the Good News
Environmentalists and globalization foes are united in their fear that greater population and consumption of energy, materials, and chemicals accompanying economic growth, technological change and free trade—the mainstays of globalization—degrade human and environmental well-being. Indeed, the 20th century saw the United States’ population multiply by four, income by seven, carbon dioxide emissions by nine, use of materials by 27, and use of chemicals by more than 100. Yet life expectancy increased from 47 years to 77 years. Onset of major disease such as cancer, heart, and respiratory disease has been postponed between eight and eleven years in the past century. Heart disease and cancer rates have been in rapid decline over the last two decades, and total cancer deaths have actually declined the last two years, despite increases in population. Among the very young, infant mortality has declined from 100 deaths per 1,000 births in 1913 to just seven per 1,000 today. These improvements haven’t been restricted to the United States. Equally important, the world is more literate and better educated than ever. People are freer politically, economically, and socially to pursue their well-being as they see fit. More people choose their own rulers, and have freedom of expression. They are more likely to live under rule of law, and less likely to be arbitrarily deprived of life, limb, and property....
'Smoke-easys' ignore the tobacco ban
I'M SIPPING A Blue Moon ale in a Philadelphia bar, Janis Joplin is wailing about Bobby McGee and I'm thinking a smoke would go great about now. I take out one of Baby Cakes' Parliament Lights and fire it up. I'm smoking in a bar in Philadelphia and nobody says, "Boo!" There are 20 other people, smokers and nonsmokers, hanging out, enjoying themselves, not doing any harm to anyone (except maybe themselves). The bar is spacious, the NCAA is on the TV screens, beer pennants hang from the ceiling, and through the large windows I see rain falling. The owner is sitting at the bar chewing nicotine gum. He's a former smoker. Also a former cop. "I'm an irresponsible bar-owner," he says with a smile. Despite the smoking ban - because of it, actually - Philadelphia now has "smoke-easies," a play on "speakeasies" that came to us with the Prohibition of alcohol. Prohibition was enacted in 1920, repealed in 1933 and largely ignored in between. I'm surprised at how many Americans meekly obey smoking bans. This is about Philadelphians who don't....
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