Elderly couple's lives in limbo over unpaid $1.63 tax bill
In 1996, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office mailed a paltry $1.63 property tax bill for the Slidell-area home of Kermit and Dolores Atwood that never reached its destination. The seemingly innocuous, misaddressed bill was the start of a bizarre legal ordeal that threatens to leave the elderly couple homeless and now stands at the door of the state Supreme Court. The chain of events that followed the wayward property tax bill, including the eventual sale of the home at a sheriff's tax sale, is described by Dolores Atwood as "seven years of emotional hell." "I don't know how much more I can endure," said Atwood, 69, while sitting in a FEMA trailer in front of her Katrina-ravaged brick home on Dauphine Street, just north of Slidell. "I wake up in the middle of the night, and it's on my mind," she said. "All this should have never happened." But it did, all because of the $1.63 tax bill that Atwood and her husband, Kermit, never received. And they still face the threat of losing their property because of the bill, which was mailed to a defunct address in late 1996 and returned undelivered to the Sheriff's Office. The Atwoods' nightmare began when they learned in 2000 that their four-bedroom, two-bath home had been sold in 1997 through a tax sale for the $1.63 in unpaid taxes, plus 10 cents interest and $125 in costs associated with the sale....
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Property-Rights Showdown (subscription)
....But even Oregonians are only so green. The state is now in the midst of high-stakes battle over whether the government should be forced to pay property owners when it imposes regulations that strip land of its value. Among the top concerns: regulations so strict that families who have owned property for decades cannot subdivide and pass separate parcels to their children. This fight has hit the ballot box, twice. The first time was in 2000, when voters approved an amendment to the constitution forcing the state to pay for the loss of value property owners suffer at the hands of land use and environmental regulations. The amendment was bogged down in litigation and was tossed out by the state Supreme Court. Three years ago voters tried again. This time 61% of them voted to enact "Measure 37," a law that does what the constitutional amendment attempted to do -- force the government to pay for the environmental regulations it imposes on landowners. The law, which has withstood court scrutiny, allows the government to waive regulations when it prefers not to compensate a landowner. But in recent weeks, the Democratically controlled legislature, voting along party lines, moved to "reform" Measure 37 -- a euphemism for emptying the law of any real meaning. The legislature has put the bill on the November ballot....Opponents of Measure 37 exploit fears that the law will force local and state officials to approve large scale development projects. The reforms on the ballot would drastically limit the number of new home sites and allow the government to put regulations on commercial and industrial property without having to compensate the owners for loss of value. The reform, drafted by Democrats, has been drafted with some appealing elements. It would expedite claims filed by property owners under Measure 37; and it would explicitly grant property owners the right to transfer their claim for compensation to another person -- something that should be possible under Measure 37, but which is now being fought over in the courts. Nevertheless, while these provisions are good, the Democrats' overall aim is to split the coalition needed to keep Measure 37 intact by driving a wedge between ordinary folks and business, industry and subdivision developers. One persistent argument in favor of Measure 37 "reform" is that it could hurt farmers by spurring development that would place new homeowners near existing farms, whose sounds and smells might be considered a nuisance. As the argument goes, this could lead to the new homeowners filing nuisance lawsuits. But there is already a "right to farm" law to protect against such claims....Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black once noted that the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment takings clause was necessary to "bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole." That's just the point: Measure 37 passed because courts haven't provided much protection, and because in Oregon land-use regulators have been overzealous....
....But even Oregonians are only so green. The state is now in the midst of high-stakes battle over whether the government should be forced to pay property owners when it imposes regulations that strip land of its value. Among the top concerns: regulations so strict that families who have owned property for decades cannot subdivide and pass separate parcels to their children. This fight has hit the ballot box, twice. The first time was in 2000, when voters approved an amendment to the constitution forcing the state to pay for the loss of value property owners suffer at the hands of land use and environmental regulations. The amendment was bogged down in litigation and was tossed out by the state Supreme Court. Three years ago voters tried again. This time 61% of them voted to enact "Measure 37," a law that does what the constitutional amendment attempted to do -- force the government to pay for the environmental regulations it imposes on landowners. The law, which has withstood court scrutiny, allows the government to waive regulations when it prefers not to compensate a landowner. But in recent weeks, the Democratically controlled legislature, voting along party lines, moved to "reform" Measure 37 -- a euphemism for emptying the law of any real meaning. The legislature has put the bill on the November ballot....Opponents of Measure 37 exploit fears that the law will force local and state officials to approve large scale development projects. The reforms on the ballot would drastically limit the number of new home sites and allow the government to put regulations on commercial and industrial property without having to compensate the owners for loss of value. The reform, drafted by Democrats, has been drafted with some appealing elements. It would expedite claims filed by property owners under Measure 37; and it would explicitly grant property owners the right to transfer their claim for compensation to another person -- something that should be possible under Measure 37, but which is now being fought over in the courts. Nevertheless, while these provisions are good, the Democrats' overall aim is to split the coalition needed to keep Measure 37 intact by driving a wedge between ordinary folks and business, industry and subdivision developers. One persistent argument in favor of Measure 37 "reform" is that it could hurt farmers by spurring development that would place new homeowners near existing farms, whose sounds and smells might be considered a nuisance. As the argument goes, this could lead to the new homeowners filing nuisance lawsuits. But there is already a "right to farm" law to protect against such claims....Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black once noted that the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment takings clause was necessary to "bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole." That's just the point: Measure 37 passed because courts haven't provided much protection, and because in Oregon land-use regulators have been overzealous....
Friday, July 20, 2007
Utah Wildfire Burns Campground, Motel A group of Boy Scouts and hikers had to be airlifted from a canyon as a wildfire swept through a campground and destroyed a nearby motel, authorities said Friday. The fire started Thursday at a campground in Salt Creek Canyon, 85 miles south of Salt Lake City, the U.S. Forest Service said Friday. By Friday, 20 square miles, more than 13,000 acres, had burned. All campgrounds and cabins were evacuated along the Nebo Loop, a scenic road in Uinta National Forest, and 18 Scouts and hikers were rescued Thursday from Nephi Canyon. "They'd had to get up in some real rough, rocky area to get away from the fire, so it could have been bad. But with quick work by the helicopters, they were able to get out," said Bert Hart, a spokesman at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The cause was under investigation, but there was a report of a car shooting sparks from the brakes, Uinta National Forest spokeswoman Loyal Clark said. Utah's weather was little help to firefighters; forecasters called for another day of 100 degrees or more throughout the state....
Lawsuit challenges permits for Navajo coal mine Two environmental groups filed a lawsuit Friday against the federal agency that regulates coal mining over its approval of two permits for a mine in northwestern New Mexico. The San Juan Citizens Alliance and Dine Citizens Against Ruining our Environment claim the agency and its western regional director, Al Klein, violated federal laws when renewing the mine's permit in September 2004 and approving a revised permit in October 2005. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Denver, claims the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement did not provide adequate public notice and failed to fully analyze potential environmental consequences as required by the National Environmental Policy Act....
Lawsuit challenges permits for Navajo coal mine Two environmental groups filed a lawsuit Friday against the federal agency that regulates coal mining over its approval of two permits for a mine in northwestern New Mexico. The San Juan Citizens Alliance and Dine Citizens Against Ruining our Environment claim the agency and its western regional director, Al Klein, violated federal laws when renewing the mine's permit in September 2004 and approving a revised permit in October 2005. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Denver, claims the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement did not provide adequate public notice and failed to fully analyze potential environmental consequences as required by the National Environmental Policy Act....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Back to drawing board on Pinon Canyon Facing a possible cut-off in funding for the project, Army Secretary Pete Geren announced the Army is "going back to the drawing board" on the planned expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site in order to consider ideas on how to help the regional economy as the Army goes ahead with its effort to acquire the 414,000 acres it wants to add to the training site northeast of Trinidad. In a letter to Colorado Sens. Ken Salazar and Wayne Allard dated Thursday, Geren repeated the Army's often-stated goal of acquiring land from "willing sellers," but also said it intends to look at ways to offer some economic "enhancements" to the region. "Our intent is to fully consider potential economic enhancements to local communities, with the goal of accomplishing the acquisition of the necessary property from willing sellers," Geren's letter said. "I don't see anything knew here for us," Lon Robertson, a rancher and president of the Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition. "The Army says they're willing to talk about economic development. But putting troops down here would still mean we lose our land and agriculture would be finished down here."....The Pentagon has over 29 million acres of U.S. landholdings, with 52% of those controlled by the Army. It's hard for me to believe they just have to have another 400,000 plus acres to train troops.
Were American Indians Really Environmentalists? The traditional story is familiar to American schoolchildren: the American Indians possessed a profound spiritual kinship with nature, and were unusually solicitous of environmental welfare. In his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, then-Senator Al Gore cited a nineteenth-century speech from Chief Seattle, patriarch of the Duwamish and Suquamish Indians of Puget Sound, as evidence of the Indians' concern for nature. This speech, which speaks of absolutely everything in the natural world, including every last insect and pine needle, as being sacred to Seattle and his people, has been made to bear an unusually heavy share of the burden in depicting the American Indians as the first environmentalists. The trouble for Gore is that the version of the speech he cites is a fabrication, drawn up in the early 1970s by screenwriter Ted Perry. (Perry, to his credit, has tried without success to let people know that he made up the speech.) Still, it was influential enough to become the basis for Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, a children's book that reached number five on the New York Times bestseller list in 1992....
Why Milk Costs More Than Gas The other day milk was selling in a New England supermarket at $4.79 a gallon. Down the street, regular gasoline was going for about $3.04 a gallon. One of the factors driving up the cost of milk is the ethanol stampede. Ethanol, as we all have been taught to believe by now, will bring us "energy independence" and lessen global warming with no change in the way we live--unless we happen to be a small child in a household with a limited budget. American ethanol is made from corn, and the more corn we use to feed our cars, the more expensive is the corn left over for our livestock. Ergo, "No Milk Today." If ethanol we must have, we could import it from Brazil, where they can make it cheaper from sugar cane than Americans can make it from corn. But Brazilian ethanol, thanks to the agribusiness lobby and a 54-cent-per-gallon import tariff, is kept out of the country. Politicians of both parties, mad for winning elections in corn-growing Iowa, do not mention the cheaper Brazilian stuff....
Eating beef ' is less green than driving' Producing 2.2lb of beef generates as much greenhouse gas as driving a car non-stop for three hours, it was claimed yesterday. Japanese scientists used a range of data to calculate the environmental impact of a single purchase of beef. Taking into account all the processes involved, they said, four average sized steaks generated greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent to 80.25lb of carbon dioxide. This also consumed 169 megajoules of energy. That means that 2.2lb of beef is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions which have the same effect as the carbon dioxide released by an ordinary car travelling at 50 miles per hour for 155 miles, a journey lasting three hours. The amount of energy consumed would light a 100-watt bulb for 20 days. Most of the greenhouse gas emissions are in the form of methane released from the animals' digestive systems, New Scientist magazine reported....
Park whittles at roving elks' willow feast Estes Park - In the heart of Rocky Mountain National Park, a slice of wild country famed for its natural state, stands a jarring discrepancy: a giant fence. The 32-acre enclosure in the middle of Horseshoe Park, an area denuded by a flood 25 years ago this week, ironically fits in with the national park's mission to restore natural conditions, said Jeff Connor, a park natural-resources specialist. "We gave it an opportunity to restore on its own, and it didn't happen," he said. The fence is intended to protect willows and other plants from the voracious appetite of the park's elk herd, allowing the landscape to revert back to the mountain wetland that existed before the July 15, 1982, Lawn Lake flood. "The elk just hammer these willows," Connor said, pointing to stunted growth on one scraggly clump of dead shoots in a dry sand bar. "All of these new shoots that come up in the summer get chewed back down by the elk in the fall."....
Foes blast Desert Rock The Bureau of Indian Affairs got an earful from Durango residents Wednesday as one person after another streamed to the microphone to speak out against the proposed Desert Rock Energy Project. The federal agency hosted a public hearing to gather comments about the power plant. It followed on the May release of a draft Environmental Impact Statement, a key step toward construction. The EIS said the power plant would have several environmental impacts on the surrounding area in northern New Mexico, but nothing significant enough to stop the project. Speakers at the hearing Wednesday were having none of that. "Nobody wants a power plant," said Nathan Caceres, who lives in Burnham, N.M. Forty-nine people signed to speak. Of the first 39, only one voiced support. Desert Rock would generate 1,500 megawatts of electricity from a site on Navajo land about 30 miles southwest of Farmington. Sithe Global Power, a New York-based international corporation, and Diné Power Authority, a Navajo company, are pushing the $2.5 billion coal-fired power plant. Environmentalists fiercely oppose the project, saying it will worsen pollution emitted by two older power plants in northern New Mexico. Desert Rock representatives say it will provide much-needed jobs and tax revenue to the Navajo Nation while generating electricity for booming Southwest cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas....
Forest Service is blamed in deaths The U.S. Forest Service committed serious safety violations that contributed to the deaths of five of its firefighters in a Southern California blaze last year, workplace safety regulators alleged Thursday. The U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the Forest Service for nine safety violations, including failing to provide firefighters on the front lines of the Esperanza Fire with maps and crucial information about potentially hazardous weather conditions. OSHA ordered the Forest Service to fix the unsafe working conditions within 15 days. Asked whether the agency believed the violations led to the firefighters' deaths, Department of Labor spokesman Roger Gayman responded, "By implication, yes." Messages left at the office of San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor Jeanne Wade Evans and the Forest Service's Washington, D.C, office were not immediately returned....
Ending the cycle of catastrophic fires It seems that this time every year, we find ourselves in the same precarious situation of watching our hillsides get drier and drier while the summer gets hotter and hotter, until a fire erupts and we scramble to contain it and minimize its effect. Once the fire's been put out and things return to normal (for the most part), we do little to prevent future fires. Then summer hits once again and we're back to square one. It's time we put an end to this cycle. The existing hands-off approach is simply not acceptable -- suppression alone is a flawed policy whereby forest fires are merely put out and there isn't enough active forest management. This policy has resulted in the Lake Tahoe basin having twice as many trees as normally would be sustained. As a result of certain crippling environmental laws regarding forestry, this calamity has endangered our families, children and firefighters, destroyed hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of residents, threatened our air and water quality, and caused millions of dollars of damage to the Lake Tahoe region. There is a group of people who tend to the more extreme side of environmentalism, who insist upon stricter air quality regulations on industries and agriculture, and yet endorse policies such as an arbitrary limit on the size of trees that can be removed from our forests and the exclusion of biomass (converting forest waste into usable energy) as a form of alternative fuel. These are the same policies that have led to overgrown, dense forests that act as "powder kegs," as termed by Thomas Bonnicksen, a professor at Texas A&M and an expert on forestry and forest management....
Drones Raise Safety Issues as Service Roles Multiply From the comfort of a control center at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California, pilot Mark Pestana will gun the throttle of his unmanned aircraft, pull back on the stick and gently guide his plane into the sky next month. But he will not be using the high-tech modified Predator B drone to seek out and kill insurgents in Iraq or Taliban in Afghanistan. Instead, his mission will be to comb the western United States for forest fires and to relay infrared images and photographs of the blazes to firefighters on the ground. This year, regulators expect to grant more than 130 waivers to government agencies to use unmanned flying machines, up from 64 two years ago. The FAA has granted private companies nine certificates to operate drones in the United States this year -- a total of 13 have been granted since 2005 -- so they can test their products, regulators said. Rescuers in December sent up small drones in a last-ditch effort to locate hikers trapped on Mount Hood in Oregon, and the Forest Service evaluated small drones during a blaze in Montana last summer to see whether they were capable of helping firefighters. The agency says it expects firefighters on the ground to be outfitted with such backpack-sized drones by next year's fire season....
BLM withdraws oil, gas leases Federal officials said Thursday that dozens of oil and gas leases in Montana will be withdrawn from auction and pledged to look more closely at the environmental consequences of such development, particularly near the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. The announcement followed vocal opposition from conservation groups and state officials who claimed the federal government's pro-energy policies threaten wildlife populations. "It's a huge step if they're willing to do things differently," said T.O. Smith, energy coordinator for the Montana Department of Fish Wildlife and Parks. A petroleum industry representative, Dave Galt, warned that the BLM's action could "complicate development of resources in the Rocky Mountain West." At issue are the effects of increased drilling under the Bush administration on public lands stretching from Montana to New Mexico. In deferring the lease sales on 73,000 acres Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management pledged to consider whether additional industry restrictions are needed in light of emerging wildlife research from the University of Wyoming and the University of Montana. Recent studies have tied intensive oil and gas development to sharp declines in game species including mule deer and sage grouse. Energy companies contend there is not enough proof of declines to draw definitive conclusions....
BLM Sees Worsening Off-Road Crisis Risking Visitor Safety The U.S. Bureau of Land Management foresees "a continued rise in the number and severity of incidents involving crimes against persons" fueled by firearms, drugs and alcohol at mass off-road gatherings during holiday weekends, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As reckless off-road vehicle use rises, land management agencies are losing their ability to safeguard visitors or prevent injuries, let alone protect the landscapes from being scarred, burned and trashed. A 2007 BLM analysis of the preparedness of its Little Sahara Recreational Area, obtained by PEER under the Freedom of Information Act, finds that the "high number of personal injury accidents, lost persons, littering, burning of flammable materials on the mountain and various safety violations" caused by irresponsible off-roading were fanning visitor fears and producing "a nearly all-reactive law enforcement operation with little opportunity to deter or reduce unlawful behavior." This official forecast, however, did little to prepare the agency for the 2007 Easter weekend when a gathering of an estimated one thousand off-road vehicle enthusiasts at Little Sahara degenerated into "near riot conditions," according to the BLM incident report....
Preble's meadow mouse may end up back on endangered species list The director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may keep a rare jumping mouse in the Rocky Mountains on the endangered species list after all. The Preble's meadow jumping mouse, the Southwestern willow flycatcher and several other species vying for survival could get a new lease on life from the agency, whose director, H. Dale Hall, is reviewing decisions affecting them, The Associated Press has learned. They are among the plants and animals affected by up to 10 decisions involving former Interior Department official Julie MacDonald that might be reversed or modified, a government official said Thursday night, speaking on condition of anonymity because a decision had not yet been made. MacDonald resigned in May as deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks after the department's inspector general found that she had broken federal rules and should be punished for bullying federal scientists and improperly leaking information about endangered species to private groups. "We're reviewing a number of decisions that Julie MacDonald was involved with and we're determining how best to proceed," said Chris Tollefson, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, who wouldn't confirm anything more. "There are a lot of things under consideration."....
Asian Parasite Killing Western Bees - Scientist A parasite common in Asian bees has spread to Europe and the Americas and is behind the mass disappearance of honeybees in many countries, says a Spanish scientist who has been studying the phenomenon for years. The culprit is a microscopic parasite called nosema ceranae said Mariano Higes, who leads a team of researchers at a government-funded apiculture centre in Guadalajara, the province east of Madrid that is the heartland of Spain's honey industry. He and his colleagues have analysed thousands of samples from stricken hives in many countries. "We started in 2000 with the hypothesis that it was pesticides, but soon ruled it out," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday....
Panel Agrees on New Labels for Meat The House Agriculture Committee voted Thursday night to require country of origin labels on meats beginning next year, striking a compromise as reports of tainted food from China raise consumer awareness about imported food safety. After days of negotiations between both sides, the committee agreed to allow the mandatory labels but soften penalties and burdensome record-keeping requirements that had concerned many food retailers and meatpackers who opposed the law. The committee adopted by voice vote the labeling changes just before it approved a five-year farm law that would govern agriculture programs. Herseth Sandlin and others, including consumer groups, were most concerned that meats could not be given a USA label unless the animals were born, raised and slaughtered in the United States. ``There has to be some reflection of the fact that these animals were born elsewhere,'' Herseth Sandlin said after the vote. The agreement maintains that standard, but it also allows the labels to list the United States as one of several countries of origin if the meat is mixed. Virginia Rep. Robert Goodlatte, the top Republican on the Agriculture panel and a lawmaker who has never supported a mandatory labeling law, helped broker the agreement. He said the ``overwhelming majority'' of interests are behind it now....
Earliest inhabitants seen in new light The narrow two-lane road connecting modern commuters in the Tularosa Basin with the many resort communities and ranches in the Sacramento Mountains winds between the steep slopes of Fresnal Canyon. Those who make the drive are subject to dangerous weather conditions, from high summer temperatures and torrential thunderstorms to freezing snows during the winter. Ancient communities used the same canyon route, while establishing residences on either side of the road. During more than 1,500 years of occupation, climate was the motivator for adjustment and mobility among those who chose to live there. These same people also developed relationships to the far south and north with other growing civilizations present at that time. By the time the two sites and their extended "cultural ecological landscape" were finally abandoned, in approximately 250 to 300 A.D., the development of early Puebloan culture began to appear throughout the American Southwest. The Fresnal and High Rolls sites are among the earliest testaments to this transformation....
Cowboy scribes treat audience to their poems on the range The spotlight on the Murray Park Amphitheater stage grew brighter, and the air filled with the audience's laughter and applause for Michael Robinson, Stan Tixier and Don Kennington of the cowboy-poetry performing group Sidekicks. Taking the stage first, Kennington brought his poems to life with animated arm movements as he acted out parts of the poems. He had the audience gasping for breath in a fit of laughter when he impersonated the female antagonist of one poem. While reciting his poem "Shoeing Ol' Rivet," he bent his knees and grabbed at an invisible horse's hoof. Then, out of breath, he put the imaginary hoof down and leaned on the rear end of the horse. His facial gestures corresponded with the poem's moods. " 'Cause he's having trouble breathing and I ain't sure just what to do," recited Kennington, "I hope he ain't a-dyin'. He'd be wasting three new shoes."....
Back to drawing board on Pinon Canyon Facing a possible cut-off in funding for the project, Army Secretary Pete Geren announced the Army is "going back to the drawing board" on the planned expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site in order to consider ideas on how to help the regional economy as the Army goes ahead with its effort to acquire the 414,000 acres it wants to add to the training site northeast of Trinidad. In a letter to Colorado Sens. Ken Salazar and Wayne Allard dated Thursday, Geren repeated the Army's often-stated goal of acquiring land from "willing sellers," but also said it intends to look at ways to offer some economic "enhancements" to the region. "Our intent is to fully consider potential economic enhancements to local communities, with the goal of accomplishing the acquisition of the necessary property from willing sellers," Geren's letter said. "I don't see anything knew here for us," Lon Robertson, a rancher and president of the Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition. "The Army says they're willing to talk about economic development. But putting troops down here would still mean we lose our land and agriculture would be finished down here."....The Pentagon has over 29 million acres of U.S. landholdings, with 52% of those controlled by the Army. It's hard for me to believe they just have to have another 400,000 plus acres to train troops.
Were American Indians Really Environmentalists? The traditional story is familiar to American schoolchildren: the American Indians possessed a profound spiritual kinship with nature, and were unusually solicitous of environmental welfare. In his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, then-Senator Al Gore cited a nineteenth-century speech from Chief Seattle, patriarch of the Duwamish and Suquamish Indians of Puget Sound, as evidence of the Indians' concern for nature. This speech, which speaks of absolutely everything in the natural world, including every last insect and pine needle, as being sacred to Seattle and his people, has been made to bear an unusually heavy share of the burden in depicting the American Indians as the first environmentalists. The trouble for Gore is that the version of the speech he cites is a fabrication, drawn up in the early 1970s by screenwriter Ted Perry. (Perry, to his credit, has tried without success to let people know that he made up the speech.) Still, it was influential enough to become the basis for Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, a children's book that reached number five on the New York Times bestseller list in 1992....
Why Milk Costs More Than Gas The other day milk was selling in a New England supermarket at $4.79 a gallon. Down the street, regular gasoline was going for about $3.04 a gallon. One of the factors driving up the cost of milk is the ethanol stampede. Ethanol, as we all have been taught to believe by now, will bring us "energy independence" and lessen global warming with no change in the way we live--unless we happen to be a small child in a household with a limited budget. American ethanol is made from corn, and the more corn we use to feed our cars, the more expensive is the corn left over for our livestock. Ergo, "No Milk Today." If ethanol we must have, we could import it from Brazil, where they can make it cheaper from sugar cane than Americans can make it from corn. But Brazilian ethanol, thanks to the agribusiness lobby and a 54-cent-per-gallon import tariff, is kept out of the country. Politicians of both parties, mad for winning elections in corn-growing Iowa, do not mention the cheaper Brazilian stuff....
Eating beef ' is less green than driving' Producing 2.2lb of beef generates as much greenhouse gas as driving a car non-stop for three hours, it was claimed yesterday. Japanese scientists used a range of data to calculate the environmental impact of a single purchase of beef. Taking into account all the processes involved, they said, four average sized steaks generated greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent to 80.25lb of carbon dioxide. This also consumed 169 megajoules of energy. That means that 2.2lb of beef is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions which have the same effect as the carbon dioxide released by an ordinary car travelling at 50 miles per hour for 155 miles, a journey lasting three hours. The amount of energy consumed would light a 100-watt bulb for 20 days. Most of the greenhouse gas emissions are in the form of methane released from the animals' digestive systems, New Scientist magazine reported....
Park whittles at roving elks' willow feast Estes Park - In the heart of Rocky Mountain National Park, a slice of wild country famed for its natural state, stands a jarring discrepancy: a giant fence. The 32-acre enclosure in the middle of Horseshoe Park, an area denuded by a flood 25 years ago this week, ironically fits in with the national park's mission to restore natural conditions, said Jeff Connor, a park natural-resources specialist. "We gave it an opportunity to restore on its own, and it didn't happen," he said. The fence is intended to protect willows and other plants from the voracious appetite of the park's elk herd, allowing the landscape to revert back to the mountain wetland that existed before the July 15, 1982, Lawn Lake flood. "The elk just hammer these willows," Connor said, pointing to stunted growth on one scraggly clump of dead shoots in a dry sand bar. "All of these new shoots that come up in the summer get chewed back down by the elk in the fall."....
Foes blast Desert Rock The Bureau of Indian Affairs got an earful from Durango residents Wednesday as one person after another streamed to the microphone to speak out against the proposed Desert Rock Energy Project. The federal agency hosted a public hearing to gather comments about the power plant. It followed on the May release of a draft Environmental Impact Statement, a key step toward construction. The EIS said the power plant would have several environmental impacts on the surrounding area in northern New Mexico, but nothing significant enough to stop the project. Speakers at the hearing Wednesday were having none of that. "Nobody wants a power plant," said Nathan Caceres, who lives in Burnham, N.M. Forty-nine people signed to speak. Of the first 39, only one voiced support. Desert Rock would generate 1,500 megawatts of electricity from a site on Navajo land about 30 miles southwest of Farmington. Sithe Global Power, a New York-based international corporation, and Diné Power Authority, a Navajo company, are pushing the $2.5 billion coal-fired power plant. Environmentalists fiercely oppose the project, saying it will worsen pollution emitted by two older power plants in northern New Mexico. Desert Rock representatives say it will provide much-needed jobs and tax revenue to the Navajo Nation while generating electricity for booming Southwest cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas....
Forest Service is blamed in deaths The U.S. Forest Service committed serious safety violations that contributed to the deaths of five of its firefighters in a Southern California blaze last year, workplace safety regulators alleged Thursday. The U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the Forest Service for nine safety violations, including failing to provide firefighters on the front lines of the Esperanza Fire with maps and crucial information about potentially hazardous weather conditions. OSHA ordered the Forest Service to fix the unsafe working conditions within 15 days. Asked whether the agency believed the violations led to the firefighters' deaths, Department of Labor spokesman Roger Gayman responded, "By implication, yes." Messages left at the office of San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor Jeanne Wade Evans and the Forest Service's Washington, D.C, office were not immediately returned....
Ending the cycle of catastrophic fires It seems that this time every year, we find ourselves in the same precarious situation of watching our hillsides get drier and drier while the summer gets hotter and hotter, until a fire erupts and we scramble to contain it and minimize its effect. Once the fire's been put out and things return to normal (for the most part), we do little to prevent future fires. Then summer hits once again and we're back to square one. It's time we put an end to this cycle. The existing hands-off approach is simply not acceptable -- suppression alone is a flawed policy whereby forest fires are merely put out and there isn't enough active forest management. This policy has resulted in the Lake Tahoe basin having twice as many trees as normally would be sustained. As a result of certain crippling environmental laws regarding forestry, this calamity has endangered our families, children and firefighters, destroyed hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of residents, threatened our air and water quality, and caused millions of dollars of damage to the Lake Tahoe region. There is a group of people who tend to the more extreme side of environmentalism, who insist upon stricter air quality regulations on industries and agriculture, and yet endorse policies such as an arbitrary limit on the size of trees that can be removed from our forests and the exclusion of biomass (converting forest waste into usable energy) as a form of alternative fuel. These are the same policies that have led to overgrown, dense forests that act as "powder kegs," as termed by Thomas Bonnicksen, a professor at Texas A&M and an expert on forestry and forest management....
Drones Raise Safety Issues as Service Roles Multiply From the comfort of a control center at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California, pilot Mark Pestana will gun the throttle of his unmanned aircraft, pull back on the stick and gently guide his plane into the sky next month. But he will not be using the high-tech modified Predator B drone to seek out and kill insurgents in Iraq or Taliban in Afghanistan. Instead, his mission will be to comb the western United States for forest fires and to relay infrared images and photographs of the blazes to firefighters on the ground. This year, regulators expect to grant more than 130 waivers to government agencies to use unmanned flying machines, up from 64 two years ago. The FAA has granted private companies nine certificates to operate drones in the United States this year -- a total of 13 have been granted since 2005 -- so they can test their products, regulators said. Rescuers in December sent up small drones in a last-ditch effort to locate hikers trapped on Mount Hood in Oregon, and the Forest Service evaluated small drones during a blaze in Montana last summer to see whether they were capable of helping firefighters. The agency says it expects firefighters on the ground to be outfitted with such backpack-sized drones by next year's fire season....
BLM withdraws oil, gas leases Federal officials said Thursday that dozens of oil and gas leases in Montana will be withdrawn from auction and pledged to look more closely at the environmental consequences of such development, particularly near the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. The announcement followed vocal opposition from conservation groups and state officials who claimed the federal government's pro-energy policies threaten wildlife populations. "It's a huge step if they're willing to do things differently," said T.O. Smith, energy coordinator for the Montana Department of Fish Wildlife and Parks. A petroleum industry representative, Dave Galt, warned that the BLM's action could "complicate development of resources in the Rocky Mountain West." At issue are the effects of increased drilling under the Bush administration on public lands stretching from Montana to New Mexico. In deferring the lease sales on 73,000 acres Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management pledged to consider whether additional industry restrictions are needed in light of emerging wildlife research from the University of Wyoming and the University of Montana. Recent studies have tied intensive oil and gas development to sharp declines in game species including mule deer and sage grouse. Energy companies contend there is not enough proof of declines to draw definitive conclusions....
BLM Sees Worsening Off-Road Crisis Risking Visitor Safety The U.S. Bureau of Land Management foresees "a continued rise in the number and severity of incidents involving crimes against persons" fueled by firearms, drugs and alcohol at mass off-road gatherings during holiday weekends, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As reckless off-road vehicle use rises, land management agencies are losing their ability to safeguard visitors or prevent injuries, let alone protect the landscapes from being scarred, burned and trashed. A 2007 BLM analysis of the preparedness of its Little Sahara Recreational Area, obtained by PEER under the Freedom of Information Act, finds that the "high number of personal injury accidents, lost persons, littering, burning of flammable materials on the mountain and various safety violations" caused by irresponsible off-roading were fanning visitor fears and producing "a nearly all-reactive law enforcement operation with little opportunity to deter or reduce unlawful behavior." This official forecast, however, did little to prepare the agency for the 2007 Easter weekend when a gathering of an estimated one thousand off-road vehicle enthusiasts at Little Sahara degenerated into "near riot conditions," according to the BLM incident report....
Preble's meadow mouse may end up back on endangered species list The director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may keep a rare jumping mouse in the Rocky Mountains on the endangered species list after all. The Preble's meadow jumping mouse, the Southwestern willow flycatcher and several other species vying for survival could get a new lease on life from the agency, whose director, H. Dale Hall, is reviewing decisions affecting them, The Associated Press has learned. They are among the plants and animals affected by up to 10 decisions involving former Interior Department official Julie MacDonald that might be reversed or modified, a government official said Thursday night, speaking on condition of anonymity because a decision had not yet been made. MacDonald resigned in May as deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks after the department's inspector general found that she had broken federal rules and should be punished for bullying federal scientists and improperly leaking information about endangered species to private groups. "We're reviewing a number of decisions that Julie MacDonald was involved with and we're determining how best to proceed," said Chris Tollefson, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, who wouldn't confirm anything more. "There are a lot of things under consideration."....
Asian Parasite Killing Western Bees - Scientist A parasite common in Asian bees has spread to Europe and the Americas and is behind the mass disappearance of honeybees in many countries, says a Spanish scientist who has been studying the phenomenon for years. The culprit is a microscopic parasite called nosema ceranae said Mariano Higes, who leads a team of researchers at a government-funded apiculture centre in Guadalajara, the province east of Madrid that is the heartland of Spain's honey industry. He and his colleagues have analysed thousands of samples from stricken hives in many countries. "We started in 2000 with the hypothesis that it was pesticides, but soon ruled it out," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday....
Panel Agrees on New Labels for Meat The House Agriculture Committee voted Thursday night to require country of origin labels on meats beginning next year, striking a compromise as reports of tainted food from China raise consumer awareness about imported food safety. After days of negotiations between both sides, the committee agreed to allow the mandatory labels but soften penalties and burdensome record-keeping requirements that had concerned many food retailers and meatpackers who opposed the law. The committee adopted by voice vote the labeling changes just before it approved a five-year farm law that would govern agriculture programs. Herseth Sandlin and others, including consumer groups, were most concerned that meats could not be given a USA label unless the animals were born, raised and slaughtered in the United States. ``There has to be some reflection of the fact that these animals were born elsewhere,'' Herseth Sandlin said after the vote. The agreement maintains that standard, but it also allows the labels to list the United States as one of several countries of origin if the meat is mixed. Virginia Rep. Robert Goodlatte, the top Republican on the Agriculture panel and a lawmaker who has never supported a mandatory labeling law, helped broker the agreement. He said the ``overwhelming majority'' of interests are behind it now....
Earliest inhabitants seen in new light The narrow two-lane road connecting modern commuters in the Tularosa Basin with the many resort communities and ranches in the Sacramento Mountains winds between the steep slopes of Fresnal Canyon. Those who make the drive are subject to dangerous weather conditions, from high summer temperatures and torrential thunderstorms to freezing snows during the winter. Ancient communities used the same canyon route, while establishing residences on either side of the road. During more than 1,500 years of occupation, climate was the motivator for adjustment and mobility among those who chose to live there. These same people also developed relationships to the far south and north with other growing civilizations present at that time. By the time the two sites and their extended "cultural ecological landscape" were finally abandoned, in approximately 250 to 300 A.D., the development of early Puebloan culture began to appear throughout the American Southwest. The Fresnal and High Rolls sites are among the earliest testaments to this transformation....
Cowboy scribes treat audience to their poems on the range The spotlight on the Murray Park Amphitheater stage grew brighter, and the air filled with the audience's laughter and applause for Michael Robinson, Stan Tixier and Don Kennington of the cowboy-poetry performing group Sidekicks. Taking the stage first, Kennington brought his poems to life with animated arm movements as he acted out parts of the poems. He had the audience gasping for breath in a fit of laughter when he impersonated the female antagonist of one poem. While reciting his poem "Shoeing Ol' Rivet," he bent his knees and grabbed at an invisible horse's hoof. Then, out of breath, he put the imaginary hoof down and leaned on the rear end of the horse. His facial gestures corresponded with the poem's moods. " 'Cause he's having trouble breathing and I ain't sure just what to do," recited Kennington, "I hope he ain't a-dyin'. He'd be wasting three new shoes."....
FLE
Ex-Border Agents' Supporters Hopeful After Senate Probe Two leading senators Wednesday called on President Bush to commute the sentences of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents who are facing more than a decade each in prison for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler and covering up the incident. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) wrote in a letter to the White House that a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week into the prosecution and jailing of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean had "confirmed the concerns raised by many members of the public: that this penalty levied on these agents is excessive and that they deserve the immediate exercise of your executive clemency powers." The letter to the president highlighted the fact that U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of the Western District of Texas, who prosecuted the case, had used his discretion to include a specific charge -- discharging a firearm during the commission of a crime -- that carries a 10-year minimum sentence. This was not necessary, the senators argued....
Chertoff: Texas border fence construction to begin by fall U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he expects construction of a Texas-Mexico border fence to begin by this fall. He pledged to consult with local communities on the fence design, but said he won't give them a veto on the plan. "I expect we'll be doing some construction in Texas this fiscal year," Chertoff said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. The government's fiscal year ends Sept. 30. Chertoff also said he "can't rule out" that the government could use eminent domain to seize private property if it's necessary to build the fence. Laredo Mayor Raul G. Salinas said he hasn't been notified of the fence's location in his city. "I understand we don't have veto power, but I hope the citizens of Laredo, the business community, the ranchers and farmers, will have an opportunity to speak about this issue," he said. "If you're going to construct something in your neighborhood, aren't you going to tell them?" McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez said most residents believe the fence won't be effective....
US guns arm Mexico's drug wars In some ways this is an old border story. Drugs have always gone north. Guns go south. But as Mexico's drug wars spiral so violently out of control that beheadings are tallied in local papers, the Calderón administration is demanding that the US do more to stanch the gun smuggling and to amend gun laws that, it says, are interfering with Mexico's fight to disarm organized crime. "There is a contradiction," says a Mexican senior official speaking on condition of anonymity. "The US says they are so worried about drug trafficking, but the US is the one arming the drug traffickers." Amid violence that has even spilled onto American soil, the US government is answering the call. US-Mexico cooperation on the matter, say many involved in the effort, has reached an unprecedented level, including gun tracing, personnel training, information-sharing, extraditions, and the establishment of joint task forces....
FEMA lawyers nixed trailer tests for toxicity The Federal Emergency Management Agency has suppressed warnings from its own Gulf coast field workers since the middle of 2006 about suspected health problems that may be linked to elevated levels of formaldehyde gas released in FEMA-provided trailers, lawmakers said today. At a hearing Thursday of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, investigators released internal e-mails indicating that FEMA lawyers rejected environmental testing out of fear that the agency would then become legally liable if health problems emerged among as many as 120,000 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina who lived in trailers. FEMA's Office of General Counsel "has advised that we do not do testing," because this "would imply FEMA's ownership of this issue," wrote a FEMA logistics specialist on June 16, 2006, three months after news reports surfaced about the possible effects of the invisible cancer-causing compound and one month after the agency was sued....So, is the government looking out for you, or for itself?
Texas State Site Leaks Personal Data Troy Aikman may not be happy about it, but the State of Texas has made his address and social security number available via the Internet. Sensitive information on Aikman, formerly a star quarterback with the Dallas Cowboys, and thousands of others is available on the Texas Secretary of State's SOSDirect Web site, according to Steven Peisner, the president of fraud prevention vendor Sellitsafe Inc., who has provided IDG News Service with a half-dozen examples of social security numbers he was able to obtain from the site. As government pushes more and more documents online, Texas is one of many state and local governments across the U.S. that is now struggling to remove sensitive information so that it cannot be misused by criminals. Peisner found social security numbers on tax liens and on loan agreement notifications filed with the state, called Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) financing statements....
Copyright prison break Four enterprising prison inmates have been accused of trying to use copyright law to escape. They allegedly copyrighted their own names and then demanded millions of dollars from jail officials for using them without permission, reports the Daily Telegraph. Russell Dean Landers, Clayton Heath Albers, Carl Ervin Batts and Barry Dean Bischof sent demand notices for payment to the warden of the El Reno federal prison in Oklahoma City, according to prosecutors. They allegedly filed claims against his property, then hired someone to seize his vehicles, freeze his bank accounts and change the locks on his house. Believing the warden's property had been seized, the inmates allegedly said they would not return it unless they were released from prison, according to the indictment....
Ex-Border Agents' Supporters Hopeful After Senate Probe Two leading senators Wednesday called on President Bush to commute the sentences of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents who are facing more than a decade each in prison for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler and covering up the incident. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) wrote in a letter to the White House that a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week into the prosecution and jailing of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean had "confirmed the concerns raised by many members of the public: that this penalty levied on these agents is excessive and that they deserve the immediate exercise of your executive clemency powers." The letter to the president highlighted the fact that U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of the Western District of Texas, who prosecuted the case, had used his discretion to include a specific charge -- discharging a firearm during the commission of a crime -- that carries a 10-year minimum sentence. This was not necessary, the senators argued....
Chertoff: Texas border fence construction to begin by fall U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he expects construction of a Texas-Mexico border fence to begin by this fall. He pledged to consult with local communities on the fence design, but said he won't give them a veto on the plan. "I expect we'll be doing some construction in Texas this fiscal year," Chertoff said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. The government's fiscal year ends Sept. 30. Chertoff also said he "can't rule out" that the government could use eminent domain to seize private property if it's necessary to build the fence. Laredo Mayor Raul G. Salinas said he hasn't been notified of the fence's location in his city. "I understand we don't have veto power, but I hope the citizens of Laredo, the business community, the ranchers and farmers, will have an opportunity to speak about this issue," he said. "If you're going to construct something in your neighborhood, aren't you going to tell them?" McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez said most residents believe the fence won't be effective....
US guns arm Mexico's drug wars In some ways this is an old border story. Drugs have always gone north. Guns go south. But as Mexico's drug wars spiral so violently out of control that beheadings are tallied in local papers, the Calderón administration is demanding that the US do more to stanch the gun smuggling and to amend gun laws that, it says, are interfering with Mexico's fight to disarm organized crime. "There is a contradiction," says a Mexican senior official speaking on condition of anonymity. "The US says they are so worried about drug trafficking, but the US is the one arming the drug traffickers." Amid violence that has even spilled onto American soil, the US government is answering the call. US-Mexico cooperation on the matter, say many involved in the effort, has reached an unprecedented level, including gun tracing, personnel training, information-sharing, extraditions, and the establishment of joint task forces....
FEMA lawyers nixed trailer tests for toxicity The Federal Emergency Management Agency has suppressed warnings from its own Gulf coast field workers since the middle of 2006 about suspected health problems that may be linked to elevated levels of formaldehyde gas released in FEMA-provided trailers, lawmakers said today. At a hearing Thursday of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, investigators released internal e-mails indicating that FEMA lawyers rejected environmental testing out of fear that the agency would then become legally liable if health problems emerged among as many as 120,000 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina who lived in trailers. FEMA's Office of General Counsel "has advised that we do not do testing," because this "would imply FEMA's ownership of this issue," wrote a FEMA logistics specialist on June 16, 2006, three months after news reports surfaced about the possible effects of the invisible cancer-causing compound and one month after the agency was sued....So, is the government looking out for you, or for itself?
Texas State Site Leaks Personal Data Troy Aikman may not be happy about it, but the State of Texas has made his address and social security number available via the Internet. Sensitive information on Aikman, formerly a star quarterback with the Dallas Cowboys, and thousands of others is available on the Texas Secretary of State's SOSDirect Web site, according to Steven Peisner, the president of fraud prevention vendor Sellitsafe Inc., who has provided IDG News Service with a half-dozen examples of social security numbers he was able to obtain from the site. As government pushes more and more documents online, Texas is one of many state and local governments across the U.S. that is now struggling to remove sensitive information so that it cannot be misused by criminals. Peisner found social security numbers on tax liens and on loan agreement notifications filed with the state, called Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) financing statements....
Copyright prison break Four enterprising prison inmates have been accused of trying to use copyright law to escape. They allegedly copyrighted their own names and then demanded millions of dollars from jail officials for using them without permission, reports the Daily Telegraph. Russell Dean Landers, Clayton Heath Albers, Carl Ervin Batts and Barry Dean Bischof sent demand notices for payment to the warden of the El Reno federal prison in Oklahoma City, according to prosecutors. They allegedly filed claims against his property, then hired someone to seize his vehicles, freeze his bank accounts and change the locks on his house. Believing the warden's property had been seized, the inmates allegedly said they would not return it unless they were released from prison, according to the indictment....
Thursday, July 19, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
1,000 New Fires Blaze Across West International wildfire crews could be called to help fight blazes in the bone-dry West as U.S. officials on Wednesday boosted the nation's wildfire alert to its highest level. "It's driven by a couple of things: The number of large fires we have, and also the fires are occurring in several states and in several geographic areas," Randy Eardley, a spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center here, told The Associated Press. "The resources we have are being stretched thin." The wildfire preparedness level was raised to five as dry lightning blasted and sparked dozens of new blazes in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah, where firefighters have been stretched thin by nearly 70 fires bigger than 100 acres burning in 12 states. National Guard units also could be mobilized under new level. Since Monday, there have been more than 1,000 new fires reported across the West, Eardley said....
Ranchers, wilderness advocates lock horns Events Thursday showed at least two distinctive camps have formed in a debate over land use for Dona Ana County: those who want a federally designated wilderness area and those who don't. Ranchers, an off-highway vehicle club and a sportsmen's group highlighted their concerns during a news conference early Thursday afternoon at the New Mexico Farm Bureau Center. Among their fears are that the federal designation will cut off access to the land and hurt ranchers' ability to make a living. Ranchers part of a group called People For Preserving Our Western Heritage were quick to say they're not opposed to protecting federal lands in the county that are being considered for wilderness. Rather, they said, Congress should protect the lands by taking away their potential to be developed. "The ranchers are for protection of these lands, but they believe they have a better way to do it by withdrawing these lands from disposal," said Frank DuBois, a former secretary for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture. "If you designate wilderness, you're going to limit these ranchers' ability to maintain improvements," he said, referring to structures such as windmills. Ranchers hold grazing leases on much of the federal land being considered for wilderness a designation that prohibits most mechanized travel. DuBois said the designation could also lead to more restrictions on grazing and accessing land....
Let's hope state resource managers learn from this summer's wildfires Ranchers can often be taciturn while possessing the ability to put complicated ecological principles into simple plain talk. Such was the case last week with Pete Yardley, a Beaver rancher who lost cattle and feed to the blaze that scorched hundreds of thousands of acres in Millard and Beaver counties. He made two cogent points. First, he wondered why there were no controlled burns in this area over the past 10 years to improve habitat for domestic livestock and many wildlife species. Such controlled burns may not have prevented the wildfire in this extraordinarily dry summer, but damages may have been more limited. Second, Yardley said that in two years, the fire could make this land much more valuable than it is now. The logic, put out by another worker in the area, is that fewer trees mean more grass, which is good for domestic livestock and wildlife. But that point remains in question. The Milford Flat fire was so large that it is going to be all but impossible for state and federal ecologists and land managers to reseed the land with native plant species, which would provide good food for livestock and wildlife while helping keep out the invasive cheat grass that will fuel future fires....
Officials: Pinon Expansion Will Cut Cattle Herds Officials say that if the Army's Pinon Canyon expansion plan was in place, they would not have been able to run as many cattle as they did during a drought-impacted time last year. The Colorado State University Extension office says ranchers in Las Animas County ran 51,000 cattle, about two-thirds the average size of their herd. If the Army had taken the land it wants, they would have only been able to run 41,000 cattle. County's extension agent Dean Oatman said that would have meant a loss of $6 million in cattle sales. And he said he's being conservative in estimating that the loss would have only been 10,000 head. He said ranchers normally would have run a third more cattle, but drought conditions forced them to reduce their herds.
Environmental Defense Warns About Conservation Spending In a statement published on Tuesday, Environmental Defense said that the latest plan being put before the House of Representatives' Agricultural Committee does not do enough to meet the needs of most farmers or the environment. In the proposal, USDA spending on conservation measures would only increase by $3 billion over the next five years. Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin and the Bush Administration have given estimates on conservation spending needs that greatly surpass that amount. Environmental Defense says that its analysis shows numerous farmers and ranchers whose representatives are sitting in Congress would benefit significantly more if Congress drastically reduced farm subsidies and rewarded environmental stewardship instead of merely voting "the status quo". The call for reductions in U.S. government farm subsidies does not begin or end with this matter. Foreign nations including Canada have repeatedly said that the United States is in violation of its World Trade Organization cap on farm subsidizing and that American farmers are so heavily subsidized that their exports distort the world market and make competition almost impossible....
Can state order ditches? Landowner advocates say they're alarmed at a proposal tinkering with the state's use of eminent domain powers. State Engineer Patrick Tyrrell wants to accommodate the surface discharge of groundwater in the oil and gas industry by ordering ditching and other reconstruction where ephemeral stream channels disappear into wide pastures. The idea builds on case law in which private companies have pointed to the state's water easement authority to force coal-bed methane water onto private property. Ditching, Tyrrell said, comes from the state's right to order drainage works. In the same way, the state can order in capacity of a natural channel. In its written comments to the task force, the Powder River Basin Resource Council said the state engineer's proposal does nothing to protect landowners. "Our overall concern with the proposals of the state engineer to convert ephemeral drainages into perennial CBM ditches is that it allows lands to be destroyed without just compensation to landowners," said the group's chairman, Bob LeResche. Moreover, the measure doesn't seem to be in keeping with the intent of Wyoming's eminent domain laws, he said....
State looks to curtail home building in fire-prone areas Bone-dry conditions and large amounts of brush threaten increasing numbers of homes near wild land, officials told a legislative committee Wednesday. A lawmaker, meanwhile, left open the possibility that the Legislature would step in if cities and counties did not do more to restrict development in fire-prone places. Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-San Barbara, compared local government's allowing homes in high-fire risk areas to allowing homes in flood plains -- something the Legislature has tried to curtail. In Riverside County 4,500 miles of homes line fire-prone chaparral and forests, an increase of 1,000 miles from 15 years ago, said Thomas Scott, associate director of UC Riverside's Center for Conservation Biology. Earlier this month, Riverside County officials recommended sweeping land-use changes to restrict home construction in fire-prone places....
Study Pinpoints How Humans and Urban Sprawl Influence California Fire Regimes A new study quantifies how distribution of housing developments and the kinds of fire fuels at the wildland-urban interface can help predict fires in California, a state that experiences monumental fire hazards. The study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Oregon State University, Forest Service Northern Research Station, and the U.S. Geological Survey confirms some assumptions but also contains some surprises. Published in the July issue of Ecological Applications, the study underscores the importance of using human as well as biological and physical factors to assess fire risk. The scientists weren't surprised when their research documented that increasing human settlement is exacerbating fire hazard in California. However, what was initially more startling to the authors is that their research also revealed that fire ignitions progressively declined after human population and development reached a threshold density. The authors suggest this finding is likely the result of diminished and fragmented open space containing insufficient fuels (for example, shrubs and other vegetation) to sustain fire in highly populated areas. In addition, the researchers noted that above a certain population threshold, fire suppression resources, such as fire engine crews, are likely to be more concentrated at the wildland-urban interface....
Leases on 300K acres protested Conservation groups have filed another round of protests against Bureau of Land Management oil and gas sales, targeting leases to be auctioned later this month on almost 300,000 acres in central and southern Montana. The BLM has faced mounting pressure in recent months from state wildlife officials, researchers and private groups that say the agency is opening public land to drilling without adequate safeguards for wildlife. The latest protests challenge 127 leases south of the Fort Peck Reservoir in Garfield and McCone counties and six in Clark County near the Clark Fork of the Yellowstone River. They were filed by the Montana Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Hellgate Hunters and Anglers and Trout Unlimited. The groups say the leases in Garfield and McCone counties lack suitable protection for sage grouse, elk, pronghorn and mule deer. The Clark County protests, filed by Trout Unlimited, were over potential effects of oil and gas development on Yellowstone cutthroat trout....
Spotted owl saga not over For the past year, Dominick DellaSala has been part of a 12-member team charged with creating a recovery plan for the northern spotted owl. Now a draft of the recovery plan has been released to the public, and he has become one of that plan’s most outspoken critics. It seems that the spotted owl, which was so controversial in the 1990s, is still a magnet for conflict. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking public input on the new draft recovery plan for the spotted owl. “It’s probably the most significant hearing that we’ve had on the spotted owl in over a decade,” says Bob Sallinger, conservation director of the Audubon Society of Portland. But before the public can voice an opinion, it needs to understand the draft plan and its implications, which is no mean feat....
Harvesting the Secret Gardens Last week, an unprecedented collaboration among federal, state, and local agencies began a well-publicized blitz campaign in northern California’s Shasta County to root out illegal marijuana gardens hidden in national parks and forests – a phenomenon that occurs statewide and is partly the result of stepped-up eradication efforts and tighter border security. At a news conference in Redding, officials involved in what is known as Operation Alesia trumpeted the successes of the three-tiered campaign, which involves at least 400 people from Shasta County law enforcement, the National Guard, and 15 other agencies. Officials say most pot gardens are run by organized Mexican drug cartels who are armed and pose a threat to the public, citing instances in which passersby were threatened and shotgun-rigged booby traps were discovered. Law enforcement groups say 80 percent of the environmentally intrusive marijuana gardens are located on public lands, often near recreational hunting and fishing areas, where growers can run water into remote areas through irrigation piping. Only 20 percent of gardens on public lands are found and eradicated, Odle says....
Flesh-eating bacteria put man's life at risk A Nacogdoches man who was infected by flesh-eating bacteria while swimming off Galveston County's Crystal Beach still faces the threat of losing a leg — and possibly his life — despite three surgeries. Steve Gilpatrick is fighting necrotizing fasciitis, a tissue-destroying disease caused by a bacterium called Vibrio vulnificus. The retired oil company marketing consultant also is suffering from multiple organ failure because the disease has caused a blood infection, his physician said Tuesday. Gilpatrick, 58, was listed in critical but stable condition. The bacterium thrives in warm salt water and is most prevalent during summer months. Gilpatrick's wife, Linda, said she and her husband routinely vacation in Galveston each summer....
1,000 New Fires Blaze Across West International wildfire crews could be called to help fight blazes in the bone-dry West as U.S. officials on Wednesday boosted the nation's wildfire alert to its highest level. "It's driven by a couple of things: The number of large fires we have, and also the fires are occurring in several states and in several geographic areas," Randy Eardley, a spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center here, told The Associated Press. "The resources we have are being stretched thin." The wildfire preparedness level was raised to five as dry lightning blasted and sparked dozens of new blazes in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah, where firefighters have been stretched thin by nearly 70 fires bigger than 100 acres burning in 12 states. National Guard units also could be mobilized under new level. Since Monday, there have been more than 1,000 new fires reported across the West, Eardley said....
Ranchers, wilderness advocates lock horns Events Thursday showed at least two distinctive camps have formed in a debate over land use for Dona Ana County: those who want a federally designated wilderness area and those who don't. Ranchers, an off-highway vehicle club and a sportsmen's group highlighted their concerns during a news conference early Thursday afternoon at the New Mexico Farm Bureau Center. Among their fears are that the federal designation will cut off access to the land and hurt ranchers' ability to make a living. Ranchers part of a group called People For Preserving Our Western Heritage were quick to say they're not opposed to protecting federal lands in the county that are being considered for wilderness. Rather, they said, Congress should protect the lands by taking away their potential to be developed. "The ranchers are for protection of these lands, but they believe they have a better way to do it by withdrawing these lands from disposal," said Frank DuBois, a former secretary for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture. "If you designate wilderness, you're going to limit these ranchers' ability to maintain improvements," he said, referring to structures such as windmills. Ranchers hold grazing leases on much of the federal land being considered for wilderness a designation that prohibits most mechanized travel. DuBois said the designation could also lead to more restrictions on grazing and accessing land....
Let's hope state resource managers learn from this summer's wildfires Ranchers can often be taciturn while possessing the ability to put complicated ecological principles into simple plain talk. Such was the case last week with Pete Yardley, a Beaver rancher who lost cattle and feed to the blaze that scorched hundreds of thousands of acres in Millard and Beaver counties. He made two cogent points. First, he wondered why there were no controlled burns in this area over the past 10 years to improve habitat for domestic livestock and many wildlife species. Such controlled burns may not have prevented the wildfire in this extraordinarily dry summer, but damages may have been more limited. Second, Yardley said that in two years, the fire could make this land much more valuable than it is now. The logic, put out by another worker in the area, is that fewer trees mean more grass, which is good for domestic livestock and wildlife. But that point remains in question. The Milford Flat fire was so large that it is going to be all but impossible for state and federal ecologists and land managers to reseed the land with native plant species, which would provide good food for livestock and wildlife while helping keep out the invasive cheat grass that will fuel future fires....
Officials: Pinon Expansion Will Cut Cattle Herds Officials say that if the Army's Pinon Canyon expansion plan was in place, they would not have been able to run as many cattle as they did during a drought-impacted time last year. The Colorado State University Extension office says ranchers in Las Animas County ran 51,000 cattle, about two-thirds the average size of their herd. If the Army had taken the land it wants, they would have only been able to run 41,000 cattle. County's extension agent Dean Oatman said that would have meant a loss of $6 million in cattle sales. And he said he's being conservative in estimating that the loss would have only been 10,000 head. He said ranchers normally would have run a third more cattle, but drought conditions forced them to reduce their herds.
Environmental Defense Warns About Conservation Spending In a statement published on Tuesday, Environmental Defense said that the latest plan being put before the House of Representatives' Agricultural Committee does not do enough to meet the needs of most farmers or the environment. In the proposal, USDA spending on conservation measures would only increase by $3 billion over the next five years. Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin and the Bush Administration have given estimates on conservation spending needs that greatly surpass that amount. Environmental Defense says that its analysis shows numerous farmers and ranchers whose representatives are sitting in Congress would benefit significantly more if Congress drastically reduced farm subsidies and rewarded environmental stewardship instead of merely voting "the status quo". The call for reductions in U.S. government farm subsidies does not begin or end with this matter. Foreign nations including Canada have repeatedly said that the United States is in violation of its World Trade Organization cap on farm subsidizing and that American farmers are so heavily subsidized that their exports distort the world market and make competition almost impossible....
Can state order ditches? Landowner advocates say they're alarmed at a proposal tinkering with the state's use of eminent domain powers. State Engineer Patrick Tyrrell wants to accommodate the surface discharge of groundwater in the oil and gas industry by ordering ditching and other reconstruction where ephemeral stream channels disappear into wide pastures. The idea builds on case law in which private companies have pointed to the state's water easement authority to force coal-bed methane water onto private property. Ditching, Tyrrell said, comes from the state's right to order drainage works. In the same way, the state can order in capacity of a natural channel. In its written comments to the task force, the Powder River Basin Resource Council said the state engineer's proposal does nothing to protect landowners. "Our overall concern with the proposals of the state engineer to convert ephemeral drainages into perennial CBM ditches is that it allows lands to be destroyed without just compensation to landowners," said the group's chairman, Bob LeResche. Moreover, the measure doesn't seem to be in keeping with the intent of Wyoming's eminent domain laws, he said....
State looks to curtail home building in fire-prone areas Bone-dry conditions and large amounts of brush threaten increasing numbers of homes near wild land, officials told a legislative committee Wednesday. A lawmaker, meanwhile, left open the possibility that the Legislature would step in if cities and counties did not do more to restrict development in fire-prone places. Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-San Barbara, compared local government's allowing homes in high-fire risk areas to allowing homes in flood plains -- something the Legislature has tried to curtail. In Riverside County 4,500 miles of homes line fire-prone chaparral and forests, an increase of 1,000 miles from 15 years ago, said Thomas Scott, associate director of UC Riverside's Center for Conservation Biology. Earlier this month, Riverside County officials recommended sweeping land-use changes to restrict home construction in fire-prone places....
Study Pinpoints How Humans and Urban Sprawl Influence California Fire Regimes A new study quantifies how distribution of housing developments and the kinds of fire fuels at the wildland-urban interface can help predict fires in California, a state that experiences monumental fire hazards. The study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Oregon State University, Forest Service Northern Research Station, and the U.S. Geological Survey confirms some assumptions but also contains some surprises. Published in the July issue of Ecological Applications, the study underscores the importance of using human as well as biological and physical factors to assess fire risk. The scientists weren't surprised when their research documented that increasing human settlement is exacerbating fire hazard in California. However, what was initially more startling to the authors is that their research also revealed that fire ignitions progressively declined after human population and development reached a threshold density. The authors suggest this finding is likely the result of diminished and fragmented open space containing insufficient fuels (for example, shrubs and other vegetation) to sustain fire in highly populated areas. In addition, the researchers noted that above a certain population threshold, fire suppression resources, such as fire engine crews, are likely to be more concentrated at the wildland-urban interface....
Leases on 300K acres protested Conservation groups have filed another round of protests against Bureau of Land Management oil and gas sales, targeting leases to be auctioned later this month on almost 300,000 acres in central and southern Montana. The BLM has faced mounting pressure in recent months from state wildlife officials, researchers and private groups that say the agency is opening public land to drilling without adequate safeguards for wildlife. The latest protests challenge 127 leases south of the Fort Peck Reservoir in Garfield and McCone counties and six in Clark County near the Clark Fork of the Yellowstone River. They were filed by the Montana Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Hellgate Hunters and Anglers and Trout Unlimited. The groups say the leases in Garfield and McCone counties lack suitable protection for sage grouse, elk, pronghorn and mule deer. The Clark County protests, filed by Trout Unlimited, were over potential effects of oil and gas development on Yellowstone cutthroat trout....
Spotted owl saga not over For the past year, Dominick DellaSala has been part of a 12-member team charged with creating a recovery plan for the northern spotted owl. Now a draft of the recovery plan has been released to the public, and he has become one of that plan’s most outspoken critics. It seems that the spotted owl, which was so controversial in the 1990s, is still a magnet for conflict. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking public input on the new draft recovery plan for the spotted owl. “It’s probably the most significant hearing that we’ve had on the spotted owl in over a decade,” says Bob Sallinger, conservation director of the Audubon Society of Portland. But before the public can voice an opinion, it needs to understand the draft plan and its implications, which is no mean feat....
Harvesting the Secret Gardens Last week, an unprecedented collaboration among federal, state, and local agencies began a well-publicized blitz campaign in northern California’s Shasta County to root out illegal marijuana gardens hidden in national parks and forests – a phenomenon that occurs statewide and is partly the result of stepped-up eradication efforts and tighter border security. At a news conference in Redding, officials involved in what is known as Operation Alesia trumpeted the successes of the three-tiered campaign, which involves at least 400 people from Shasta County law enforcement, the National Guard, and 15 other agencies. Officials say most pot gardens are run by organized Mexican drug cartels who are armed and pose a threat to the public, citing instances in which passersby were threatened and shotgun-rigged booby traps were discovered. Law enforcement groups say 80 percent of the environmentally intrusive marijuana gardens are located on public lands, often near recreational hunting and fishing areas, where growers can run water into remote areas through irrigation piping. Only 20 percent of gardens on public lands are found and eradicated, Odle says....
Flesh-eating bacteria put man's life at risk A Nacogdoches man who was infected by flesh-eating bacteria while swimming off Galveston County's Crystal Beach still faces the threat of losing a leg — and possibly his life — despite three surgeries. Steve Gilpatrick is fighting necrotizing fasciitis, a tissue-destroying disease caused by a bacterium called Vibrio vulnificus. The retired oil company marketing consultant also is suffering from multiple organ failure because the disease has caused a blood infection, his physician said Tuesday. Gilpatrick, 58, was listed in critical but stable condition. The bacterium thrives in warm salt water and is most prevalent during summer months. Gilpatrick's wife, Linda, said she and her husband routinely vacation in Galveston each summer....
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
Gray wolf shot, killed in eastern Oregon An endangered gray wolf was found shot and killed in late May in a forested area north of La Grande, apparently the fifth known wolf to arrive in Oregon since the species was returned to nearby Idaho more than a decade ago. The adult female animal was badly decomposed and was only recently positively identified as a wolf by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forensics laboratory in Ashland, officials said. The wolf was not wearing a radio collar, but DNA analysis confirmed it was related to other wild wolves in Idaho. It did not appear to have been the same wolf videotaped in Wallowa County last summer. That animal was black and the dead animal was a more typical gray-brown, said Russ Morgan of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Counting that videotaped wolf, the wolf found dead would be the fifth known wolf to make it to Oregon. The first was captured near John Day in 1999 and returned to Idaho, another was hit by a car on Interstate 84 and another was found illegally shot between Ukiah and Pendleton....
Wolves Of Yellowstone Spur Love And Hate On any given morning in Yellowstone National Park, you can find packs of tourists watching for packs of wolves, CBS News correspondent Tracy Smith reports. What do they feel when looking at these wolves? "My spirit just feels such a resonance with what I'm seeing," said wolf watcher Nancy Waring. Wolf watchers bring more than high-powered scopes: They bring money to area businesses — about $35 million each year. Seventy years ago, aggressive hunting and trapping had all but wiped out the wolves in Yellowstone. But the federal government decided that as predators, wolves were a key link in the park's food chain. So starting in 1995, they brought the wolves back to Yellowstone. They released 41 in the park, housed in pens. Officials were hoping the wolves would have pups and eventually they would end up with about 100. Now, a decade later, the pens are overgrown and there are 300 wolves in the Yellowstone area ... more than 1,300 in the three surrounding states....
New rule would make it easier to kill wolves Shielded by law from hunters, gray wolf populations boomed in the Northern Rockies over the last decade at the expense of some big game herds that represent a sure meal for the resurgent carnivores. But the balance of power in the region's forests could soon tilt against those 1,300 wolves. Federal officials are seeking to give Idaho, Montana and Wyoming wider latitude to kill wolves that prey on big game species or threaten domestic animals. As public hearings on the proposal began Wednesday, state officials and some ranchers welcomed a plan they said could help put wolves in check more than a decade after they were reintroduced to the region. "This is something we need," said Allen Jaggi, a Wyoming state representative from Lyman. "We're in a hell of a mess. We're losing elk. We're losing domestic livestock." Another pending U.S. Fish and Wildlife proposal would go much farther, allowing public hunting of wolves by stripping them of protection under the Endangered Species Act. With that idea facing a near-certain legal challenge _ which could hang it up in court possibly for years _ federal officials said the big game protection proposal gives states at least an interim measure to deal with problem wolves....
Wolves kill seven sheep in Oregon Gulch Rather than try to remove the gray wolves that killed seven domestic sheep northwest of Ketchum last week, an official with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game has elected to pursue non-lethal methods to keep the wolves away. The decision to pursue non-lethal methods was made after the owner of the sheep requested the wolves not be killed, Fish and Game Large Carnivore Manager Steve Nadeau said Tuesday. "The livestock producer wanted to work with us to explore all options to keep his stock and the wolves alive," Nadeau said. Nadeau said he has agreed to that plan. The sheep-killing incident occurred on two separate days—July 10 and 12—in a remote portion of the upper Oregon Gulch area. The sheep band was being grazed on a Sawtooth National Forest grazing allotment that covers the area....
Home on the Range: “Home Land: Ranching and a West That Works” The editors of Home Land: Ranching and a West That Works, recently published by Johnson Books and the Rocky Mountain Land Library, explain the purpose of this collection in the preface: “The premise of our book is that conservation is compatible with ranching and farming,” and “that conservationists and agriculturalists are compatible creatures: they actually belong together.” That is, even though some questions of conservation, such as the reintroduction of wolves, tend to pit ranchers and environmentalists against each other, larger questions such as respect for animals and a love for undeveloped land unite them. The editors of Home Land are calling for a productive truce between ranchers and environmentalists. As Jordan writes in the introduction, “Environmetalists have been at least as rigid as ranchers in the thirty-year war that has locked vast regions of the West in litigation and rancor while millions of acres of open land have fallen to development.” If environmentalists and ranchers instead united, Home Land suggests, perhaps some of this development could be halted....
Wilderness proposal worries ranchers A pair of news conferences set for today seem to indicate a debate about wilderness in Dona Ana County is far from over. A group of ranchers concerned about possible impacts of a wilderness designation on grazing allotments announced last week it planned a press event today to highlight its views. Tuesday, a group backing a wilderness designation for thousands of acres in the county announced a press conference of its own. Members of the ranching group People For Preserving Our Western Heritage said backers of the wilderness proposal didn't involve ranchers in creating their proposal. "Our organization felt like the process of engaging support for the effort failed to include us," said Steve Wilmeth, a Dona Ana County rancher. A wilderness designation would place new restrictions on the use of that land. Wilmeth said the group will propose alternatives that would still achieve the goal of preserving land....
Water as collateral? B.J. "Red" McCombs has turned investments in radio, sports, oil and cars into gold. The San Antonio businessman now is applying his Midas touch to water rights, trade-school education and loans for those late on their property taxes. Propel Financial Services LLC will act as a private lender to make up to $100 million in loans to individuals and businesses with nonconventional collateral. "I've been looking at this for some time," McCombs said of the venture, which will include loans with Edwards Aquifer private water rights as a collateral. "Very few people are knowledgeable about water rights right now." In recent years, water rights have become a hot commodity in the San Antonio area, but traditional lenders have yet to recognize them as assets for collateral, said Jack Nelson, CEO of the newly formed Propel. The option is particularly attractive for South Texas farmers and ranchers who have the potential to pay off their equipment or even their land with a loan secured by water rights....
Beetle bill lands in D.C. The entire Colorado legislative delegation introduced a federal bark beetle bill on Tuesday that would commit up to $22 million to help the Forest Service and local communities combat the threat of wildfire and protect water supplies in the state. Colorado's seven members of the House of Representatives introduced the legislation, called the Colorado Forest Management Improvement Act of 2007, on the House floor, while the state's two senators presented the bill in the Senate. The bill would make grants available to at-risk communities in Colorado for the creation of a community wildfire protection plan and would create central collection points for dead trees removed from forests. It would also allow for the creation of Healthy Forest Partnership Zones for high-fire risk areas in order to facilitate an effort between local communities and private industry to reduce hazardous fuels and fire risks to communities. The legislation would make the Forest Service's good neighbor policy permanent. That policy focuses on treatment and thinning projects on Forest Service land adjacent to private property....
Bipartisan Group Works to End Costly Tongass Forest Logging Subsidy While the nation continues to be burdened with huge federal budget deficits, the U.S. Forest Service is still promoting millions of dollars in taxpayer handouts to logging companies for forest road-building projects. The timber program in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska has been hemorrhaging money--and jobs--for years. Since 1996, timber-related employment in the Tongass has dropped from 1,560 to fewer than 200 workers. Yet the subsidies keep flowing in ever greater amounts. The per-job subsidy has risen to more than $200,000, with the total cost since 1982 amounting to about $1 billion, according to Forest Service data and other government sources. "What kind of business model are these people operating under?" asked Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "The taxpayer spigot needs to be shut off. Relying on government handouts for success is not something most economists or smart business owners endorse." A bipartisan group in Congress, allied with budget watchdogs, fiscal conservatives, sportsmen, and environmental groups, has teamed up to put an end to the practice....
Crews fight fires in bear country Firefighters have an added layer of danger when battling blazes in northwest Wyoming: bears. But firefighters practice the same precautions when working in bear country that campers are asked to do -- namely, storing food, making noise and carrying pepper spray. On the Salt Lick fire outside Pinedale, now estimated at 2,500 acres and about 40 percent contained, fire crews are using bear boxes to store food and other bear attractants. They are sleeping away from the bear boxes and carrying pepper spray. Mary Cernicek, spokeswoman for the Bridger-Teton National Forest, said everything the U.S. Forest Service asks the public to do in bear country, firefighters do....
Two states, divided by salmon Oregon and Washington not only sit on opposite sides of the Columbia River, but they're also taking opposite sides in a landmark case on how much should be done for the river's troubled salmon runs. The interstate feud over fish has far-reaching consequences because it will help decide the future of the river's massive hydroelectric dams. While the dams supply inexpensive energy, they also kill many young salmon migrating past. Though fish drive the dispute, the economic stakes are high: Washington enjoys more discounted hydropower because of its higher number of public utilities and stands to reap federal money for restoring salmon habitat. Oregon, on the other hand, does not gain the same benefits from the dams and is pushing to do more for salmon. Washington, siding with the Bonneville Power Administration, which distributes the hydropower, and many electric utilities that buy the power, likes the federal government's proposal to help salmon hurt by the dams. It does a better job focusing aid on the salmon runs that need it, Washington argues. But Oregon, siding with conservation and fishing groups and some Native American tribes, sees the federal approach as pretty close to awful. It offers no new help for fish and may illegally ignore the federal mandate to help endangered species, Oregon says in court filings....
Eagle feather laws still in place Although the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list last month, the laws regulating the possession of the bird’s feathers are still in place. Both the bald and the golden eagle are still protected by the federal act that bears their names: the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act – also known as the “Eagle Act” – as well as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The Eagle Act was passed in 1940, and prohibits the “take; possession; sale; purchase; barter; offer to sell, purchase, or barter; transport, export or import, of any bald or golden eagle, alive or dead, including any part, nest, or egg, unless allowed by permit.” Eagle feathers, however, have had spiritual significance to Indian tribes long before the federal government began passing acts. So in the 1970s, the National Eagle Repository was established to provide feathers of bald and golden eagles to tribal members for ceremonial purposes....
Elusive Yosemite flower ID'd as new species Discovered 84 years ago in Yosemite National Park, the Yosemite bog-orchid is finally an official new species. The tiny orchid — aka Platanthera yosemitensis — was first found by orchid enthusiast George Henry Grinnell in 1923. But it then returned to its hidden state for 70 years until a new generation of botanists rediscovered it in 1993. Fourteen years later, the tiny orchid that botanists then had trouble identifying now has a name, and details about it have been published in the California Botanical Society journal. "I actually smelled it before I found it," said Alison Colwell, a U.S. Geological Survey botanist. "It smelled like sweaty animals — really musky." The petite orchid has yellow pea-size flowers and a potent bouquet which some compare to strong cheese and human feet. The orchid may use its unique scent to attract flies and mosquitoes for pollination purposes, scientists said....
Freudenthal defends feed grounds Feed grounds are a vital part of the state's efforts to manage elk and combat brucellosis for the foreseeable future, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said. "While the federal government acknowledges that, they don't move," Freudenthal told the 2007 Western Regional Meeting of Agricultural College Deans on Monday. "They say, 'That (brucellosis) is a hell of a problem and we hope you are going to work on it.' " Freudenthal said feed grounds are one of the only resources available to the state as long as there is a reservoir of brucellosis in the national parks. Brucellosis is a disease that can cause cows, bison and elk to abort fetuses. "If you get rid of feed grounds, you are only going to push elk onto private property and spread the disease," Freudenthal said. Conservation groups say crowded conditions on feed grounds help transmit brucellosis and that the grounds should be phased out....
S. Dakota looks at new rules for DM&E The state Transportation Commission is proposing new rules that would control the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad's application to use eminent domain to acquire land for its planned expansion. The commission has been asked to grant the Sioux Falls-based DM&E the right of eminent domain to extend its east-west line into Wyoming's Powder River Basin. Eminent domain is the right to condemn and acquire land. A state law provides that railroads can use the procedure if they can show a project is a use consistent with public necessity. The Transportation Commission had planned to hold a hearing on DM&E's eminent-domain application on July 10, but Circuit Judge James Anderson of Pierre stopped the hearing after landowners argued that the commission has failed to pass rules dealing with such applications. The commission on Tuesday announced that it would meet by telephone at 12:15 p.m. MDT today to consider setting a date for a hearing on rules governing applications for a railroad's use of eminent domain....
Waterfowl populations rise by 14 percent in past year With five waterfowl species at or near record numbers, there are plenty of reasons for optimism among waterfowl enthusiasts. Preliminary results from the annual Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey jointly conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Canadian Wildlife Service say overall waterfowl population has jumped 14 percent from last year to more than 41 million birds in the survey area. That number is 24 percent above the 1955-2006 average. “There’s a lot of good news in the survey this year for the total duck population and waterfowl breeding habitat,” said H. Dale Hall, Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We have five species that are at record or near record highs, including canvasbacks, and there are good breeding conditions on the prairies. “However, we remain concerned that pintails and scaup are well below long-term averages.” The survey covers 1.3 million square miles across the north-central United States, south-central and northern Canada and Alaska and estimates the number of ducks in the continent’s most important nesting grounds. Biologists reported most breeding-habitat conditions were the same or slightly better than reported in 2006....
Yellowstone cutthroat not joining endangered list The Yellowstone cutthroat trout does not merit the protections of the federal Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday. While fish numbers have declined substantially, the Service “found numerous robust populations throughout the historic range of the subspecies, most notably in headwater areas,” said Mitch King, regional director of the Service. King also noted the “numerous ongoing conservation efforts” on behalf of the fish by state, federal, tribal, local and nongovernmental organizations. Environmentalists who had pushed for the listing said Tuesday they were disappointed but not surprised....
Humane Society: Gore's message loses bite ONLY one week after Live Earth, Al Gore's green credentials slipped while hosting his daughter's wedding in Beverly Hills. Gore and his guests at the weekend ceremony dined on Chilean sea bass - arguably one of the world's most threatened fish species. Also known as Patagonian toothfish, the species is under pressure from illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing activities in the Southern Ocean, jeopardising the sustainability of remaining stocks. It has been estimated that more than 50 per cent of toothfish traded is illegally caught, and includes juveniles vital to the ongoing toothfish population....
North Dakota Stockmen’s Association Will Not Re-Up R-CALF Dues The North Dakota Stockmen’s Association (NDSA) will not be renewing its expiring affiliate dues with R-CALF USA. Disappointed with the lack of communication and respect from the national organization, the NDSA Board of Directors made the decision at its quarterly meeting at the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame in Medora, N.D., last Wednesday. “The decision boiled down to accountability,” explained NDSA President Mark Huseth, who ranches near McLeod, N.D. “A trade organization must be accountable to its members, but, time after time, R-CALF refused to answer our questions or acknowledge our concerns. Our directors decided they could not renew the affiliation with R-CALF if they wanted to be accountable to the NDSA’s own members.” Here’s an example: The NDSA issued a letter to R-CALF leaders in March requesting a verifiable audit and seeking information about officer oustings and staff and leadership turnovers within the national organization after an anonymous, purportedly tell-all website was launched. The NDSA also wanted to know why it was not informed of a regional R-CALF meeting that was held in Bismarck, N.D., last fall. The NDSA board was disappointed when, after a long delay, the R-CALF president said he had been instructed by his board not to answer the NDSA’s questions in writing. Instead, he offered to send a DVD of an R-CALF regional meeting in place of a letter. The NDSA still has not received it....
Gray wolf shot, killed in eastern Oregon An endangered gray wolf was found shot and killed in late May in a forested area north of La Grande, apparently the fifth known wolf to arrive in Oregon since the species was returned to nearby Idaho more than a decade ago. The adult female animal was badly decomposed and was only recently positively identified as a wolf by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forensics laboratory in Ashland, officials said. The wolf was not wearing a radio collar, but DNA analysis confirmed it was related to other wild wolves in Idaho. It did not appear to have been the same wolf videotaped in Wallowa County last summer. That animal was black and the dead animal was a more typical gray-brown, said Russ Morgan of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Counting that videotaped wolf, the wolf found dead would be the fifth known wolf to make it to Oregon. The first was captured near John Day in 1999 and returned to Idaho, another was hit by a car on Interstate 84 and another was found illegally shot between Ukiah and Pendleton....
Wolves Of Yellowstone Spur Love And Hate On any given morning in Yellowstone National Park, you can find packs of tourists watching for packs of wolves, CBS News correspondent Tracy Smith reports. What do they feel when looking at these wolves? "My spirit just feels such a resonance with what I'm seeing," said wolf watcher Nancy Waring. Wolf watchers bring more than high-powered scopes: They bring money to area businesses — about $35 million each year. Seventy years ago, aggressive hunting and trapping had all but wiped out the wolves in Yellowstone. But the federal government decided that as predators, wolves were a key link in the park's food chain. So starting in 1995, they brought the wolves back to Yellowstone. They released 41 in the park, housed in pens. Officials were hoping the wolves would have pups and eventually they would end up with about 100. Now, a decade later, the pens are overgrown and there are 300 wolves in the Yellowstone area ... more than 1,300 in the three surrounding states....
New rule would make it easier to kill wolves Shielded by law from hunters, gray wolf populations boomed in the Northern Rockies over the last decade at the expense of some big game herds that represent a sure meal for the resurgent carnivores. But the balance of power in the region's forests could soon tilt against those 1,300 wolves. Federal officials are seeking to give Idaho, Montana and Wyoming wider latitude to kill wolves that prey on big game species or threaten domestic animals. As public hearings on the proposal began Wednesday, state officials and some ranchers welcomed a plan they said could help put wolves in check more than a decade after they were reintroduced to the region. "This is something we need," said Allen Jaggi, a Wyoming state representative from Lyman. "We're in a hell of a mess. We're losing elk. We're losing domestic livestock." Another pending U.S. Fish and Wildlife proposal would go much farther, allowing public hunting of wolves by stripping them of protection under the Endangered Species Act. With that idea facing a near-certain legal challenge _ which could hang it up in court possibly for years _ federal officials said the big game protection proposal gives states at least an interim measure to deal with problem wolves....
Wolves kill seven sheep in Oregon Gulch Rather than try to remove the gray wolves that killed seven domestic sheep northwest of Ketchum last week, an official with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game has elected to pursue non-lethal methods to keep the wolves away. The decision to pursue non-lethal methods was made after the owner of the sheep requested the wolves not be killed, Fish and Game Large Carnivore Manager Steve Nadeau said Tuesday. "The livestock producer wanted to work with us to explore all options to keep his stock and the wolves alive," Nadeau said. Nadeau said he has agreed to that plan. The sheep-killing incident occurred on two separate days—July 10 and 12—in a remote portion of the upper Oregon Gulch area. The sheep band was being grazed on a Sawtooth National Forest grazing allotment that covers the area....
Home on the Range: “Home Land: Ranching and a West That Works” The editors of Home Land: Ranching and a West That Works, recently published by Johnson Books and the Rocky Mountain Land Library, explain the purpose of this collection in the preface: “The premise of our book is that conservation is compatible with ranching and farming,” and “that conservationists and agriculturalists are compatible creatures: they actually belong together.” That is, even though some questions of conservation, such as the reintroduction of wolves, tend to pit ranchers and environmentalists against each other, larger questions such as respect for animals and a love for undeveloped land unite them. The editors of Home Land are calling for a productive truce between ranchers and environmentalists. As Jordan writes in the introduction, “Environmetalists have been at least as rigid as ranchers in the thirty-year war that has locked vast regions of the West in litigation and rancor while millions of acres of open land have fallen to development.” If environmentalists and ranchers instead united, Home Land suggests, perhaps some of this development could be halted....
Wilderness proposal worries ranchers A pair of news conferences set for today seem to indicate a debate about wilderness in Dona Ana County is far from over. A group of ranchers concerned about possible impacts of a wilderness designation on grazing allotments announced last week it planned a press event today to highlight its views. Tuesday, a group backing a wilderness designation for thousands of acres in the county announced a press conference of its own. Members of the ranching group People For Preserving Our Western Heritage said backers of the wilderness proposal didn't involve ranchers in creating their proposal. "Our organization felt like the process of engaging support for the effort failed to include us," said Steve Wilmeth, a Dona Ana County rancher. A wilderness designation would place new restrictions on the use of that land. Wilmeth said the group will propose alternatives that would still achieve the goal of preserving land....
Water as collateral? B.J. "Red" McCombs has turned investments in radio, sports, oil and cars into gold. The San Antonio businessman now is applying his Midas touch to water rights, trade-school education and loans for those late on their property taxes. Propel Financial Services LLC will act as a private lender to make up to $100 million in loans to individuals and businesses with nonconventional collateral. "I've been looking at this for some time," McCombs said of the venture, which will include loans with Edwards Aquifer private water rights as a collateral. "Very few people are knowledgeable about water rights right now." In recent years, water rights have become a hot commodity in the San Antonio area, but traditional lenders have yet to recognize them as assets for collateral, said Jack Nelson, CEO of the newly formed Propel. The option is particularly attractive for South Texas farmers and ranchers who have the potential to pay off their equipment or even their land with a loan secured by water rights....
Beetle bill lands in D.C. The entire Colorado legislative delegation introduced a federal bark beetle bill on Tuesday that would commit up to $22 million to help the Forest Service and local communities combat the threat of wildfire and protect water supplies in the state. Colorado's seven members of the House of Representatives introduced the legislation, called the Colorado Forest Management Improvement Act of 2007, on the House floor, while the state's two senators presented the bill in the Senate. The bill would make grants available to at-risk communities in Colorado for the creation of a community wildfire protection plan and would create central collection points for dead trees removed from forests. It would also allow for the creation of Healthy Forest Partnership Zones for high-fire risk areas in order to facilitate an effort between local communities and private industry to reduce hazardous fuels and fire risks to communities. The legislation would make the Forest Service's good neighbor policy permanent. That policy focuses on treatment and thinning projects on Forest Service land adjacent to private property....
Bipartisan Group Works to End Costly Tongass Forest Logging Subsidy While the nation continues to be burdened with huge federal budget deficits, the U.S. Forest Service is still promoting millions of dollars in taxpayer handouts to logging companies for forest road-building projects. The timber program in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska has been hemorrhaging money--and jobs--for years. Since 1996, timber-related employment in the Tongass has dropped from 1,560 to fewer than 200 workers. Yet the subsidies keep flowing in ever greater amounts. The per-job subsidy has risen to more than $200,000, with the total cost since 1982 amounting to about $1 billion, according to Forest Service data and other government sources. "What kind of business model are these people operating under?" asked Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "The taxpayer spigot needs to be shut off. Relying on government handouts for success is not something most economists or smart business owners endorse." A bipartisan group in Congress, allied with budget watchdogs, fiscal conservatives, sportsmen, and environmental groups, has teamed up to put an end to the practice....
Crews fight fires in bear country Firefighters have an added layer of danger when battling blazes in northwest Wyoming: bears. But firefighters practice the same precautions when working in bear country that campers are asked to do -- namely, storing food, making noise and carrying pepper spray. On the Salt Lick fire outside Pinedale, now estimated at 2,500 acres and about 40 percent contained, fire crews are using bear boxes to store food and other bear attractants. They are sleeping away from the bear boxes and carrying pepper spray. Mary Cernicek, spokeswoman for the Bridger-Teton National Forest, said everything the U.S. Forest Service asks the public to do in bear country, firefighters do....
Two states, divided by salmon Oregon and Washington not only sit on opposite sides of the Columbia River, but they're also taking opposite sides in a landmark case on how much should be done for the river's troubled salmon runs. The interstate feud over fish has far-reaching consequences because it will help decide the future of the river's massive hydroelectric dams. While the dams supply inexpensive energy, they also kill many young salmon migrating past. Though fish drive the dispute, the economic stakes are high: Washington enjoys more discounted hydropower because of its higher number of public utilities and stands to reap federal money for restoring salmon habitat. Oregon, on the other hand, does not gain the same benefits from the dams and is pushing to do more for salmon. Washington, siding with the Bonneville Power Administration, which distributes the hydropower, and many electric utilities that buy the power, likes the federal government's proposal to help salmon hurt by the dams. It does a better job focusing aid on the salmon runs that need it, Washington argues. But Oregon, siding with conservation and fishing groups and some Native American tribes, sees the federal approach as pretty close to awful. It offers no new help for fish and may illegally ignore the federal mandate to help endangered species, Oregon says in court filings....
Eagle feather laws still in place Although the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list last month, the laws regulating the possession of the bird’s feathers are still in place. Both the bald and the golden eagle are still protected by the federal act that bears their names: the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act – also known as the “Eagle Act” – as well as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The Eagle Act was passed in 1940, and prohibits the “take; possession; sale; purchase; barter; offer to sell, purchase, or barter; transport, export or import, of any bald or golden eagle, alive or dead, including any part, nest, or egg, unless allowed by permit.” Eagle feathers, however, have had spiritual significance to Indian tribes long before the federal government began passing acts. So in the 1970s, the National Eagle Repository was established to provide feathers of bald and golden eagles to tribal members for ceremonial purposes....
Elusive Yosemite flower ID'd as new species Discovered 84 years ago in Yosemite National Park, the Yosemite bog-orchid is finally an official new species. The tiny orchid — aka Platanthera yosemitensis — was first found by orchid enthusiast George Henry Grinnell in 1923. But it then returned to its hidden state for 70 years until a new generation of botanists rediscovered it in 1993. Fourteen years later, the tiny orchid that botanists then had trouble identifying now has a name, and details about it have been published in the California Botanical Society journal. "I actually smelled it before I found it," said Alison Colwell, a U.S. Geological Survey botanist. "It smelled like sweaty animals — really musky." The petite orchid has yellow pea-size flowers and a potent bouquet which some compare to strong cheese and human feet. The orchid may use its unique scent to attract flies and mosquitoes for pollination purposes, scientists said....
Freudenthal defends feed grounds Feed grounds are a vital part of the state's efforts to manage elk and combat brucellosis for the foreseeable future, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said. "While the federal government acknowledges that, they don't move," Freudenthal told the 2007 Western Regional Meeting of Agricultural College Deans on Monday. "They say, 'That (brucellosis) is a hell of a problem and we hope you are going to work on it.' " Freudenthal said feed grounds are one of the only resources available to the state as long as there is a reservoir of brucellosis in the national parks. Brucellosis is a disease that can cause cows, bison and elk to abort fetuses. "If you get rid of feed grounds, you are only going to push elk onto private property and spread the disease," Freudenthal said. Conservation groups say crowded conditions on feed grounds help transmit brucellosis and that the grounds should be phased out....
S. Dakota looks at new rules for DM&E The state Transportation Commission is proposing new rules that would control the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad's application to use eminent domain to acquire land for its planned expansion. The commission has been asked to grant the Sioux Falls-based DM&E the right of eminent domain to extend its east-west line into Wyoming's Powder River Basin. Eminent domain is the right to condemn and acquire land. A state law provides that railroads can use the procedure if they can show a project is a use consistent with public necessity. The Transportation Commission had planned to hold a hearing on DM&E's eminent-domain application on July 10, but Circuit Judge James Anderson of Pierre stopped the hearing after landowners argued that the commission has failed to pass rules dealing with such applications. The commission on Tuesday announced that it would meet by telephone at 12:15 p.m. MDT today to consider setting a date for a hearing on rules governing applications for a railroad's use of eminent domain....
Waterfowl populations rise by 14 percent in past year With five waterfowl species at or near record numbers, there are plenty of reasons for optimism among waterfowl enthusiasts. Preliminary results from the annual Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey jointly conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Canadian Wildlife Service say overall waterfowl population has jumped 14 percent from last year to more than 41 million birds in the survey area. That number is 24 percent above the 1955-2006 average. “There’s a lot of good news in the survey this year for the total duck population and waterfowl breeding habitat,” said H. Dale Hall, Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We have five species that are at record or near record highs, including canvasbacks, and there are good breeding conditions on the prairies. “However, we remain concerned that pintails and scaup are well below long-term averages.” The survey covers 1.3 million square miles across the north-central United States, south-central and northern Canada and Alaska and estimates the number of ducks in the continent’s most important nesting grounds. Biologists reported most breeding-habitat conditions were the same or slightly better than reported in 2006....
Yellowstone cutthroat not joining endangered list The Yellowstone cutthroat trout does not merit the protections of the federal Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday. While fish numbers have declined substantially, the Service “found numerous robust populations throughout the historic range of the subspecies, most notably in headwater areas,” said Mitch King, regional director of the Service. King also noted the “numerous ongoing conservation efforts” on behalf of the fish by state, federal, tribal, local and nongovernmental organizations. Environmentalists who had pushed for the listing said Tuesday they were disappointed but not surprised....
Humane Society: Gore's message loses bite ONLY one week after Live Earth, Al Gore's green credentials slipped while hosting his daughter's wedding in Beverly Hills. Gore and his guests at the weekend ceremony dined on Chilean sea bass - arguably one of the world's most threatened fish species. Also known as Patagonian toothfish, the species is under pressure from illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing activities in the Southern Ocean, jeopardising the sustainability of remaining stocks. It has been estimated that more than 50 per cent of toothfish traded is illegally caught, and includes juveniles vital to the ongoing toothfish population....
North Dakota Stockmen’s Association Will Not Re-Up R-CALF Dues The North Dakota Stockmen’s Association (NDSA) will not be renewing its expiring affiliate dues with R-CALF USA. Disappointed with the lack of communication and respect from the national organization, the NDSA Board of Directors made the decision at its quarterly meeting at the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame in Medora, N.D., last Wednesday. “The decision boiled down to accountability,” explained NDSA President Mark Huseth, who ranches near McLeod, N.D. “A trade organization must be accountable to its members, but, time after time, R-CALF refused to answer our questions or acknowledge our concerns. Our directors decided they could not renew the affiliation with R-CALF if they wanted to be accountable to the NDSA’s own members.” Here’s an example: The NDSA issued a letter to R-CALF leaders in March requesting a verifiable audit and seeking information about officer oustings and staff and leadership turnovers within the national organization after an anonymous, purportedly tell-all website was launched. The NDSA also wanted to know why it was not informed of a regional R-CALF meeting that was held in Bismarck, N.D., last fall. The NDSA board was disappointed when, after a long delay, the R-CALF president said he had been instructed by his board not to answer the NDSA’s questions in writing. Instead, he offered to send a DVD of an R-CALF regional meeting in place of a letter. The NDSA still has not received it....
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FBI: Iraqis Being Smuggled Across the Rio Grande The FBI is investigating an alleged human smuggling operation based in Chaparral, N.M., that agents say is bringing "Iraqis and other Middle Eastern" individuals across the Rio Grande from Mexico. An FBI intelligence report distributed by the Washington, D.C. Joint Terrorism Task Force, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, says the illegal ring has been bringing Iraqis across the border illegally for more than a year. Border Patrol officials in the area said they were unaware of the specifics of the FBI's report, and federal prosecutors in New Mexico told ABCNews.com they had no current cases involving the illegal smuggling of Iraqis. The FBI report, issued last week, says the smuggling organization "used to smuggle Mexicans, but decided to smuggle Iraqi or other Middle Eastern individuals because it was more lucrative." Each individual would be charged a fee of $20,000 to $25,000, according to the report. The people to be smuggled would "gather at a house on the Mexican side of the border" and then cross the Rio Grande into the U.S., the report says. "Unidentified individuals would then transport them to train stations in El Paso, Texas or Belen, New Mexico," according to the FBI document....
Feinstein to Bush: Free Ramos, Compean After presiding over a Senate hearing today, Sen. Dianne Feinstein has decided to ask President Bush to commute the sentences of former U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, an aide for the California Democrat told WND. Feinstein will have a letter delivered to the White House tomorrow, said spokesman Scott Gerber. Following the Senate judiciary committee's examination of the controversial prosecution, according to Gerber, the senator said "it became very clear the sentences did not match the crime." Ramos and Compean are serving 11- and 12-year prison sentences, respectively, after a jury convicted them of violating federal gun laws and covering up the shooting of a drug smuggler as he fled back to Mexico after driving across the border with 742 pounds of marijuana. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's office gave the smuggler, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, immunity to serve as the government's star witness and testify against the border agents. Feinstein concluded the hearing today with a vow to look further into why prosecutors charged the men under section 924(c) of the U.S. code, which requires a 10-year sentence for using or carrying a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence....
FBI: Iraqis Being Smuggled Across the Rio Grande The FBI is investigating an alleged human smuggling operation based in Chaparral, N.M., that agents say is bringing "Iraqis and other Middle Eastern" individuals across the Rio Grande from Mexico. An FBI intelligence report distributed by the Washington, D.C. Joint Terrorism Task Force, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, says the illegal ring has been bringing Iraqis across the border illegally for more than a year. Border Patrol officials in the area said they were unaware of the specifics of the FBI's report, and federal prosecutors in New Mexico told ABCNews.com they had no current cases involving the illegal smuggling of Iraqis. The FBI report, issued last week, says the smuggling organization "used to smuggle Mexicans, but decided to smuggle Iraqi or other Middle Eastern individuals because it was more lucrative." Each individual would be charged a fee of $20,000 to $25,000, according to the report. The people to be smuggled would "gather at a house on the Mexican side of the border" and then cross the Rio Grande into the U.S., the report says. "Unidentified individuals would then transport them to train stations in El Paso, Texas or Belen, New Mexico," according to the FBI document....
Feinstein to Bush: Free Ramos, Compean After presiding over a Senate hearing today, Sen. Dianne Feinstein has decided to ask President Bush to commute the sentences of former U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, an aide for the California Democrat told WND. Feinstein will have a letter delivered to the White House tomorrow, said spokesman Scott Gerber. Following the Senate judiciary committee's examination of the controversial prosecution, according to Gerber, the senator said "it became very clear the sentences did not match the crime." Ramos and Compean are serving 11- and 12-year prison sentences, respectively, after a jury convicted them of violating federal gun laws and covering up the shooting of a drug smuggler as he fled back to Mexico after driving across the border with 742 pounds of marijuana. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's office gave the smuggler, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, immunity to serve as the government's star witness and testify against the border agents. Feinstein concluded the hearing today with a vow to look further into why prosecutors charged the men under section 924(c) of the U.S. code, which requires a 10-year sentence for using or carrying a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence....
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
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Report Says al-Qaida Seeks to Attack U.S. The terrorist network Al-Qaida will likely leverage its contacts and capabilities in Iraq to mount an attack on U.S. soil, according to a new National Intelligence Estimate on threats to the American homeland. The declassified key findings, to be released publicly on Tuesday, were obtained in advance by The Associated Press. The report lays out a range of dangers—from al-Qaida to Lebanese Hezbollah to non-Muslim radical groups—that pose a "persistent and evolving threat" to the country over the next three years. As expected, however, the findings focus most of their attention on the gravest terror problem: Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. The report makes clear that al-Qaida in Iraq, which has not yet posed a direct threat to U.S. soil, could become a problem here. "Of note," the analysts said, "we assess that al-Qaida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the homeland." The analysts also found that al-Qaida's association with its Iraqi affiliate helps the group to energize the broader Sunni Muslim extremist community, raise resources and recruit and indoctrinate operatives—"including for homeland attacks." National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative written judgments of the 16 spy agencies across the breadth of the U.S. government....
Sutton grilled in Ramos-Compean hearing Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein concluded a Senate hearing today on the high-profile prosecution of former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean with a vow to look further into why prosecutors charged the men with a violation that requires a mandatory 10-year sentence. Chairing the Senate judiciary committee hearing, Feinstein questioned the decision to charge the agents under 18 United States Code section 924(c)(1)(a), which requires the harsh sentence for using or carrying a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence. Ramos and Compean are serving 11- and 12-year sentences, respectively, after a jury convicted them of violating federal gun laws and covering up the shooting of a drug smuggler as he fled back to Mexico after driving across the border with 742 pounds of marijuana in February 2005. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's office gave the smuggler, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, immunity to serve as the government's star witness and testify against the border agents. Feinstein, during questioning of Sutton, argued the statute did not apply to Ramos and Compean in their pursuit of a drug smuggler at the Mexican border, because there was no underlying crime....
Will security firms detect police spyware? A recent federal court decision raises the question of whether antivirus companies may intentionally overlook spyware that is secretly placed on computers by police. In the case decided earlier this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, federal agents used spyware with a keystroke logger--call it fedware--to record the typing of a suspected Ecstasy manufacturer who used encryption to thwart the police. A CNET News.com survey of 13 leading antispyware vendors found that not one company acknowledged cooperating unofficially with government agencies. Some, however, indicated that they would not alert customers to the presence of fedware if they were ordered by a court to remain quiet. Because only two known criminal prosecutions in the United States involve police use of key loggers, important legal rules remain unsettled. But key logger makers say that police and investigative agencies are frequent customers, in part because recording keystrokes can bypass the increasingly common use of encryption to scramble communications and hard drives. Microsoft's Windows Vista and Apple's OS X include built-in encryption. This isn't exactly a new question. After the last high-profile case in which federal agents turned to a key logger, some security companies allegedly volunteered to ignore fedware. The Associated Press reported in 2001 that "McAfee Corp. contacted the FBI... to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's snooping software." McAfee subsequently said the report was inaccurate. Later that year, the FBI confirmed that it was creating spy software called "Magic Lantern" that would allow agents to inject keystroke loggers remotely through a virus without having physical access to the computer. (In both the recent Ecstasy case and the earlier key logging case involving an alleged mobster, federal agents obtained court orders authorizing them to break into buildings to install key loggers.) Government agencies and backdoors in technology products have a long and frequently clandestine relationship....
DEA targets landlords of pot outlets Raising the stakes in the federal government's war against medical marijuana, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has warned more than 150 Los Angeles landlords that they risk arrest and the loss of their properties if they continue renting to cannabis dispensaries. The two-page letter sent last week by Timothy J. Landrum, DEA special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office, has whipped up worries among landlords and dispensary operators in a region that has seen a proliferation of the businesses in the last two years. "I'm devastated," said Lisa Sawoya, who left her lucrative job selling high-tech hospital equipment to open a dispensary 18 months ago in Hollywood. "My landlord believes in cannabis as medicine. But they're taking the letter very seriously. So I'll be closing my doors at the end of this month." Sarah Pullen, a DEA spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said the purpose of the letters was to "educate" property owners at risk because they were housing marijuana dispensaries. "By renting their property to individuals violating fed drug laws, they are in and of themselves violating federal law," Pullen said. "These are definitely meant to serve as a notice. What might happen as to the continuing investigations, we'll just have to see." The DEA move has focused entirely on Los Angeles. Activists suspect that the logistics and timing — more than a decade after state voters legalized medical marijuana with the passage of Proposition 215 — is intended to thin the ranks of Los Angeles dispensaries on the eve of new city regulations. A proposed city ordinance would cap and regulate the number of outlets, which now number more than 400....
Report Says al-Qaida Seeks to Attack U.S. The terrorist network Al-Qaida will likely leverage its contacts and capabilities in Iraq to mount an attack on U.S. soil, according to a new National Intelligence Estimate on threats to the American homeland. The declassified key findings, to be released publicly on Tuesday, were obtained in advance by The Associated Press. The report lays out a range of dangers—from al-Qaida to Lebanese Hezbollah to non-Muslim radical groups—that pose a "persistent and evolving threat" to the country over the next three years. As expected, however, the findings focus most of their attention on the gravest terror problem: Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. The report makes clear that al-Qaida in Iraq, which has not yet posed a direct threat to U.S. soil, could become a problem here. "Of note," the analysts said, "we assess that al-Qaida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the homeland." The analysts also found that al-Qaida's association with its Iraqi affiliate helps the group to energize the broader Sunni Muslim extremist community, raise resources and recruit and indoctrinate operatives—"including for homeland attacks." National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative written judgments of the 16 spy agencies across the breadth of the U.S. government....
Sutton grilled in Ramos-Compean hearing Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein concluded a Senate hearing today on the high-profile prosecution of former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean with a vow to look further into why prosecutors charged the men with a violation that requires a mandatory 10-year sentence. Chairing the Senate judiciary committee hearing, Feinstein questioned the decision to charge the agents under 18 United States Code section 924(c)(1)(a), which requires the harsh sentence for using or carrying a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence. Ramos and Compean are serving 11- and 12-year sentences, respectively, after a jury convicted them of violating federal gun laws and covering up the shooting of a drug smuggler as he fled back to Mexico after driving across the border with 742 pounds of marijuana in February 2005. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's office gave the smuggler, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, immunity to serve as the government's star witness and testify against the border agents. Feinstein, during questioning of Sutton, argued the statute did not apply to Ramos and Compean in their pursuit of a drug smuggler at the Mexican border, because there was no underlying crime....
Will security firms detect police spyware? A recent federal court decision raises the question of whether antivirus companies may intentionally overlook spyware that is secretly placed on computers by police. In the case decided earlier this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, federal agents used spyware with a keystroke logger--call it fedware--to record the typing of a suspected Ecstasy manufacturer who used encryption to thwart the police. A CNET News.com survey of 13 leading antispyware vendors found that not one company acknowledged cooperating unofficially with government agencies. Some, however, indicated that they would not alert customers to the presence of fedware if they were ordered by a court to remain quiet. Because only two known criminal prosecutions in the United States involve police use of key loggers, important legal rules remain unsettled. But key logger makers say that police and investigative agencies are frequent customers, in part because recording keystrokes can bypass the increasingly common use of encryption to scramble communications and hard drives. Microsoft's Windows Vista and Apple's OS X include built-in encryption. This isn't exactly a new question. After the last high-profile case in which federal agents turned to a key logger, some security companies allegedly volunteered to ignore fedware. The Associated Press reported in 2001 that "McAfee Corp. contacted the FBI... to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's snooping software." McAfee subsequently said the report was inaccurate. Later that year, the FBI confirmed that it was creating spy software called "Magic Lantern" that would allow agents to inject keystroke loggers remotely through a virus without having physical access to the computer. (In both the recent Ecstasy case and the earlier key logging case involving an alleged mobster, federal agents obtained court orders authorizing them to break into buildings to install key loggers.) Government agencies and backdoors in technology products have a long and frequently clandestine relationship....
DEA targets landlords of pot outlets Raising the stakes in the federal government's war against medical marijuana, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has warned more than 150 Los Angeles landlords that they risk arrest and the loss of their properties if they continue renting to cannabis dispensaries. The two-page letter sent last week by Timothy J. Landrum, DEA special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office, has whipped up worries among landlords and dispensary operators in a region that has seen a proliferation of the businesses in the last two years. "I'm devastated," said Lisa Sawoya, who left her lucrative job selling high-tech hospital equipment to open a dispensary 18 months ago in Hollywood. "My landlord believes in cannabis as medicine. But they're taking the letter very seriously. So I'll be closing my doors at the end of this month." Sarah Pullen, a DEA spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said the purpose of the letters was to "educate" property owners at risk because they were housing marijuana dispensaries. "By renting their property to individuals violating fed drug laws, they are in and of themselves violating federal law," Pullen said. "These are definitely meant to serve as a notice. What might happen as to the continuing investigations, we'll just have to see." The DEA move has focused entirely on Los Angeles. Activists suspect that the logistics and timing — more than a decade after state voters legalized medical marijuana with the passage of Proposition 215 — is intended to thin the ranks of Los Angeles dispensaries on the eve of new city regulations. A proposed city ordinance would cap and regulate the number of outlets, which now number more than 400....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Cartels grow pot on 'national treasures' Marijuana cultivation on public land in the U.S. is a multibillion-dollar business, run by Mexican drug cartels and guarded by heavily armed members of U.S.-based street gangs and Mexican nationals, says the head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). "Our national treasures are now ground zero for international and domestic drug cultivation and trafficking," said drug czar John P. Walters. Mr. Walters made his comments last week during Operation Alesia, a multiagency marijuana-eradication initiative in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, the largest national forest in California. Coordinated by the Shasta County Sheriff's Office with the support of the California National Guard, the weeklong operation involved 17 federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies. He said California's public lands are exceptionally vulnerable, adding that nine out of the top 10 marijuana-producing sites are found in that state and that 57 percent of all marijuana produced on public land in the U.S. is grown in California....
Report: 'Dead Zone' Growing in Gulf Researchers predict that the recurring oxygen-depleted "dead zone" off the Louisiana coast will grow this summer to 8,543 square miles - its largest in at least 22 years. The forecast, released Monday by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, is based on a federal estimate of nitrogen from the Mississippi River watershed to the Gulf of Mexico. It discounts the effect storms might have. The "dead zone" in the northern Gulf, at the end of the Mississippi River system, is one of the largest areas of oxygen-depleted coastal waters in the world. Low oxygen, or hypoxia, can be caused by pollution from farm fertilizer, soil erosion and discharge from sewage treatment plants, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The pollution is carried downstream by the Mississippi and comes from throughout the U.S....
Weld County residents oppose uranium plans The soaring price of uranium and plans for scores of new nuclear power plants are driving a controversial plan for a Front Range uranium mine.
Powertech Uranium Corp. is proposing a 5,760-acre development in western Weld County that eventually could produce 8 million pounds of the nuclear fuel. At the current price of $129 a pound, the operation could generate $1 billion in revenue. Yet the $20 million proposal has generated strong opposition from northern Colorado landowners who fear environmental damage and health problems from the mine. The company is proposing a mining process known as "in-situ" in which a solvent solution is injected underground to dissolve uranium and pump it to the surface. The process is safer and less invasive than traditional open-pit or underground mining, said Richard Blubaugh, vice president of environmental health and safety resources for Powertech. Nunn cattle rancher Daryl Burkhart is not convinced by Powertech's claims. "I'm worried about cancer and about them messing with my water and destroying my aquifer," he said. "It's a health risk getting that uranium out, and once you've done it, you've got a poison that you can never get rid of."....
Oil drilling fears erupt in Galisteo, Cerrillos More than 6,000 acres of state mineral rights plus at least 54,000 acres of private mineral rights in southern Santa Fe County, between Cerrillos and Galisteo, have been leased for petroleum exploration, causing worries of an oil boom that might pollute the environment. Concerned residents are meeting from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. tonight at Eldorado Community Center to hear from Tweeti Blancett, an Aztec rancher who will talk about how oil and gas exploration has harmed her ranch. Johnny Micou, who lives between Cerrillos and Galisteo, said he and his wife learned about the exploration by Tecton Energy of Houston in April after seeing several petroleum-drilling trucks near their home. Micou said they formed Drilling Santa Fe and created a Web site at drillingsantafe.com ``to at least bring to light that Santa Fe County has thousands of acres leased for drilling, exploration and then maybe development. ``Some of those areas are highly sensitive areas, such as water aquifers or archaeological sites,'' he said. ``It's something that this county has really not been up against before.''....
The changes to come Global warming discussions usually focus on the dramatic, catastrophic changes that are taking place in faraway places. Glaciers at the top of the world receding at alarming rates, or computer simulators showing heavily populated seacoasts battered by hurricanes and engulfed by rising seas. But what about right here on the rangelands of Wyoming? Will noxious weeds, unpalatable to livestock and wildlife, take over the state's grasslands? Or will native grasses flourish? Will droughts become more frequent? At this point no one knows for sure. This summer on the hot, windswept prairie a few miles outside of Cheyenne, scientists and students from the University of Wyoming are down on their knees searching in the grass for answers. The scientists' outdoor laboratory is on a plot of United States Department of Agriculture property called PHACE, short for the Prairie Heating and CO2 Enrichment experiment. Here scientists are manipulating circular plots of prairie grass to simulate the atmospheric conditions expected to exist at the end of the century. Fxpected decades from now are warmer temperatures and elevated levels of carbon dioxide, up from today's CO2 levels in the air of 380 parts per billion to 600 parts per billion. Heaters surround some of the circular plots of grass, while others are gassed with extra doses of CO2. Some plots receive both treatments. Control groups receive neither. Some are watered, some are not. By monitoring the rangeland's response to these manipulations, scientists may be able to help Wyoming's ranchers, land managers, wildlife agencies and everyday people prepare for the future....
Pueblo chamber backs Army studies of Pinon Canyon The Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce has weighed in on the debate over the Army's planned expansion of its Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, sending a letter to Colorado's senators that urges them to permit the initial Army studies to go forward. Rod Slyhoff, the chamber president, said the board's June 20 letter urges Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., to remove an amendment to the 2008 military construction appropriations bill that would prohibit the Army from spending any money on the expansion next year. Slyhoff said the chamber is not taking a position yet on the 414,000-acre expansion, but wants the Army to go forward with its environmental and economic impact studies, which are the first steps in its land acquisition process. Reps. John Salazar, D-Colo., and Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., put that amendment on the House version of the military construction bill in June on an overwhelming vote of 383 to 34....Another fine example of urban businessmen. Use eminent domain to take private property, destroy the living of rural residents and relinquish the culture and customs they and their families bring to the area. All so they can rake in a little more cash at their stores, restaurants and bars. Do they really think they can build a more vibrant economy by growing the presence of the federal government in their community? May they rue the day they violated solid principle and turned on their neighbors. And let's not forget the sorry role of the military in turning one group of individuals against another.
Tahoe officials: Rehab efforts inadequate Emergency restoration plans by the U.S. Forest Service for areas burned by the disastrous Angora Fire fail to adequately protect homes, a high school and Lake Tahoe's sensitive environment, South Lake Tahoe officials said Monday. City officials are concerned that rainfall could cause debris flows, threatening city property where it abuts national forest land burned by the fire. Last week, the Forest Service issued a report detailing nearly $2.2 million in emergency erosion control improvements believed necessary to offset immediate erosion problems in the burn area. They don't go far enough, said South Lake Tahoe City Manager David Jinkens. "It's not going to handle the runoff," Jinkens said. "We don't think the current plan will handle the runoff that's expected." In a letter to Terri Marceron, supervisor of the Forest Service's Lake Tahoe unit, city Public Works Director John Greenhut identified four specific areas of concern....
Judge: Science on coho ignored It seemed like a rare good-news story for Northwest salmon: a Democratic governor rallies industry to help a troubled species, a supportive Republican White House hands the reins to the state, and happily, salmon numbers bounce back. The only problem: A federal judge concluded Friday that the story of Oregon coast coho was based on smoke and mirrors. The only evidence things are looking up for the salmon was a faulty analysis by Oregon officials that federal scientists said "does not meet the red face test," the judge said. Although federal biologists warned that Oregon's analysis had serious flaws, the Bush administration used that analysis to drop Endangered Species Act protections for the coho, leaving the state in charge, U.S. Magistrate Judge Janice M. Stewart concluded. Stewart found that the Bush administration's decision was illegal because it ignored the best available science about what's really happening to coho -- which is not as rosy as Oregon suggested....
Stanley activist wants wolves out of Idaho Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf? Not Ron Gillett, though he wants the creature removed from Idaho. An outdoor outfitter from Stanley and anti-wolf activist, Gillett is leading a campaign to rid the state of Canadian gray wolves. He's traveling to each of Idaho's 44 counties, urging commissioners to pass resolutions that endorse wolf removal. Gillett said wolves ravage Idaho's elk population, drive hunters from the state and cost businesses money when the hunters disappear. He met Monday with commissioners in Jerome and Twin Falls counties - the seventh and eighth stops on his campaign - and gave a passionate presentation about what he calls "the most cruel predator in North America." Commissioners in Jerome County seemed interested in Gillett's proposal, agreeing to table the issue until they could gather more information. Twin Falls commissioners indicated wolves were a non-issue....
Biggest water idea in decades? Aaron Million’s idea to pump water from Utah and Wyoming to the Front Range was the first major new water idea in several decades in Colorado. The reception has been polite, if in some cases skeptical. The water committee for Club 20, the Western Slope advocacy group, gave Million a friendly reception this winter. In May, The Denver Post lent an editorial pat-on-the-back. Without mentioning Million’s project, Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregg Hobbes agreed with the concept of additional storage as an answer to global warming-induced drought. But Million’s plan has also been met by what Ed Quillen, publisher of a Salida-based magazine called Colorado Central, calls hostility. He believes that major water organizations see Million invading what they consider to be their turf. Nearly all water projects of the last century were conceived by public or quasi-public agencies. Million’s is essentially a private venture....
Congress Will Hold Hearing on Cheney’s Role in Klamath Fish Kill Representative Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia), Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, will convene an oversight hearing on the role that Vice President Dick Cheney played in Klamath River Basin decisions leading to the Klamath fish kill of 2002. The hearing is set for July 31 in Washington D.C. As reported in the Washington Post article, “Leaving No Tracks,” by Jo Becker and Barton Gellman on June 27, Cheney's intervention in the development of a 10-year water plan for the Klamath River resulted in a September 2002 die-off of an estimated 68,000 to 80,000 adult salmon in the lower Klamath - the largest fish kill in U.S. history. The cutoff of water was made in spite of evidence from state, federal, tribal and independent scientists that a fish kill was imminent in September because of low, warm water conditions that prevailed in the river when the salmon began their annual migration upriver. In the spring of 2002, hundreds of thousands of juvenile salmon and steelhead perished because of the low flows and high water temperatures as the fish moved downriver....
Chunk of state water may be cut The state's water supply could be cut dramatically under a plan submitted last week to address California's increasingly chaotic Delta-based water system. The proposal filed in federal court sent shudders through water agencies from the Bay Area to Southern California, where surprised planners late in the week were still trying to figure out how dire its effects might be. The state Department of Water Resources said the plan could reduce water deliveries out of the Delta by more than one-third in a year of average rain and snow. "These impacts are dramatic," said the department's deputy director, Jerry Johns. "This is absolutely phenomenal." At the forefront of that crisis is the Delta smelt, a tiny imperiled fish whose numbers have collapsed repeatedly to lower and lower levels. In a declaration filed last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's top endangered species regulator in California linked the collapse of Delta smelt with the increase in water pumping out of the Delta that began in 2000. Steve Thompson acknowledged other factors could also be contributing to the ecological crisis and added that evidence linking increased water deliveries and the collapse of fish populations remains circumstantial....
He can dig it: dog knows scat The brownish-gray "sample" was about the size of a quarter and didn't smell like much to a human. But Rio, a 95-pound German shepherd with a discerning nose, sniffed out the bit of dried kit fox poop in a landscape littered with Frisbee-sized cow pies. "Good boy!" said handler Deborah Smith, rewarding Rio with a slap on the back and a few seconds of play. Then the pair resumed their scientific prowl for poop. Rio is a scent detection dog, trained to find a variety of animal scat (that's poop to you and me) and even plants. He and Smith, a wildlife biologist and dog trainer/handler, represent a leading edge of research in the San Joaquin Valley as scientists collect more information about the endangered kit fox. "[In] the use of scent dogs for work with endangered species ... she is one of the pioneers," said Patrick Kelly, a zoology professor and coordinator of the Endangered Species Recovery Program based at California State University, Stanislaus....
Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Site Becomes a Wildlife Refuge Sixteen miles northwest of Denver, the site where once the trigger mechanisms for nearly every nuclear weapon in the United States were made, has become the country's newest wildlife refuge. The U.S. Department of Energy, DOE, transferred nearly 4,000 acres of its former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production site to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Thursday. The transfer creates the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Over the warnings of some citizens groups, public access will be allowed to large portions of the site. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management James Rispoli said, "We are proud to transfer this space to the U.S. Department of Interior and we will continue with plans to complete environmental cleanup work at five more sites across the country by 2009."....
Farm Subsidies for Millionaires Washington spends more on corporate welfare than on homeland security — and farm subsidies are America's largest corporate welfare program. This year, as lawmakers rewrite the farm programs and push up their spending, they will invoke Norman Rockwell imagery to portray farm subsidies as a vital lifeboat for small, struggling family farmers. Don’t believe a word of it. Farms have come a long way since subsidies were introduced as a temporary solution to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression. Today, the average farm household earns $81,420 and has a net worth of $838,875 — both well above the national average. Farm incomes are setting records, and farms have one of the lowest failure rates of any industry. To be sure, some family farmers continue to struggle. But if farm subsidies were really about alleviating farmer poverty, then lawmakers could guarantee every full-time farmer an income of 185 percent of the federal level ($38,203 for a family of four) for under $5 billion annually — one-fifth the current cost of farm subsidies. Instead, small farmers are largely excluded from farm subsidies. Farm subsidy payments are based on acreage, so by definition, the largest agribusinesses get the largest subsidies. Consequently, commercial farmers — who report an average income of $200,000 and net worth of nearly $2 million — now collect the majority of farm subsidies. Most farm subsidy dollars go to millionaires....
R-CALF sues former president, directors Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, R-CALF, has filed suit against several former members and board members. A lawsuit was filed in Montana District Court against former president of the organization, Chuck Kiker, and former regional directors Jonathan Wooster and Dennis McDonald. The lawsuit also names five unnamed defendants John Doe 1 to 5. The lawsuit claims breach of fiduciary duty, violation of the Montana Uniform Trade Secrets Act, Conversion and Injunctive Relief. R-CALF claims that what was intended as a confidential report commissioned by the group was disseminated by the defendants, resulting in damage to the R-CALF organization. The suit also hopes to keep the defendants from using R-CALF membership lists. Chuck Kiker was removed as president of R-CALF earlier this year, and regional directors Wooster and McDonald were among the board members who resigned in protest....
Tombstone Or Bust! A group of five people are traveling from Texarkana, Ark., to Tombstone, Ariz., at 4 miles per hour. How long does it take them? Nine months. That's because the group is traveling in horse-drawn covered wagons. Mike Smith, 58, has been planning this trip for three years and on July 4 the caravan left Texarkana. The rancher spent half of that time building the two wagons the group is riding in. Smith's grandson, Clint Culpepper, 18, leads the caravan riding a horse. Smith departed July 4 because he has to get though the last set of mountains in New Mexico before the ice hits....
Idaho's range wars made Diamond Field Jack famous When two Cassia County sheepherders were found shot to death in their 1896 winter camp, Gov. William J. McConnell issued a statement to the newspapers: "It is a most terrible thing that men who are suffering the hardships incident to taking care of sheep in the winter months out upon the range, isolated by themselves from the support and comfort of their fellow men, should be shot down like wild beasts. The civilization of this age is shocked at the possibility of such men going unpunished." A cowboy named Jackson Lee Davis, who had become known by the nickname Diamond Field Jack, was the first suspect. He had come by the name because of an earlier involvement in an Owyhee County scam over worthless quartz crystals their promoters claimed were diamonds. Davis worked for the Sparks-Harrel Cattle Co. with the job of intimidating sheep owners to keep them from crossing an imaginary "dead line" that divided Cassia County. Cattle interests claimed the western half of the county and wanted sheep to stay on the eastern half. The role was a natural for Jack, a small man who liked to talk and act big, but he overplayed his part this time. He had told anyone who would listen that he had been hired to kill sheepherders. Davis had been involved in a scrape in November 1895, in which a sheepherder named Tolman was injured....
It's All Trew: Stables were cultural hub I found that the "stables" of today had replaced "livery stables" located in cities during the height of the horsepower era before the advent of the gas-powered automobile. Livery stable is derived from "delivery stable" for at one time almost all goods purchased in stores in the city were delivered by the store to the customer's home. This required large outlays of barns, horses, wagons and buggies for delivery purposes, thus the name livery stable. The term "livery" used by itself, seems to have been coined in the smaller towns of the Midwest. Here, stores were smaller and often contracted or hired private firms for customer deliveries. These private firms often rented mounts, teams and equipment to the public along with farrier and grooming services. Along with liveries, livery stables and stables there were also freight companies for heavier hauling of products. Some blacksmith shops were versatile, offering farrier service, wagon repair, saddle and harness repairs and gun-smithing. Any of these businesses might also offer livestock sales in conjunction with the other services. All of these evolved from the old time "wagon yard." Both in Europe and early America, travelers sought nightly comfort and protection at remote taverns and inns who offered fenced or walled courtyards and stables for stock. Many of these "traveler way-stations" later became stagecoach stops and grew into villages or towns....
Cartels grow pot on 'national treasures' Marijuana cultivation on public land in the U.S. is a multibillion-dollar business, run by Mexican drug cartels and guarded by heavily armed members of U.S.-based street gangs and Mexican nationals, says the head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). "Our national treasures are now ground zero for international and domestic drug cultivation and trafficking," said drug czar John P. Walters. Mr. Walters made his comments last week during Operation Alesia, a multiagency marijuana-eradication initiative in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, the largest national forest in California. Coordinated by the Shasta County Sheriff's Office with the support of the California National Guard, the weeklong operation involved 17 federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies. He said California's public lands are exceptionally vulnerable, adding that nine out of the top 10 marijuana-producing sites are found in that state and that 57 percent of all marijuana produced on public land in the U.S. is grown in California....
Report: 'Dead Zone' Growing in Gulf Researchers predict that the recurring oxygen-depleted "dead zone" off the Louisiana coast will grow this summer to 8,543 square miles - its largest in at least 22 years. The forecast, released Monday by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, is based on a federal estimate of nitrogen from the Mississippi River watershed to the Gulf of Mexico. It discounts the effect storms might have. The "dead zone" in the northern Gulf, at the end of the Mississippi River system, is one of the largest areas of oxygen-depleted coastal waters in the world. Low oxygen, or hypoxia, can be caused by pollution from farm fertilizer, soil erosion and discharge from sewage treatment plants, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The pollution is carried downstream by the Mississippi and comes from throughout the U.S....
Weld County residents oppose uranium plans The soaring price of uranium and plans for scores of new nuclear power plants are driving a controversial plan for a Front Range uranium mine.
Powertech Uranium Corp. is proposing a 5,760-acre development in western Weld County that eventually could produce 8 million pounds of the nuclear fuel. At the current price of $129 a pound, the operation could generate $1 billion in revenue. Yet the $20 million proposal has generated strong opposition from northern Colorado landowners who fear environmental damage and health problems from the mine. The company is proposing a mining process known as "in-situ" in which a solvent solution is injected underground to dissolve uranium and pump it to the surface. The process is safer and less invasive than traditional open-pit or underground mining, said Richard Blubaugh, vice president of environmental health and safety resources for Powertech. Nunn cattle rancher Daryl Burkhart is not convinced by Powertech's claims. "I'm worried about cancer and about them messing with my water and destroying my aquifer," he said. "It's a health risk getting that uranium out, and once you've done it, you've got a poison that you can never get rid of."....
Oil drilling fears erupt in Galisteo, Cerrillos More than 6,000 acres of state mineral rights plus at least 54,000 acres of private mineral rights in southern Santa Fe County, between Cerrillos and Galisteo, have been leased for petroleum exploration, causing worries of an oil boom that might pollute the environment. Concerned residents are meeting from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. tonight at Eldorado Community Center to hear from Tweeti Blancett, an Aztec rancher who will talk about how oil and gas exploration has harmed her ranch. Johnny Micou, who lives between Cerrillos and Galisteo, said he and his wife learned about the exploration by Tecton Energy of Houston in April after seeing several petroleum-drilling trucks near their home. Micou said they formed Drilling Santa Fe and created a Web site at drillingsantafe.com ``to at least bring to light that Santa Fe County has thousands of acres leased for drilling, exploration and then maybe development. ``Some of those areas are highly sensitive areas, such as water aquifers or archaeological sites,'' he said. ``It's something that this county has really not been up against before.''....
The changes to come Global warming discussions usually focus on the dramatic, catastrophic changes that are taking place in faraway places. Glaciers at the top of the world receding at alarming rates, or computer simulators showing heavily populated seacoasts battered by hurricanes and engulfed by rising seas. But what about right here on the rangelands of Wyoming? Will noxious weeds, unpalatable to livestock and wildlife, take over the state's grasslands? Or will native grasses flourish? Will droughts become more frequent? At this point no one knows for sure. This summer on the hot, windswept prairie a few miles outside of Cheyenne, scientists and students from the University of Wyoming are down on their knees searching in the grass for answers. The scientists' outdoor laboratory is on a plot of United States Department of Agriculture property called PHACE, short for the Prairie Heating and CO2 Enrichment experiment. Here scientists are manipulating circular plots of prairie grass to simulate the atmospheric conditions expected to exist at the end of the century. Fxpected decades from now are warmer temperatures and elevated levels of carbon dioxide, up from today's CO2 levels in the air of 380 parts per billion to 600 parts per billion. Heaters surround some of the circular plots of grass, while others are gassed with extra doses of CO2. Some plots receive both treatments. Control groups receive neither. Some are watered, some are not. By monitoring the rangeland's response to these manipulations, scientists may be able to help Wyoming's ranchers, land managers, wildlife agencies and everyday people prepare for the future....
Pueblo chamber backs Army studies of Pinon Canyon The Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce has weighed in on the debate over the Army's planned expansion of its Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, sending a letter to Colorado's senators that urges them to permit the initial Army studies to go forward. Rod Slyhoff, the chamber president, said the board's June 20 letter urges Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., to remove an amendment to the 2008 military construction appropriations bill that would prohibit the Army from spending any money on the expansion next year. Slyhoff said the chamber is not taking a position yet on the 414,000-acre expansion, but wants the Army to go forward with its environmental and economic impact studies, which are the first steps in its land acquisition process. Reps. John Salazar, D-Colo., and Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., put that amendment on the House version of the military construction bill in June on an overwhelming vote of 383 to 34....Another fine example of urban businessmen. Use eminent domain to take private property, destroy the living of rural residents and relinquish the culture and customs they and their families bring to the area. All so they can rake in a little more cash at their stores, restaurants and bars. Do they really think they can build a more vibrant economy by growing the presence of the federal government in their community? May they rue the day they violated solid principle and turned on their neighbors. And let's not forget the sorry role of the military in turning one group of individuals against another.
Tahoe officials: Rehab efforts inadequate Emergency restoration plans by the U.S. Forest Service for areas burned by the disastrous Angora Fire fail to adequately protect homes, a high school and Lake Tahoe's sensitive environment, South Lake Tahoe officials said Monday. City officials are concerned that rainfall could cause debris flows, threatening city property where it abuts national forest land burned by the fire. Last week, the Forest Service issued a report detailing nearly $2.2 million in emergency erosion control improvements believed necessary to offset immediate erosion problems in the burn area. They don't go far enough, said South Lake Tahoe City Manager David Jinkens. "It's not going to handle the runoff," Jinkens said. "We don't think the current plan will handle the runoff that's expected." In a letter to Terri Marceron, supervisor of the Forest Service's Lake Tahoe unit, city Public Works Director John Greenhut identified four specific areas of concern....
Judge: Science on coho ignored It seemed like a rare good-news story for Northwest salmon: a Democratic governor rallies industry to help a troubled species, a supportive Republican White House hands the reins to the state, and happily, salmon numbers bounce back. The only problem: A federal judge concluded Friday that the story of Oregon coast coho was based on smoke and mirrors. The only evidence things are looking up for the salmon was a faulty analysis by Oregon officials that federal scientists said "does not meet the red face test," the judge said. Although federal biologists warned that Oregon's analysis had serious flaws, the Bush administration used that analysis to drop Endangered Species Act protections for the coho, leaving the state in charge, U.S. Magistrate Judge Janice M. Stewart concluded. Stewart found that the Bush administration's decision was illegal because it ignored the best available science about what's really happening to coho -- which is not as rosy as Oregon suggested....
Stanley activist wants wolves out of Idaho Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf? Not Ron Gillett, though he wants the creature removed from Idaho. An outdoor outfitter from Stanley and anti-wolf activist, Gillett is leading a campaign to rid the state of Canadian gray wolves. He's traveling to each of Idaho's 44 counties, urging commissioners to pass resolutions that endorse wolf removal. Gillett said wolves ravage Idaho's elk population, drive hunters from the state and cost businesses money when the hunters disappear. He met Monday with commissioners in Jerome and Twin Falls counties - the seventh and eighth stops on his campaign - and gave a passionate presentation about what he calls "the most cruel predator in North America." Commissioners in Jerome County seemed interested in Gillett's proposal, agreeing to table the issue until they could gather more information. Twin Falls commissioners indicated wolves were a non-issue....
Biggest water idea in decades? Aaron Million’s idea to pump water from Utah and Wyoming to the Front Range was the first major new water idea in several decades in Colorado. The reception has been polite, if in some cases skeptical. The water committee for Club 20, the Western Slope advocacy group, gave Million a friendly reception this winter. In May, The Denver Post lent an editorial pat-on-the-back. Without mentioning Million’s project, Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregg Hobbes agreed with the concept of additional storage as an answer to global warming-induced drought. But Million’s plan has also been met by what Ed Quillen, publisher of a Salida-based magazine called Colorado Central, calls hostility. He believes that major water organizations see Million invading what they consider to be their turf. Nearly all water projects of the last century were conceived by public or quasi-public agencies. Million’s is essentially a private venture....
Congress Will Hold Hearing on Cheney’s Role in Klamath Fish Kill Representative Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia), Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, will convene an oversight hearing on the role that Vice President Dick Cheney played in Klamath River Basin decisions leading to the Klamath fish kill of 2002. The hearing is set for July 31 in Washington D.C. As reported in the Washington Post article, “Leaving No Tracks,” by Jo Becker and Barton Gellman on June 27, Cheney's intervention in the development of a 10-year water plan for the Klamath River resulted in a September 2002 die-off of an estimated 68,000 to 80,000 adult salmon in the lower Klamath - the largest fish kill in U.S. history. The cutoff of water was made in spite of evidence from state, federal, tribal and independent scientists that a fish kill was imminent in September because of low, warm water conditions that prevailed in the river when the salmon began their annual migration upriver. In the spring of 2002, hundreds of thousands of juvenile salmon and steelhead perished because of the low flows and high water temperatures as the fish moved downriver....
Chunk of state water may be cut The state's water supply could be cut dramatically under a plan submitted last week to address California's increasingly chaotic Delta-based water system. The proposal filed in federal court sent shudders through water agencies from the Bay Area to Southern California, where surprised planners late in the week were still trying to figure out how dire its effects might be. The state Department of Water Resources said the plan could reduce water deliveries out of the Delta by more than one-third in a year of average rain and snow. "These impacts are dramatic," said the department's deputy director, Jerry Johns. "This is absolutely phenomenal." At the forefront of that crisis is the Delta smelt, a tiny imperiled fish whose numbers have collapsed repeatedly to lower and lower levels. In a declaration filed last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's top endangered species regulator in California linked the collapse of Delta smelt with the increase in water pumping out of the Delta that began in 2000. Steve Thompson acknowledged other factors could also be contributing to the ecological crisis and added that evidence linking increased water deliveries and the collapse of fish populations remains circumstantial....
He can dig it: dog knows scat The brownish-gray "sample" was about the size of a quarter and didn't smell like much to a human. But Rio, a 95-pound German shepherd with a discerning nose, sniffed out the bit of dried kit fox poop in a landscape littered with Frisbee-sized cow pies. "Good boy!" said handler Deborah Smith, rewarding Rio with a slap on the back and a few seconds of play. Then the pair resumed their scientific prowl for poop. Rio is a scent detection dog, trained to find a variety of animal scat (that's poop to you and me) and even plants. He and Smith, a wildlife biologist and dog trainer/handler, represent a leading edge of research in the San Joaquin Valley as scientists collect more information about the endangered kit fox. "[In] the use of scent dogs for work with endangered species ... she is one of the pioneers," said Patrick Kelly, a zoology professor and coordinator of the Endangered Species Recovery Program based at California State University, Stanislaus....
Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Site Becomes a Wildlife Refuge Sixteen miles northwest of Denver, the site where once the trigger mechanisms for nearly every nuclear weapon in the United States were made, has become the country's newest wildlife refuge. The U.S. Department of Energy, DOE, transferred nearly 4,000 acres of its former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production site to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Thursday. The transfer creates the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Over the warnings of some citizens groups, public access will be allowed to large portions of the site. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management James Rispoli said, "We are proud to transfer this space to the U.S. Department of Interior and we will continue with plans to complete environmental cleanup work at five more sites across the country by 2009."....
Farm Subsidies for Millionaires Washington spends more on corporate welfare than on homeland security — and farm subsidies are America's largest corporate welfare program. This year, as lawmakers rewrite the farm programs and push up their spending, they will invoke Norman Rockwell imagery to portray farm subsidies as a vital lifeboat for small, struggling family farmers. Don’t believe a word of it. Farms have come a long way since subsidies were introduced as a temporary solution to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression. Today, the average farm household earns $81,420 and has a net worth of $838,875 — both well above the national average. Farm incomes are setting records, and farms have one of the lowest failure rates of any industry. To be sure, some family farmers continue to struggle. But if farm subsidies were really about alleviating farmer poverty, then lawmakers could guarantee every full-time farmer an income of 185 percent of the federal level ($38,203 for a family of four) for under $5 billion annually — one-fifth the current cost of farm subsidies. Instead, small farmers are largely excluded from farm subsidies. Farm subsidy payments are based on acreage, so by definition, the largest agribusinesses get the largest subsidies. Consequently, commercial farmers — who report an average income of $200,000 and net worth of nearly $2 million — now collect the majority of farm subsidies. Most farm subsidy dollars go to millionaires....
R-CALF sues former president, directors Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, R-CALF, has filed suit against several former members and board members. A lawsuit was filed in Montana District Court against former president of the organization, Chuck Kiker, and former regional directors Jonathan Wooster and Dennis McDonald. The lawsuit also names five unnamed defendants John Doe 1 to 5. The lawsuit claims breach of fiduciary duty, violation of the Montana Uniform Trade Secrets Act, Conversion and Injunctive Relief. R-CALF claims that what was intended as a confidential report commissioned by the group was disseminated by the defendants, resulting in damage to the R-CALF organization. The suit also hopes to keep the defendants from using R-CALF membership lists. Chuck Kiker was removed as president of R-CALF earlier this year, and regional directors Wooster and McDonald were among the board members who resigned in protest....
Tombstone Or Bust! A group of five people are traveling from Texarkana, Ark., to Tombstone, Ariz., at 4 miles per hour. How long does it take them? Nine months. That's because the group is traveling in horse-drawn covered wagons. Mike Smith, 58, has been planning this trip for three years and on July 4 the caravan left Texarkana. The rancher spent half of that time building the two wagons the group is riding in. Smith's grandson, Clint Culpepper, 18, leads the caravan riding a horse. Smith departed July 4 because he has to get though the last set of mountains in New Mexico before the ice hits....
Idaho's range wars made Diamond Field Jack famous When two Cassia County sheepherders were found shot to death in their 1896 winter camp, Gov. William J. McConnell issued a statement to the newspapers: "It is a most terrible thing that men who are suffering the hardships incident to taking care of sheep in the winter months out upon the range, isolated by themselves from the support and comfort of their fellow men, should be shot down like wild beasts. The civilization of this age is shocked at the possibility of such men going unpunished." A cowboy named Jackson Lee Davis, who had become known by the nickname Diamond Field Jack, was the first suspect. He had come by the name because of an earlier involvement in an Owyhee County scam over worthless quartz crystals their promoters claimed were diamonds. Davis worked for the Sparks-Harrel Cattle Co. with the job of intimidating sheep owners to keep them from crossing an imaginary "dead line" that divided Cassia County. Cattle interests claimed the western half of the county and wanted sheep to stay on the eastern half. The role was a natural for Jack, a small man who liked to talk and act big, but he overplayed his part this time. He had told anyone who would listen that he had been hired to kill sheepherders. Davis had been involved in a scrape in November 1895, in which a sheepherder named Tolman was injured....
It's All Trew: Stables were cultural hub I found that the "stables" of today had replaced "livery stables" located in cities during the height of the horsepower era before the advent of the gas-powered automobile. Livery stable is derived from "delivery stable" for at one time almost all goods purchased in stores in the city were delivered by the store to the customer's home. This required large outlays of barns, horses, wagons and buggies for delivery purposes, thus the name livery stable. The term "livery" used by itself, seems to have been coined in the smaller towns of the Midwest. Here, stores were smaller and often contracted or hired private firms for customer deliveries. These private firms often rented mounts, teams and equipment to the public along with farrier and grooming services. Along with liveries, livery stables and stables there were also freight companies for heavier hauling of products. Some blacksmith shops were versatile, offering farrier service, wagon repair, saddle and harness repairs and gun-smithing. Any of these businesses might also offer livestock sales in conjunction with the other services. All of these evolved from the old time "wagon yard." Both in Europe and early America, travelers sought nightly comfort and protection at remote taverns and inns who offered fenced or walled courtyards and stables for stock. Many of these "traveler way-stations" later became stagecoach stops and grew into villages or towns....
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